[This is an excerpt from the free weekly newsletter – Dispatches from the Creative Journey.]

Steve Albini’s work on alternative rock records from the mid-1980s to his death last year was hugely influential. He filled the role of record producer for PJ Harvey, Pixies, Nirvana, The Breeders… and so many others, but always preferred the term engineer over producer.

In a video he posted on YouTube demonstrating how to line up microphones for certain performances, he said that when he records an acoustic guitar it’s more about sensation.

“When I talk about recording an acoustic instrument, what I really mean is recreating the sense memory of having heard an acoustic instrument. I say that because acoustic instruments have an extremely long tradition. Every part of the world uses some form of acoustic stringed instruments, and we all have engrained in us personal and cultural memory of these instruments. So when I say I’m trying to make an accurate recording of an acoustic instrument, what I mean is I’m trying to evoke the sensation of having heard that instrument in life.”

Recreating the sense memory for the recording is an interesting distinction.

Aristotle opens Poetics by describing poetry as a species of imitation. There are different ways to do that, different mediums and different ways. Painting, too, is imitation, Aristotle points out.

In our stories, that’s what we do – we imitate to recreate sense memory.

When we write, we want to connect with the reader in a way that evokes emotion. We want to evoke the sensation of having experienced something in life. We want to recreate the sense memory.

We want to imitate.

On a Steve Albini record, we can’t be in the room when the string is plucked, but we can feel like we were. In story, we can feel that we were there when the right emotional strings were strummed.