Do you like to listen to your old recordings?

[rick-slo]

I enjoy listening to many of my old recordings (mostly original compositions). Maybe an hour or so most every week I will do that.

Do you sometimes listen to your prior music or is it always just looking forward to newer things?

[JonPR]

The older they are, the worse they are. The oldest ones I still have are - almost literally - painful to listen to. What was I thinking??

As long as I don't go back more than a few years, they're mostly OK. I guess that's because I stopped improving a few years ago....

[Gitfiddlemann]

I do actually. Not as often as weekly, but now and then. Oddly enough, it's not the most recent, i.e. digital and video, stuff that I listen to but the real early recordings when I had just started on a 4 track cassette Porta 2 recorder.
I had so much fun with that little unit. I still have it. It's a piece of nostalgia that I hold onto.
It's very surprising sometimes how varied the stuff is. THe other day I came across an all instrumental version of Stairway To Heaven I had done and had forgotten about. I must have used 4 different guitars on that one. And some originals mixing both electric and acoustic. Some of it, of course, for my ears only...
(I also came across a CD of yours Rick recently. "Six String Shuffle". You had a lot of originals on that one, and a couple of covers. Nice stuff, and a lot more polished than some of my old cassettes!

[RodB]

Every now and then I will listen to one or two of my recordings and enjoy them. I only record music that I have played and has stood the test of time - many others get learned and put aside without feeling the desire to record them.

The only drawback is that once in a while I find I have rearranged tunes or departed from what I recorded and then feel a need to re-record. Just for my own satisfaction.

My oldest recordings (live) are from 1978, and my reaction ranges from wondering how I got away with so many mistakes to how did I manage to play that?

I find all of my recordings cringe worthy. I often think of deleting them all off of soundcloud again.

[islandguitar]

Yes, I do......
As I change my signature here on AGF, I often will click on that tune and listen back. And then fairly often will scroll back through SC to catch older tunes and sometimes take aim at re-recording them on guitars which are currently with me. I do find ones I'd like to have back, but others are pretty good to a point where I know I'd have to work quite a bit to get them back into original form. (Nearly all original instrumentals)

Also, I am lucky enough to have old recordings of the group I played in 50+ years ago from a demo record but also our set from a live concert that was recorded with good equipment, which has gone from reel to reel, on to many updates through to CD and finally digital on my laptop. Nice to take a walk down memory lane and recall that amazing evening. (We opened for the Sha Na Na)

[catdaddy]

My earliest recordings are now over 50 years old and almost all of them are of songs that I've written. I don't listen to those recordings very often, but when I do I do so with the purpose of lifting an idea for a new song. I've found that my nascent attempts at lyric writing so long ago were often amateurish, but a lot of my musical ideas were actually quite good, and I've incorporated many of those ideas into new material. Hopefully my lyric writing has become good enough after half a century of work and experience to better complement those original musical compositions.

As for old recordings of a more recent vintage (15-25 years old) I do listen to a few of them on a weekly basis for enjoyment and with an idea toward possibly resurrecting a song to put it on my current set list.

[Brent Hahn]

When I get some distance from my stuff, I usually like it a lot better.

[TBman]

I go back and listen at times, but I'm my worst critic.

All of my older recordings prior to the last couple of months could have been done with more input gain, better mic positions a lot less eq'ing and more practicing before being posted up.

On the bright side though I record for my own entertainment and if I waited until everything was perfect I'd have nothing posted anywhere and where is the fun in that?

[Glennwillow]

Do you like to listen to your old recordings?

It depends on how old the recordings are. If they are more than a couple of years old, then no. More recent stuff I listen to occasionally to see if I still think I did okay.

I don't spend much time listening to my old stuff, in general. Every week I have something new to immerse myself in.

- Glenn

[nightchef]

I don't make a habit of listening to my old stuff, but I find myself doing it occasionally, usually when I'm reorganizing my storage (digital or physical) and stumble on a folder or a cassette full of stuff I haven't heard in a while.

As far as liking it, for me it's kind of a tradeoff -- I definitely became a better writer over the years, but the energy and conviction on some of the early stuff is fun, and sometimes seems to outweigh the awkwardness of the writing.

[FrankHudson]

I listen to my older stuff fairly often. Here are my frank reactions/reasons.

I'm sometimes surprised at how good and how bad an older piece is. The element of surprise as to which it'll be in each case, wince or smile, is one motivation to do it.

Given that I've done this for some time, and like to think I've explored different things during those decades, I'll sometimes pick up on something I was doing "back then" and try to integrate it into something I'm doing now. Everyone's got influences, but if I'm going to steal an idea, why not steal from myself? Of course some recordings are made only so that one can self-assess where they are in realizing some technique. That kind of recording doesn't need to be listened to once it's served that short-term purpose.

This may be hard to separate from vanity and self-deception, but I sincerely create the compositions I record because I like the idea that inspired the composition, and I want to hear it expressed. You know the saying "Be the change you want to see?" Well, I'm sort of like that with the things I write, I'm seeking to create the kind of music I'd like to hear. Now, my execution of what I'm aiming for is inconsistent, but that doesn't always make the result unpleasant to revisit.

I know many guitarists here aren't all that involved in composing new stuff, and get their pleasure and achievement-reward from the playing of a piece itself (even alone, in a room by themselves) or because they enjoy performing with an audience in that transient moment. I understand those things, and I've had those pleasures too, but I'm primarily a guitar operating composer.

[reeve21]

Occasionally, every few months or so. I've only been recording for a few years, so it doesn't take too long. It's nice to hear some progress in recording and playing. I've got limited space on sound cloud so I cull out the worst of it

[Bob Womack]

I'm a recording engineer/producer by trade. As such, I've got masters going back as far as 1979. When I get calls to bring some of my older material back to life it can be a little strange. It is a little-discussed fact that many people involved in recording improve their technique constantly, and that includes over the span of one record project. When, after a couple of months, it is time to mix, it is pretty normal to look back at the first recordings of the project and think, "I wish I could have done that song later in the project so I could have applied this new technique that I developed towards the end." It's the curse of improvement. I recently did my first "greatest hits" compilation involving songs I recorded over several years. That was interesting.

But then, I've actually learned recording techniques from myself! For example, In 1982 I recorded demos of a couple of pieces I wrote. I was new to the business, had over 100 microphones to choose from and a thirty-two channel Neve console at my disposal. I basically did everything wrong but since then, whenever I play one of the demos for colleagues their eyes get monstrous and they always say, "How did you get that ride cymbal sound? It is fantastic!" The truth is that I set up the drum kit with a standard textbook mic rig but ended up with a spare AKG C451E lying around and plenty of extra channels, so I thought, "I'll just throw this up on the ride cymbal bell." During that song the drummer decided to whack the ride cymbal bell on the back beat and because that condenser was there I got this lovely musical "ping!" on each hit. Great. I threw my demos in the drawer for about twenty years and didn't listen. But when I did pull them out, as rough as they were, the compliments about the ride cymbal started flowing. Ever since, I've hung out an AKG C451 over the ride cymbal bell, just in case. And boy are people pleased when suddenly a back beat rhythm on their song comes to life! Ping!

Bob

[Slothead56]

Among others, I have a live show I did in 1978 when I was in college that was taped off the radio. I listen to it every once in a while. I liked the kid I was back then. My vocal range was greater and had more power. Also love the sound of the Guild D-35 ($195) through a mic. I was more....happy sounding. And it’s the only recording I have of me playing banjo.

It includes covers and some originals, all of which I like and a couple that I still do today at Open Mics (remember them?) and small stuff.

My only regret is that I am noticeably off key on one of my songs, an unusual thing for me. Oh, and I was trying to be funny and, though I am, it didn’t play well.