Painstaking Process, Part IV

Tonight I was supposed to go with my friend Emily, a singer/journalist just like moi, to go see famed investigator Bob Woodward at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco. Instead I practiced for tomorrow's studio session. Sorry, Emily! You'll have to tell me how it went. In the meantime, check out her gorgeous new website.

Yesterday we spent 6.5 hours in the studio. Got most of the vocal done on Habanera, the Carmen aria I'm redoing salsa-style. I'm not sure I'm content with the vocal on the first verse. In my neverending battle with colds, I'm now at a steady state with a slightly hoarse speaking voice but pretty good singing voice--in fact, I was able to hit a high C at the end of the song. Not that we're doing this opera style, but at the coda there's a tiny homage to that world nestled in with the horns--not too exposed.

I also managed to get a lead vocal done on the medley of Agua de Beber/Aguas de Marco. Listening to it now, I'm happy with it. At the time it was hard to do because Wayne had left and Gary was not giving me much feedback. He says he can't feel the emotion of a song if it's not in English. I thought that was exaggerating things a bit. But he managed to at least indicate if things seemed in tune and if the vocal quality from punch to punch was matching. This tune is going to need a lot to turn it into something special--right now it's nice, but skeletal. The plan, throughout this record, is to have a lot more ensemble and a capella vocals. But that also involves organization and rehearsal so I'm not going to worry about that this week. The bigger issue, along those lines, is putting together the gospel choir for one of my tunes. I've been told six women and six men would be enough to give a full sound, but we need them to be crack sight readers, given the way Wayne writes. I also want them to have that old-school Oakland gospel sound.

So, the good news is, we now have six out of 11 tunes with a final lead vocal recorded (though I still might tweak some of them)! I also now have rough vocals on all the tunes (this was a costly setback in that I was not able to record them with the band cutting basics because I had lost my voice). Progress...