I suppose everyone has their own idea of what it’s like to record a song. Big head-phones, mounted microphone, madly working sound technician, hopefully a band somewhere in the picture…lay things down in one take, go to lunch.
Which is all well and good, but which barely scratches the surface of what recording something is actually like; as I’ve found out over the past few days. Amras and I are working on a project, the details of which I won’t go into, but which involves recording. And I haven’t recorded anything since high school when my choir did their annual CD (and we thought we were oh so special). I’ve never recorded anything solo, and never with the assistance of any kind of a recording studio.
Oh, we don’t have a recording studio on board, not exactly. We have a cabin, and a laptop, a laptop with high end mixing software, and really good recording tech that Amras packs with him which allows us to turn that cabin into a mini-studio. But heck, I mean I don’t even have good headphones! And it’s not as though the cabin is precisely soundproof, so there’s always the risk of things interrupting us, like knocks on the door, or oh…ringing phones…vacuum cleaners, the occasional alarm from the watertight doors. You really never know what is going to happen.
But the hardest part for me? Is take after take of listening to my own voice. I’m a good singer, I know I am, I’m pretty sure I might have mutant lungs, but actually listening to myself sing on playback? I can barely listen to myself talking into an answering machine! The first take I squirmed like crazy, the second was not so bad, and by perhaps the third I was able to listen with a bit more of a critical ear
Can I take that last bit again? I can do that better
Okay, get ready I’ll punch you in…and go..
So it gets easier. But it is by far one of the weirdest processes I have ever been through. How do you not feel self-conscious about hearing yourself on tape? Over and over again? And once Amras ran through all the clean-up effects and started balancing out the mix (which still isn’t’ finished, but it’s coming along), I blinked..
That’s…me?
Yeah.
But that sounds…good
Duh!
Okay…so here we go…new adventures…take one…