When y'all record with your bands, who has the final say on when something is "good enough?"
I'm trying to fiinish our band's demo and I'm fairly frustrated because the standards of the others (except the drummer) seem to be fairly low. They ask me "Why are you dumping that take, it's fine" and I say "It's NOT fine, I clammed three times and I'm not putting that out in the world." It's like they're unable to listen critically.
Do most musicians (on this level) really liisten to something and say "doesn't need to be any better"? For me, and I know it's a non-attainabloe goal but seriously, I want a really clean, precise sound.
As it is, I'm going to have to use auto-tune on a number of vocals becauuse after 20 takes, it is just clear that the other guy can't do this one line in a song without flatting a note...sometimes a half-step, sometimes a step. He's going for a blue-note effect and that's fine, but he has to hit the right note, however briefly.
Recorded more yesterday, I think I'm now at the point that any further recording will be done by me, as I'm a better *studio* musician than the two guys I've been trying to record.
Not saying I'm a better musician, but I have a lot more experience simply by virtue of the fact that I've had the tools to do it for the past four years. I have honed my skills at playing in a way that serves the song and even beyond that, I know what I want to hear on the recording (we agreed I'm producing it) and I'm not getting it from the other guys, so I'm just going to do it myself, because the damned demo needs finishing and I'm not wasting another weekend fighting with them about playing legato instead of staccato and so forth.
The bass player hasn't been playing the stuff long enough to know it well enough to play it without clamming and I have. I can play the bass part.
I probably sound like a control-freaking prick, and to a degree I AM, but dammit, our names are gonna be on this thing and I'm not going to sacrifice quality in the name of musical egalitarianism.
Am I a bad person?