"Record take one only because I never fuck up."
--This is one of my pals and I's running jokes, but how true it is, even if it isn't, there's always a magic you will never recreate on that first take..part of the brain that is working properly until it gets told to shut up.
Just like trying to recapture the magic of a 4-track production by switching over to a 24 track and spending a day micing the drums.... Usually though it's the guitar or vocal tone that really stops the session in it's tracks.
God bless you if your clients are able to walk the tightrope, but I must bid you fair warning, I have seen nothing get easier on the engineer lately. But it's not only engineering to me, it seems the whole world is turning into a hand holding telemarketers apology. We appreciate your patience sir...
I personally love having a good time and sharing some smiles but I also like to define an objective and then totally murder it with tears of bliss and rage. The save save save thing to me is total BS and always will be, I don't care if they make 500 track rigs that record at reality, very few records have ever proven to me that more than 24 tracks is necessary.
When decisions are made now, records are being made now, and the emotion and ambience that you are forcing yourself to swim in will inform the rest of what happens for the song. It will always be more unique if three months later some golden ear cannot EQ it to sound exactly 'right'. Motown. Beatles.
But that ain't 2010! It's not modern and new!
Well, I submit that 1979 was the cutoff then, with few and rare acceptions. Supertramps 'Breakfast in America' and Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'...and previous to this alot of other things, Queen, ELO in 77 and 78, keep going back...hundreds of beautiful LPs. Rock as Art. Rock as High Art. Painters and sculpters used to be the artists of a culture but in the 1960's and 1970's the ultimate artist, the man who's work spoke for his generation and represented that time, those men and women were rock-n-roll artists.
But things reached a perfection in the late 70's for some reason and then it was over, save for the revisitations--Radiohead's 'OK Computer', Beck's 'Seachange', the revisitations happen when the match of the artist who is ready to take the throne, to make the statement, to define what life feels like right at that time, when that artist demands to work in a certain way, which happens to be the way it used to be done.
You have to be locked away, your thoughts must never be centered around, 'well I can save this and revisit it'.
It's now or never.