I've been listening to You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk a lot over the past couple of days. And... you know I'm actually kinda happy with the vocals. They are some spots which make me cringe a bit. But for a rather rushed and unprepared go-at, I think there's almost the right level of emotion.
I'm wondering if that hard-drive buzz really *is* enough to make me re-record the vocals.
It's amazing to see the difference between where I was 3 or 4 years ago and where I am now. Half Moon Bay, Ghosts of Roses, Diamond Rise - those are all amazing beasts of cut-and-paste vocal concoction. I think there were maybe even up to 6 takes involved with each of them.
Yeah, I'm a bit neurotic. :)
But, on the other hand, I'm not aiming for some sort of classical-esque vocal perfection. I just... sometimes there's a certain emotion or color to the phrase or even a word that caught my ear.
I love noise. I love hearing all the little bits of a word - a little bit of catch in the throat, a slight bit of extra exhale, the catch of the vocal chords as they growl into a word...
Bono became one of my most favorite singers for a while. As a technician he's *horrible*. There are entire sections of him completely missing notes - Pride (In the Name of Love) for a good example! But, somewhere in the whole process, they really started capturing all the nuances of him as someone who almost paints with his voice. There's just so much grit and color - auditory texture - he can evoke that inspires me.
I returned to the Intermezzo last night for another open mic. I'd toyed with the notion all day and eventually decided that my need to see if I could rent/borrow Mark's sound system was an excuse enough. I almost backed out - my chest has just been a veritable monsoon of phlegm lately...
But I went ahead and signed up.
Took the last slot and eventually got my turn to come up. Unlike the last one I didn't pull together much of a narrative thing. But... again I really did feel like I'm starting to figure this out. I don't think I did *as* well - especially with the afore-mentioned congestion.
But still I did okay. Not bad, really. Not where I *want* to be, of course, but.... Yeah. I was just relaxed enough to enjoy myself a bit and smile through the mistakes - no mean feat since again, I didn't really know anyone outside of Mark.
Started off with Half Moon Bay. Then went into You Only Tell Me. Then really went out on a limb for myself and did Jesus Year - on of my newest tunes. Was a bit surprised that they asked me to do another one (though most everyone else *did* do four) and pulled out So Glad... again.
Jesus Year went pretty well, actually. My voice didn't *quite* last through it. The last two stanzas were weak in my opinion - just couldn't control my voice at all. But the emotion and headspace was good. Tricked them a bit and was a little amused to catch some applause after the the second chorus. But I smiled a little and returned right back into headspace.
The only disturbing thing was that one of the guys referred to my stuff as "super pop" which I think he meant like ultra-pop. I know he didn't mean it as an insult. Yet it kinda threw me a bit. But, looking back, everything I did (and often _do_) live *is* pretty goddamned pop.
_MUST_ change this.
In more... mundane news I've signed up for ReverbNation. Facebook's music player has been craptastic of late - completely not letting me upload new tunes. So... I figured what the fuck and climbed aboard. I must say, I'm actually rather impressed by the quality of the site. The widgets rock and totally put soundclick to shame.
I think I'll keep stuff on soundclick, of course. It's definitely nice to have a space where I can post things 'in progress'. But I think I *may* move towards using ReverbNation as a front-end for my more finished stuff.
Still gotta go through and figure out about how I'm going to organize Toshio Mana stuff vs project::in•fin•i•ty though...
Not really sure where the line is at the moment.
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