The Work Diary

I try not to struggle getting the perfect recording - or at least I wont be so bothered going forward.  Nailing a first or second or third take I suspect just comes with seasoning where you get used to the routine of playing, rehearsing, recording.  Meanwhile, spending hours trying to nail all the random hiccups that can happen is just not efficient!  Recording just takes practice because it can be nerve racking.

Challenges
 - I don't know why but I just wanted to sing every line on a single breath, so there are just a few places where you can breath
 - your spit builds up and because you're using every break to breath, you just gotta deal with it
 - pretty high
 - Light accompaniment so screw ups are exposed

Ishida

You know the tune - attached is a an 'acoustic' version by Elton thats pretty different from the popular version.  I didn't really try to imitate his changes, but its neat hearing an errant note and hearing how he takes a brief conversational turn makes me think he must have listened to a few American country singers back in the 1960s.  Anyway, my theories on voice are becoming ...less abstract maybe.  The past few recordings were always put in a higher key, as high as possible, because its my belief that what should come first is finding the sweet spot in the throat where you can hit both high and long notes comfortably without straining or flexing which means keeping everything light light light - the downside is that you sound like a young kid. 

This one is in EJ's key and the highest / loudest note is an E flat which is there in the tenor's passagio (the tough cluster), but the goal should be not have a significant change in tone as you navigate notes in and out of the passagio - it should sound smooth.  I tried to add a little more 'muscle' to my voice and although I don't think it sounds much louder, I can hear the upped intensity.  I think a pitfall might be trying to imitate the quality / timber of your fav's voice right from the start, but once your voice and throat are all beefed up from working on an intense, loud, or diva-like sound its way harder to relax in order to sing higher or longer, so you might have to drop your keys and steal breaths where you can.  I think an example of the perfect blend of power, lightness, height, and speed is young Michael Jackson - an example of too stressed, too flexed, and too intense would be old Michael Jackson.  But the most insane singing style that dominates all others is opera.  By the way this is all based off a few voice lessons I had in college and after college.

Recording
I sympathize with people who have to record in a band or a group because just recording by myself makes me want to murder the player and the device operator both of whom are me.  This one was recorded in much fewer takes because I rehearsed the spots like crazy that had even a whiff of uncertainty - even the unironed small parts honk out mercilessly on a recording.  Then if some freak accident happens but everything else is good - it can become a keeper.  Just thinking about how to rehearse has become a priority as well and not just the middle man between recording and practicing because it totally sucks when you do a 99% good recording and then final chord or something is screwed up. 

If your curious I use a Tascam DR-40.

Mixing
I think you can make a lot of money fiddling with the virtual knobs and selecting presets in a recording program, but I hate it.  One thing I think I've definitely learned is that after about 5 minutes (or maybe even less) you can't even trust your own freakin' ears.  Its like your ears adapt to what you think sounds normal but when you come back later to what you screwed around with for so long it sounds like total crap!  I see that if I had money I would pay someone to do this for me. 

Hopefully my ears will develop here as well as I compare past recordings and sensitivity increases.

I first heard this song sometime this year after searching Phil Leadbetter who was wailing dobro on another song I was researching covers.  Phil and Steve Gulley formed the band Grasstowne in 2007, and this was one of their songs on their CD, but other than that I can't find anything else about it!  It turns out that this could be the most well crafted relatively new song that I've heard, so I wouldn't be surprised if its a remake of an old old folk song maybe from the British Isles since it talks about a son going off to join the navy in Aberdeen [Scotland].

This one was tough because I've only known it for a little while and didn't even know all the lyrics - memorizing lyrics is super annoying!  The chords are more interesting than most, and the strumming pattern is consistent throughout.  The range of the vocals is challenging and gets a little high - and Steve throws in a high A for fun which I also try to do too...  Thanks to all the time I spent on the last song Landslide, recording the chords and vocals took a relatively short amount of time - maybe because I was confident I could eventually internalize the words, notes, and strumming patterns.  However the accompanying guitar solo and fills took a really long time, because I'd never done it before - it was tough remembering what licks go where in order to mirror Phil as closely as possible but ultimately my timing and memory greatly improved when compared to when I first started rehearsing it.  I've heard that the way to become better at soloing on guitar is to learn "licks" and build a sort of vocabulary and then it becomes a game of linking them together seamlessly and creating phrases in real time without overusing certain things while being guided by a sense of direction.  Anyway, I really like Phil's dobro playing and after figuring out maybe 70% of his accompanying part its really freaking awesome (and humbling) that he can just whip out his style in the live performance from which I copied him.  Bonus fun fact - in April 2011, Phil was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma and underwent 15 months of very intense chemotherapy.  In late August 2012, Phil entered a stem cell program and as of Dec. 20 2012 was deemed cancer free. He returned to performing in February 2013  

Whats Hard

 - Learning a guitar solo

 - Learning lyrics

 - Over dubbing an existing recording

 - Wide ranging melody

 - Resisting the urge to just cut and paste flubs that don't fit precisely - I wanted both tracks to be live straight thru

Whats new

 - Learned to "eliminate noise" thru Audacity and then export modified tracks to shitty GarageBand

 - Accompanying an existing track really needs spot on timing, but I guess I already knew that..

 - Mixing 5 tracks to take advantage of the panoramic space and also to avoid overlapping since both tracks include the same guitar notes

Ishida

I recorded 2 versions and eventually posted the first one but then decided: No!  Not good enough!  Re-recorded the song today.  Its dropped by a half step, at a slower tempo (although the urgency to speed up is audible), and I hoped a little louder / varied vocally.  I suppose thats progress to produce, consider, reject, re-produce, accept.  If I were to hand this one in as homework to myself as the teacher, I would expect an A because I decided what boxes I wanted, and eventually checked them all!  I gave / received an A+ just FYI.

This one turned out being tougher than I originally thought because:
 - took days just to rehearse and kept switching segments around even though I've been playing this tune for years!  I guess this is called arranging?

 - wanted differing strum patterns and finger pickings at specific times - was hard to remember in real time

 - wanted to modify the guitar solo (but it still got a little screwed up in the end) 

 - version 2 had to be louder - cringed when neighbor said "yes I can hear you."

 - combination of two different versions, so I had to remember what I wanted when and where instead of just hearing the ipod version  in my head.  

 - mic placement is annoying as hell because the closer a microphone is to a subject the more sensitive it becomes.  I use a recorder w/ two mics built in, so I had to angle one closer to my face and the other further from the guitar.  Oh well good experience.

I actually like the Dixie Chicks version more, but this Bush one I found on YouTube pretty much copies the structure from Fleetwood Mac, but the singer Gavin approaches the high notes from "above" rather than jumping up to them.  Its hard to explain, but if you try to imitate him you can feel it in your throat.  You're trying to hit a target that needs just enough pressure to land firmly, but if you use too much you screw up the tone or choke - too little pressure you'll be flat or too quiet, so it kinda goes against logic to overshoot it and come down on it from above, but I like the sensation of overshooting while being relaxed and landing in the right place.  Meanwhile the Dixie Chicks are just nailing each note like a laser, so who knows how the hell thats done - maybe some day....  Ultimately, the Bush version yielded a more useful vocal concept.  

Ishida (final)

Ishida (rejected)

Imported to shitty garageband and messed with adding 2 other tracks so one is in the center, one is on the right, and one is on the left.  Also had each track be one of the stupid "voice effects".  Sounds weird as though some kind of autotuning thing is happening but I turned off all the knobs other than some reverb and eq, but ... maybe because stupid garageband.