First of I all I know that there are proper remotesters like Plush and Norse Horse who make a living at it, but I think the category also includes home recordists who strive to make proper recordings of their own musical performances, and learn from their mistakes.

My formative years, from age zero to ten, were spent living in isolated pulp and paper towns in the province of Quebec. In the late 1950s/early 1960s my father acquired a fairly posh looking stereo tape deck, model Philips EL 3536 A, with a built-in speakers, and a plastic dynamic stereo mic. He also built various hand wired components, and had a cabinet maker build a singleton folded horn for a Wharfedale loudspeaker, with satellite stereo extension speakers. So there is some fatherly influence, on this area of interest, but in fact, he didn't want his son breaking his toys, so I was encouraged to get my own gear when the time was right.

In my late teens, early twenties, from the mid-seventies to the 1980s, I began collecting hifi gear, and I insisted in finding a stereo cassette deck with microphone inputs -- so that I could make my own recordings to track my progress in learning how to play the guitar, and to record my jam sessions with my friends. On one of my cycling trips around the West Island, of Montreal, I discovered a hi-fi repair shop that was an authorized dealer for Beyer microphones. I studied the Beyerdynamic catalogue with the intensity that one might use on legal or religious text, and I selected a pair of Beyer Soundstar mics -- which seemed to have a wide range of applications.

In turned out that with the pair of Soundstar mics, wired up with 1/4 phono jacks, I had the perfect rig for recording our little jam sessions. I was fixated on playing lead guitar on my acoustic guitar, my late friend George was our best rhythm guitar and singer, our tone deaf yet very scholastic singer Mike sang in a Lou Reed way, while our Irish buddy Brendan played with actual drumsticks on an empty beer case.

At a certain point I mounted the mics on the ceiling. This avoided any interference from the foot stomping and field hollers. Despite the limitations of the cassette format the recordings turned out quite well, very well blended, but I had to stop myself from getting carried away on the guitar and jazz violin. The first our gang to get married got a batch of our jam tapes as a wedding present.

This formative experience, recording sessions while trying to play an instrument, or sing, or do both at the same time, steered me into the category of live music, and for some reason I'm repulsed at doing sound on sound, or Steely Dan type of recordings. Our heroes were Bob Dylan and the Band, and in our own minds, we were doing a remote, or suburban copy of The Basement Tapes, but in fact the jams occurred in my bedroom.

Most of my interest, in music, lies in trying to sound half decent, and to use the recording process as a documentary medium. I have never been interested in supplying a recording service. But the idea of recording live performances, even rehearsals is truer to my ideas than attempting to be a home studio. There is a remote possibility that I'm becoming a better musician, but there's a distinct possibility that music is a money pit, or that I may be using music as a form of naive therapy.