Friday, April 28, 2017

Waking Life Afternoon

I had the pleasure of recording this week.
It had been a minute (or decade) since I had spent any quality time in a studio. 
The night and a few hours before I got to the studio I had been exploding out of my face. Puke. I was puking my guts out. And it took all of my being to get in the shower and clean myself up before leaving the house. Though I truly do not remember recording some of the songs and it felt like my stomach was collapsing on itself, I did enjoy tracking my bass parts, watching the engineer set up the microphones on the drum kit and the like.
The engineer is great and I enjoy watching audio folks work who really know their room and gear. Ooh, I got to use an amp that sounds really good that I would never buy. And quite possibly the coolest- we recorded on tape!

The second day I was able to eat some saltines and an apple and record vocals. MY FAVORITE! I could record vocals all day. I have weird rituals I do before each song when I am standing alone in the iso booth. I shake my hands wildly and over accentuate my mouth with kissy face before taking my breaths to sing. Sometimes I "hand-jive." If you don't know what that is watch the movie Grease, they hand-jive during the dance scenes.
I put my hair in a side pony tail and stuff like that. 
Also, I really like to double my vocal. I like the sound of natural chorus and I think it make my voice sound better. The engineer agreed, so obviously he is brilliant, and so I was able to double all my parts. Usually I can nail them within a couple of go rounds. So even though I still felt like ass and all the time away from the studio, I still could do the things I used to do.
The tracks sound good and in a few months we will be able to mix. Mixing is fun, but in a different way. The performing part is much more physical and emotionally draining (I mean you don't want to do 50 takes of a song). The mixing portion is more cerebral and since there are 4 of us, probably more debating with a chance of an argument. With the time gap before the mixing happens there will probably be lots and lots of notes.



Friday, April 14, 2017

Louie Louie (Explicit Version)

Since my daughter was born, I have been doing my best not to curse and not just in front of her, but in general. And if I may be completely honest I really enjoy it. Cursing. My husband has said that I use cursing as a way to express myself. It is my poetry at times.

Now I have replaced some of my favorite curse words with "pickles," "dang it," "holy cow," jeeez Louise," and so forth and I feel pretty good about it. So with my alternative vocab to curse words I started thinking about how some of my favorites were inappropriate and extremely derogatory. Now I know what you are thinking- they are curse words. WTF?

I read an article recently about the use of non-gender specific pronouns and it got me thinking about the way I gender some of my cursing.
I know it may seem silly, but one can stay within the potty mouth rhetoric and not use slang for female genitalia. Does mother have to be in front of the f-word? Is there something else that will get the point across?
Anatomy parts, specifically below the belt seem cliche' and though I experience plenty of a-holes on a daily basis, I think there can be other words to use.

I have been experimenting with curse words and expressions here are some I have used.

A friend likes to call people sh*t necks. Not too bad.
At work the other day something crazy happened and I used the term sh*t bananas.
On BART the other day I heard someone say that something was pure stink.

So there are options.