Much can be learned from mistakes. On one of his albums, the musician Todd Rundgren has a spoken-word introduction encouraging the listener to play a little game he calls ‘Sounds of the Studio’. Rundgren describes all the missteps that can be made when recording music: hums, hisses, pops on the microphone whenever someone sings a word with a ‘p’ in it, choppy editing, and so on. He suggests that the reader listen for these mistakes in the songs that follow, and on other records. And just as a better understanding of recording studio slip-ups can give you a new insight into how music is made,
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