I’ve made an amazing discovery! So, I was mixing a new recording of Worried Man Blues for a CD. Sometimes I record extra instruments on after and “fill in the holes,” so to speak. In this case, the mandolin and guitar and all voices were done in one take, banjo and fiddle were added on separately after.
What’s the discovery? My audio equipment has the nasty habit of recording overdubs out of sync, usually ‘late’. The fiddle track on this particular recording was clearly late and off-sync, but it happened to be exactly the distance between the on and off beats in the measure (about 0.3 seconds, I think). You’d think it wouldn’t fit so well — the backup chops certainly didn’t — but listen to my break (first the normal version, then the out-of-sync):
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Cool, eh? I think it actually sounds better the “wrong” way! More old-timey. I especially like the part around the 4 chord. I gotta learn to play like that!