Inputs and Outputs

The other day I was overdubbing an electric bass part against a keyboard bass part. As I was playing it sounded good but when I isolated the two parts they sounded terrible. I realized I didn't have the optimal headphone mix.

In order to function properly in the world there has to be some kind of coherence at the input level. It's actually a good metaphor for life: if you don't have a good headphone mix (the basis for performance) you won't perform well. You think you might be, which may be the gestalt effect: As long as everything is experienced as a whole it makes sense, but the individual parts don't hold up, or fight against each other. A, B, C and D can sound okay, but B and C might not.

People shouldn't blame themselves for under-performing if you're set up to fail by not optimizing the inputs. If you give a chef plastic knives and bad ingredients you negate whatever potential they have to make something. The best chefs can produce something, but it's still sub-optimal.

But there's also a subtle psychology in play: you can tell someone (or yourself) they are at the top of their game and they might play better, but when you isolate the performance it's actually sub-optimal. It's rather an optimal average and can work fine--up to the point where average isn't going to work at the gestalt level. Then you have to do something about it. Usually what people do is invest in something--usually more gear to replace the plastic knives with the best knives on the market. This is a new input that is supposed to solve the performance problem. It can up to the point where the subtle psychology is at play again. The good gear becomes a placebo briefly, then the nocebo effect sets in because now you can't play anything. It all comes back to the optimal inputs. The solution in my hypothetical could be many things, perhaps switching instruments or replaying the sub-optimal keyboard part with a different sound. But at that point you've switched things too much and the magic might be gone, regardless of what you could do to optimize it. This is a common paradox in any project where outputs rely on proper inputs.