Do You Have To Worry About Sound?

If you want to record the music you make, you'll face a challenge - sound.
Your music might be great, but if you want to convince others that this is
true, you need good sound. You need to be able to control every sound of
your recording - no noise from the microphone, no noise from other people
(that aren't from your band) and no wrong sounds from you.

Maybe this is the biggest obstacle for wanna-be players - they don't have
good sound, they don't like what they hear, they hear only mistakes in their
sound. How can you overcome this obstacle? You have two ways - either you
should buy expensive recording equipment, or you should get used to noise.

How can you get used to noise? Well, simply you have to try to use that
noise in your music. Of course if the noise is louder than, or equal to your
music, this technique is out of the question. But if there is a quiet little
noise produced by one of the three sources I mentioned, that isn't a major
problem.

I've always thought that the best combination is good sound plus good music,
but even if the sound isn't perfect, good music is better than great
sounding music you don't like, isn't it?

So, I think one should concentrate on music and leave the sound to the
backstage people (this is their job). If they manage to make the sound as
good as the music, everybody is happy.

The easiest way to have absolutely perfect sound is to play accoustic in
front of a quiet audience. Nothing can compare to this - this is the real
sound. There is also best places and time of the day for this kind of sound
making - out of the cities, or during the night in the suburbs.

This reminds me of the old scratched records nobody listens to any more.
Listening to such a record is so painful when you compare it to the new
digital recordings, but this doesn't mean that this dusty music itself is
low quality. Imagine the live sound of it - wow! You go back in time! All
those people in night suits and dresses with umbrellas.

To conclude - I think sound is very important for music making but the
quallity of the music itself should not be underestimated in the process of
sound improvement. Good music can sound bad only if the noise is louder or
equal to the music. There is music with pure sound which can be more
unpleasant than noise.