Musicians listening to their own music

Also, is it so hard to understand how listening to something over and over with a hyper-critical ear could ruin it for you?

I always 'tripped out' on the bits that worked. Years later, I could say "Actually, those vocals are really not good, maybe it's how they were recorded" sort of thing.

OH YEAH THAT'S TOTALLY THE SAME.

it's not surprising at all -- i doubt writers ever read their novels after they've been published, or film directors after they've done the final edit.

why?

partly cos finishing things is very rarely a nice experience; you have limited time and resources (of all kinds) and the final product is rarely just as you want it. you hear/read/see it a grillion times in subatomic form during the finishing process, and you know every mistake.

but there is also something more mysterious, about getting the thing out from inside you, and it being dead to you.

that said people do 'go back' to their work from time to time -- henry james is probably an interesting example -- and revise it.

with spiritualized, it was like he *only* listened to his own stuff, and tried to refine the same song over and over again.

While playing through "Hey!", Kim Deal stopped and went "Hey guys, can anyone remember how many times I have to say 'chaiiiined' in the middle of this song? Was it six or is it seven?" A few suggestions were made, they attempted to work it out by playing through the song, but no luck. So then someone came up with the solution - putting on the CD of the original song and seeing how they did it. So the whole band sat, attentively listening to the recording. "Ohh, that's right, nine times." It was like they were listening to another band altogether - The Pixies as but another Pixies cover band!

Check this, Catherine.

i don't sit and reread my writing, but i would be pissed off if it was mangled by a sub, etc, so the reader got a distorted impression of what i'd been trying to do/say. i had a feature printed a year ago where a column from the middle of the piece got chopped out of the page layout somehow, rendering the whole thing hugely confusing. (and, as if to prove my point, i only found out about it when my girlfriend bought a copy of said magazine, and discovered the SNAFU).

the point that people make music to hear what's not already out there is a good one; but i guess most musicians don't listen to their own music because they've already spent so long writing and recording it, that they're overfamiliar with the material already. or, they could find it really painful being re-exposed to every glitch and mistake that's all too obvious to their ears (which is sort of why i don't reread my stuff much after it gets submitted).

I do think there is value in a musician listening to their own stuff, even beyond typical muso reasons (which usually come down to editing, or trying to pinpoint areas for improvement) -- and I guess they are like reading an old blog, figuring out where you were, where you are -- and lot of other lame self-help stuff.

i can finally listen to my old band's stuff and enjoy it...i dust it off every once in awhile to see if it holds up.

the new cd which just came out, i'm just totally burned out on, after mixing, mastering it twice, blah blah blah, playing those songs out for like a year and half, it's sort of hard to know what to think anymore.

but nick's thing about why would you care is crazy? i mean, you want everything to be the best it can be....in anything i guess, not just music, but yeah i was pretty obsessive about the album when we were doing it.

I can't imagine wanting to hear your music again after 'finishing' it. After going through the painstaking process of fine tuning the songs and recording, and playing the songs live again and again, it seems like it would be overkill. If I know almost every nook and cranny of an album and it has attained some static place in my mind, going back to it can seem hollow and stale because it's so entwined with the time at which I was listening to it repeatedly. Although, I've never released a record, and with my own things, there's a continual process of revision. Without wanting to restart that process after 'finishing' it, it seems like it might be an exercise in nostalgia.

Re: writers revising their work: Didn't Joyce Carol Oates do this in the past few years with one of her early novels?

Also, sitting at work playing a recording of yourself singing does tend to make one ever so slightly self-conscious.

I listen to my own music a lot... Someone's got to (FWIW, I'm not Mick Hucknall).

"You're the first in a long time to bring that bit up. Yeah, we played together, but that was back when we were both punky teenagers."
"Do you ever see him in LA?" I asked
"Funny thing is, I have bumped into him twice. Once at Tower Records up on Sunset - he was looking in the Morrissey section."

awesome...

personally i have sessions of listening to my own backcatalogue and its usually a good time. i imagine that if anyone else was ever listening to it i would listen to it less...

Noel has sure done his share of listening to The New Seekers, T.Rex, Stevie Wonder, Bon Jovi, Rolling Stones and Neil Innes, to name but a few....

Possibly less so since Innes successfully sued him for plagiarism, the essence of Geir's post.

somewhere in this documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu0F0LZbbd4 i remember one of the oasis guys telling they like to listen to their own stuff

so, bump. what other musicians have said they are into listening to their own music and who said they actively avoid it?

scott walker listens to every album once very loudly

The few times I recorded I listened to the records quite a lot, partly in a useful "what worked, what didn't" sort of way, and partly just out of a kind of anxious self-obsession, I guess -- "Is this good? I think it's good. Is it really any good?" etc.

Anyway I learned a lot from the first aspect of it -- sometimes that complex fill doesn't fit as well as you think it did, or you didn't pull it off as well as you think you did, or maybe you realize that improving the fills was a bad idea and you should have planned it out more.

Maybe also being the drummer is different -- they're not my songs and I'm playing a supporting role, so I'm not as exposed.

John Entwistle said he only ever listened to Tommy once, and hated it (mostly for the mix/production).

But when he and Moon first heard Live At Leeds, in a hotel room in the US, they exchanged stunned glances. They had never heard a live recording of themselves, and at first didn't believe it was them; they had no idea how good they were.

The Pruient guy started making Vatican Shadow tracks because he had run out of certain Muslimgauze records to listen to..

http://www.complex.com/music/2012/12/chief-keefs-25-favorite-songs/

Interesting thread. I make music as fast and as often as possible, one or two albums a month, so I forget the details very fast and I don't linger over the mixing. It's really fun to listen to it all now that I've generated a gigantic and diverse back catalog, lots of surprises. The older ones (the first 30 or so albums, ha) are truly terrible but they are useful, I enjoy plotting my artistic growth... or in many cases the lack thereof!

Almost no one else has ever listened to any of it even though it's all on bandcamp now and I'm okay with that. I totally make it for myself in hopes that eventually, like captain Ahab, I'll land my white whale. Whenever someone does stumble on one of the older/bad albums I do cringe but that's healthy I think.

The singing albums are indeed the hardest to revisit!