Are you ready to start a live performance? I hope you are, because now that we have pushed past both the songwriting and arranging phases, we can move on to my personal favorite of the six steps. This third phase of producing a musical piece is called “tracking”. This is the fun part where your gear and equipment will start to play their role. The overall goal of tracking is to capture your performance with your musical piece.
In most instances, a song is typically recorded one track at a time, and every time that you record a new track, you will be able to hear the previously recorded tracks playing on top of one another. This process is actually relatively easy to accomplish and this is the process of multi-track recording. However, “tracking” is considered a live performance so listening to your work over and over to catch mistakes will be ineffective here. It needs to be noted that tracking is not the same as songwriting because the way you focus on editing a project is very different from the way you would focus on your own live performance. When you perform live you need to focus on playing in time and the mood that you would want your recording to present. Multi-tracking can be used to supplement your live performance, however; what you decide to record is important based on what you need left to complete your work. When you are writing , you will want to have your mind open so that you are able to make different and new associations, and in turn you will start experimenting more and gradually become more comfortable with the way your recordings will go. Once complete, your live performance of your musical track can be added to your multi-track recording and further bring your masterwork together.
Depending on the software and hardware that is available to you, it is possible that you will have options to help you edit your live performance. However, you will still be limited with your editing options because live recordings can become distorted quickly by effects and in turn can make your overall project choppy and sound unnatural. You should never focus on both your writing and performance all at the same time because when you do, they typically both tend to suffer as a result. In order to provide a superb piece of music, you should focus on each of them separately. When you smash that record button, you should only think about giving the performance of your life and nothing else. Every. Single. Time. Have you any experience with live recordings or performances? Make sure to subscribe to my blog to stay up to date and don’t forget to like my post and leave a comment.
I will catch you in the next one. Stay Classy!