4th Recording Session - 27 January 2008, Sunday (12.00pm – 4.00pm)

*pop* !

And Syai finally makes his virgin entry on this blog.

I'm here to rescue Ken (aka Tan ah Tan). He's spending almost everyday of the week pouring over his work responsibilities, and having him go through and fill the blog up can take quite a toll. I think this is why they call me syai-da-man. And it's not just because i'm Gifted.

And so it was, on that Sunday afternoon, where Rahmat(Matt) picked me up from Eunos MRT Station to head over to our sweet lil' nest in the middle of Dunlop St., our very own Abbey Rd-ish haven.
The agenda of the day was to lay down the lead vocal tracks, and my job was to..well..listen. And provide constructive/deconstructive critique, of course. But it wasn't as easy as I thought, as I shall illustrate below.


Songs - News & Astray
Instruments Recorded - None. The mouth isn't an instrument.


Recording Process
We first listened through the raw tracks that we've just recorded a few days before. It sounded good. Very good, in my own opinion. And these tracks weren't even mixed yet. After exchanging grinning, satisfied looks with Matt, we decided to get right down to business.

Before Matt even uttered a single line of lyric through his teeth, Nick put us through the most important step: choosing the correct microphone. He went into the recording booth, put up 3 different mic set-ups, and had Matt sing through each. We then went back to the cockpit and sat through each of the 3 samples. At this point, I apologise for not noting down the exact models of those 3 mics, but I promise you readers that i'll update this info the next time I return from a studio session.

Nick stressed the importance of knowing why we chose the mic that we chose. He questioned us on our choice, and we could tell he wanted to make us realise what is it that we like in the mic's sound. Nick explained earlier that the set-up for Matt is quite unique, because of his very bass-ey voice tone and scruffy texture. Not suitable for any 'ordinary mic'. And so, with the mysterious-chosen-mic, Nick placed the mic set-up just behind the inner door of the recording booth, and put up a sound buffer by using a suspicious-looking purple mattress. Mr.Matt stood between the door and the mattress.

And then Matt sang. Oh, how we sang. It sounded the way our songs should sound, except for the fact that Matt was down with the friggin' flu. There was a nasal twang to it, which we would only fully notice in the next session.

We took a little longer than expected, though. Aside from the time spent on setting up, the total time we took to lay down take after take of matt's vocals and filling the mic surface up with his saliva was close to 3 hrs. I personally discovered that I don't really have the ear for precise vocal melodies. Even if I do identify what a certain tune should be, what comes out of my vocal chords as i try to describe it sounds like a squeak. Maybe this is why we took extra long. I think my 'helping along' of the vocal tracks probably did more harm than good. *laughs*

Fin
At the end of the session, as we said our 'seeyouagainextweeks' to Nick, he actually told us that he'll treat this session as just an hour's take. Me and Matt were surprised, of course, but we were absolutely grateful. In these kind of circumstances, it helps to be able to realise that it's not really the terms of the situation, but the thought behind it that counts. Nick, you rock mannnn.

Afternote: i'll promise to put up the pictures of the mic(s) used, and i'll see if it'll be more appropriate to post it here or in any futures posts that i'll publish. Just for the record, we didnt have any camera during this session, hence the lack of my beautiful face plastered on this page. :(