It doesn’t matter what you do, once you’ve been doing it for a while, you default to a particular way of approaching issues. Coming from the era of recording to tape and “dropping-in” to correct mistakes, that’s how I think when I find I’ve recorded something that isn’t quite right. (In fact, I never liked dropping-in – I always found it easier to just go back and do the whole part again, but that’s another story.) All of which can blind you to the obvious when things have moved on and you’re recording to RAM, buffers and disk instead of spinning reels of tape. Back in the day, you’d record with minimal lead-in recorded to tape, lest there be a sudden burst of tape noise which would ruin the ambience. Nowadays, of course, there’s no tape hiss and the noise floor is so low you wouldn’t think twice about it, but old habits die hard. Until, that is, they trip you up…
