Sometimes you get the bear...

And sometimes the bear gets you.

Is that a saying? I think it is.

Regardless, I think it's apropos in light of the recording session last night. I got down to the studio around 8:30, and settled on the song Fallout Grace as the primary target for the night. Dave and I started out in our usual manner, with me singing through the tune 3 or 4 times to warm up. Right off the bat, I had a feeling things weren't going to go my way. I was hitting all the notes okay, but there was something a little off about everything I tried.

And additionally, I figured out that Fallout is a much harder song to sing than I thought it was. It goes from a whisper at the beginning to nearly shouting at the end, and I was having trouble getting the quieter parts to sound good.

We tried a bunch of things, from singing closer to the microphone, to singing without a "P" screen (used to keep a singer's "p's" from popping), to changing the monitoring in my headphones. All to no avail.

Nothing was working.

I was frustrated.

We tried another tune, but at that point it was already getting a bit too late to start something new. So we tinkered with some background vocals and mults, and called it a night without really getting anything down.

Now intellectually, I knew I would have at least one of these nights while I was cutting vocals. There are just too many factors that can adversely affect the singing voice and the level of scrutinization on vocal tracks is incredibly high.

So... that's life. I'll head back in Sunday with a fresh approach and probably a hangover.

Sometimes you get the beer...

jbg