Just Listen…and Play
“Turn that up! No, not that one - the other one!”
Recently, I was in the studio editing guitar tracks for a client’s upcoming project. As I was intently focusing on the feel and sonics of the rhythm guitar tracks (of which there were many!) I was working off of the client’s mix notes, since they couldn’t be here for the actual mix session. One of the requests was to “tighten” the guitar tracks up; that is, edit them so that they conform closer to perfect metronomic time. Normally in a circumstance like this, an engineer might try to quantize the audio, but quantization can often lead to unpredictable interactions with the other tracks, or worse. And of course, when one starts moving and editing tracks in this manner, the sonic issue of phase coherence certainly comes into play.
Four hours later, I finished up the client’s requests for this mix revision, mixed down a rough but semi-polished version of the full mix and shipped it off via the magic of file transfer. No CDs or tapes anymore – at least, it’s a rare request…the immediacy of digital file transfer can be a positive or a negative. Although, sometimes, a workflow can be interrupted when things happen too fast (more on that in a future post, for sure).
Anyway, later in the week, I was informed that the band made the decision to go back to the original versions of the raw-ish guitar tracks - “unquantized” and “more natural” sounding were some of the descriptions they used. The band’s new mix notes advised me to return the tracks to their former timing glory, before all of the editing surgery and, and, as Brian Eno says, a massive amount of “screwdriver work.”
There is a lesson to be learned here (hopefully!), and I think it has to do with musical authenticity and, in a more specific way, musical intimacy. The original guitar tracks weren’t “out-of-time,” they were just not perfect. It’s ok to have a track feel human; it’s what draws us in, makes us feel connected. We can tell when tracks and songs and artists are genuine, and we can tell when they are not; the concept of musical intimacy is present, and lurking just beneath the sonic surface for those who wish to listen intentionally and connect to music on a deeper, yet inescapably fundamental level.
I hope they don’t want to do the same thing to the drum tracks…