It’s not every day you get to work with a 3x Grammy award-winning producer in a state-of-the-art studio. Well, not yet anyway. But after having a weekend to look back on the experience (my first time in a professional, commercial recording studio no less), so many words come to mind: energy, macro, top-down, positivity, creative, trust, process, support, professionalism, limitations, etc. Yet the one word that comes up most is “humbling”. Quite frankly folks, ya boii got his ass handed to him.

You see, for the longest time I’ve been pretty self-conscious about doing anything in a studio with other people around. It’s incredibly frustrating for me to explain clearly, but it all boils down to dealing with issues I’ve got about being judged; particularly over my music, which I’ve been fiercely uncompromising and protective over (and that’s a whole other story). In the moments of vulnerability that are essential to record something like a vocal take, the most deflating thing I can think of is seeing someone and reading their face as saying “ehhh…”, or “wtf?”, or anything short of “wow, that was incredible, have my first-born”. Recording music on my own terms has been a very insular process with obvious benefits, but it was only recently that I became painfully aware of all its drawbacks. The main one being my relationship to time.