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Table of Contents - Issue 55

Making records is lying. Recordings are fake performances.

Even when they document a live performance, the reproduction over speakers in a listening environment is nothing like the live event. If they are creations of overdubs, edits, fixes and mixing, then of course they are lies — these are events that never happened. We are lying to the listener, asking them to believe in our recorded lies, to imagine that a recording communicates what music really is.