Studio Diary Entry: Singing

The reason I haven’t posted anything in the past few weeks is because things have been downright slow and negative. With all that bad energy floating about I get very unmotivated to do certain things, like posting a blog entry. It’s much easier to seethe and let my intolerance ferment into sweet hateful ether.

 

Despite all the `Torched Laughter’ tracks being completed last month, I’m still recording vocals for other projects. I was to finish everything by March 29th, but that didn’t happen. By the 29th I finished one song (not related to `Torched Laughter.’)

 

1 out of 15.

 

If there is a positive way to look at this stat, please let me know. Because I am quite at a loss.

 

I do know why I didn’t finish the recordings in the allotted time frame. Cue bullet points:

 

 

* Intimidated by the workload. It’s not a matter of just recording one track and then going to the next song. At times there are 10-12 vocal tracks to do for a song (making those big fake choruses.) I don’t have the blow to motivate me to pull off 12 hour days of singing the same `OOOH’ 144 times in a row. (I wish I could though) Which cleverly ties into:

 

* Creating a level of standard that might not be unattainable. By doing this, I can safely self-sabotage anything I do and not feel any guilt or pressure to meet a deadline. It is a passive-aggressive trait that has done more damage to my person than I want to admit.

 

In this case, it was the following rule: SING THE WHOLE SONG. Do not record one line at a time. Record the entire song. I am unqualified to pull this off. But I insisted on doing it this way. Something to do with pride, arrogance, etc. This alone set things back several weeks. The good aspect is that I can do it now under certain circumstances and the vocals are genuine and not patchwork. But the price was a lot of time and exhausting to the voice from overdoing it.

 

* Not staying positive. In order to even attempt what was laid out in bullet point #2, I had to warm up twice a day for 2 hours. Many a day those warm-ups were a waste of time because the recording process later in the evening was just terrible. The voice was there, the mind and heart weren’t. The intimidation and all the pressure I have thrown on myself were knocking me out of whack. Why did I put myself under these conditions when I knew I wasn’t up for it?

 

Because my heroes could do it well and do it quickly. I want to be as good as them. Obviously I am not. If they had an inkling of care, they would be sneering down at me from their cocaine castles. Provided they weren’t so dead and all.

 

Even worse were the days when the mind and heart were there, and the voice wasn’t. Which bleeds into:

 

* No sleep. I won’t go into detail about this. But if you don’t get rest, the voice suffers greatly. Smoke, drink formaldehyde, lick unhygenic prostitutes, but make sure you get rest. I don’t get much rest.

 

* Finding my voice. This will be the next entry.

 

~ by ikonowerk on April 16, 2008.