This is the process -- write a song, then re-write it, and re-write and re-write. Then record it at the home studio, re-write again, and chart it out. Then mentally assemble a group of musicians to record it, send it out to all of them along with the words and charts. Then comes the scheduling of all involved. We finally meet in the studio to make the final arrangement decisions and actually record it. Now you listen to this song, I can't count the number of times, fine tuning each musician's part, bringing up this phrase, taking down that one countless, countless times, plus adding new instrument voices to the mix as you go and doing all the mixing with those tracks. Then you multiply this process by 12 songs. I am totally exhausted, and I have no idea how my Ed, my engineer has managed to stay sane through the whole thing.
If I have listened to the songs a hundred times, Ed has listened to them a thousand, tweaking here and there constantly. All told, it's been two years -- thank goodness it hasn't been a constant thing until just lately. I have only a vague notion of all of the things, effects, whatever, that can be done through audio engineering. I'm an analog girl, and knew my way around the analog studio. Everything is digital now, analog to the nth degree. There are the technical aspects of making all of the voices, human and instrumental, achieve a certain level, and a certain warmth and freshness. It is unknown to most that recording is done flat, with all resonance and such taken away, and then those characteristics are added back in. The whole point is to be able to make all of the instruments sound like a cohesive unit. I can't explain it much more than that. I do know it is a great deal of work.
It does things to your ego, listening to yourself that much. One might think it would be a wonderful thing, but it's not. First of all, I'm not that fond of my voice, and then there are the thousand tiny things I wish I could change -- one song should have been in a higher key, one was faster than I intended it, I kind of flubbed that note, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum.
It is nearly done, though. I probably wouldn't be able to listen to it full all the way through again, were it not for the wonderful job that the musicians did. I have to admit that I am less interested in my singing than I am the playing of these musicians. I know I will enjoy this album for the rest of my life simply because of the wonderful musical talent that is on it. If it were up to me, the music would go on forever. Just hang an iPod on my ears when you cart me off to the old folks' home.
I have said this before, that song writing is a singular, solitary thing, and what you manage to croak out and strum on your front porch becomes a whole new thing when you invite other people to join in and put their own impressions to it. This process to me, is the most fun thing I can ever think to do. To be able to sit down with wonderful players and let them take my song, everybody contributing in, and make it into something else completely is, well, my idea of a good time. That's what does it for me.
