Domesticating the Microphone
If there’s one tiny, tiny positive to have come out of the recent COVID-19 disruption, it’s that many classical musicians seem to be becoming more independent, as many dip a toe into the world of microphones and audio editing/mixing. What with one thing and another, the only way for many of us to carry on doing our thing has been to get competent at using recording gear on our own, often remotely in combination with other people. While it’s been far from ideal to have to resort to this - clearly, it’s not a replacement for live performance - I think there’s a chance it’s sown the seed of something genuinely positive for classical music.
A few years ago I had a really good time teaching a KCL undergrad module in the philosophy and history of recording, working with the wonderful Dr. Amy Blier-Carruthers (now of the Royal Academy of Music). A lot of the things we dealt with related to the fact that recording is basically outside most classical players’ natural habitats. We live off the adrenaline of the live gig, often hate the idea we have to commit to just one ‘definitive’ version of each moment, feel the horrible pressure of having to nail it so as not to spoil our colleagues’ best version, and - perhaps most importantly - miss the expressive intensity that you only really get with an audience in the room. Also, hearing yourself back is not often an enjoyable experience - at the very least, it’s usually a bit disconcerting. Some people deal with all of this better than others, but as a whole, classical players tend to be less comfortable in recording situations than musicians working in other genres.
More widely, it’s often been argued that the peculiar aesthetics of recording, most of which arise from external (usually commercial) pressures, have had a large, frequently detrimental impact on the culture by sacrificing classical musicians’ creativity in the search for ‘the perfect take’. There’s undoubtedly some truth in this. It’s also clear that the character of a modern commercial recording reflects the fact that we’re working with far more advanced technology than was available a century ago, to the extent that it might be argued that it should be understood a fundamentally different kind of thing. There’s a lot of writing out there about this issue, and it comes up in my own thinking in all sorts of ways. So I won’t go over old ground too much, other than to say that we’re clearly talking about significant differences between ‘live’ and ‘recorded’; yet I’m not always convinced those differences are quite what we think they are.
Having (somewhat fortuitously) caught the recording bug about 5 months before lockdown, I’m more convinced than ever that this largely negative impression is mostly about control. Maybe it’s obvious, but we are always in others’ hands to some extent when in a studio: certainly technically, if not usually artistically. Being dependent on somebody else for the result you’re after is absolutely not an inevitable or even direct source of negative musical experiences - indeed, it’s basically the whole story of chamber music - but in this case it does breed unfamiliarity, and a feeling of being outside your comfort zone, because we simply don’t know much about what’s involved in recording.
Unfamiliarity is often enough to change one’s mindset in some complicated ways. Add into this the fact that we’re talking about two groups of people - all of whom who are both hugely expert, but who work in radically different fields, and so bring with them all sorts of different conventions, concerns and habits - and there’s a pretty high chance of miscommunication and dissatisfaction somewhere down the line. In my experience, it’s usually an indirect result of the situation, rather than explicit disagreements. Maybe that’s where thinking about the philosophy of recording isn’t just navel gazing, but can be a worthwhile thing in practical situations too. It’s good to be reminded that although they seem abstract and academic, these ideas are doing work ‘in the field’ all the time!
I don’t mean that all musicians should become producers and sound engineers. Those are incredibly skilled professions, and there’s certainly no way to gain that level of true expertise ‘on the side’; nor would any of us want to be without their independent, discerning and experienced ears. The biggest benefit of the recent necessity of musicians becoming more comfortable with recording, to whatever level, and with whatever purpose, may well be to provide more common ground. Our exposure this year might just help to reduce the sense of unfamiliarity with each other’s habitat, and if that is the ultimate cause of unsatisfying experiences with recording, there could be some positives there.
I’m also hopeful that it’ll be much harder for us performers to ignore how genuinely creative many aspects of recording engineering and sound design really are - such that the basis for communication is not the ideal, unrealisable dogma of capturing the sound ‘as it was in the room’, but something a bit more nuanced. Amy’s research revealed many of the inhibiting effects of the microphone for professional musicians, but she has also discussed the potential for more explicitly creative philosophies of recording, including an approach she (and others) have called ‘hyper-production’. There’s no reason that this philosophy couldn’t be about to witness a real burst of interest, as musicians and sound professionals become better at communicating, and do more collaborating.
Still, I can testify that the taste for ‘natural’ sounds is pretty hard to shift, especially when it comes to scores you know well. My point is a bit broader, I suppose, which is s to say that the groundswell of musicians taking an interest in recording could well give rise to a much healthier relationship with capturing our own sound. Might more classical musicians start to make friends with the microphone and the red light? I think it’s definitely a possibility - and a positive one at that, despite the huge challenges we’re all facing.
