Behind the Microphone
Recording has been on my mind a lot lately.
This past weekend marked 3 years since I finished recording my debut album, and somewhat fittingly, I’m now in the final stages of editing for my third album, due out in January. As I spend hours listening back to my playing, fussing over details and searching for that one take that will somehow magically make my performance come together (spoiler alert: it usually doesn’t exist), I’m reminded of what a surreal experience it is to make an album.
In fact, with prerecorded and livestreamed “virtual concerts” temporarily replacing live performances in the COVID-era, the microphone has never been so important in musician’s lives. So while we’re immersed in this weird world of recorded music — and as I toil away on my new CD — I thought it might be interesting to explore the bizarre and fascinating art which is music recording.
I think it’s fair to say that, love or hate it, each musician has their own unique feelings towards the microphone. For many years, recording was a mostly miserable experience for me, one of constant disappointment when I would listen back to myself only to realize that how I thought sounded did not line up with reality. It’s a well-known fact among musicians that something in the energy of a live performance miraculously diminishes the importance of details in favour of a greater musical picture. But the microphone always hears the truth, and there’s only so much that you can “fix in post”. Now I’ve gotten better at predicting how I’ll sound on the other side of the microphone. But recording is still never a particularly pleasant experience.
I think it’s important to understand that in classical music, we’re trying to craft this “idealized” experience of musical performance. You the listener are supposed to be able to imagine that the music happened exactly as you’re hearing it, and not as a bunch of different takes carefully assembled together after the fact. This is maybe what led one of my professors at the Paris Conservatoire to exclaim that a CD was more akin to a historical document than to a true musical performance. Not only is it the same every time you listen back to it, but it’s not even real life. It’s an illusion, pretending to be something it’s not.
I was reminded about how unique this process is to classical recording when, sitting in a Montreal park on a beautiful summer day, I had the chance to compare notes with the fabulous jazz singer Dominique Fils-Aimé, also in the midst of producing her third record. Whereas I had only 3 days to record my album, hers was coming together in multiple studio sessions over the course of months. For her, recording was an intensely creative experience in which her ideas, music, and sound would all come to life. In contrast, when I sat in front of the microphones, most of my creative process had already taken place in months before, and the goal was instead to try and capture as best as possible my (hopefully) meticulously prepared performance.
It really makes you wonder why classical musicians continue to put ourselves through this whole process, especially when most pieces of music have already been recorded multiple times, often by legendary artists. Sure, there’s always room for a new interpretation, but if it’s just the same music are we really creating anything that new? Is there really need for more documentation?
Whenever I start thinking this way, I go back to the one of the recordings that first made me passionate about the format: Decca’s studio version of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, led by Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic. The history of this production (and it’s various re-releases) is enthralling, and it’s a wonder it ever happened at all. At over 14 hours of total music, recorded over the course of 6 years from 1958-1964, it’s often considered one of the greatest recording achievements of all times, and possibly one of the most expensive (apparently it took nearly 40 years to turn a profit!).
Something about the audacity of making the first ever studio version of this monumental operatic tetralogy never ceases amaze me. It captures my imagination, and reminds me that recording can be a chance to create something close to mythical. Sure, it might be the same every time you listen to it, but it’s a constantly exceptional musical experience.
Of course, the recording industry now is not what it once was, and I know it’s unlikely that I’ll ever make a recording as monumental, definitive, or world-changing as Solti’s Ring. But that doesn’t stop me from approaching making an album with the same audacity. There’s something amazing about being able to tell a story through recorded music, to invite listeners into my own carefully constructed world of sound, and to create something for the future.
So yes, my Conservatoire professor was right, a recording is nothing like a live performance, even if it might try to imitate one. But that’s a good thing, because recording has given musicians the power to imagine something beyond live, something permanent that an uncountable number of people might be able to experience. It’s allowed us to dream of bigger and grander creations than we ever could’ve before, and I don’t think that’s ever a bad thing.
But for right now, it’s back to work for me. My producer needs my comments on her new edit by this evening!