First, the big news. My first song, Holding My Heart, while heartfelt and set to a nice melody (thank you Welsh Wonder) shifted back and forth between second person (you) and third person (she) because of my inexperience. A few weeks ago, I decided to fix it. The Welsh Wonder re-recorded six words and didn’t charge me for it, so there is a new Holding My Heart, with a change that I, alone, will notice.
Which got me to thinking. In the first century and a half of recorded music, or for that matter, large-circulation newsprint, any stupid error you made was chiseled in stone forever. Now that physical music (CDs) and printed paper are (mostly) gone, professionals in both fields have an unprecedented opportunity: fix the error so it is as if it were never made.
Every newspaper editor and every musician who worked before the 21st century must be so jealous. Scrupulous and ethical journalists notate such edits. I, on the other hand, make stealth corrections suggested by my handful of Sunday night readers (mostly MIT grads) before the hordes (if 100 can be considered a horde) arrive on Monday. Musicians who only heard the clinker (missed note) after the record/CD shipped once had to live with it forever. Now, five minutes of digital editing insures no one will ever know.