Serguey Asael Shinder – IT Professional

For years I judged my playing from the inside, while my hands were busy. And from in there, it sounded pretty good. My ears heard the version I intended, not the one that was actually happening.

Then someone told me to record myself and listen back. I almost didn’t, because some part of me already knew. The first playback was one of the more humbling minutes of my musical life. The bar I was sure I nailed rushed. The tone I thought was warm was thin. The dynamics I felt so proud of were entirely in my head — the tape was flat.

It stung, and then it was the most useful thing I’d done in months. Because now I wasn’t guessing what to practice. The gap between the playing I felt and the playing that came out was a precise, honest map, and the recorder had drawn it for me without any mercy or any grudge.

I’ve kept the habit far beyond music. Whenever I can, I try to see my own work from the outside — read the writing aloud, watch the talk back, get the version of me that the world actually receives, not the one I experience from inside my own good intentions.

You can’t fix what you can’t hear. So I hit record, and I listen to the truth.

– Serguey Asael Shinder