I have spent something approaching 40,000 hours in studios.

That is a ridiculous amount of time to spend listening to voices, sounds, breaths, pauses, mistakes, performances and silence. You hear things after that amount of time that you simply didn't hear when you started.

One of the things I hear now is intent.

Intent is the fire behind the voice.

You can have a technically perfect recording, a beautifully written script and all the right words, but if the intent behind the voice isn't right, the session can die. Sometimes you can hear it immediately.

It might be a lack of confidence. It might be a voice that simply isn't suited to what is being said. Sometimes there is too much performance in it. Sometimes, particularly with hypnosis recordings I've heard online, there can be a sense of ego behind the hypnotherapist.

None of those things necessarily show up on a waveform.

But you can hear them.

When I record an EnTrance session, I'm trying to establish an intention underneath the words and carry it through the whole performance. There is the script-level therapy, of course. There is also everything happening at the audio and structural level: pacing, spacing, repetition, sound and the way the recording is constructed.

But there is another layer.

In a strange way, you're giving someone a pep talk.

Not the kind of pep talk where somebody tells you that everything is wonderful and you're going to live happily ever after. Life isn't like that. Life is serious. Bad things happen. People lose people. Relationships end. Things don't always work out.

So when I say, through an EnTrance recording, that everything is going to be okay, I don't mean that everything is going to turn out perfectly.

I mean that you can survive a lot.

That distinction matters.

One of the clearest examples of this for me is Yes Therapy. It was a particularly enjoyable session to record because it is built with layers of voices, and the voices really drive the experience. There is a certain fire in that recording that I love.

It isn't simply an emotional tone.

It is the intention behind it.

There is a sense of encouragement running underneath the whole thing: this is possible; you can do this; there is another way of looking at this. The recording isn't trying to bully the listener into believing something. It is trying to lend them some certainty.

That matters because sometimes the person listening can't see very far ahead.

One of the most useful descriptions of depression I've ever heard is the inability to imagine a future. If you can't see a future, then even taking another step can become difficult.

You don't necessarily need someone to tell you that the future will be wonderful.

Sometimes you just need the smallest indication that there is something beyond where you are now.

I've used the image before of a pinprick of light through a closed blind. It doesn't have to illuminate the whole room. It just has to prove that there is something on the other side.

I think that is part of what I'm trying to put into these recordings.

And it is also why recording technique matters.

After all these years, I'm actually less tolerant of imperfections than I used to be. Not because I think everything has to be sterile, but because I now have the knowledge and experience to recognise when something is getting in the listener's way.

A hesitation in the wrong place can change the inflection of a sentence. Change the spacing and you can change the meaning. The old "panda eats shoots and leaves" example is funny because punctuation and spacing can completely alter what a sentence appears to mean. Timing in a voice recording can do the same thing.

So if something isn't working, I record it again.

And again, if necessary.

The same applies to technical problems. If I'm recording in a room with an unwanted reflection, I'll do what I can to remove it. There is a level of technical quality below which I feel you are disrespecting the listener.

They have given you their time.

They have chosen to listen.

The least you can do is make the recording properly.

But perhaps the biggest lesson from all those hours is much simpler.

Slow down.

It is much easier to speed something up than it is to slow it down. Put the spaces in. Give the words room. If you need to cut something out, you can always cut it out afterwards. It is much easier to remove something than to manufacture space that was never recorded.

I've learned that perfection can't be rushed.

Sometimes a recording takes much longer than you want it to take. Sometimes, surprisingly, it takes much less time than you expected.

You can't always predict which it will be.

You just have to listen.

And eventually, after enough years of doing this, you begin to recognise when the recording is telling you that it is finished.

It takes as long as it takes.