the music project update

[forgotten_aria]

Ok, this is completely boring and uninteresting, but what else if for lj for?

I made another pass at my song due at the end of the year. the good news is the bass records well and my simple and unsure lines are definately good enough for my purpose. However my vocals still suck, are boting and uncertain, which is very frustrating, since that's the thing I really want to prove to myself that I can sing.

I'm thinking I should record a throw away song, since I care about this one a little too much.

I will record something and post it here before the end of the year! It may be horrrrrrrrrible, and then none of you will ever ask me to do anything musical again, but I'm going to do it.

Comments

[athereal.livejournal.com]

We ever going to form a band? I wanna siiiiing!

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

I thought there wasn't enough interest...

I'll think harder on making that happen then. With the holidays coming, however, it is both hard to plan and schedule.

[nw1.livejournal.com]

There's a couple of tricks to recording vocals, and getting a good performance. One trick is to set the mic at least 12-18 inches away from you. This makes it easier to forget about and minimizes the need for mic technique, so you can just focus on standing straight and singing. Another trick is to double the vocals (record the same part twice). If you can learn to match the nuances of delivery from take to take, a doubled vocal line will sound stronger and purer than a single one. Brian Wilson used to have each of the individual Beach Boys vocal parts layered 4 and 5 times deep, sometimes more (the exact same part sung and recorded 4 or 5 times) so a 4 part harmony might have as many as 20 or more individual takes layered in. Another nice thing about doubling, is that once you've got one scratch take down, you always have something to sing along with in your headphones, which can make it easier to get a solid take. It also allows you to work iteratively, replacing one or another of the vocal lines until you're happy with both. Also keep in mind that due to it's huge dynamic range, the human voice nearly always needs some kind of compression to sit well in a mix.

It's also worth remembering that recording vocals nearly always takes far longer than you expect it to, even when recording people who are used to singing in a studio, an hour to get 2 solid takes of lead vox per song is pretty common, and 4+ hours is not unusual. It'll take longer if you're engineering yourself.

Good Luck!

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

Thank you for all the wonderful points.

I've been planning to double, but since I'm a shakey enough vocalist, this sometimes exasperates my errors.

Part of my frustration is that I don't like the actual line that I've come up with. I think I really need to rework the song to get more movement in the line itself. I think that given that I'm not a stellar vocalist AND I'm creating the song as I go, by myself in an iterative process, is making it even more frustrating.

Knowing that recording professionals take many tries at an established line is encouraging though. Thank you.