"recording much more nerve wracking than playing live"
I used to think that, until I discovered how easy it is to fix mistakes in the recording process, and then I realised that the recording studio is just as good a place to take risks as live performance, if you can get in the right mood.

I didn't know about the folk world, but in pop music recording, techniques like recording 20 takes of the same vocal and then patching together the best on almost a syllable-by-syllable basis is certainly common practice.

The time-honoured practice of moving mics around until the balance is right still hasn't died out. Recording engineers worth anything know that it's far easier to get the right sound in the first place than to fix it in the mix.

Anahata