So this one is rough, I’m on the 14th version of this song and I’m TIRED! They all sounded good, and as a matter of fact, one of the lead vocal performances was, without a doubt, the best performance of my life. The thing is, the song is still not conveying what I want it to put across. It just doesn’t “feel” like what I want it to feel like, and this album is all about that. After all, it IS called “Broke Wide Open”. So I gotta stay with it, keep doin’ it, can’t quit on the song, gotta get it right, but here’s the thing…..
I have now done 8 full blown productions around this incredible lead vocal and it’s just not working. I have to get rid of that vocal forever, I have to delete the file, I have to KNOW that it’s gone forever, that it was just a “moment in time”, something special that I can appreciate for what it was, a passing thing, can’t get hung up on a performance if it’s not serving the whole piece, so……………….
I clicked on my hard drive, found that file, that magical file, looked at it for about 45 minutes, and hit delete. Then I cried for about an hour. Cried like a baby, big cry, crocodile tears, snot coming out of your nose crying, making deep primal sounds crying, gonna have the cleanest eyeballs you’ve ever had since you were born crying. Then I let it go.
I sat in the studio with my boxer shorts on, and just got into the lyrics, just kept reading them, over and over, really going back, getting my brain, my soul and spirit back on the A Train a few months earlier, where the song was born. Really stepped back inside, and then I finally got it. The courage to REALLY do this song, I let go of the fear, the anxiety, and I finally agreed with myself to allow this song to happen organically, to reveal it, to cut it loose into the universe.
Boxers came off, set up a click track in the headphones and got on the mic. Then I started to do this rhythmic hand clap thing, it just came out, don’t know where it came from, but I just started clapping. Felt almost tribal, this was coming from my feelings, not my thoughts, so I just kept clapping. I clapped for about 2 hours, literally until my hands were bleeding, until I was dripping with sweat all over the mic, all over my floor, my own salt water dripping down my back, my chest, my face, my arms and legs, sweat splashing all over the place mixed with my blood, bringing my entire self to complete and utter exhaustion.
letting my song loop over and over again until I had about 40 tracks of handclaps. The cool thing about this is that I could only hear what I was doing, couldn’t hear the tracks that were already recorded, only the one I was currently doing, and when I listened back to all the tracks together, they were LOCKED!
So then I just laid down for a while, and let those tracks play in the studio, LOUD, over and over, just listened, tried to get those handclaps inside me, wanted them connected from the inside out, so I just let ‘em play, and I listened, and I listened…………………. About an hour later, I got up, recorded some pots and pans as percussion instruments, programmed some drums, just a bass drum, snare and high hat, and then I had my groove.
Finally, this song was feeling right, after all this time, but now was the moment of truth, could I record another lead vocal that I would be happy with? I got on the mic, and just sang the song. After some sweaty, bleeding handclaps, and some very organic drum and percussion tracks, I finally was swimming in a track that felt like the words of my song, the environment was correct, and the vocal just flowed.
One take, I listened back, and that was it, it just felt right, so I left it. Looped the song again, now with the bulk of the track done, including the lead vocal, and just started singing background vocal parts, just let the song go around and around, and came up with all the parts on the fly. That’s how I arrange background vocals, just hit loop and go. Once I had the foundation parts, I layered everything with more tracks, added some “crowd noise”, {all me again}, and that was it, the song was finally done.
Just wanted to share some of my process with you this week.
“2 Days”
You can hear it on my album, “Broke Wide Open”, which you can purchase here, or at
www.myspace.com/wilkmusic . Just hit the “buy now” button.
Hope this finds you happy in your world and I’ll be back soon.
Peace
WILK
