Comic 87 – “Mr. Sensitive”
Debs: I’m a horrible perfectionist when it comes to vocals. Like really horrible. They take me forever. Give me easy-breezy one-take songs any day.
Errol: Everyone thinks, “Poor Debs. She’s stuck with Errol as a bandmate.” But you guys haven’t tried recording with her. *LAUGH* I keed, I keed. 😀
Debs: With me? I don’t let you in the room when I record – you know that.
Errol: I didn’t mean in the same room, I meant… oh never mind.
To Debs: I wish I were good enough as a singer to make being a perfectionist a useful attitude. My recording is based on an off-shoot of the Goldilocks principle: the first one will be too tight, the second too loose, and the third about as good as I can expect. 🙂
…ignoring all the false starts where I forget everything I was going to do. 🙂
Three takes? That’s as many as I take. 😀
Debs redoes her vocals over 80 times sometimes. We will cover that in the comic. It’s crazy. 😀
That’s kind of what I meant. I might do the 80 if I thought there was any hope that there would be some miraculous improvement as I went along.
The guest of honour that we just saw in Chicago — S.J. Tucker — said that her band-mates and engineers have been known to throw her out of the studio while they review her vocal takes because they can’t stand how much she cringes, visibly suffers, and picks on herself for ‘mistakes’ that none of them can hear.
Yes, pretty much, Phil. Unless I’m doing a character voice, it’s really hard to listen to stuff once I’ve sent it off, and that’s after I’ve done the 80 takes. Ug.
Debs is just like that, Phil. Just like that.
So… if we were to have a concert, say on the 21st of August, would you do two geek songs?
Unfortunately, this would be to the public… so that increases the likelyhood of you saying no. *sigh*
I NEED GEEK ARTISTS!
Does Deb also want to spend a year mixing after picking the best of the 80 takes? As far as I can tell, mixing can go on forever and ever – adding reverb then taking out reverb, adding EQ and taking out EQ, doing punch-ins and endlessly tweaking stuff a tiny amount to line up, etc. The number of takes seems minor compared to that.
I’ve got your concert on our schedule now and hope Phil will say yes. The audience last time seemed geeky enough to be similar to filkers.
Great thing is, we’ve hired someone else to mix. 😀 However, you should see the notes she gives him. 😀
And sadly, the concert is cancelled. *sigh*
Next time, Gadget, next time.
Yeah, that’s my fault, I’m afraid. I’m auditioning for TTC Subway Busking and because I’m away all that weekend I asked for the latest time possible on Sunday, which is 8pm at night. I told Errol we could totally do a concert after that but he said “no, don’t be crazy.”