There’s a lot of good stuff in the first take. So why do a second?
There’s three reasons for another take…
- you know what you want and you want to see if you can do it better
- you’re experimenting, trying new things, creative brainstorming
- there’s no clear understanding of what you want but it just doesn’t sound right so lets just keep doing takes
The first two are a great reason for another take.
‘Let’s do another take and then another and then eight more just so we have them for when we actually figure out what we’re doing’ gets long, boring and is rarely the attitude of a professional.
»» The first time I was in attendance at a professional A-list session was at Blackbird here in Nashville. It was all the usual suspects (in a good way) with Dann Huff producing. They’d never played the song before so there was a brief listening of the demo and handing out of charts.
All the players filed into the live room. Take 1. It was certainly the best first take I’d ever heard but there were some flubs. The guitar and piano didn’t dip in and out quite at the right times and not everyone pushed the ending together.
Take 2. All the notes were there and the groove was there. At the end of the take there was chatter back and forth of how some of the lead licks could be tweaked.
Take 3. Absolutely stunning. Everything. I could hardly believe what had happened over the course of this twenty five minutes.
