Blog 6: September 2008. Now it was my big moment in the recording process

A few days ago I saw one of the best live gigs ever. Green Day completely exceeded my expectations. I now regard Billy joe Armstrong as one of the best musicians of today. Aside from what I already knew, i.e. Great songs, astounding production, and staying power (they played their first gig 21 years ago!), I now know that Billy Joe has also that rare ability to perform stupendously live both as a musician and as an entertainer. Initially I was a little skeptic as He pranced around on stage before the show started dressed as a drunk horny bunny rabbit. He more than once pulled up fans from the adoring crowd to come up on stage and sing with him or even instead Of him, shot tshirts to his fans with an airgun and expected a constant interactive participation Of The audience or would lie on The floor as if drained Of energy! Now if all' Of this had not been accompanied by the highest level of musical performance it would have seemed a bit gimmicky, but instead it just made it into a Master Performance. Would love to hear if any of you saw the concert and what you thought. Especially; was it billy joe in that rabbit costume? Now back to the recording of my album 'just me": the vocals.

September 2008. Now it was my big moment in the recording process! I was so hyped up at this point having been at Britannia Row for 2 months recording all the song tracks. It all was sounded amazing and I was literally DYING to put my vocals on it all. I was terrified (as all singers are I guess) of getting a cold and screwing it all up...and of course the first couple days of recording I felt like hell: massive headache, itchy dry throat, blocked nose! I couldn't believe it and put it all down to some psychosomatic illness that I just had to ignore so I got behind the mic and just sang my headaches away. It kinda worked as I felt better by day 3, but we ended up rerecording some of the stuff I had done the first 2 days (if I remember correctly I think these were the songs "breaking the rules", "just listen" "ride your bike" and "for me").

We averaged 2 songs per day and it was the most exhausting but at the same time thrilling part of the recording process for me. Singing is a very physical thing combined with strange mix of needing 100% concentration while at the same time letting go and when you are doing all of this for 6-8 hours per day it takes up an incredible amount of energy! I would feel listless but satisfied at the end of each day. There were a couple songs that were a bit more difficult for me because of their topics.,To sing them with my heart I had to go back to the place where I was when I wrote them. "we will find a way" was really difficult as we had to stop a lot as I started crying in the middle of a verse or bridge. It was quite funny thinking back as the first time it happened the producer and engineers just heard me go quiet all of a sudden and thought the mic has gone dead so they went MAD trying to figure out what had happened to the technology while I was just in a corner having a quiet cry! After that they got used to it and would just wait patiently until I was ready to resume singing!

The other tough one was 'why do you hate me'. I sang it 3 Times in a row, sitting down, with the vocal booth completely dark and we took The last live take in full. I was trembling by then! There were other songs where I had to hype myself up as the song was very upbeat (like 'my friend') and I had had a bad day. I sang 'my friend' as if i was The 'friend' i was trying to' cheer up...it worked though...sometimes you need to trick your own mind to get the effect you are looking for. That's all for now. Next part is the last finishing touches of the recording process: backing vocals.

Stay tuned!

Kisses, Odette x