Studio Update: The Painstaking Process

Yesterday's session at Gary's small studio was the first where my voice was at 95% capacity. And actually, once I was really warm in the afternoon I felt no limits at all. The first thing I tackled was the lead vocal to Calling You.

Prior to that, Gary had spent many hours (I'm afraid to check exactly how many) tuning the a capella background vocals on Calling You. This is not because the singers were bad, just that we hadn't rehearsed. It's frustrating how my producer and engineer are almost always right about everything. And I knew a week ago when we were laying down those vocals that I was probably wasting money on some level due to that disorganization. However, the bass line was excellent (I'd managed to get the chart to Bryan beforehand), and Kenny Washington's solo is breathtaking.

Wayne's point (correct as usual) had been that doing this via overdubbing (with me singing the top two female parts, Kenny singing the tenor and baritone, and Bryan Dyer singing the bass as he did on my last record) was going to result in something that lacked natural phrasing and breaths of a rehearsed live session. But it wasn't a complete wreck--far from it, in fact, now that it's tuned. Gary has a sign above his computer that reads "Stop me before I tune again"--but in his hands the tools help create something uber-musical, I think. Of course, this is technology that didn't exist when, say, Take 6 recorded their stuff 20 years ago. Back then, it was just a million punches until you got it right. These days, we do about 6-10 and then we give up and fix it in Pro Tools. Some of us do, anyway.

Wayne arrived in the afternoon as I was just beginning to sing the lead to Ave Rara, which, like Calling You, I have performed frequently on gigs. I finished the first take and hesitantly asked him what he thought. There's always that moment of silence where I wonder if he's going to shred it or praise it. Generally he's light on obvious praise, though sometimes I glean some by the comparisons he'll make ("That was like Sarah Vaughn" is not a bad one). He doesn't say anything right away so I suggest we do another take since I heard some pitch and phrasing things I want to change.

"Wait. Don't you want to sit down and listen to what you just did?"

"I already know there're things I want to do better."

"I've been listening to your roughs, and I noticed some things you consistently do. You always do the same turn," he says, singing it. Damn, he's right. I never noticed it.

"Also, your characters are reversed. The character singing the second half of the song is completely different from the first one. Who are you in this song?"

I have no idea what he's talking about. Eventually, via our usual game of 20 questions, I understand what he means: Sing lighter without rounded Sarah Vaughn tones, enunciate, deliver the first line in tune (though I argue and he agrees that Brazilians always sing slightly flat and Mexicans sing slightly sharp). We start recording and punching a phrase at a time, though it's going better than it sometimes does.

When we finish, it really sounds great. The phrasing, the choice of notes, the placement of the voice, everything is better than I've ever sung it. And here's the hard part: I feel a bit of, I don't know what emotion, frustration I guess, that I didn't think of these things myself. But I realized last night that I've only had one other serious professional mentor like Wayne (my first editor, 10 years ago). It can be a tricky relationship. But right now, listening to the mixes of what we recorded yesterday, I can hear how lucky I am to have it.