Recording report: 1/7/09

Happy New Year to our faithful blog readers (all 3 of you)! Hope everyone had a nice holiday break. Good riddance, I say. (The character “The Grinch” was based on me.)

We got back on the recording horse last night by charging through three of the four vocal parts for “The Stranger in You” (the remaining part being Daryl’s). (I use too many parentheses in my writing.) We were graced with the presence not only of Lexi, who had been planning to be out of town yesterday but made a welcome surprise appearance, but also of Jennifer Fisher, a/k/a Jennifer Catalina as she is known in the World of Rock, making her debut at these vocal sessions. Joe also graced us with his presence once again – less, I suspect, for the music than for the company of hot babes. Understandable.

“Stranger in You” has kind of a round-robin vocal line, with all 4 of us – Lexi, Jen, Daryl, and me – singing parts of the verses alone, then harmonizing on the chorus and bridge. We went in chronological order so I was up first. It took me less time than usual to get my part finished, possibly because I only sing a little bit of the song by myself and the rest is blended into harmonies…hence less pressure/nerves and being able to relax more. It is crucial to be relaxed when recording vocals. Sometimes the pressure of singing the lead vocal on a song, putting your naked voice out there for all to hear, can lead to a little bit of nervousness while recording and can prolong the process interminably – nerves are public enemy #1 in the recording studio. That’s why a lot of singers have little rituals and fetishes, i.e. having the lights dimmed, kicking out everybody but the engineer, scented candles, etc. I have no rituals myself other than trying to sing on key. I think I did OK last night.

Next up was Jen, who nailed all her parts in just a few takes. Actually I think she hit the verse part in one take, maybe two for the chorus. She has such a pure, clear voice and it really sounds wonderful on this song. You gonna like. By the time she was finished, we were really starting to get a sense of what the multi-part harmonies on the chorus were going to sound like.

Then it was Lexi’s turn, and she did really well too. I love the contrast between her voice and Jen’s. They have such different voices, and yet when they harmonize, they blend so beautifully – it’s really magical. They just have that musical chemistry that’s impossible to define but it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Lexi’s harmony on the chorus really made it all come together and it sounds great with the three of us now. She also added a nice little improv bit going into the guitar solo that I never would have thought of. I’d forgotten what a good job Daryl did on his solo on this song. The whole ending section has a nice, live feel, almost like a ’60s jam band like Traffic or something. Quite cool.

So the big news is I think we have decided to reduce the amount of time it will take to put out a CD by releasing a shorter, “EP”-length CD of 7 songs. Thanks to Daryl for pushing the idea…I was resisting it but I’ve come around. We had been planning to release a full 14- or 15-song CD, but realistically it might have taken us until summer to finish and that’s just too long. A 7-song CD is much more manageable given our time constraints and I’m hopeful that we can get finished by the end of February for possibly a March release.

I was just thinking it’s now been 3 years since our first rehearsals for the Graffiti Rock Challenge back in Troy’s basement. We were a very different band then, of course…but 3 years! And nothing officially recorded that represents the band, just a lot of home demos. That situation is unacceptable but will be corrected in the very near future. We are all very psyched about that. Finally we’ll have something we can play for people and say, “This is what we sound like.” Very exciting.

Band photos coming soon, too, at long last. Three years and no band photos! As far as I know, no one has ever taken a single picture of the Aviation Blondes. That has got to be some kind of record…but we are planning to work with the talented Matthew Kleinrock, who took those gorgeous photos of the WXXP reunion show (two of them grace this page) a couple Octobers ago.

Anyway...a fun session and more solid progress. All is well.

Next session: Wednesday, Jan. 14, 7:00 PM.