When did it all change for you?

[Ryan Silva]

As most of us, I started out playing in bands for many years while learning the ropes of recording. Now all of a sudden I can?t imagine music being played without recording it. The idea of a practice/jam session without record being hit once kinnda bores to death.

So it's happened, 90% of the time all I want to do is record music. I feel as if I have lost sight of the Rock n' Roll dream. You know, playing to a club full of dancing scantily clad bar vixens. Coming off the stage sweaty and completely on top of the world, as hundreds (maybe dozens) of fans chanting your band name

Has this happened to others out there? And how was the transaction for you?

Thanks

[JASIII]

I got into recording because of songwriting. I had lots of sketches and scraps of songs, but I'm a terrible lyricist, so I thought if I made demos of all my songs I could listen to them over and over and write lyrics. so a friend told me about tapeop and then i found this message board. It was all downhill from there. What was going to be about a $1000 investment has turned into 20x that or more 3 years later.......


Now I'd rather record than play club and bar gigs.

[Randy]

Well, after I did a stage dive at Leeds into a hot, sweaty pile of shirtless young, tight skinned beautiful people all screaming my name, I realized it was all just hollow and useless.

Hold it, I never played at Leeds. That must have been a dream.

Anyhoo, back to reality. After spending hours on the road sitting on top of my bass cabinet nursing horredous allergy hangovers (dust and cat allergies) only to play at clubs where the local bands vibe you and the "crowd" numbered less than 15. Then spending years "jamming" in a basement and doing a show every month or so to your long suffering pool of friends. Hauling your entire practice space 3 miles to do a 45 minute set and get home at 3 am after waking up the previous morning at 5:30 to go to work.

As far back as 1979 I got the realization that it is the recordings that I love. Yeah, it's great to see a band play live, but the only thing that makes you really love the music is the "permanent" art that was made of the songs. So i have always been about the recordings, even when it was only a handheld reporter's tape deck.

The funny thing is, I am over 40 and I still play out every month or so. We lug our old black boxes from one end of town to the other and blast it out at some punk club. I get a horrible chest cold from being in a smoke filled bar, and I have to nurse my back for a couple of days from hauling all the gear. But for some reason, we still do it.

I guess my answer would be, it never has and probably never will change for me. Oh well, I'm chronic.

[drumsound]

I got into recording because I was offered a job at a studio. I had been dinking around at home with my four-track so I kinda knew what was what. Once I started sdoing it I really felt at home. Plus I was making some money and not working for the man. Though I worked for him for a few years about a year after I started as a studio rat. I hate giging. Schleping gear to some ratty, shitty sounding room with an un-level stage to make $25 and smell like smoke sucks. I do about 6 gigs a year and that's plenty, too many even. I can spend weeks in the studio without noticing how long I've been there, happy as a clam the whole time.

I don't however record rehearsal. I still love to play music and I don't want to deal with technical things. I want to show up and lay my drums, or (now) bass.

[Slider]

For me it changed when computers started being used to mix records...
I went from making cool sounding records to making average sounding ones.


I was the typical kid with a 4-track writing songs just so I could record something.
It's very satisfying to preserve an idea as something you can play back again and again (at least until that format is obsolete).

[supersockmonkey]

i got into recording because i was sick of waiting for flakey friends to make music, so decided to do it on my own. Ive been happy ever since of coarse i miss playing with a group now and again but im getting older and everyone has lives now and no time for fun. Playing live was fun but dont miss hauling gear around.

[tommy]

Nothings changed for me with playing live. I still love it. I love waking up the day of the gig knowing that I have to somehow get out of work early to go to sound check. I love buying 2 for 1 strings during my lunch break. I love the anticipation and the nervous energy involved. I also love that I got my live rig down to 1 trip from the trunk of my car to the stage. ONE TRIP! Amp and pedal board in one hand, guitar over the shoulder and thats it.

As for recording, it all changed the day my friend bought a black face 16 bit adat machine and a mackie I bought a used pair of 414buls.

[Brett Siler]

I still love gigging. Although I agree with some of of the frustrations mentioned but I still love it. When I perform and play live I get a high like nothing else, even if it is to 10 apathic people.

As for recording I started out on a little Tascam 4 track. I took some recording classes at a local community college and started getting more into it. I stepped up to a DAW and kept collecting gear with extra money I had (and still do that). I keep learning more and more with each session and now actually starting to make decent sounding recordings.

There are things I like and dislike about both gigging and recording, but it is something I see myself doing for a long long time.

[Rigsby]

For years, up until really recently everything seemed vaguely pointless musically unless it was being recorded, but since getting into playing drums more i've just been playing for the love of it. Feels good.

[christiannokes]

yeah. I loved music sooo much, and now I love sound soooo much.


Maybe because I am getting older and becoming more detached to
emotion and my feelings.


But sometimes I hear a song and it makes me want to cry...

so I still got it.

[Mane1234]

Nice thread.....I turn 45 next month. I started playing in bands when I was 17 and just finally hung it up about 5 years ago. I started getting into recording about 13 years ago when I bought my first 4 trak and I've loved doing it ever since. I miss playing out but not near as much as I love recording. I guess if I lived someplace that had a more active live music scene I might still go play out from time to time but the scene here sucks. At least there's still plenty of bands to work with though which is all I need.

[AudioHog]

Ya know it's kinda funny when you look back. Started playing in bands when I was 17. Played into my early 30's and thought I hung it up. Sure we released records, toured, and had alot of fun but there was alot of bullshit involved as well. When we moved out of the city (MPLS) to a town of 3000, I thought me and the Hummingbird were all that was left of my music life. Then my wife started playing guitar, I met other musicians up here, my friend and I started the studio. Here I am at 39 back in the thick of it.

[spacelabstudio]

After messing around with a few very fun but thoroughly unimpressive bands in college, I was pretty much exclusively a recordist for a number of years and am just now getting back into playing with rock bands again. From my point of view, the two experiences inform each other. My experience in the production realm makes me better in a band, and playing in a band makes me better in the studio. Overall, anything I do with music, in my estimation, makes me a better *musician*, in the big holistic sense of the word. Each different situation I get myself into has different challenges and something to teach me, which in turn gives me more to offer.

It's extremely rare for me to record rehearsal, though. Or shows. As much as I love making records, I also love the mandala, here one moment, gone the next nature of live music--the irrepeatable event.

That said, I have no intention of ever being in a full-time touring rock band. Life on the road does not appeal to me. I currently make my living by other means, but in the long run I can see myself doing recording/production and film score/composing work as a "day job" and playing in rock bands as a hobby.

chris

[ubertar]

For me it was always about recording. When I was a little kid, I had a boombox that I'd use to record thunderstorms and crows. When I was about 13, I started "multi-tracking" by playing back stuff I recorded on the boombox and adding something live and recording the results on a stereo, and repeating the process a bunch of times. I didn't play an instrument yet, so I'd use whatever sounds I could find... stretched, plucked rubber bands were a favorite. I wish I still had those tapes. When I got older, being in a band and playing live gigs was exciting, but after doing it a bunch of years, it lost its luster. But recording still does it for me. Maybe part of it is because most of the music I like, and liked then was impossible to see live, b/c the bands didn't exist anymore.

[junkstar]

The cassette 4-track changed my life when it was introduced. The digital 8-track did the same many years later. I'm stuck for life (or until my ears give out).