Midori, sans liqueur.

So I just delivered our recordings from Sunday to the Music Dept, and am now set up to participate in at least one, perhaps two, more gigs in the next month. Yay :D

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It’s funny. I thought I’d gotten over this part of my life, too - I haven’t recorded in over a year. Yet, as soon as I was once again nitpicking at mic placement, soon as I had those headphones on… I couldn’t help wanting to obsess over capturing this performance perfectly like I had in high school.

I didn’t try seriously getting into recording because I assumed that when I got to university, I wouldn’t have time for recording anymore among the myriad of extracurriculars I planned to participate in. That was a good call, and I was right about that much. But my main reason for not trying was that I assumed there’d be people much better than I already doing it, and I would never get to actually have my hands on a project again.

…Well, I kinda lied on that one. I didn’t just assume, I actually knew there were going to be people as passionate as me AND better than me before I even got here: I’d been talking to Ben for months before I’d arrived at Northeastern, and even from the start I knew he had one-ups on me. He had $XX amount of equipment that I could only really dream of having (because I admittedly spend my money on food, instruments, dresses, and shoes > recording gear). He had a more efficient set up that didn’t require a mixer, DAT deck, DAT tape, and an Alesis. He knew how to use Logic, and after having switched to Mac OSX only a year ago, I was still struggling with it.

And I knew he was going to go after it as one of his main activities at university. I was done for.

Basically, I didn’t bother trying because I thought it was going to break my heart: I would never be able to top Ben, or anyone else, at their own game. I wouldn’t be able to deal with just sitting, watching, or sitting second fiddle after all that I had done at Pingry. Ugly as it sounds, I also knew I’d kind of hate not being in charge.

I decided to bow out, live vicariously through Ben and just deal with it.

But the fact of the matter is, I can’t. I can’t have mics unevenly set up. I can’t leave footsteps, or ambient noise, or even flies buzzing past mics once I’ve heard it in the recording (Even if that means whining loudly at Ben and pouting til he teaches me how to remove it, or just does it himself). I can’t not fill in every ID3 tag possible. I can’t not physically label CDs and archival DVDs with sharpie and pack it up all nice and neat.

So I was right about myself in that I couldn’t just sit and take it… but I was dead wrong about getting my heart broken. I should have known I’d end up getting involved anyway - That’s just who I am. This is just what I love.

And in the end, Ben will probably want to strangle me because I strive for a level of nearly unattainable perfection, and I will probably want to smash his amazing gear out of spite that it sounds better than mine ever did… But at least I’m back to doing what I still love.

That’s what counts, right?