Recording diary, day two: With A Dead Soprano.
There was no better way to close out 2007 than with the same thing that kicked it off: a recording session. Of course, this was for a different album -- Red Roses and Dead Things, rather than the somewhat less blood-thirsty Stars Fall Home -- and at a different studio -- Mystic Fig, with Jeff Bohnhoff, rather than Flowinglass, with Kristoph Klover -- and it was for the beginning of a recording cycle, not the end, but hey, other than that, exactly the same. Right? Right?
Okay, so it's not the same at all, but still, coincidences of timing (Tony and Vixy, who I needed for the session, were already going to be in the Bay Area, doing some recording for Jeff and Maya's upcoming album) meant that this was the best time to assemble for our second recording session on the new album. Jeff had been working hard for weeks, getting ready for both the tracks Vixy would be adding to his album (plug, plug, plug) and the tracks he'd need to have ready for my album. The nature of this particular recording cycle being what it is, track preparation is a somewhat more involved process than it was on Stars Fall Home, where prep-work mostly consisted of Kristoph sitting down in the booth and asking what we were planning to do today. Jeff needs to do the base arrangement for each song before we can actually start doing anything, since that base arrangement is what will set our key, tempo, and overall ability to record. You may remember that back on day one, we got a set of basic scratch tracks down. Now it was time to show what they'd turned into.
Our pre-set goal for the session was to go into things capable of recording the vocal lines for three tracks -- the three that had the most Vixy-and-Tony-centric timing requirements. One of them, 'Oh, Helen', is going to be the only track on the album on which I don't sing at all; Tony sings lead, since it's a song from a male point of view, and I don't make a terribly believable boy. (There are male point of view songs that I'll happily sing. Songs which include the line 'a guy named Dave could be your perfect man' aren't generally among them, as that creates a whole new sort of silly. I like my silly to be the intentional sort, not the after-the-fact 'whoops' kind.) It was pretty close to the wire, but Jeff came through with flying colors, because Jeff is a golden god.
It was time to embrace our inner mad scientists once again. Who's with me?
Want to get this party started?
The participants:
* Me, on musical direction, scratch vocals, and living death.
* Tony Fabris, on lead vocals and arguing about the lyrics.
* Michelle 'Vixy' Dockrey, on backing and lead vocals, and henching.
* Maya Bohnhoff, on backing and lead vocals, and choirs of angels.
* Jeff Bohnhoff, on sound engineering and looking evil.
Also participating, if in a somewhat more behind-the-scenes way:
* Chris Mangum, on showing up for Indian food and play-back.
* Kristine Bohnhoff, on wrangling her little sister.
* Amanda Bohnhoff, on being five years old, and hence possessed.
The itinerary for the day:
* Record lead vocals for 'Oh, Helen' (Tony).
* Record scratch vocals for 'The Black Death' (me).
* Record backing vocals for 'The Black Death' (Vixy, Maya).
* Record scratch vocals for 'What A Woman's For' (me).
* Record lead vocals for 'What A Woman's For' (Vixy, Maya).
Now, in the original plan for the day, the word 'scratch', above, would have been replaced with the word 'final'. Unfortunately, I managed to pick up some sort of horrible Martian death cold during my holiday stay in Seattle, and while the worst was over by the time we reached our scheduled recording day, I still sounded like, well, raw hammered death. I mean, for serious. I called Kate before heading out, and she wasn't even sure I should be leaving the house. Death. When I decide to catch a cold, I don't mess around. I informed Jeff of this, and we hastily decided that we wouldn't even pretend we were recording any of my final vocals; we'd just drop some scratch tracks with the correct timing into place, and bring me back in later to do my part of things.
How I do love working with a sane recording engineer.
(Please don't allow this to imply that Kristoph isn't sane in the 'good recording engineer' sense. He's totally sane. He just never had to deal with me sounding like I'd just decided to crawl out of my crypt and drop by the studio for a little visit.)
Jeff had finished the base backing arrangement for 'Oh, Helen' before I left for Seattle, since of the three songs we had planned, that was the one it was most absolutely crazy-vital we have Tony and Vixy in the physical studio for. The others could, if necessary, be done using 'dummy tracks' of myself and Maya pretending to be Vixy, and then sent to Monkey Brains (Tony's studio, in Seattle) to be finished. It would be better if we had all three ready for us, but it wasn't going to be vital. Jeff being Jeff, of course, and roughly as methodical as I am when it comes to things like 'being ready for a recording session', informed us a few days before we got there that everything was ready to rock and roll (for values of 'everything' meaning 'these three songs'). Totally badass.
Tony and Vixy flew into San Jose with me on Friday night, putting them at the Bohnhoff residence two days before they'd be needed for Red Roses and Dead Things. This was awesome, as it provided time for a) Tony and Vixy to visit with the Bohnhoffs, b) Vixy to record a whole lot of backing vocals for the Bohnhoffs, c) me to properly recover from the horrible cold that I'd incubated on the plane, and d) everyone to get some sleep. Yay for sleep. Sopranos are better, less homicidal singers when they've been allowed to get some damn sleep already. Monday morning -- recording day (and New Year's Eve) -- dawned bright, early, and with me in Concord, a good long way from where I needed to eventually be.
One nice thing about living in California: the public transit. While it's very difficult to get from Concord to San Jose by public transportation (unless you're willing to spend half your lifetime doing it), getting from Concord to Fremont is relatively easy, and Jeff was blessedly willing to make the jaunt to fetch me from the BART and take me back to his place. All hail Jeff, most wondrous of engineers. I got up, got dressed, packed my standard 'leaving the house immediately after an illness' carry-kit, and begged a ride to the train station off my unsuspecting housemate, who had the simple bad luck to be in the right place at the right time to get me where I needed to be. Thanks, Alex!
Being a well-prepared blonde, I reached the station with my ticket in my hand, ready to head through the fare gates and up to the platform. Issue: since it was a holiday, most of the gates were closed, and the one remaining gate was choked with a flock of terminally confused tourists who seemed to think that the best place to mill senselessly was directly in front of the one access to the actual trains. Arrrrrrrgh. I managed to worm my way through their ongoing debate (which consisted mostly of them trying to figure out what they were supposed to be doing) and flew up the escalator, catching the San Francisco train...barely. I do hope those tourists figured out where they were going before they found themselves stranded in Concord over the holiday. That would be deeply sad, if it wasn't something that they were actually trying to accomplish.
Finding a seat on the nearly-empty train, I called Jeff with my ETA and settled down to read (book of the day: X-Rated Bloodsuckers) until we reached my transfer station. Once there, I switched to a Fremont-bound train, finished my book, started trying to read my backup book (Flu, the story of the 1918 flu pandemic), discovered that I was still too sick to properly enjoy a book about horrific plague, and dozed the rest of the way to my destination. Yay.
Jeff was waiting for me at the Fremont BART. I asked whether it would be possible to stop at a gas station or 7-11, as I was thirsty; he countered with the magnificant and incredible suggestion that we stop at the local Jamba Juice instead, where I could obtain tasty, healthful goodness. I like Jamba under normal circumstances. When I'm recovering from a cold, with all the damage to my immune system that this implies, I practically worship Jamba. If Jeff hadn't already been pretty high on my list of people to save when the revolution comes, this simple gesture would have elevated him right on up there. Mmmmmmmm, Jamba.
We reached the house with no further difficulties, and found ourselves cheerfully swarmed by people. Yay for people. Tony was up first, to record his lead vocals for 'Oh, Helen'. Hooray for Tony! Jeff chucked him into the booth and started checking levels, while Tony began to sing along to try and get a feel for what he was doing. Now, this is where I should really take a moment to note that Jeff's arrangement for 'Oh, Helen' is pure genius. It's sad and wistful and full of pathos, despite the fact that the lyrics are, well, a little bit on the warped side of normal. It's perfect. And Tony, singing Dave Davenport, unlucky swain of Dr. Helen Narbon, is also perfect. Pardon me while I squeal.
I puddled myself into one of Jeff's incredibly comfy studio chairs, and proceeded to listen. Tony and Jeff decided that it was best for them to take it one verse at a time, so that they could go back for alternate takes immediately when something didn't sound right. Jeff is a wiz with the patches. When he splices two takes together, he does it with the sort of skill that makes it genuinely sound like it was all done at the same time. Seriously, I would trust this man to cobble together the voice-key password phrases needed to get us into a top-secret military installation. Not that we would, y'know, ever want to do anything like that. And. Um. Stuff.
It's a running joke with us -- wherein 'us' is defined as 'anyone who has ever, under any circumstances, attempted to sing something I've written' -- that I start to change the words of songs almost before I finish writing them. Vixy frequently looks at me wearily and asks if I'm really sure about the words she has before she starts figuring out harmony lines...and two times out of three, I take her lyric sheet and make corrections before we can proceed. It's a thing. I don't know why it's a thing, it's just a thing, and we try to live with it.
As I sat there listening, I started to realize that what Tony was singing didn't match what was on my lyric sheet. In between phrases, when he came back for notes, I would give him lyric corrections. This led to him protesting that I was rewriting the entire song, while I protested back that some of these corrections were things that have been a part of the song since it was written -- I was unchanging lyrics! This would lead to us spending the rest of the day arguing about where he'd gotten his original lyric sheet, as I knew it wasn't from me, and he knew he'd had to get it from somewhere. It was good-natured arguing, at least. (We determined later that he had somehow never actually received a lyric sheet from me, and had been working instead from a phonetic breakdown Jeff had done as a guide. Thus proving that sometimes, the simplest things can create the biggest and most impressive complications.)
Back in the present, however, Tony took my corrections with good, if grumbling, grace, and it didn't take terribly long before he'd managed to nail down enough clean takes for Jeff to piece together an end-to-end track. During playback, it sounded so sweet that I thought I heard choirs of angels singing in the background. Then I decided that this was silly, and what I was hearing was actually some sort of backing track. Then I decided that this was silly, and looked around to see where the sound was coming from. The sound was coming from Maya, who was harmonizing cheerfully. Plans to add a female backing track were immediately put into place. Let's hear it for the choirs of angels!
Objective number one, lead vocals for 'Oh, Helen': accomplished. Time for objective number two: my scratch track for 'The Black Death'.
Uh-oh.
Now, the thing about 'The Black Death' is that it, like the pandemic it's named for, goes on for a very, very long time. Approximately seven minutes, to be exact. And I, thanks to the Martian death cold that was doing its best to kill me, had roughly the breath support of a corpse. Not the world's best combination, especially when you consider that -- for purposes of getting the timing as close to exact as possible -- I needed to do all the spoken parts, as well as the singing parts. The phrase 'shoot me now' came into play. Several times.
I wasn't as terrified as I might have been, largely because I was preoccupied with being utterly and completely thrilled by Jeff's arrangement of the song (which I was hearing for the very first time). Because Jeff, you see, is a very talented mimic of existing musical styles. Tell him 'I want something to sound like that', and he can probably find a way to make it happen. And I told him that 'The Black Death' should, ideally, sound like something from Schoolhouse Rock. Now, Jeff wasn't familiar with Schoolhouse Rock before I asked him to arrange a song that sounded like it could belong there, but he's a scholar and a gentleman, and he learned. Oh, yes, he learned. His arrangement is catchy, bouncy, utterly-seventies, utterly-modern, and sounds so perfectly like Schoolhouse Rock that if it weren't for the part where the song it accompanies includes phrases like 'droplet-based transmission' and 'internalized necrosis', you might actually believe it was a cover. I squealed and did as much of a dance as my weakened condition would allow, and Jeff shut me in the recording booth.
Luckily for me, 'The Black Death' is long, but it's also forgiving. We were able to truck gleefully through almost the entire song before crashing and burning on the fact that somehow, the set of lyric sheets I'd taken into the booth with me was missing the last page. Trainwreck! Also, swearing. Vixy brought me a fresh copy of the final page, and we did a few takes of the final verse before wrapping it up and calling it good. One nice thing about scratch tracks: as long as you're on the beat and vaguely in tune, you don't need to re-record.
First into the booth for backing vocals was Vixy, who nailed her part as solidly as was expected, given that a) she's Vixy, and b) she's performed this song in concert, which means she's practiced it a nigh-infinite number of times. Smooth as butter. Now, the law of recording says that when your scratch vocal goes down smooth, and your first backing vocal goes down smooth, your second backing vocal should go down in flames. Maya, who followed Vixy into the booth, proceeded to flaunt the rules with gleeful abandon, nailing her part to the wall and leaving it there as a warning to others. Despite being projected as the longest single song on the album, 'The Black Death' was off our docket in a record amount of time. Glee.
Of course, this going as smoothly as it did meant that I was right back in the booth again, this time to put down my scratch vocals for the album version of 'What A Woman's For'. (I differentiate these because the bonus version is going to be totally different, including a different lead vocal track, with Paul Kwinn on spoken backing vocals. Album version: the undead Andrews Sisters. Bonus version: the Elvira and Vincent Price comedy hour. So cool.) Again, Jeff's base arrangement was a surprise to me, and again, it surpassed all my expectations, providing a smoky, smooth underlying rhythm for our vocals to go on top of. Totally awesome. My scratch was somewhat harder this time, as the three-part version of 'What A Woman's For' is really very dependant on interplay between the parts for timing; I basically had to sing all three lines, or fall flat on my face. Very odd, given the timing differences, but I managed to navigate those waters. Barely.
Some people have heard 'What A Woman's For' before -- both versions, actually, as the me-and-Paul was part of my BayCon 2007 concert, and the three-way was a part of my Conterpoint 2007 concert -- but believe me, nobody's heard it like this. Maya and Vixy debated harmony for something like five minutes, and then, suddenly, the song went quantum. For serious. High harmony, low harmony, smooth-as-silk transitions between the parts, and the single most smokin' 'Emmet Brown' ever to be uttered in this or any other musical number. It was magic. And since we still have to record me, we'll be able to slip me between the layers of harmony like a knife between the hero's ribs, and everything will be wonderful. I'm starting to get genuinely excited about this album, which is good, because it's starting to get genuinely exciting.
After we wrapped recording for Red Roses, we all gathered around Jeff's standing microphone to record some backing vocals for 'Mal's Song' (coming soon to a Tony and Vixy CD near you!), and then busied ourselves with arranging to meet Chris at the Bay Leaf Indian restaurant for dinner. Mmmmm, Indian food. Mmmmm, lamb curry. Mmmmm, pilfered naan. I love naan. Chris showed up just as we were putting in our orders, and we all settled down for a comfortable, low-key dinner, which was spicy enough that I could actually taste it. So very cool.
Dinner passed with no major complications, and then it was back to the Bohnhoff household, to listen to cuts from their upcoming album (soooooooooooooo good), watch This Is Spinal Tap (I'd never seen it), and chill to Ace of Cakes until it was time to go home.
Some people say that how you start a year is how you'll spend the rest of it. I started this year curled on a couch, holding Vixy's hand, surrounded by friends, with a good recording session behind me, and a lazy holiday in front of me.
I can live with that.
Okay, so it's not the same at all, but still, coincidences of timing (Tony and Vixy, who I needed for the session, were already going to be in the Bay Area, doing some recording for Jeff and Maya's upcoming album) meant that this was the best time to assemble for our second recording session on the new album. Jeff had been working hard for weeks, getting ready for both the tracks Vixy would be adding to his album (plug, plug, plug) and the tracks he'd need to have ready for my album. The nature of this particular recording cycle being what it is, track preparation is a somewhat more involved process than it was on Stars Fall Home, where prep-work mostly consisted of Kristoph sitting down in the booth and asking what we were planning to do today. Jeff needs to do the base arrangement for each song before we can actually start doing anything, since that base arrangement is what will set our key, tempo, and overall ability to record. You may remember that back on day one, we got a set of basic scratch tracks down. Now it was time to show what they'd turned into.
Our pre-set goal for the session was to go into things capable of recording the vocal lines for three tracks -- the three that had the most Vixy-and-Tony-centric timing requirements. One of them, 'Oh, Helen', is going to be the only track on the album on which I don't sing at all; Tony sings lead, since it's a song from a male point of view, and I don't make a terribly believable boy. (There are male point of view songs that I'll happily sing. Songs which include the line 'a guy named Dave could be your perfect man' aren't generally among them, as that creates a whole new sort of silly. I like my silly to be the intentional sort, not the after-the-fact 'whoops' kind.) It was pretty close to the wire, but Jeff came through with flying colors, because Jeff is a golden god.
It was time to embrace our inner mad scientists once again. Who's with me?
Want to get this party started?
The participants:
* Me, on musical direction, scratch vocals, and living death.
* Tony Fabris, on lead vocals and arguing about the lyrics.
* Michelle 'Vixy' Dockrey, on backing and lead vocals, and henching.
* Maya Bohnhoff, on backing and lead vocals, and choirs of angels.
* Jeff Bohnhoff, on sound engineering and looking evil.
Also participating, if in a somewhat more behind-the-scenes way:
* Chris Mangum, on showing up for Indian food and play-back.
* Kristine Bohnhoff, on wrangling her little sister.
* Amanda Bohnhoff, on being five years old, and hence possessed.
The itinerary for the day:
* Record lead vocals for 'Oh, Helen' (Tony).
* Record scratch vocals for 'The Black Death' (me).
* Record backing vocals for 'The Black Death' (Vixy, Maya).
* Record scratch vocals for 'What A Woman's For' (me).
* Record lead vocals for 'What A Woman's For' (Vixy, Maya).
Now, in the original plan for the day, the word 'scratch', above, would have been replaced with the word 'final'. Unfortunately, I managed to pick up some sort of horrible Martian death cold during my holiday stay in Seattle, and while the worst was over by the time we reached our scheduled recording day, I still sounded like, well, raw hammered death. I mean, for serious. I called Kate before heading out, and she wasn't even sure I should be leaving the house. Death. When I decide to catch a cold, I don't mess around. I informed Jeff of this, and we hastily decided that we wouldn't even pretend we were recording any of my final vocals; we'd just drop some scratch tracks with the correct timing into place, and bring me back in later to do my part of things.
How I do love working with a sane recording engineer.
(Please don't allow this to imply that Kristoph isn't sane in the 'good recording engineer' sense. He's totally sane. He just never had to deal with me sounding like I'd just decided to crawl out of my crypt and drop by the studio for a little visit.)
Jeff had finished the base backing arrangement for 'Oh, Helen' before I left for Seattle, since of the three songs we had planned, that was the one it was most absolutely crazy-vital we have Tony and Vixy in the physical studio for. The others could, if necessary, be done using 'dummy tracks' of myself and Maya pretending to be Vixy, and then sent to Monkey Brains (Tony's studio, in Seattle) to be finished. It would be better if we had all three ready for us, but it wasn't going to be vital. Jeff being Jeff, of course, and roughly as methodical as I am when it comes to things like 'being ready for a recording session', informed us a few days before we got there that everything was ready to rock and roll (for values of 'everything' meaning 'these three songs'). Totally badass.
Tony and Vixy flew into San Jose with me on Friday night, putting them at the Bohnhoff residence two days before they'd be needed for Red Roses and Dead Things. This was awesome, as it provided time for a) Tony and Vixy to visit with the Bohnhoffs, b) Vixy to record a whole lot of backing vocals for the Bohnhoffs, c) me to properly recover from the horrible cold that I'd incubated on the plane, and d) everyone to get some sleep. Yay for sleep. Sopranos are better, less homicidal singers when they've been allowed to get some damn sleep already. Monday morning -- recording day (and New Year's Eve) -- dawned bright, early, and with me in Concord, a good long way from where I needed to eventually be.
One nice thing about living in California: the public transit. While it's very difficult to get from Concord to San Jose by public transportation (unless you're willing to spend half your lifetime doing it), getting from Concord to Fremont is relatively easy, and Jeff was blessedly willing to make the jaunt to fetch me from the BART and take me back to his place. All hail Jeff, most wondrous of engineers. I got up, got dressed, packed my standard 'leaving the house immediately after an illness' carry-kit, and begged a ride to the train station off my unsuspecting housemate, who had the simple bad luck to be in the right place at the right time to get me where I needed to be. Thanks, Alex!
Being a well-prepared blonde, I reached the station with my ticket in my hand, ready to head through the fare gates and up to the platform. Issue: since it was a holiday, most of the gates were closed, and the one remaining gate was choked with a flock of terminally confused tourists who seemed to think that the best place to mill senselessly was directly in front of the one access to the actual trains. Arrrrrrrgh. I managed to worm my way through their ongoing debate (which consisted mostly of them trying to figure out what they were supposed to be doing) and flew up the escalator, catching the San Francisco train...barely. I do hope those tourists figured out where they were going before they found themselves stranded in Concord over the holiday. That would be deeply sad, if it wasn't something that they were actually trying to accomplish.
Finding a seat on the nearly-empty train, I called Jeff with my ETA and settled down to read (book of the day: X-Rated Bloodsuckers) until we reached my transfer station. Once there, I switched to a Fremont-bound train, finished my book, started trying to read my backup book (Flu, the story of the 1918 flu pandemic), discovered that I was still too sick to properly enjoy a book about horrific plague, and dozed the rest of the way to my destination. Yay.
Jeff was waiting for me at the Fremont BART. I asked whether it would be possible to stop at a gas station or 7-11, as I was thirsty; he countered with the magnificant and incredible suggestion that we stop at the local Jamba Juice instead, where I could obtain tasty, healthful goodness. I like Jamba under normal circumstances. When I'm recovering from a cold, with all the damage to my immune system that this implies, I practically worship Jamba. If Jeff hadn't already been pretty high on my list of people to save when the revolution comes, this simple gesture would have elevated him right on up there. Mmmmmmmm, Jamba.
We reached the house with no further difficulties, and found ourselves cheerfully swarmed by people. Yay for people. Tony was up first, to record his lead vocals for 'Oh, Helen'. Hooray for Tony! Jeff chucked him into the booth and started checking levels, while Tony began to sing along to try and get a feel for what he was doing. Now, this is where I should really take a moment to note that Jeff's arrangement for 'Oh, Helen' is pure genius. It's sad and wistful and full of pathos, despite the fact that the lyrics are, well, a little bit on the warped side of normal. It's perfect. And Tony, singing Dave Davenport, unlucky swain of Dr. Helen Narbon, is also perfect. Pardon me while I squeal.
I puddled myself into one of Jeff's incredibly comfy studio chairs, and proceeded to listen. Tony and Jeff decided that it was best for them to take it one verse at a time, so that they could go back for alternate takes immediately when something didn't sound right. Jeff is a wiz with the patches. When he splices two takes together, he does it with the sort of skill that makes it genuinely sound like it was all done at the same time. Seriously, I would trust this man to cobble together the voice-key password phrases needed to get us into a top-secret military installation. Not that we would, y'know, ever want to do anything like that. And. Um. Stuff.
It's a running joke with us -- wherein 'us' is defined as 'anyone who has ever, under any circumstances, attempted to sing something I've written' -- that I start to change the words of songs almost before I finish writing them. Vixy frequently looks at me wearily and asks if I'm really sure about the words she has before she starts figuring out harmony lines...and two times out of three, I take her lyric sheet and make corrections before we can proceed. It's a thing. I don't know why it's a thing, it's just a thing, and we try to live with it.
As I sat there listening, I started to realize that what Tony was singing didn't match what was on my lyric sheet. In between phrases, when he came back for notes, I would give him lyric corrections. This led to him protesting that I was rewriting the entire song, while I protested back that some of these corrections were things that have been a part of the song since it was written -- I was unchanging lyrics! This would lead to us spending the rest of the day arguing about where he'd gotten his original lyric sheet, as I knew it wasn't from me, and he knew he'd had to get it from somewhere. It was good-natured arguing, at least. (We determined later that he had somehow never actually received a lyric sheet from me, and had been working instead from a phonetic breakdown Jeff had done as a guide. Thus proving that sometimes, the simplest things can create the biggest and most impressive complications.)
Back in the present, however, Tony took my corrections with good, if grumbling, grace, and it didn't take terribly long before he'd managed to nail down enough clean takes for Jeff to piece together an end-to-end track. During playback, it sounded so sweet that I thought I heard choirs of angels singing in the background. Then I decided that this was silly, and what I was hearing was actually some sort of backing track. Then I decided that this was silly, and looked around to see where the sound was coming from. The sound was coming from Maya, who was harmonizing cheerfully. Plans to add a female backing track were immediately put into place. Let's hear it for the choirs of angels!
Objective number one, lead vocals for 'Oh, Helen': accomplished. Time for objective number two: my scratch track for 'The Black Death'.
Uh-oh.
Now, the thing about 'The Black Death' is that it, like the pandemic it's named for, goes on for a very, very long time. Approximately seven minutes, to be exact. And I, thanks to the Martian death cold that was doing its best to kill me, had roughly the breath support of a corpse. Not the world's best combination, especially when you consider that -- for purposes of getting the timing as close to exact as possible -- I needed to do all the spoken parts, as well as the singing parts. The phrase 'shoot me now' came into play. Several times.
I wasn't as terrified as I might have been, largely because I was preoccupied with being utterly and completely thrilled by Jeff's arrangement of the song (which I was hearing for the very first time). Because Jeff, you see, is a very talented mimic of existing musical styles. Tell him 'I want something to sound like that', and he can probably find a way to make it happen. And I told him that 'The Black Death' should, ideally, sound like something from Schoolhouse Rock. Now, Jeff wasn't familiar with Schoolhouse Rock before I asked him to arrange a song that sounded like it could belong there, but he's a scholar and a gentleman, and he learned. Oh, yes, he learned. His arrangement is catchy, bouncy, utterly-seventies, utterly-modern, and sounds so perfectly like Schoolhouse Rock that if it weren't for the part where the song it accompanies includes phrases like 'droplet-based transmission' and 'internalized necrosis', you might actually believe it was a cover. I squealed and did as much of a dance as my weakened condition would allow, and Jeff shut me in the recording booth.
Luckily for me, 'The Black Death' is long, but it's also forgiving. We were able to truck gleefully through almost the entire song before crashing and burning on the fact that somehow, the set of lyric sheets I'd taken into the booth with me was missing the last page. Trainwreck! Also, swearing. Vixy brought me a fresh copy of the final page, and we did a few takes of the final verse before wrapping it up and calling it good. One nice thing about scratch tracks: as long as you're on the beat and vaguely in tune, you don't need to re-record.
First into the booth for backing vocals was Vixy, who nailed her part as solidly as was expected, given that a) she's Vixy, and b) she's performed this song in concert, which means she's practiced it a nigh-infinite number of times. Smooth as butter. Now, the law of recording says that when your scratch vocal goes down smooth, and your first backing vocal goes down smooth, your second backing vocal should go down in flames. Maya, who followed Vixy into the booth, proceeded to flaunt the rules with gleeful abandon, nailing her part to the wall and leaving it there as a warning to others. Despite being projected as the longest single song on the album, 'The Black Death' was off our docket in a record amount of time. Glee.
Of course, this going as smoothly as it did meant that I was right back in the booth again, this time to put down my scratch vocals for the album version of 'What A Woman's For'. (I differentiate these because the bonus version is going to be totally different, including a different lead vocal track, with Paul Kwinn on spoken backing vocals. Album version: the undead Andrews Sisters. Bonus version: the Elvira and Vincent Price comedy hour. So cool.) Again, Jeff's base arrangement was a surprise to me, and again, it surpassed all my expectations, providing a smoky, smooth underlying rhythm for our vocals to go on top of. Totally awesome. My scratch was somewhat harder this time, as the three-part version of 'What A Woman's For' is really very dependant on interplay between the parts for timing; I basically had to sing all three lines, or fall flat on my face. Very odd, given the timing differences, but I managed to navigate those waters. Barely.
Some people have heard 'What A Woman's For' before -- both versions, actually, as the me-and-Paul was part of my BayCon 2007 concert, and the three-way was a part of my Conterpoint 2007 concert -- but believe me, nobody's heard it like this. Maya and Vixy debated harmony for something like five minutes, and then, suddenly, the song went quantum. For serious. High harmony, low harmony, smooth-as-silk transitions between the parts, and the single most smokin' 'Emmet Brown' ever to be uttered in this or any other musical number. It was magic. And since we still have to record me, we'll be able to slip me between the layers of harmony like a knife between the hero's ribs, and everything will be wonderful. I'm starting to get genuinely excited about this album, which is good, because it's starting to get genuinely exciting.
After we wrapped recording for Red Roses, we all gathered around Jeff's standing microphone to record some backing vocals for 'Mal's Song' (coming soon to a Tony and Vixy CD near you!), and then busied ourselves with arranging to meet Chris at the Bay Leaf Indian restaurant for dinner. Mmmmm, Indian food. Mmmmm, lamb curry. Mmmmm, pilfered naan. I love naan. Chris showed up just as we were putting in our orders, and we all settled down for a comfortable, low-key dinner, which was spicy enough that I could actually taste it. So very cool.
Dinner passed with no major complications, and then it was back to the Bohnhoff household, to listen to cuts from their upcoming album (soooooooooooooo good), watch This Is Spinal Tap (I'd never seen it), and chill to Ace of Cakes until it was time to go home.
Some people say that how you start a year is how you'll spend the rest of it. I started this year curled on a couch, holding Vixy's hand, surrounded by friends, with a good recording session behind me, and a lazy holiday in front of me.
I can live with that.