Saturday 3 September 2011

I started listening again to last June’s Mackintosh session tapes while cutting the grass this afternoon: it’s much easier to get an idea of what’s good when you’ve got a repetitive distraction on the go at the same time.  I tried sitting down and listening with the scores in hand a few months ago and that was hopeless.  After the experience of making Revenge when there was only time for two takes of everything, it’s interesting to go back and eavesdrop on a process when there was time to keep ‘improving’ things: take 1 often turns out to be the best even where there are 15. In the tunes rather than the classical material, where there was more room to concentrate on feel rather than accuracy, there's more room for improvement as the session goes on, but the first good take is still usually the best.  The problem at the time is that you’re never quite sure whether the first good one has already been, or if it’s just coming up.