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Monday, December 29, 2008

Letting My Voice Be Heard

I woke up today to take Wifey and AKV to the train station to go visit Na and PaPa during the big  Chicago Bears bonanza of a game only to be followed by the hilarious and atrocious loss of the Cowboys.   By the time I got home, I was running on roughly 6 hours of sleep and new a nap was in order.  The couch invited me to curl up with Munky and we curled up dozing to the dulcet tones of Penn Jillete mocking people who live their lives always wanting "the best" of whatever material goods bring them a limited amount of joy.  A few hours of sleep would do me good before I recorded some vocal takes.

I got a phone call that rudely woke me up.  I could've ignored it, but I figured it might be important (tell me, what's more important - sleep or finding flight information? ).   After that call, I tried to sleep but not felt wide awake .  I laid around for another half hour watching more Penn & Teller's Bullsh*t and then finally mustered up the will to record.

The cool thing about owning your own studio is that you have access to it all of the time.  One bad thing is that you don't ever have someone willing to help you out so you have to do everything yourself.  I detest doing my own vocal takes.  I'm far too critical and insecure about them.  My first instinct is to stop recording and fix everything with Auto-tune and studio trickery.  However, I was relatively in a peaceful state of mind from my rest and just wanted something down on tape.  So, I just kinda went for it.  No vocal warm up.  No multiple takes.  I sang the song three times straight through and did the essential backup vocals.  I then took a break and took Munky for a walk while I forgot about the takes themselves.  I returned and was pleasantly surprised at the outcome.  I had enough material to make a really decent composite vocal track!  So, after doing so and doing a bunch of other vocal tracks, I finished "Hypocrite", a song that honestly has been sitting around for the last 4 years to be finished

I listened to it in the car and still am pretty proud of it.  Yes, there are somethings I'd like to fix but they are very minor and if I do it right, you won't have a clue I fixed it .  Now, if I can just take this attitude going forward, the rest of the tracks should be finished by week's end!

Currently watching:
Penn & Teller - Bullsh*t - The Complete Third Season
Release date: 2006-10-03


Note: This was originally posted at Myspace with comments at http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=16074757&blogId=459696052

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