managing the first take wonders

[SafeandSoundMastering]

If at all possible do the load in and set up the night before, record it anyway and then the same the next morning, that way you get 2 of those moments.

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[LowG]

I think doing lots of takes is great. If you are playing something where you have exact ideas about each nuance of the part it takes lots of takes to get focused in on what there is to do and what to concentrate on.

Didn't bands like the Beatles do tons and tons of takes?

If you're playing more improvised type music, of course you shouldn't do lots of takes.

If a paid studio musician got worse with each take they wouldn't be very useful. I don't understand why so many songwriters get so much worse at their own songs as takes add up. I guess it's a different animal....

I know that when I played classical music the more we played the piece the better it got....

[vvv]

If a paid studio musician got worse with each take they wouldn't be very useful. I don't understand why so many songwriters get so much worse at their own songs as takes add up. I guess it's a different animal....

Yep. And to some unfair extent, that's why rock-n-rollers don't like playing with pro's - "jobbers", we sometimes call 'em.

Rock, as a concept, at least some times (especially avant, improv, punk, garage, etc.) requires aggression, raw emotion, a feeling of being "on the edge".

For me, that happens most best and often on the first take or 3.

And it's not a hard and fast rule, but that said, just as a example that happened today (truth), I have been working the vocal on this very hard - about 10 takes - and it pretty much sucks dirty dog-hair.

A buddy reco'd I start anew with new lyrics - he even gave me the song title, and so the first take of the new vox is here, and I believe it's much better.

[floid]

i find that with a first take that's great but just not good enough, simply coming back to it from time to time can keep the quest for the "real" take from becoming too bogged down in minutiae. Almost like doing a reboot of your conceptions. Lots of times it seems like the same things that worked to make it so magic factored equally into why you can't bring yourself to use it, but it's only after trying to find an appropriate patch to plaster over those flaws that you begin to understand their nature.
And yeah, if it ain't working, it just ain't working - leave it alone, come back later, and purposefully change something, anything: tweak a setting, nudge a mic, grab a different chair or pair of headphones, change underwear, anything to keep you in the moment of acting rather that pr-acticing re-acting.
Or there's the line of thought, as one of my craft of fiction instructors once put it, that first impulses can only be trusted as far as they pull you into exploring them.

[drumsound]

Last night I was playing drums with a solo artist. He was cutting bass. We rehearsed and worked out the details, the song was mostly in 5, but the drums came in when it shifted to 6, then went back to five, and he wanted the second cycle of the form in 5 to shift to a Boom-Chick 2 feel against the continued 5 in the bass and melody, then drum solo over the bass ostinato.

The first recorded take had a few goobers and we knew we'd need to try again. We went out and played a take, and I soloed for 12 bars instead of 16 and we weren't sure about some other things. We stayed out while the RADAR kept rolling and played another take. The artist was fairly convince the second take was going to be the one, but we both thought the first just felt better. I did have to punch one bar in the section in 6/8, and edit the bass part to match the length of the drum solo.

That's not a true first take, but the first of a set.