Recording New Stuff!

I've been pushing myself to use new tools and techniques in my recording lately. I think it's healthy for an artist to always feel like they're being tested by their medium. Everything you do is a little bit like a negotiation- you're constantly in a state of knowing vaguely what you want, and trying to reconcile it with what you see/hear, and the capabilities of the tools in front of you. This "negotiation" can be a fun and creatively-lucrative process.

As a listener I want to be delighted and surprised by what I'm experiencing. As the artist, I have to be the *first listener* and part of that means following the things that surprise and delight me in the recording and mixing process. A song with too rigid a plan/execution that does nothing new, will never be as genuinely interesting and cool as something you discovered as you were working. Dan Harmon said in an interview once, "If you want to make something creative that people will actually like, you have to be its first fan."

Putting yourself in a position to make discoveries and be fascinated by your tools encourages you to make something *fun*. That doesn't mean I don't have a plan before I go into recording. I start with a very solid foundation that I've worked on for days, or weeks (or sometimes months...). I know already where I think the energy should build and wane- and what musical moments I think I want to bring out. Then I set off to create a cast of voices and characters with my instruments. I sometimes think of the new parts like creatures that will roam and play and be free to wander in and out of the songs structure. Who is listening to who? Who wants to be in charge? Who has something interesting to say at this moment?

The Moog Grandmother (and more recently, also the Moog DFAM) is an amazing tool for this. It's very much designed around the ethos of discovery and playful experimentation. Other, more articulate people have already written at length about that synth (and why it is so lovely), so I shall refrain from gushing too much here.