Another Andrew Bird
piece in the Times. Good stuff about the sausage making of music:
Writing songs and performing live have with time become almost the same process for me. The improvisation and conversation with the audience from show to show keep the songs fluid and alive. On the other hand, making a record is like a show that gets drawn out over a year or more, but with no cathartic resolution. When I’m in the studio things can quickly unravel and that’s not surprising. The audience has disappeared and you are given the attractive, but dangerous option to control everything.
And the tricky act of recording vocals:
Recording vocals can be fraught with aural illusions akin to the weirdness of hearing your own voice on your answering machine. ”That’s not me, is it?” You sing into a device that converts your voice into an electric current, which travels through wires and gadgets to a tape machine. You scrutinize that voice, make adjustments to your proximity to the microphone, switching between “head voice” and “chest voice.” When you belt it out it almost always sounds thin and small but when you sing quiet, close and intimate it sounds thick, warm and huge — but then it can lose gusto. Recording is full of counterintuitive stuff like this, so you can see how quickly the original sentiment of a song can get derailed.
Good stuff. I am surprised at some of the distinctions he draws between performing and recording, but knowing his music and having seen him live, I can hear how those distinctions work for him. I'm just not sure that it
has to be that way.
