Something I noticed early on – that became even worse once the computer took over from analog tape – was after an artist or a band would do several takes of a song and then come into the control room to listen and assess what they had done, they tended to spend all of their energy looking only for faults and mistakes. Like the way a copy editor looks for misspellings or poor punctuation. They would only describe to me their favorite takes in terms of what was "wrong" with one versus another. They tended to choose the "best" take using a "lesser of two evils" approach. It used to drive me crazy!
So, I adopted a simple set of instructions that I would try and get people to adhere to when they returned to the control room to listen back:
"I don't want to hear a single comment about any mistakes made, or anything that might be wrong with any of the takes. I only want to hear comments about what you felt was AMAZING about any of them. Elements that jumped out and got your attention in an unexpected, exciting, or emotional way. In other words, don't talk to me about the flaws; talk to me about the magic moments."
I found this had two results:
