Noli Me Tangere

for the record, vol. 4

Some of you have asked me, "how's the recording coming?" I never know how exactly to answer this, but I can offer some insight into the recording process:

-Pro-Tools is my friend.
-I'm very boring.

Andrew has played several of his other projects for me, including a couple young punk rock bands with terrible singers. When I say that they are terrible, I mean that they are habitually off-key, and largely unaware of it. As Andrew and I agreed the other night, there are two kinds of off-key, and one is very acceptable and could result in a multi-million dollar recording career, while the other will likely ensure your band will only get gigs in small town teen punk clubs, unless you are really, really good-looking.

The alpha example of the former is Sir Mick Jagger. While his pitch is never really spot-on, it's never really off, either. This probably has as much to do with his speak-sing phrasing as it does his pitch. He stands in contrast to Stephan Jenkins, the statuesque lead singer for Third Eye Blind, whose stardom was really only made possible through the miracle of modern pitch-correction software.

I'm not a singer who needs a lot of pitch correction, at least not by rocknroll standards. But there's something in my vocal takes so far that strikes me as a bit listless or uncommitted. My friend Christa says I sing everything too pretty. Andrew says it's just cerebral. I say it's boring. And while a producer can clean up all sorts of pitch and rhythmic inaccuracies, there is no such thing as a passion plug-in, unless you count the Virtual Studio Visitor (this is really funny studio humor).

I am excited about the tracks. Better 2 Believe came out pretty strong. A little more rawk than the demo, and trimmed to be more concise. I'm trying to convince Andrew that it needs his guitar. Stick Around has taken on a really smooth, laid-back flavah that may or may not work better. Impossible is still something of a mystery, and perhaps appropriately so. We're batting around ideas. Dobro? Harmonium? Swamp gas? It's a blank slate at this point, folks, and the suggestion box is open.

Posted by aokie at August 25, 2005 10:22 AM | TrackBack