Private Recordings

[Andrew McIntosh]

Do you record Noise/etc. strictly for yourself? Do you have pieces that you prefer to keep to yourself? How do you decide what to "release" and what not to?

[tiny_tove]

Yes I do.

I consider them valuable at personal level because they capture a specific moment, yet being uncostructed I do not find them appealing for public release. Every now and then I use some bits and pieces of them in releases...

Last years have been pretty productive, yet I started in '95 and until some years ago I didn't release much stuff for this reason, yet I still like to listen it, especially when constant repetition of loop, drones and soundwalls that I don't think could be of interest yet put me in the correct mindframe to do things at home, especially when studying or working on stuff.

[Hal Hutchinson]

I've found myself keeping more and more for myself & my own enjoyment and wanting to release less and less.There are many reasons why one might want to keep some recordings private, but ultimately the material serves it's purpose even if it remains unreleased.It's good in many ways to keep things clandestine, one of them being that if you do decide to release something (and you have the means to release it how you want to) you will make sure that it's of a very high standard.You will also find that you work more instinctively and gain so much more pleasure from making recordings when you are used to not having input from anyone else.This, in my opinion, is a good thing.

[Bleak Existence]

used to do it but not anymore now if i record it going to be for a label release
i do test recording near each week on the same tape for about 3 years
but who know maybe my next tape will only be private someday

[Scat-O-Logy]

I do it more often than I should but the recordings usually differs from my sound so much that it wouldn't feel right to release it. I also write a lot of lyrics for future releases but I hardly ever end up using them. My problem is that I don't have the patience to work too long with one piece so instead I record punch of shitty ones that no one wants to hear, even I feel embarrassed by them, hah! That's one of the main reasons why I don't seem to be that active but in fact I'm recording something almost daily. I just checked my hard drive and there's 30gb worth of experiments, yet only about 10% of them have been released.

[Peterson]

I record moreso for my own listening and enjoyment than for potential releases. The only reason I have actually released anything at all is because at the time I wasn't aware of other stuff that sounded like it, so I felt maybe a few others will like it. I also go into too many different and unrelated directions with noise/music in general so there's just too much to pretend that others will care about all or even any of it.

[gasskammer]

I do a lot of private recordings. I play Music a lot, and since its very easy to record it, i do. Many pieces of sound recorded over the years stay this way. I like to sit back and listen to this alone,
and i think some of this "private Leisure listening time" aspect would disappear if it was ever released. There is some similarities to masturbation in this practice, but that never harmed anyone.

[jesusfaggotchrist]

I have a lot of unreleased material, but nothing I'd consider "private". the very idea of keeping it to myself seems foreign and ridiculous to me. I could use some quality control however, as I've released a lot of stuff I'd consider "embarassing" long after it was leaked to slsk. some of the first stuff I released under the Arseterror name early on is quite cringe-inducing.

[burdizzo]

I've done a fair amount of my own 'private' recordings in the past, and distributed a bit to friends and the like. It was mostly tape stuff, and actually, I was quite proud of some of it. Maybe I could get a 7" single out of it (ha!), but I never released any of it, as I reckon there's plenty of people doing similar stuff far better, and I feel the market is slightly saturated w/ second-rate stuff as it is. Maybe I could improve on it, but w/ a busy job, and a young family, it's not a priority at the moment. One day, one day...
Anyway, it's a bit like Peterson said - would others care about any of it!?!

[SNR]

About 30 'Untitled' tracks, Spoken Word / Power Electronics hybrid, I originally recorded them for myself, for private purpose... but I will make a 'best of' of them, and release it (5-6 tracks only), the rest will still remain unreleased..

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Digging up some old topics worth of it...

I've been leaning into direction of doing a lot of recordings, which essentially are just "sessions". Not taking pressure whether I'm working on release, or merely playing as sort of test or rehearsal of specific method or style of sound. Often good things come out from this kind of things, and eventually end up chopping 5 minutes piece from one longer session. As doing one "same" sounding session as release would feel too easy.
Those "leftovers" may be considered sort of private releases. A lot of stuff is something I'd rate as good, but I question necessity of releasing it.

I've been thinking of this matter quite often. I guess some people are aware that I used to send songs (or still do) to people I communicate with, and different versions or alternative takes or mixes existed. I have sometimes wondered what would be the method of allowing little access for "private recordings", without making them "releases".

Now just uploading a track, and someone will list this item as release, with formats like "2x FILE". While in reality one should not give a fuck, it feels slightly annoying that stuff what is not "release", would be confused to be such.

For example, I like the way Whitehouse had their albums as albums, and huge line of live releases being available, but not to be considered similar "releases". Would assume that there are A LOT of people who have collected all Whitehouse albums and singles, but never bothered to collect all their live actions. But out of curiosity and simply because many of them are brilliant, they have some. And not being some limited collectibles, but archive what can be accessed, you could grab more whenever felt like it? In similar way, keeping possibility of getting "private recordings" dubbed on demand, for those who like to hear in detail what happened between albums, could be interesting. Same for good live recordings. Now if they'd be treated as proper releases, I think after hours and hours of private recordings being available, point of doing "official release" could be much smaller? If material is worthless, I simply discard it and don't consider it any sort of "private recording". Stuff what has something in it, I may storage even with no intent to publish it.

[Brad]

For example, I like the way Whitehouse had their albums as albums, and huge line of live releases being available, but not to be considered similar "releases". Would assume that there are A LOT of people who have collected all Whitehouse albums and singles, but never bothered to collect all their live actions.

And then there are people like me, who have a decent number of the major studio albums, but didn't even know that the live ones existed. Looks like they're mainly tapes and CD-R, which explains why I never see them at the record store. 

[Euro Trash Bazooka]

Most of the stuff I do I've never "released" for two reasons. The first one is that I find that a lot of it isn't really worth being released as there are already way too many worthless/useless/crappy releases cluttering distros and the second one is that I hate the way labels work in general/music "industry" standards, even at a level as underground as ours. I hate the way people treat music, consume it, buy it, sell it. I'm a also a big control freak (maybe that's the main reason why it's difficult for me to release music I make.) I have to know who does what with it. So except for a few things that have gotten wide distribution, feedback and whatnot,  my noise-related output stays in my bedroom or is shared among very close friends or close contacts I trade with. I do enjoy making covers and artworks for my tape recordings though, and I really like when people send me their practice recordings, jam sessions, random recordings of them doing shit, etc... A friend of mine recently sent me a tape with a part that's recordings of him taking pisses in public spaces. It sounds eerie and gross at the same time, I love it. I love "random" recordings and noise that's lo-fi, in which you can hear the clicks and pops and fuck-ups and things being offbeat, offkey, etc. That's what I enjoy when I listen to music. Sorry, that went all over the place.

[13]

Interesting thread. Most of the stuff I do is a bit too "composed" for me to do it as random takes. So I guess what I do is more akin to a band situation, where you'll practice your songs and slowly develop and alter them, until you get to the process of recording. I'd love to do more "free form" stuff at some point, but right now I feel I have another vision to pursue. This means that I'll work on my material until I reach a state of satisfaction. Such a state obviously won't last in the long run, but as long as it's "as good as it could get at the time" I'll be happy. That's what it takes for me to be willing to release it.

[nowirehangers]

I tend to record "sessions", they usually follow a certain feel and theme, I have quite a bit of material recorded. some of it ends up recycled, some just sits on tapes/hard drives.