I'm spending the day in Phoenix today.

My wife Liz is at a conference so I thought I'd join her in Phoenix for a change of pace and scenery.

Well, it's certainly been a change of pace because I started the day with the thing I loathe the most.

American Highway Rush Hour Traffic.

Oh how I hate you!

While we drove to the conference hotel I just saw the snail-stream traffic going the other way and thought:

Ugh...I'll need to go back that way?!? Seriously...

But then I thought, well if everyone is on the highway, the surface streets must be pretty clear.

And what do you know, clear all the way back downtown!

It reminded me that the most obvious and most commonly used solution isn't always the only one you can take.

Take EQ, for example. Instead of boosting the high-mids, you can get the same effect by cutting the low-mids.

Instead of filtering everything out because that's what you "should" do, maybe all you need it a little low-shelving cut instead.

The same goes for recording.

Instead of going the traditional route of recording the acoustic guitar the "right" way with the microphone pointed at the sweet spot at the 12th fret, why not just record the acoustic guitar through an amp as well?

That's what I did with a song we did this year with The Long Wait and after listening back to some of my acoustic guitar recordings on the album I'm thinking of revisiting the recording and seeing if I can't shake up my sound a little bit.

I don't want my acoustic guitar to sound like a folky acoustic guitar.

I'm still clinging on with feverish hope that I want to be a rockstar when I grow up so maybe I should just throw some rock 'n' roll on there?

It's not the "traditional way you should do it" but so what?

I'll keep you posted on what we decide and I'll probably make it into one of the Long Wait Patreon videos.

If you want some new ideas to shake up your thought process while recording or mixing, head on over and take a look at the Recording & Mixing Strategies tutorials:

www.audio-issues.com/strategies