Weather [week 3] — Lostinthewoodz

What a doozy of a week. Highlights:

Actually went on a date!
Saw a buncha friends and tried some nice restaurants for outdoor dining. Went to hanon (really good udon), andante for ramen and nom wah for dim sum
Rode my bike a ton. Prospect Heights, Chinatown, Williamsburg
Went to a farmers market for the first time in years. Got a small watermelon, apple cider, two peaches, and a package of andouille sausage. Honestly a bit more expensive than I expected

Anyways—straight to the point:

This week was spent on vocals. Really got my hands dirty trying to record everything. A number of different factors came into play here but the two main things I tried to tackle were

Recording environment
Feeling/feasibility

Recording environment

I’ve been trying to use a new condenser mic I bought recently (WA87). The thing with this mic (and condenser mics in general) is that they’re super sensitive. This is great in studio settings because you want the vocal to be picked up with as much clarity as possible. The issue comes about if you’re recording in a non treated room i.e. a room that might have a lot of reflective walls that generate reverb and other unwanted elements that end up in the final recording. You generally want the vocal to be as dry as possible for 1. clarity and 2. manipulability.

So the first issue I had to handle was recording environment. I asked around to a few friends and I had the following options:

Switch to a dynamic mic (less sensitive to sound so the idea was it wouldn’t pick up the room reflections much)
Record under a bunch of blankets

I was kinda wtf when I heard about the blanket idea but apparently there’s a precedent.

I set up the blankets and switched out to the dynamic mic (Shure SM58) and it sounded a bit drier but I ended up preferring the tone of the WA87 so I switched back to that.

I like to think the blanket recording helped. It gets super hot recording under the blanket booth (especially with the NY weather heating up again—damn you fickle new york weather) but great art takes sacrifice bud. I literally end up sweating through my clothes and have to shower after every recording session but I think (and greatly hope and wonder if) this blanket recording booth is worth it.

Feeling/feasibility

My ears are more ambitious than my voice. I always seem to produce the song higher than my voice can handle. Even after I got my recording environment more in check I found I wasn’t able to get the high notes in the original key.

I tried recording in the original key a few times but my voice kept pinching up towards the high end. After a few sessions I figured I should just pitch it down. I pitched the entire song a whole step down. At that point the song was significantly easier to sing but there were two issues. First the EQ/tone I had in mind when producing was kinda thrown out the window. A whole step is too much of a change to preserve the tonal feel imo. Second the feeling wasn’t there as much. The high notes may be harder to sing but I do think they produce that feeeeeeliiing. If the vocal doesn’t preserve the feeling it’s gonna be hard to carry.

So after a number of wasted sessions I ended up pitching the song one half step lower than the original key. A good balance between singability and feeling.

Final thoughts

Yeah that’s about it for this week. I kind of want to not write on Sundays because I end up cramming the music in during the day and writing late into the night. But if I don’t do Sundays will I even have time on Mondays during the workweek? I don’t know. Who cares hahahah.

Yeah next steps:

I have a big a list of todos ongoing but the main thing I need to focus on continues to be vocals. Some EQ stuff, compression for clarity/focus. Beyond that I also have a bunch of backing vocals and harmonies that I have recorded that I have to comp and produce. Man comping vocals is such a pain sometimes. Vocalign is definitely a huge time saver though. Definitely wish someone had told me about it earlier.

I think if I get the vocals down the song the track will be in a pretty good place. I’m still debating whether to mix it myself or send it off for mixing and just focus on my next track. Probably send it out because I’m lazy but also because it might be a great learning experience to see how a professional might mix it (but also mostly because I’m lazy and want to save time).