I have woken up with my head not quite in a beer cloud, but certainly a light mist. I have no idea why. Only a couple of drinks were enjoyed during a post mortem of Tuesday's failed vocal takes. Anyway, it is partly our reason for scrapping them that I've been occupied with chewing over this morning in the shower. Apart from the odd tuning defect, the problem was really that the tone didn't fit into the song properly - not on a technical level, just an emotional one. This is not the first time that inexplicable emotion has ruled our hands regarding which takes do and don't work.
A little while in recording studios large or small (or in your front room in west London, whatever the case may be) and the expression feel rears it's ugly head. I suppose that this is the standard term for the concept I'm describing. What it leads me to suspect though is that music (and probably many other forms of creativity - but yet again I plead a certain ignorance of this broad "others" category) behaves like an energy - it is not really created or destroyed so much as discovered and harnessed. Moreover, creating it is perhaps a discipline of controlling and shaping instinct.
This is quite a big frustration, especially when writing. When you write a good song, the ego is barely involved, but when you write something rubbish you usually believe at the time that you are doing something deeply important* (* a survey of n=2 I must admit, but never mind). The worst part of this is that the times when you really *need* to write are usually the latter - when you are clouding the operation of the subconscious and putting barriers in the way of your real ideas. Which, to be frank, is a bit of a bitch.