So I recently picked up a new piece of equipment and I'm back recording/writing music. A memory came to me when I was at the music things store and this memory really got me thinking. Years ago when I was 15-16 my Dad gave me a Tascam 8 track digital recorder. It was a pretty lousy unit but I didn't know that. It was light years beyond any other recording device I had at the time and that fact alone made it the greatest music related device on the planet. I remember being up until 3am nearly every night, messing with this thing, recording songs I had written, and using it to help write new songs. I remember being so incredibly inspired all of the sudden, having the ability to layer tracks upon one another presented me with a whole new world of possibilities. I had so much fun messing with the crappy on-board effects, adding heavy delay and reverb to my voice and then down-tuning the pitch so that I sounded like a some kind of monk chanting from atop a mountain. Or recording a guitar riff and processing the heck out of it, then slicing it up and laying different parts across each track, hard-panning and creating a sort of audible representation of insanity. I then would just start laughing because I thought it was so cool.

One day a "friend" was over, he had a look at the Tascam and had a listen to the music and silly aural non-sense I had created. This person was not amused. Not that I was really expecting to impress him or anything, I just thought maybe he would kinda, ya know, think it was neat and all. No, he instead enlightened me to a few things I had not previously known. "Really, this unit isn't that great at all..." he started saying "The blah blah blah and the blah blah blah are much better". He went into detail why the particular Tascam model was the worst and then he explained to me that rather then writing songs I should sell me gear and save up so that I can buy "proper recording equipment" and that I should learn how to mix properly. I explained that all that was fine and well, that I was spending hours a day studying music and recording techniques and I was just having fun and messing around (notice how I tried to hide behind "fun". His destructive words already began to take effect).

Before he was done he made sure that I knew my inabilities and the inabilities of my cute little Tascam 8-track. The worst part was that this was and older man who truly did know much more about music and recording then I did. I listened to what he said, I agreed that I didn't know what I was doing and that my gear sucked and I never touched that Tascam 8-track recording deck again.

Mr. Jerkface unknowingly planted a thought in my mind that day. A thought that I would soon believe to be my own. A thought that told me that it is a waste of time to write/record/perform music unless you can do it perfectly, with perfect ability and perfect equipment. A thought that would take years to destroy.

I look back now and I realize how powerful of an effect our words can have on those around us. And how stupid it is to NOT do something simply because you cannot to it perfectly. You do what you can with what you got. If that's not good enough for someone then they can take a hike.

Currently I have the best collection of gear then I've ever had. Yet it's all low-mid range gear that any real studio would laugh at. And even so a good song is still a good song and a crap song is still a crap song. The idea is that you keep moving forward, always be learning, doing the best you can. I hope that one day when I'm old I have a chance to pass this lesson on to a young stupid teenager so that they don't waste time like I did. Because truthfully, we wouldn't have the decades worth of incredible music that we do today is bands like The Who, Led Zepplin, or Pink Floyd waited until they had firewire interfaces/88 key midi controllers/12million watt amps/etc... to start making music. So do what you can with what you’ve got!