Voice Over Gig and more remixing...

Just got back from a friend's place in Bushwick.  Great dinner, good times.  And another long day of music, split up by a yoga class and laundry.  This is good, though.  I love when I can get a huge amount of stuff done in one day.  I was tired and didn't get nearly as much done as I had hoped but I did finish separating out all the tracks for every song I plan on remixing.  Now comes the hard part though.  Making tough decisions about what stays and what goes in each piece.  How am I going to maintain the essence of the songs while changing what I think needs to be changed. 

With one piece, I was trying to record a bass line today and now I'm realizing how bad the pick up on this old bass I picked up really is...maybe I'll borrow one, maybe I'll scrap the bass line altogether and just use a synth patch.  It might work better anyway.  The more I listen to that one piece though, the more I don't like some of the chord progressions in certain parts so now I'm thinking of overhauling that aspect of the piece. 

I'm also realizing that some of the others don't need as much work and I'm thinking maybe I should focus on them first.  There are ultimately about 10.  Some I wrote when I was in college and, while I still find them catchy, it's apparent that my compositional skills were not as developed as they are now.  The ones written in the last few years need far less work...mainly just different drum samples and more attention to the mix. 

Anyway, I have a full day tomorrow to make some more strides and hopefully, I'll be satisfied by the end of the day and will have even more momentum. 

This Monday was the voice over gig and boy, was that fun!  :) I never use emoticons in my blogs so...

When I got there, I was running a little bit early and had to wait for the producer to show up.  When he got there he handed me a script with one minor change (at this point, I had the damned thing memorized after how much I had practiced it) and then he headed off into the studio to get set up.  It wasn't long before I was ushered into the studio we'd be using and greeted by the tiniest scruffy black dog named Phil.  Phil was not the audio engineer...in fact, I think he belonged to the producer.  Anyway, I sat down and looked over the script some more and got some direction from the producer and then got set up in the booth.  They had a monitor in the booth with me and I was able to see the visuals from the almost finished spot I'd be voicing over and hear the music in my headphones so it was way easy to get into character and deliver.  Strangely, I thought in retrospect, I didn't get any direction from him in terms of which one of the reads I delivered to him in my audition he wanted to hear.  I just automatically went for the more energetic angsty kind of read vs. the deep movie trailer voice of god read that I also sent him.  We ended up with about 10 takes by the end of it plus 10 more takes of pickups (i.e. give me the first line three times in a row, stuff like that).  Throughout, I never felt nervous or anything, I just did my thing and listened to directions, never took anything personally and always remained professional, only speaking when spoken to and when asked to read.  I found myself far more comfortable than I ever do recording at home, which made me wonder if I shouldn't maybe adjust some things about my home setup.  I still can't put my finger on what it was.  Maybe I just love doing this so much and I was more excited to be in a real studio doing a real job for once, instead of just working with people long distance and corresponding in emails.  I was so comfortable I was even able to crack a joke when we started to get some RF disturbance from the cables and they had to stop the session and switch them out.  I was hearing pop music in my ear from some nearby radio station and when the engineer asked me if I was hearing it, I said, "yeah, and it's not even a good station." 

When we had enough takes, the engineer began to move them around and line them up with the visuals so I could see a finished version before I left. The whole thing took about an hour and I hung around to wait for a phone call back from one of the other producers, I guess, who they wanted to approve it with.  He never called so they let me go at that point, assured he would approve it.  Then I just headed to my other job.

Man, if I could just do that a few more times a week, I'd be golden.  Anyhow, I'm off to bed now so I can be fresh for tomorrow and maybe submit a few auditions on top of the music work.  Good night!