Saturday, May 5, 2007
Wednesday, May 2nd
We're definitely in the stage of the project where it's just work! Today I listened to the first rough, rough mix of the album on my iPod and took meticulous notes on every part of each song. I'm listening for anything I don't want, anything that's out of tune and anything that's missing. It's tedious but it's the type of work that makes a project sound really good when it's all done. Check out the scan I did of the song sheet for "Star Maker" below and you'll get an idea of what I'm doing...
Wednesday, April 25th
We were planning on finishing up the keys today but we decided to do some pre-mixing work instead. This means basically going through all the songs and doing the first round of cuts (taking out the parts we know we don't want , which could be a guitar part, a background vocal etc.) We labeled all of the tracks and burned the first rough, rough mix of the songs for me to review.
Coop has to take a break for a week to work on a PBS project, so we'll pick thing sup again late next week. I'm honestly really looking forward to having a week's break!
Coop has to take a break for a week to work on a PBS project, so we'll pick thing sup again late next week. I'm honestly really looking forward to having a week's break!
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Monday, April 23rd
We were supposed to record yesterday (Sunday) afternoon but Coop cancelled our session on account of the weather being too beautiful to work inside. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen in Nashville! It was great having the afternoon off to hang out with the family and almost kill myself on our new trampoline...
Today we went "the distance" (6 hours - which is about all you can take) and finished up all of the background vocals. It's a big deal to me because it means that my vox are done! It was an interesting process as Coop's ear really helped me fine-tune the harmony parts and prevent them being too predictable or interfering with the melody. He's got an particularly great ear for vocal parts.
I would often only hear one harmony part to the melody and then, after recording that harmony part, would hear a 2nd or 3rd harmony part in relation to hat we had just recorded. We ended up recording 2 or 3 harmony parts for each track just to give us options as we head into the mixing stage of the project.
Tomorrow we should finish up all of the keyboard parts and then it's on to mixing!
Today we went "the distance" (6 hours - which is about all you can take) and finished up all of the background vocals. It's a big deal to me because it means that my vox are done! It was an interesting process as Coop's ear really helped me fine-tune the harmony parts and prevent them being too predictable or interfering with the melody. He's got an particularly great ear for vocal parts.
I would often only hear one harmony part to the melody and then, after recording that harmony part, would hear a 2nd or 3rd harmony part in relation to hat we had just recorded. We ended up recording 2 or 3 harmony parts for each track just to give us options as we head into the mixing stage of the project.
Tomorrow we should finish up all of the keyboard parts and then it's on to mixing!
Monday, April 23, 2007
Saturday, April 21st
A GREAT day of recording! Everything was clicking today and we hammered out ALL of the lead vocals. This leaves us with just background vocals and keyboard parts for the final 8 songs.
Coop uses this incredible Pro Tools plug-in called Antares Auto-Tune - it's basically the standard in studio pitch correction. When anybody goes into a studio to record vocals, the vocal will go through several "filters" (e.g. compression, reverb, EQ) during the mixing stage of the album. One of those filters is pitch correction. It's not as amazing as you think - it can't make Britney Spears sound like Christina Aguilera but it can smooth out all the tiny imperfections in a vocal track. Hearing it applied to my vocal was pretty neat - it just gives it that little "pro" touch.
We're almost done!
Coop uses this incredible Pro Tools plug-in called Antares Auto-Tune - it's basically the standard in studio pitch correction. When anybody goes into a studio to record vocals, the vocal will go through several "filters" (e.g. compression, reverb, EQ) during the mixing stage of the album. One of those filters is pitch correction. It's not as amazing as you think - it can't make Britney Spears sound like Christina Aguilera but it can smooth out all the tiny imperfections in a vocal track. Hearing it applied to my vocal was pretty neat - it just gives it that little "pro" touch.
We're almost done!
Friday, April 20, 2007
Thursday, April 19th
We had yesterday off from the project and had an incredible night at the Student Ministry. It's neat to be involved with students and realize that a lot of these kids could be playing on future Sunday morning worship teams and CCJ albums...
It was just a relatively quick 3-hour session this afternoon, which we used to complete lead vocals on 3 more songs ("Praise", "So In Love With You" and "Star Maker"). We have tomorrow off as well before marathon session on Saturday and Sunday. We're hoping that by the end of the weekend we'll have everything recorded and can focus on mixing next week.
When you're recording vocals, you realize that every little inflection and note you sing comes through with crystal clarity - sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing! We've pushed a couple of the lower-range, slower songs to the end because they're so tough to nail vocally. On the other end of the spectrum is a song like "Alive", which is in such a high range that it requires me to be in great vocal shape to sing it. That means I can't sing it with a tired voice, I probably have to sing it first-thing and I can probably only go at it for about 20 minutes before my voice started quitting on me.
Hopefully Friday's rest day will let me voice recover enough to check off "Alive" and a couple of other harder songs...
It was just a relatively quick 3-hour session this afternoon, which we used to complete lead vocals on 3 more songs ("Praise", "So In Love With You" and "Star Maker"). We have tomorrow off as well before marathon session on Saturday and Sunday. We're hoping that by the end of the weekend we'll have everything recorded and can focus on mixing next week.
When you're recording vocals, you realize that every little inflection and note you sing comes through with crystal clarity - sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing! We've pushed a couple of the lower-range, slower songs to the end because they're so tough to nail vocally. On the other end of the spectrum is a song like "Alive", which is in such a high range that it requires me to be in great vocal shape to sing it. That means I can't sing it with a tired voice, I probably have to sing it first-thing and I can probably only go at it for about 20 minutes before my voice started quitting on me.
Hopefully Friday's rest day will let me voice recover enough to check off "Alive" and a couple of other harder songs...
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Tuesday, April 17th
A great day of recording - which was sorely needed after yesterday. We completely finished the first 3 songs! "You Deserve It All", "Reckless" and "Marvelous" are officially wrapped and ready to be mixed. We finished up background vocals, lead vocals and keyboard parts for all of these bad boys.
The vocals require a ton of focus - it's singing the same line or words over and over again, listening with complete attention to make sure it's on pitch, singing with genuine passion without singing flat or sharp etc. It's tiring!
It feels incredible to wrap up some songs. It's good to have the feeling that the end is near and all the work is totally worth it...
The vocals require a ton of focus - it's singing the same line or words over and over again, listening with complete attention to make sure it's on pitch, singing with genuine passion without singing flat or sharp etc. It's tiring!
It feels incredible to wrap up some songs. It's good to have the feeling that the end is near and all the work is totally worth it...
Monday, April 16
Today was the first really frustrating day in the recording process. My voice was still tired from yesterday (Sunday) and so the first 2 and half hours of today produced nothing but flat vocals before we finally decided to let my voice rest before trying again tomorrow.
We spent the rest of the time working on synthesizer tracks for 4 or 5 of the songs with fantastic results (fortunately)! We've come up with some parts that are guaranteed to make you smile when you hear them. As I mentioned before, I'm completely in love with the synthesizer sounds that The Killers are coming up with and hopefully we've managed to get a little bit of that modern, fun sound going on some of these tracks.
Hopefully, better vox tomorrow...
We spent the rest of the time working on synthesizer tracks for 4 or 5 of the songs with fantastic results (fortunately)! We've come up with some parts that are guaranteed to make you smile when you hear them. As I mentioned before, I'm completely in love with the synthesizer sounds that The Killers are coming up with and hopefully we've managed to get a little bit of that modern, fun sound going on some of these tracks.
Hopefully, better vox tomorrow...
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