Editing vs Not, Multitracking vs Not, Improv vs Not

From 1987 to about 2003, I was a member of a musical improv group that went under a few names as time went on. Pieces were recorded on air and eventually to videotape. Edits were cut from the improvs and released as albums - well one time anyway plus a few tapes we circulated amongst ourselves. Eventually I started to find the edits interesting because while fundamentally, one was in the situation where everyone had an equal say, only one person did the mixing (live to two tracks) and only one person did the edits. To be clear, we had an agreement that anyone could take their own parts and make something else of them. Each member also could post vids up to YouTube as part of the loosely-agreed upon project, within limits though. It was not always the same person doing the editing but it was always one person at a time.

I have no ethical issue with editing - I love to edit - actually I can't edit these improv tapes as much as I would like, because they were usually only two tracks - it would be nice to turn up the parts that I'd like to hear. In the end, my feeling towards the 15+ years of work I did would have to fall within the "almost there but not quite" about 80% of the time.

It took me years to reaize that for me it is important, as someone who clearly enjoys music-making and creativity in general as a craft, etc to have the option of a full-sounding track if the song calls for it. Most of the music I like has been recorded using multitracks and multiple takes and extensive edits and I've never seen anything wrong with it. Some newer technology actually helps me/us get closer to the spontaniety of improv by allowing a recordist to keep keep their killer guitar or vocal take from the demo - most of what I leave in a track is first take too - and edit it into a finished fleshed-out track - key and speed are no longer the barriers they once were and at the same time, all the old methods are still there for you - all of it.

Don't get me wrong - it was almost always fun - but years of doing that with really nothing resembling what I myself wanted to do took its toll. Hence the birth of my own musics...

I'm cool with improv and all it's forms and I am also cool with the edit too and all the different forms that can take - I like no limits whatsoever to get in the way with what is coming out of the head-organ, dig?

So why choose sides?