Background Vocal Mania

This week in the studio has consisted of a steady diet of inexpensive Mexican food, expensive Straybucks coffee, snappy one-liners, new commercial jingles, and, of course, lots of background vocals ("BGVs", as they are often called). With headphones stirrupped atop my noggin, "Ben, I need more reverb." became a common phrase ushering forth from my mouth as I wailed and whispered my way across six of the eleven songs. Ben has monster ears for the task - this is a compliment - and has no fear of layering vocal pads (the long, sometimes subtle "ooohs" and "aaahs") so rich and thick that they might as well be glue holding the entire thing together. I like this.

Like recording the main vocals, I am equally worn out from the creative aspect of the ornate and sometimes delicate process of singing background vocals. We are making a lot of the parts up as we go along, and it is, like singing the main melody, intense in its acute focus and concentration. Part of my problem is that I don't like to work, but part of it is that my overall energy level is already running near empty what with a two-month, and a two-year old at home. I'm lame for passing the buck, I know. I'm not sure that I possess the mental capacity of late to take a step back to see my life, my everyday life, for the mystery, the fathomless chasm, that it is. Lately, I'm all too eager to crawl into bed by day's end.

If ever I thought I was a great singer, recording background vocals is a firm reminder that I am most certainly not. Walking away from our Wednesday session - our last one for a couple of weeks - I was humbled by my lack of talent in this department. There are notes of a chord that Ben hears that I simply cannot hear, and cannot get my voice to manufacture without much help and guidance, without much ado, and without much consternation and frustration on my part. I departed the scene on Wednesday feeling pretty beat up, not by Ben, but by my own mean, perfectionist self. Hello, acedia. Nice to see you again.

So goes the process of making this, my first album, as a full-fledged parent (Scarce [2006] was recorded and released before our oldest boy, Ellis, was born). For this reason, Chrome carries a grittier weight to it that I have never known in the making of any of the previous albums. Now more than ever, I sense a focused desire for the album to "succeed" (both monetarily and artistically), with a gut feeling that if the thing should fail, then so too goeth my career of holding on, and holding on, and hoping. The economy is a joke, and I'm certainly guilty of paranoia and melodrama - this is only music, after all - but I can only hope that the kind, believing and generous folks who have held up my arms in this process, who have patroned this project with their hard-earned cash, will be proud of me, and will be glad they invested the money they did (we reached the halfway point = $7700!) once it is all said and done. Here's hoping for a June release...

A Milestone

I can't believe how famous this blog has been.

Today we reached (rather, punched) a milestone: I finished singing vocals on the record (The final song was "The Traveling Onion"), and we managed to finish comping it before both our brains exploded. Or melted. Into delirium I nearly caved. It is a mighty good feeling to be done with this major step in the process. Next week we begin background vocals (far more enjoyable), which I'm hoping to enlist the help of my friends, and then to finish the instrumentation. After that, we mix the album. Then, mastering. Then, off to the duplication plant. Like crossing the sea and finally sighting land. The end is near.

One More Day of Singing (Hallelujah)

Sorry (to the pair of you following this blog) I've missed a couple of days in the journaling of Chrome. Since I last wrote, it's only been more of the same: singing the songs eight or nine times through, then going through line by line, even word by word, weeding out the chaff from the cream of the crop (to marry idioms). The good news, which I am thrilled to report, is that there is one final song to sing ("The Traveling Onion"), then it's off to BGV (background vocal) land, and, from there, more sweet luscious overdubs. Ben and I have plans for: strings, percussion, pedal steel, keys, accordion and french horn. For these, I can't wait. Tomorrow is Friday, as fine a day as any to wrap up vocals.

I sang "Reality Came Crashing Down" this afternoon, and I gave myself a very hard time with its execution. I suppose I expect too much of myself, what with all my grand delusions. But this song, to me, feels like a rare moment at the crux of something sad and bright waiting to walk through the door. Reality doesn't always follow the course of my dreams, as was the case with my voice this afternoon. We'll listen back to today's work first thing tomorrow morning to determine if I was being hyper-critical or if there was any truth to the mental-flogging I gave myself while singing the song. We'll see....