The beauty of live recording is that other than some tweaks and edits, when it's over, it's done.
I agree with that. Since I don't read or write music and virtually everything I record turns out to be piling first takes on top of each other, each piece becomes an improvised composition. The basis of Opossum Apocalypse is a 1-4 in E, dead simple.
I wanted a contrast between the usual things that get done in that format and the vast possibilities that lie beyond it. Bar band musicians can provide the basis without breaking a sweat but how do you steer them to other worlds? Most of the musicians I know who can play beyond the norm are skeptical about being pulled back into bar-band world. Tying the two together with personnel would be quite the undertaking. I don't tend to argue with me, much...
There is a profoundly different awareness when improvising in a group situation. I've been in a couple of full improve "bands" in the past. I can't say "better or worse" but certainly not the same as doing it solo.
I'm sure the results would have been much different if we'd had a dedicated engineer for those improv situations. To make a great sounding recording live you need every track to sound great and sit in the mix.
That means putting in the time engineering. We just wanted to play, hit the go button and went. Now there is no path back to try and "fix" simple things like volume adjustments.
So live is great if live is great, if it isn't great than not so much. Nobody I know who has the talent I seek has the time to put in to make the whole thing work. If I won the lottery, I could just hire them and explain what I need them to do.
I have more freedom of schedule and a different motivation to try new things. I do it because I want to and I can make time for it sometimes. Since I may still have that recording all in separate tracks I might see if I can improve the mix. I'm afraid I probably tossed a bunch of those plugins though and never exported all tracks as audio so I may have nothing, or a profoundly different something.
I've learned a lot of useful things since that was recorded, I'm more inclined to do something else along the same lines since I am a different me than I was 7 years ago.
