Listening to Old Recordings

I’ve always hated listening to old recordings.

I’ve often found recordings of myself playing similar to how others hear videos of themselves talking. It sounds annoying, and just so unfamiliar. 

I think it’s because, as musicians, we don’t hear ourselves in the way that others hear us. Recording is an act of removing ourselves from the music, and no longer experiencing it in real time. For someone who spends hours in the practice room, only listening to themself as they play, this experience can be more than a little bizarre. 

But, in many ways, modern technology that allows us to record is a very valuable tool that we have available. Musicians are always trying to tell a compelling story to an audience. We want listeners to take something away from our music, and to find something in it that goes beyond the written page. Recording ourselves and listening to the recording gives us a chance to be our own audience – it’s an amazing resource that we have available. 

I’ve been attempting to use this tool to my advantage. I’ll admit, it’s taken a fair amount of time to get past the opening chords of what I play. I almost have to stop myself from running into the other room. It’s very difficult to look past the mistakes and shortcomings, and look for the positive things in a recording, especially since you’re very familiar with the piece. 

However, when you actually listen to what you play, you’ll discover so many things: I’ve started doing this, and I notice things that serve as my own constructive criticism in future practicing. Often, I can tell where I speed up or vary too far from the original tempo. Other times, I can tell when something about my sound production is off, or I can hear when the music sounds forced. All of this helps guide me to specific places that I can practice to improve my playing. Ultimately, I ask myself: if I were in the audience, what would I think of this? This informs my playing, so that I can act as my own reviewer. 

For a large period of time during the pandemic, I found myself having to record myself very often for auditions, competitions, online recitals, etc. I would so easily get frustrated with recording, because I felt as if I had to play everything perfectly and precisely, more so than if I were playing in a live setting. All musicians miss live music making and I hope we never return to the time where our only option to share our music was to broadcast through a screen. However, I will take from this time my newfound experience recording myself and listening to it because I think this will be a powerful tool as I continue broadening my musicianship down the road.