the default setting
spirit led often means ear led. here’s what that did to my taste 👅
there’s something genuinely fascinating about the way a team can feel music together and move it on purpose. tempo shifts. vibe shifts. lyrics changing shape mid-stream. someone starts a loop, someone else builds, the whole room locks in, and it becomes this intuitive, alive, collaborative thing. everybody watching everybody. listening. responding. it’s not just a song - it’s like a system.
i learned that system in worship spaces.
i also learned pretty quickly that spirit led often means ear led. you start listening for what’s happening, what’s shifting, what the room can hold, what the band is about to do, what the next move should be. it becomes second nature.
and when it works, you can watch it work.
a swell. a sway. wordless singing that turns into a shared thing. electric guitar swells, cymbal swells, the same simple line circling until it lands. it’s a whole language of cueing and joining.
that language does something to your ear.
it trains you toward clarity. toward anthemic language. toward lyrics you can actually inhabit. toward music that keeps moving without losing people. because you are trying to carry a room.
and after a while, that way of hearing starts to feel like neutral. like “this is just what good is.”
you can feel the arc coming before it arrives. you can feel the next move your body wants to make. the cleanest line. the safest phrasing. the version that will land.
but sometimes i don’t actually want “what lands.” sometimes i want the thing that i would be obsessed with. the thing i would play twice. and those aren’t always the same.
even when i’m not recording, i can still feel where my ear defaults.
the part of me that wants something else to carry the emotion - keep everything seamless, floaty, inevitable - so nobody has to sit in silence for even a second. sometimes that shows up as a pad track. sometimes it’s just the safest version of the moment. it’s not bad. it’s just a very specific language.
and if i’m not paying attention, it narrows the range of what i let myself write.
my test now is pretty plain. would i replay it? would i skip it after ten seconds? could i read the lyrics out loud without feeling like i’m acting?
i don’t want to erase what those rooms taught me. my ears got good there. i just want the training to be an option, not the default setting.
