The Practical Art Of Making Magic
There’s an artist on a couch surrounded by four session musicians and a producer. The artist sings her song while we listen, taking notes and charting out chord structures.
When she finishes, we ask questions. “How much darkness do you want in this song?” “Is the song better served with a slightly slower speed?” “How washy do you want the chorus?”
Every person in the room has spent decades learning their craft. Most have produced dozens of artists. We’ve each brought tens of thousands of dollars of equipment to the studio. It’s hour #4, and we’ve blocked out a long 10 hour day to record just 3 songs together.
We decide on a musical direction together, go into the tracking room and run it a half dozen times. The producer comes in between takes, explaining little things to focus on, channeling us down the right path.
We all finally lock in musically and stay there for a whole pass. The band shuffles into the control room to listen back to the recording.
As the music fades out, a quiet comes over all of us. Something sacred and magical has happened in this musical moment, and we’re all aware of it. A few people slap each other’s backs, a few people hug. Four hours well spent.
. . .
The quickest/most efficient way to record a song is to pick any of the very capable producers in the room, sit down with a midi keyboard and a laptop, and knock out the song.
They play all the parts themselves (because usually if you’re genius level at one instrument, you’ll be passable on a couple other instruments), and you finish out a song in a day or less. It’s cost-effective, quick, and efficient (Or if you’re in a very big hurry and don’t mind something generic, fire up AI and generate a song with a prompt and humming a tune into your iPhone).
The second option (the one with lots of people in the room) is expensive, time consuming, difficult to coordinate.
It’s also the way to have the most fun, to make music in community, to bring the best from every person’s talent in the room.
It’s people working together to find the right musical path. It’s harmonizing humans and making thousands of real-time musical choices based on what every one else is doing.
It’s laughter, inside jokes, conflict resolved in good faith, grace, and communal working together toward a goal.
It’s extravagant, playful, serious.
It’s wonderfully inefficient.
It’s the practical art of making magic.