Note: I suggest that if you haven’t yet read Miracle Of Faith – Parts 1-7 yet you start there.  This way you’ll get the whole story.

Installment 8B

This experience of singing, for me, was a great eye-opener, a great reminder of just how hard it is to sing at your best.  Most people think that if one has the gift of music that it’s just easy, but great singers make it look easy when it’s simply not.  It is an experience where every nuance must be addressed, where every moment of action and drama must be thoroughly understood and accomplished in performance.

In short, if you don’t do it in the vocal booth, there’s no way and no piece of technical gear invented that will put it on tape.  (Yes, tape is a funny and old-fashioned word that does not apply anymore, but you get the point.)  If you don’t truly live the song in the vocal session, you’ll never live in the recording.

After my 10 or so takes I can feel my mind, my focus going.  That’s where fatigue hits the singer who is in shape to record.  It’s usually not the voice, but rather the concentration.  My voice is still solid because I prepared well over the last month and got in shape for this adventure, but my focus is waning.  It’s time to stop.

But I only stop the full takes.  Somehow I know in my heart, in my instinct several sections of the song that I’m still a bit nervous about.  I know I haven’t quite nailed them yet, so I do an additional 4-5 takes of just those sections.  At that point I’ve been in the booth singing for about 3 hours.

I’m done … for the day.

In the next couple of days I’ll take several hours and sit down and study each take and organize what I like and what I don’t like and then build a comp track of a final vocal.  A comp track it a composite of the best of my session.  I can edit (just like in the movies) a verse or a line from one take to another and build a “best of” performance.  For that matter, I can also edit words and sometimes even individual syllables together from different takes to get it right.

It’s important to state here that if this kind of work is to be done right, my 10 full song tracks have to be very close to each other in terms of performance and emotional choices.  That’s why it’s so important for the performer to understand the emotional arc of the song well before the session.  Otherwise I’ll never be able to match style and emotional line.  Singers who come in unprepared on that level are almost impossible to comp.  It is definitely an acquired skill.

OK, perhaps I’ve given away enough trade secrets at this point.

There is a real collaboration between vocalist and producer.  Often, when a comp is finished the singer needs to go back and study the comp and learn all the good stuff that she or he and the producer created together in the endeavor of recording.  This way they can sound as good as their record when they are performing their song live.

In my case I did, several days later go back in and fix a couple of moments that I was still not happy with.  And then several days after that and many listenings later, I did go back in yet again to fix just a word or two.

I’ll have to admit the difficulty of this endeavor.  I’m a real taskmaster with my singers in the studio.  I demand the best of them and will not stop until I get it.  I was doubly hard on myself and needed to be.

The song is finished now and I’m doing the final mix today.  I’ve gone over it and over it hundreds of times and am OK with it.  I say, “OK” because I’m not sure I’ll ever be thrilled with it because I experienced the effort it took to get it done.

I understand why Katherine Hepburn never watched a movie she ever made.

It’s also just very difficult to do both jobs at the same time.  Occasionally we see that some stars direct their own movies.  I have to take my hat off to them.  It’s not easy.  Warren Beatty is a pretty special talent.  Clint Eastwood too.

In the end, it is what it is.  It’s finished and it’s time to move on.

Ultimately it was a fascinating and enriching experience.