I was 16 the first time I stepped into a real recording studio with an isolation booth, the insulated doors and the thick glass separating the Producer and engineer from the musicians. My sister’s friends’ Music Producer buddy owned it.
I was in Calgary, where it was located, for a school band trip, and I’d skipped out on the rest of the group…for good reason; the studio had this really cool piece of equipment called The Vocal Eliminator, a machine that scrubbed lead vocals off your favourite songs so you could record your vocals over that music and they offered for me to try it out. I was sooo in.
I’d already been in a band for about a year, so I kinda knew I could sing, but hearing myself in studio headphones singing through a state of the art mic was mind blowing.
I didn’t have a clue what I was doing; I just sang my little heart out.
It was pretty cool; I sang a few takes of each song, (no protools in those days), but it wasn’t that terrible a performance for a novice. My classmates passed the demo around on the bus on our way home (I’d confessed to my music teacher why I’d disappeared so I had to show proof. He was stoked). I was so proud and mortified at the same time.
When I graduated high school, I went back to that studio and became the producer’s protégé of sorts and spent about 4 months straight, singing in that same isolation booth and honing my vocal chops.
That was incredibly cool, but all those buttons and faders and lights and speakers on the mixing consul secretly enthralled me.
Over the next few years I spent a fair bit of time in other studios; Calgary, Vancouver, LA, Kelowna,Vernon, Toronto and San Francisco to record demos of my own songs, and sometimes other people’s songs, and eventually that led to making actual albums.
I was used to performing live with an audience, so being in a studio (most of the time in an isolation booth alone with a mic), and having to emote to a pretend audience is another animal completely. I learned so much about having to elicit emotion for performance by using the energy of the songs.
I was also exposed to many producers and engineers and their varied styles. Some wanted perfect run-throughs of the song from start to finish, some wanted what was called a vocal comp, so I’d do about five passes then they’d take the best parts and compile them together. I’d even stay for the mixing process; which was fascinating and tedious all at the same time as I watched and absorbed everything.
I’ve sat behind my share of consuls, observing the engineer and producer as they did their sorcery. It’s really, nothing short of magical. All those buttons, faders, dials and lights…kinda like the Starship Enterprise…the whiz and whir of the tape machine (when we were recording to literal tape aka analog) and the racks of effects like reverb and EQ (equalization). Eventually, as tape was replaced with digital recording, the music danced across computer screens with cool colour coded lines that looked like a heart rate machine as the song played.
I always loved sitting there observing, listening to them speak the language. Terms like…overdub, bed tracks, slave reel, punch out, doubling… let’s punch in there…that needs more EQ… bed tracks and overdubs. My goodness…the brilliance of it all.
I get all misty just thinking about it.
But just the thought of touching any of that equipment has always totally intimidated and scared the hell out of me.
No, that’s something to be left to the professionals!
Or so I thought.
Early on, I bought a simple 4 track recorder. I had every intention of learning how to use it, but I’d have anxiety just looking at it…I had no one to teach me…everyone just assumed I knew how to use it, and I was too ashamed after all the years of writing and recording to let on that I didn’t have a freaking clue.
Hell, it was supposed to be so simple… I should know how to do this…shouldn’t I?
I always wished I could; I always wanted to…I’d even thought about going to Recording Engineering school (too much of a time commitment and mucho $$). I took a short, basic recording course, but it was over my head and again, I was too afraid to admit it.
Thank God I’ve gotten over that mindset.
Then the world of recording evolved and computer recording programs became affordable.
I got the program. I got the gear. I figured out the basics. I dabbled a bit, but mostly it just sat there. I got frustrated when I realized I didn’t have a clue how to actually run the thing to get results I was used to. I ignorantly assumed that I SHOULD KNOW HOW TO DO THIS! So I gave up.
Instead, I’d use my old school voice recorder…press record and sing into it. That was good enough. Besides, I had friends and co-writers to do demos for me. But making good demos is expensive. And I wanted to do it myself! I wanted to learn how to do it, dammit!
Fast forward to a few months ago. I had all these songs I needed to record…I already had the equipment I needed. I stared longingly at it… screw it! I was going to do it.
I had to push aside my fears and the critical perfectionistic judgypants voice in my head, and jump in. I did. Then I panicked and I had to remind myself to breathe. Baby steps.
The internet is pretty awesome for this kind of thing, and I found the perfect online recording course. My goal was to get the songs I’d already written, recorded. Basic. Nothing fancy. I don’t profess to be an engineer or anything close at this point, but the instructor gave me hope that I can record some decent sounding demos.
So why am I doing this? Probably the same reason I picked up a guitar at such a late age. Necessity, yes, AND I’ve always wanted to do it, so now I am…and if I build decent enough tracks, I can use the demos to attract a new producer.
Sure, writing 47+ songs for a new album is an accomplishment, but they’re kinda useless if they’re just in my head or on paper. Recording them gives me endless options.
For example, I emailed a crappy mp3 demo (that I had converted from cassette using this cool converter thingy) to my keyboard player who lives two hours away. He recorded a keyboard track, emailed it back to me, and I uploaded it into my program and recorded my vocals onto it. (Yay me!)
If I want, I can email it to my friend Scotty in Nashville, to record drum tracks…or Danny in LA, or Randy in Vancouver to lay down some guitar tracks, or both of them, if I want. MAGIC!
This is so out of my comfort zone, but it’s forcing me to be creative in a different way…approach writing in a TOTALLY different way… And all that observing I did over the years…I now use those approaches and techniques on my new songs.
Now don’t get me wrong. I would LOVE nothing more than to get in a beautiful state of the art studio with a full band, producer and engineer like I did with my previous albums (except Monsters). And I still might.
But for now, my love for learning, and pushing out of my comfort zone has allowed me to be adaptable…I can build my own drum tracks, I can record my own guitar and bass tracks, I can do two hundred vocal tracks and add another hundred of backgrounds of just ME if I want.
Most of all…I’m having fun. I talk to myself a lot…I sometimes imagine a room full of musicians, engineers and producers, trying to channel their skills and talents and sometimes I surprise the hell out of myself, pushing my own boundaries every time and feeling myself grow as an artist and songwriter.
Album # 4 isn’t so far away anymore.
