Microscope

How do you feel when you lean into the mirror and look really close at the skin of your face? I imagine that if most of the world is anything like me, looking closely in the mirror involves noticing every single imperfection (large pore, zit, blackhead, redness, and missed spots shaving) in the skin of your face and cringing. Then you realize you can’t cringe because that only makes matters worse.

Recording can be a lot like that – especially when recording something for public consumption. It is like examining oneself under a microscope and seeing EVERYTHING. The good, the bad, and the ugly. The most challenging thing about this is that it becomes really difficult to not monitor every single gesture, tone, rhythm, phrase, and vocalism during a session. It becomes difficult to follow the adage, “leap and the net will appear.”

Oddly enough, the net is already there thanks to modern technology. And the best part that is so easily forgotten is that if something goes wrong, we can always go back and fix it – a feat that is impossible in a live performance.

I’m looking forward to recording tomorrow. While I don’t have tons of experience doing it, the little I have has generally been a fun experience. It is recordings that really fertilized my interest in classical music when I was first discovering what it was to make music. They provided me with inspiration to become better and better and kept my dreams to be a professional musician alive. So it is exciting to be involved in a project like this – especially one in a familiar place where so many of those dreams began as well as with a new friend that I have been wanting to sing with for a while.