Tal Wilkenfeld: preference

Transcript context

…Can you though? Yeah. You can do a totally disciplined, I can go into a session and… Okay, my favorite thing about going into a session with musicians that I adore is that we don’t hear the demo because if you hear a demo, you’re hearing what the producer or songwriter have already imagined that every instrument is playing. And then it’s like well, I’ve already heard what you want. Now my mind, part of my mind, is focused on what I already know you want and what the destination is going to be. Why did you bring me in here? I want to not hear it. I just want you to sit at a piano and sing the song, I want to hear the chords and the lyric or sit with an acoustic guitar, play it, and then let’s all go in the room. And then take one, I would say 80% of the time, take one has the most gold and there might be a mistake or two or someone forgot to go to the B section and you might want to punch that in so that you’re hitting the right chord. But all the magic is in that take. And then sometimes it happens where it’s like you go, it’s like we’re rehearsing and take 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then you’re thinking about it too much and then you go and you have a dinner and you come back and the next take one after dinner is the one. It’s usually after there’s some sort of a break, but obviously there’s exceptions to that rule. Sometimes it’s take two, or three. Yeah. You said that this is something that surprised you about recording with Prince is that he would just, so much of it would be take one. So quick, it would just move so quickly.…

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