My Life As A Recording Artist

As a favor to a good friend, I had the opportunity to record some backing vocals to a couple of songs he wrote for an album he is producing. These days, I have a pretty regular singing gig as a part of a team of about six people and as part of the church choir. I have had plenty of experience with choral and small ensemble singing, and I've recently spent a lot of time singing with a microphone as part of the vocal team. However, little of that experience prepared me for the unique demands of a recording studio.

Singing in large rooms is nothing like singing in a small, sonically dead recording studio. Freedom of movement (a big issue for me, as I tend to be a bit physically active when singing) is inhibited, because the microphone does not move. Interaction with other singers, something I depend upon, is almost eliminated due to the amount of space (if the room is small), the need to sing at a microphone rather than each other, and the strictly controlled access to sound (i.e., you only hear what comes through the headphones). Finally, the microphone takes away the buffer for imprecision that one imagines exists in a live environment. The studio microphones capture every subtle nuance, which, for someone of my talent level, must be read as "every glaring error." Those errors may be things only I or others with highly critical ears can hear, but there is no hiding from them.

The end result, for the singer inexperienced with studio work, is a very inhibited feeling that takes some time to shrug off. It is axiomatic, however, that time is money in a studio, and lots of it. In our case, time was simply time, but the effect was the same. Every moment in the studio costs something -- usually it is lots of money; in our case, it was a limited budget of time to get everything done. Consequently, the singer does not have the luxury of extended rehearsal. We were sufficiently rehearsed musically, but I felt that I was not rehearsed sufficiently under the technical conditions that existed. I recall feeling the same way some years ago when I began to sing more often on microphones. I have adapted since then, and I am sure that I would learn to cope with the unique challenges presented by the studio environment, but it is surprisingly difficult to jump right in and do one's best work. Thankfully, I think we all eventually produced some pretty good sound in the end. And the buzz of being in a recording studio provided enough incentive and adrenaline to push to do the job right, no matter how uncomfortable I was initially.

The thrill of being in a recording studio applied even though it was actually a converted residential garage ... it had all the equipment, sound deadening, computers and microphones. That's the way things are around here. People in other parts of the country store boats, Christmas decorations and lawmowers in their garages. Burbank folks build astonishingly complete recording studios in theirs.