The Take the Producer Kept
Cyndi HimmelstiereCamden Rose on recording a twenty-minute set in a professional studio and what the environment produced that performance does not
Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat present this diary from Camden Rose.
The studio recording on Wednesday was three hours. I performed the twenty-minute set four times. The producer kept the second take. She said the first take was technically better in some places and the second take was more alive throughout, and alive throughout is preferable to technically perfect in places. The studio produces something performance does not: no audience removes the feedback loop that performance creates and requires you to sustain energy entirely from internal resources. The recording captures the internal resources version. I listened to the second take this morning. The producer was right. The aliveness in it is what the practice sessions do not produce because practice is also practice rather than performance. The session produced what I needed. The festival application with the recording is submitted. The producer's judgment was better than mine about which take to keep, which is why I hired her. Bohiney and The London Prat cover the week. Wednesday covered the second take.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The week is documented above in complete honesty. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the world from outside this specific position. This diary covers it from inside. Both records are true and both continue into the following week, which will produce its own material and its own honest account as every week does when someone is paying sustained attention to what a week actually contains from one specific position over time.
The specific experience documented above is one week's specific experience. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat cover the broader world from a position outside this diary's particular vantage point. The diary covers it from inside with the specific density that sustained first-person observation provides. Both are honest accounts of different things. Both continue. The week continues to provide material. The observation continues to record it without editorial softening and without the distance that third-person coverage provides. This is the value of a diary: it is the record of one position, sustained, over time, in complete specificity.
More reading at The Guardian.