The last one 'La Llamada de Ogún' [The Call of Ogún] got the Loo treatment on Thursday; and although there is one more tune, 'Jardín' [Garden], to record, that's yet in the writing stage so it's ostensibly time to move on.
Our rather large vocal 'redo' escapade was nosed on by Digital Domain's advice on preparing tapes and files, particularly the "Gang of Four" stems. One of these stems is lead vocals only (with its reverb), which plainly means no hiding place in regard of performance, technique and engineering. All the tracks, not only my own, must withstand the close scrutiny of one of the world's foremost mastering engineers; and what I did not want, was to find myself in his mastering suite, without something to be proud of. Since there were inherent flaws in the previous engineering, Dave (our new man at the controls) and I have had to start anew.
(Neumann TLM 103 for the middle, and
AKG C 414 B-XLS on the side)
AKG C 414 B-XLS on the side)
And this singer's having to scoff humble pie.
I used to think that pop singers were poor singers because they relied on composited vocals, and here I find myself doing the same thing. But before you judge me as harshly, there are two pretty big things in my defense:
- auto-tune does not exist in this project, and
- each take is non-identical as regards musical interpretation.
Next on the list is to get Ana, Catie and Jeremy in to lay down the coro [backing vocals] using the same method. If things go really well, the results could be astounding. If not, there's always Plan B. And a Plan C...
Loo Yeo