Recording Continues

Another day another long ass haul!  Just finished checking the masters of the recordings I did today and yesterday and I'm quite happy with the way they all turned out.  No vocals just yet.  Those will probably take another week or two to be done but I have to say that it's quite nice to have songs that all sit in a pretty comfortable place in my new voice.  What was it that voice told me a few months ago?  Write to your strengths and then the rest will fall into place.

Recorded (in 20 takes) an aggressive piano ballad that I wrote and never got around to recording in 1993.  It was part of a gargantuan project that i had envisioned being two discs worth of songs and while one of them was (kinda) recorded back in 2001 this is the first time this particular song has seen the light of day.  The meter is complicated in it although it's only piano and voice but it alternates between 1/2 time to 3/4 time back and forth during a few sections and I was terrified while recording it.  I set the room simulator to HALL, shut my eyes (partially) and imagined I was playing in a concert hall.  It took me close to 2 hours to get it done, which is saying something because the song scarcely runs 2 and a half minutes in length.  I did add strings to it but then ended up deleting them since it muddied up the song.

Also re-worked a song that I wrote two weeks ago that wasn't working out in it's original format.  I was going to save that original version and re-wrote the vocal line for cello.  That ended up not working out either because I felt that the lyrics, while a bit vague, were saying something I really wanted to sing about.  So the cello never got it's chance and I re-wrote, re-titled, re-arranged and re-recorded that song this afternoon and I'm very pleased with the end result.

In my youth I had the hardest time condensing ideas into neat little 3 1/2 minute songs.  Ask any of my old friends and they'll tell you, my idea of a pop song was a 5 minute song.  It just seemed as if I couldn't find a way to edit my thoughts back then...much in the same way I can't seem to edit this rambling blog.  Well, I've finally MASTERED the art of the 3 1/2 minute pop song and most of the songs all fall well within the 4 minute range.  That's progress for me.

Right now I'm shutting things down for the night and crawling into bed with thoughts of halfway decent vocals on my mind. La bonne chance pour demain!

Fais des beaux reves!

Harry