NYCG & Pride
Saturday, June 7th, 2025 05:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio |
79F this afternoon, going down to 59F tonight.
Today was the 4th Saturday in a row that I packed my gear and made the treck over to Elgym, to record vocals up in Studio C.
Today's song; Tuesday Siren, formerly, New York City Gargoyles.
This was another challenging song to sing, but happily, today I found that my voice is starting to regain it's youthful elasticity!
The trickyest part is in the bridge.
First a very quiet part, but behind the glasses... that she wears to classes...
And then the music rocks out and I sing, were the biggest bluest EYES I've ever seen!.. they were the biggest bluest EYES I've ever seen!
In that part, "EYES," is a very high note, meant to be screamed in almost Ronnie James Dio hard rock style.
I was sure I wouldn't be able to hit the note, so the plan was to record, "biggest bluest (ahz) I've ever seen," with the, "ahz" part just being a whisper, but with the consonant sounds that would help later when mixing in separately recorded, "EYES" shrieks, done in isolation.
But something magical happened, long about take three! I found myself accidentally singing the word out loud, at nearly the correct pitch!
So I leaned into that, and a few takes later, I was hitting it dead on, in the shriek form it was meant to have!
Maybe not every, "EYES," was hit exactly perfect, but there's at least one or two in there, so I can paste those into all the places they go!
All tolled, I did eight full takes, which was a lot, considering I would take a small break between each one to crank on the AC unit and stand in front of it, sipping water, until I cooled down.
It wasn't super hot in there, but hot enough I was sweating, and also kinda half blacking-out while screaming those bridge parts!
I did note, however, that after about take four, my body started to aclimatize to the room temperature, and I wasn't needing as long to cool down between takes.
This was good to observe, knowing that it will certainly be hotter in there, come July and August, unless I get lucky and all the weekends just happen to be around 80F, rather than 90 or higher.
At any rate, yeah... eight takes, and I still had time at the end to do some bonus takes of, "Whooo's," and "Babeh!'s" for the outro instrumental part that rocks out pretty hard.
Again, I was really surprised to be hitting high notes with relative ease for that bit.
So, even though I'm unable to practice during the week, it seems that just screaming for two hours every saturday is having the effect of loosening up the old vocal chords, and getting the range back!
So now, I'm assuming that after battling through a whole hot summer of this, my voice will be back in top form by September!
This is both good and bad, because it means I'll probably want to go back and re-record the vocals for most of the songs!
However, if I do that, it shouldn't take nearly as long.
It should be easier to get three good takes and call it done!.. which means I'd probably be able to knock out two songs per session.
If that's how things go, I just have to remind myself that the money and time I'm spending right now are not wasted.
I'm basically paying to get my voice back in shape.
But it may also be true that some of the takes I'm getting right now are absolutely the keepers!
In the end, it's just a question of; how long do I want to spend trying to get the raw vocals perfect for this album?
And I think the answer is... mid November!
With my job, all the paid vacation time happens from Thanksgiving, through Christmas & New Year, and on to Martin Luther King Day in January.
I want to be done with vocals before then, so I can use the free time to get the final mixes for the songs, before mastering begins in February or so.
But again, maybe I'll get lucky and the timeline is faster than that?
We'll just have to see.
This is Pride Weekend, in downtown Aurora!
They're setting up for some kind of pride festivities tonight, down on the street outside the building, and tomorrow will be the big pride parade at 2PM!
I've known for years that Aurora has the biggest pride celebration in Illinois, outside Chicago, but never dared attend while Dad was alive!
In 2023, I was too busy with the yard to think about it, and in 2024, I was too busy packing and freaking out about losing the house... not moving in here until July 1st.
So I think tonight I'll get out there and see what's up!
And then tomorrow, I'll make sure to see the parade, and wait until after that to run my Sunday errands.
°¦}
