Recording report: 4/8/09

The session last night – our next to last – was quick and fun. Just some final backup vocals by Ronda Zegarelli, Scott Bedillion, Lexi, and me. Once again the redoubtable Joe Stile manned the controls.

Scott had heard “Edge of Forever” for the first time just that afternoon and had been immediately struck with an idea that no one else had thought of: a layer of “la la la’s” under all the other voices who were singing the lyrics. It was a solid idea and it worked really well. So there’s now yet another layer to the big chorus on the end of the song. Scott has a very rich, pleasant voice with great pitch control, and he banged out two tracks in one take each, boom.

Ronda, to my delight, brought her “A” game and absolutely sang her ass off. She wailed full-throttle in that blues/gospel style of hers and literally shook the room. Seriously. Her voice is so powerful the whole room was actually vibrating…things were falling off tables…I think I lost a couple fillings. Just amazing and gorgeous. That was the finishing touch the song needed. All the other singers did great, and I’m very happy with what they contributed, but there was still that missing ingredient of someone really taking it home, going for broke, testifying and improvising with total abandon over top of everything else – someone who just happens to have a killer voice. Think Merry Clayton on “Gimme Shelter.” Ronda did a better job than I ever could have hoped for and now the song really feels complete.

Scott and Ronda both had places to go and left when they were finished, which left me and Joe sitting there staring at each other. I thought I would use the time to finish up my last thing, a backup vocal for “Don’t Look Down.” It’s an easy part – I just double Jen on the verse and part of the chorus, an octave lower. Got it done just as Lexi arrived.

All Lexi had to do was a portion of her backup vocal for “Don’t Look Down” that had been left dangling from one of the sessions a while back. At that session I had thrown her a curve ball by asking her to sing the melody slightly differently from how she’d been doing it, which can be a daunting thing when you’re used to singing something a certain way. Tonight I’d taken the extra step, before Lexi got there, of singing it myself as a scratch track for her to reference, but as it turned out I sang it wrong myself (!) – so that was pointless. Luckily Lexi didn’t need my help – she’d been practicing the part in her car and knew it backwards and forwards. She sounded great – the notes are down in the lower part of her range where her voice sort of purrs. Joe commented that we would have been happy to listen to her do about 20 more takes, but sadly she hit it perfectly the first time.

So there’s nothing left now to record except the horn section for “Don’t Look Down,” which is scheduled for next Wednesday. We’ll be joined by Rocco Pacella, Jonny Franks and Mike Dely from The Metropolitans. Very excited about that. I’ve never recorded a horn section before and neither has Jason or Joe, but I’ve been doing some reading and am starting to get an idea how to approach it. And Rocco said they can help advise us on how to record them, so I’m not worried. I can’t wait to hear how "Don't Look Down" sounds with the horns. Probably the most important ingredient of the song apart from Jen’s vocal.

Only one session left! But then there’s all the mixdown work to do, which will also be chronicled here, so don’t worry – this blog isn’t going away anytime soon. Even if some of you were hoping it would!

luv,
SM