Against perfection
May 12, 2014
Tim pointed me in the direction of this interview with Pye Corner Audio.
“I spend less time pondering the what-ifs, more time doing, then moving on,” he says. “Given the chance, I can work very quickly. I definitely embrace imperfection. In my days as an engineer I spent so much time polishing performances and correcting mistakes that I realised it made for pretty sterile recordings. I also felt extremely liberated after coming to the realisation that there is no absolute final version of a song. There are just alternative interpretations. Once I stopped chasing that elusive perfection, things eased massively.”
Music should be performed. If you iron out every crease to attain an ideal recording/mix, you’ll have a dead song. Writing is similar, except I think it has more propensity to evolve. You can rewrite in a way that develops the work. Re-recording, on the other hand, presents a different version.
Anyway, here’s something I recorded as a demo years ago and have always had a mind to finish. Like all others, this is the best extant recording of this version of the song.
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