This morning I got up at 4AM and drove the dark nearly deserted streets of LA to Tennis Channel. I worked today but my call time was 11AM. Last night I set up my studio in the voice-over (V.O.) booth so that I could stubble in at Oh-dark-thirty and begin tracking the last few songs that need vocals.
The V.O. booth where I work.\
Yes, I got permission to use it.
The ladder was so I could cover a noisy AC vent.
One song in particular, "Rice Crispies and Gin"--the creepiest song I have ever written and yet everyone seems to dig it--needs the sound of a rough and gravely voice. The early hour did not disappoint and by the time I was ready to record the other pieces my voice had warmed up and smoothed out to suite the not-so-scary songs.
Now I'm doing some mixing and going through my many vocal takes to pick the best takes phrase-by-phrase. It's tedious work that has me nodding off a bit but it's necessary to do all I can to compete with professionally produced and funded recordings created in a real studio.
Only a very few years ago my project would not have been possible. Now, as you can see from the picture above, my ordinary laptop--and I'm here to tell ya, it's nothing special--with some special software (about $1000 total) and a simple USB sound recording interface ($400), can not only I record and produce everything I need, I can edit and manipulate the audio in ways that no studio in the World could accomplish twenty-five years ago.
The song being worked on here is "The Barn". I recorded ninety percent of it at my parents house during a Christmas visit. I borrowed a bass from my good friend Jim and used whatever my parents had lying around: a meditation bell, a frame drum and a Native American flute.
The portability of the laptop means I can easily migrate my 'studio' from my apartment to, my in-laws pool house to the V.O. booth I am sitting in right now. I have posted pictures in the past me schlepping large heaps of gear but a large portion of that is instruments and amplifiers (and laundry we take to Audra's folks to save on quarters ).
The studio itself consists of, the laptop, a small carry-on bag with mics, cables and accessories and a small rack case along with a couple mic stands.
With some postponed sleep and some luck I will have this recording off to be 'pressed' in a couple of days, but not if I don't wrap this blog up and get-a-move-on!
Then I return to rehearsing for the shows I will be playing in Rochester and possibly Canandiagua, NY!
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