Exitproject » harmonies

Time lapse of recording vocals for First Breath

Emi — Wed, 19 May 2010 22:48:53 +0000

Since April’s song was heavily delayed by the ash cloud, I thought I’d upload a time lapse video of me recording the vocals of First Breath (19732) (the March tune). Seems like vaguely a fair trade?

ps – I don’t technically know if this is actually time lapse, not even Google could tell me. Anyone?

Let it rest a coupla days – then listen to it again

Emi — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:17:50 +0000

After a solid Saturday of writing and recording, our brains were dribbling out of our ears… in a good way… if that’s possible.

Fellow musos will know what I mean when I say that you always reach a point in a day where you’re not really ‘hearing’ any more. There’s been so many ‘try adding this’s and ‘try muting that’s that all you can hear is a kind of muted-through-the-walls-cranium-party of cymbals, strings and vocals.

THIS, my fellow peeps, is when it’s time to leave the studio. So on Saturday, leave we did.

Tonight we went back in and listened to the track twice in a row – it’s amazing how obvious things can become after a couple days of rest. The changes we needed to make were staring us in the face like a lairy punter - woop!

Here’s the list (caution: non-musos might not give a crap about this list)

Mmmm’s in the verses
Hand percussion in the verses
Harmonies above the second verse
Some kind of metallic sound (or maybe just a pause) to mark the transition between the 4/4 and 5/4 section
Ridiculously high harmonies towards the end of the outro
Some kind of other fat-but-floaty vocal sounds in the outro

Then I guess it’ll be on to mixing for the Ninja Butler – BRING IT!!!

Writing bridges and ‘What’s that buzzing noise?’

Emi — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:05:16 +0000

We’ve got a fair bit done today and all is well. J is in the studio listening back to my vocal takes even as I’m sitting in the living room typing this (I laid ‘em down while he went out for a stroll to catch some daylight…)

AHA! He’s just come in to say he likes the outtro harmonies – WOOP!

All celebrations aside for a minute and let’s get down to business. What did we do today? Here’s a tidy list:

Wrote the bridge (C-section, break-down, middle 8, or whatever you want to call it). After working on it for awhile, it turned into the outro (magic!). We decided it should be a little weird compared to the rest of the song. We were discussing adding a loud creaking noise, or the sound a tin-building makes in a storm, or jerky-guitar parts – but we settled on making it 5/4 instead of 4/4 as a start…
Hunted for a heinous digital buzz for a couple of minutes (it was because we were recording with a large-diaphragm condenser mic and I hadn’t turned on phantom power – SCHOOLGIRL ERROR!)
Recorded 3 different acoustic guitar parts
Recorded 3 different electric guitar bits, one of which we scrapped
Snapped one of the tuning pegs on J’s Les Paul (see below…sadness)
Changed the lyrics of the chorus – it used to be ‘You make it seem easy’ four times in a row, but it seemed like a lyric cop-out, so (after struggling with this simplest of tasks) I managed to mix it up a little.
Re-recorded all of the vocals with harmonies and whisper-y whisper tracks
J’s working on a new drum part for the verses right now…

Also included were drinking coffee, drinking tea, eating biscuits and eating lunch – CRUCIAL in any session. Especially the coffee… and tea… and food…

I’m in a freakin’ good mood because this song is about my brother is his lady-wife and working on this tune reminds me of how awesome they are…

I’m luuuurving the bridge… I’ve got a big crush on it. I’m gonna pass it a note in study hall.