Boring post about vocals...

And so we start my least favourite part of recording....recording the vocals. There are a number of reasons why I like this part of the process the least 1) I don't really like hearing my own voice on record 2) it is the hardest to plan out, with harmonies that you thought were going to be amazing not quite working and having to come up with other parts as you work and 3) it's the hardest to perform - you'd think it'd be easier to operate your vocal chords rather than play bass/guitar...but no.

So we didn't get off to a great start. We ran some rough test vocals for the non-album track that we are recording, "Red Lights Mean Go", and they didn't sound so great, so we tested out some vocals on "The 78 Song". Also not great. So I made sure on Monday that we started working differently - making sure nothing was rough and everything was listened to 'dry' (which means we didn't run any reverb, compression, echo, delay etc) until we'd agreed the part was good. Effects were only applied then to give a rough impression of how they would sound in a real mix...a lot of what we are working with at the moment will be turned off when we start mixing (except the dealsy which we accidentally keep getting about right so they'll stay).

So now the vocals sound pretty damn good, there are loads of "oooohs", little high parts and harmonies that we've never tried out before.

The 78 song is pretty much done for the basic vocals and harmonies. Extra little parts will get added all the time as we listen to it and pick out bits we'd like to add, then we'll go through them all when we're mixing and see what works best, what needs to be cut etc.

The best part of all this is singing the word/sound 'whoa' a lot, which requires very little effort.

Like I told you, I am easily pleased.

Max.