Lest anyone really think that professional musicians don’t put a lot of work into something, let’s set the record straight. Earlier this week I was hired to sing on a video game. Nothing super fancy. At least not to me, now that I’ve done it a few times. I did my prep for it, learning the melody and tweaking the words to work better than the writer had written. I knew they wanted a vocal sound similar to Avenged Sevenfold. Something I can do, but it’s not my ideal use of my voice.
I had marked out all the lines and the order I felt it would be best to run through them. Grouping lead vocals, two part harmonies and the three part harmonies the composer wanted. Then came the day to be in the studio recording. First pass through the composer felt I wasn’t getting enough grunt, so in the second pass I amped it up and he felt it was too much grunt. Third pass on it was just right. However, due to the nature of the singing I had to stop after each part to drink some tea and have a moment of rest.
You know you’re working hard when you’re sweating in an air conditioned studio. For most of the parts there was a double to go with it. That means twice as much work. Whew. I knocked out all the vocal parts in roughly two hours. That’s pretty darn fast for a song, considering all the parts, harmonies and doubling – not to mention the style. The rest of the day and the following day I didn’t do much talking so as to give my voice the much needed rest from the beating it took. I honestly can’t understand how those guys in bands do that day in and day out. Actually, I can understand it. But their careers are short.
To put it mildly, it’s work. Work obviously that I’m good at and enjoy, but work non-the-less.
Truth is, I’m looking forward to getting into the studio on my own material. I’ll go over it with a super fine tooth comb. Probably end up doing Sextuple Tracking each harmony for super hugeness. We’ll see.
In the meantime lets get to Esza Kaye. The song Tinged With Machine is a flowing semi industrial eclectic thing. There’s a slightly futuristic flow to it. It’s the kind of song you turn on when you’re in a mysterious mood. Which was exactly where I was when I was sweating in the studio on the track earlier this week.
Enjoy the meandering movement going on here.