The recording is finished
and it is the best thing
you have ever made.
Two guitars in the verse.
Four in the chorus,
because nothing stopped you.
A harmony stack
sung one voice at a time
by a person with one voice.
A keyboard pad underneath
all of it,
so quiet that nobody notices it
until the moment it is gone.
Then somebody books you a gig.
There are four of you.
Eight hands.
One of you sings.
And the song does not exist
in a form that four people
can play in a room.
What happens next is familiar.
You put the pad on a laptop,
and now the band has a member
who cannot listen,
cannot slow down,
cannot find its way back in
after the drummer drops a stick.
Or you give the pad
to the guitarist,
who then cannot play the line
that was the reason
the song exists.
Or you play it stripped,
and it is thin,
and the room is comparing it
with the version
you taught them to expect.
None of that is the recording's fault.
The recording was an arrangement
for a band that does not exist,
written by one person
who could add one more part,
at a time,
alone,
for as long as the night held.
A room does not work like that.
In a room everything happens at once,
by people, with hands,
who have to hear each other
to stay together.
So ask the question early.
Who plays this.
Not in principle. By name.
And if the honest answer
is that the studio plays it,
then you have two songs
and it is better to know.
One of them is for speakers.
One of them is for the four of you.
They are allowed to differ,
and the differences
are where arrangements
actually get made.
The version you can perform
is the real one.
Everything else is a very good record
of something you cannot do yet.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
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