Iam sitting in a recording studio, headphones over my ears, banjo on my knee, playing along to a half-completed song and a metronome click. Other members of the band I’m in are behind the glass, listening along with George, the engineer. I make a mistake, lose my way, and swear. The music stops. I hear the light whoosh of air that comes with the intercom button on the mixing desk being depressed. “You can turn up the click if you want,” says George. This means: you are playing out of time. “It’s getting there,” says the guitar player. This means: you are playing out of time. Over the years I have grown accustomed to the unnerving pressure of these moments. Because the banjo part I’ve come up with is new, I’m not very good at playing it, and this is trying everyone’s patience a little. And because the track is only half finished, this is also sort of an audition: everyone listening may suddenly decide the banjo is not appropriate for the arrangement. When it comes to being inappropriate, the banjo has a massive head start. “Can you drop me in just before the second verse?” I say. “Two bars,” he says. I have to remind myself none of this was meant to happen; I was never destined to be here. This is me, living the dream. When I cross to the other side of the glass 20 minutes later I am greeted by the dispiriting sound of a banjo part being rapidly edited together from the most salvageable bits of the four complete takes and several drop-ins I’ve recorded. Stray notes are nudged into their correct position. Flat notes are replaced by on-pitch ones cut and pasted from elsewhere. It’s so humiliating I have to go and stand outside in the sun for a bit. When I come back, it sounds brilliant. I sit behind the mixing desk with George and the fiddle player while the lead singer redoes some of his vocals. This is the bit of recording I’m good at: the enforced sloth. I sit scrolling through my phone while making occasional unhelpful suggestions. Ah, I think: the life of a musician. The track finishes. George presses the intercom button. “How was that?” asks the singer. “Don’t sing the ‘and’,” I say. “What’s that?” says the singer. “Between the first and second line of the chorus, you keep putting an ‘and’,” I say. “So don’t do it?” “I feel very strongly about this,” I say. “It changes the sense.” “I like the ‘and’,” George says. “It doesn’t bother me,” the fiddle player says. “Well, I’ve made my position clear,” I say, returning to my phone. In the late afternoon I go back to the booth to add a banjo part to another song: a short, sliding figure I have devised to go over the fiddle in the intro. It requires immense finesse. The song stops, and George, out of habit, depresses the intercom button. But it’s clear no one else in the room realises he’s done so, because they are all too busy laughing. “Like a dog walking on its hind legs,” says someone. More laughter follows. I think: me? Do they mean me? “You know that saying,” the voice continues. “It’s like …” The intercom suddenly cuts out. I think: I do know that saying about a dog walking on his hind legs: “It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” They appear to be saying my banjo playing is like a dog walking on its hind legs: not good, even surprisingly not good. “Do you want me to go again, or what?” I say. There is a very long pause before the button is depressed. “We’re not sure it’s working,” says the singer. They invite me in to hear the result, and I have to admit that it’s surprisingly inappropriate, even by banjo standards. Also, it is not done well. The song, I’m afraid, is better without it. I have to wait around to add some backing vocals later, so when the fiddle player goes into the booth to rerecord his part I stay behind the desk. As he plays his haunting opening refrain with tremendous confidence, I listen, impressed and duly humbled. After a few bars I go back to scrolling through my phone, occasionally stopping at videos of dogs doing amazing, amazing things.