lost fidelity
I was never a professional musician. I played in a handful of bands in my teens and 20s, but my motivation as a guitarist began as a much-needed emotional release at the age of 13 that was instantly more satisfying and effective than random vandalism and enormously stupid high-risk behavior. I play and write music to fulfill my personal artistic needs and ideas; fame and adoration are not relevant to my interests.
Despite concerted effort throughout my youth, I never acquired the ability to read or write proper sheet music. When I played something new that I liked, a lick or a riff or a melody, I learned early on there was maybe a 5% chance I would remember it later without a recording.
More than 25 years since this discovery, I have hundreds of hours of recordings – low quality clips and captures created with whatever was available at the time, mostly cassette recorders, junky mobile phones, laptops, and so on, mostly with built-in microphones. I enjoy multi-track projects, but my production style does not yield clean, high-fidelity, studio-quality audio. Indeed, nearly everything I record and produce is decidedly lo-fi.
And I embrace that. I also run some phone systems as part of my business services, with which I sometimes geek out and experiment. I particularly like the telephone’s inherent lack of quality – the crappy audio hardware, low bitrate audio, and unforgiving nature of the medium.
The inevitable product of these interests is ready for criticism and feedback.