Camille: Mommy, who is that?

Me: Ella. That is her daddy (pointing to picture of Chad)

Camille: Why is his picture silly?

She played “Go Tell It” over and over and over last night as we were getting ready for some friends’ annual Christmas Music party. Camille (our daughter) has never sang in public. At home she said she wanted to sing “Away In A Manger” at the party, but we knew there was no way. She’s a hairbrush/microphone holding girl in the mirror at home, but clams up in public.

Well, she did it. She made her debut, and it was a hit. As we were going to bed my husband and I agreed that it had something to do with listening to Ella and thinking “I can do that.”

I think this project of you and Erica could develop very nicely along the lines of singles, tunes, creative snapshots instead of “10 song album in 2006, 2009, 2012, etc.”

Ya’ll owe me $10 each.

I cannot express, first of all, the mix of unadulterated joy and frustration at attempting to track a vocal session with a 4 year old.

See… I do vocal sessions quite frequently, but it’s usually either tracking myself or Erica, with whom I share a pretty robust shorthand, musically speaking. Now, for those of you who haven’t been to my studio… I run a fairly serious semi pro rig. We’ve invested in a vocal chain that, at least on paper, would be right at home in a commercial, professional setting. The mic is expensive, the preamp is expensive, the compressor is expensive, the EQ is expensive, and the A/D conversion is expensive. All this gear is now in the service of a human being who still sometimes forgets that she’s supposed to tell us when she needs to pee-pee.

So, the scene’s like this: Ella doesn’t want to sing until the mic’s on. And then she doesn’t want to sing without the track playing. I quickly had to adjust my rhythm and flow of a session. There would be no getting tones before hand. This was push record and adjust on the fly. Oh, and because I’m me, I’ve knowingly created a track with three full verses and a freaking modulation. Way to go, pop.

Then we start, and Erica’s holding Ella’s hands, getting her to watch her face through the grill and diaphragm of the microphone, both to enhance clarity of her diction and to get the most out of her little voice. She’s four, so her eyes and head wander this way and that. I think my favorite thing about the recording is that you can hear her state of mind at any given moment in any given phrase. Her vocal is totally unmasked of any kind of adult fear or control. There’s like a direct connection from her mood to the vocal. We did this over the course of two afternoons, and you can hear her energy waning during the 2nd verse, as that was the last thing we did the first day.

For the record, I didn’t really edit her very much. Some of you don’t record music for a living, so allow me to tell you that there are infinite ways to digitally “improve” recordings. I have constructed VERY musical sounding vocal phrases quite literally one word, one note at a time. Crossfade the breaths until liking, and most everyone wouldn’t ever hear it, and if I’m on a good day, some pros.

I was making this recording mostly for myself, and I wanted a quality musical keepsake from this moment in her life. There would be no vocal tuning, no nudging of phrases here or there for the sake of groove and feel. I let her take each section about three times, I grabbed the best phrases from each one, and that’s what you hear. I wanted to strike a balance between a novelty song, only cute to those who know her, and some sort of uber-produced, “Listen to my kid who’s SOOOOO GOOOD for her age” sorta balony.

As for, “Some Children See Him,” I guess I was just sort of messing about with that synth sound one day and started singing the opening few phrases over it out of time and free-form, and the idea for the arrangement was born. I’m trying to make my programming and production feel more organic, and the live bass and rhodes help with that.

I’m quite proud of the dynamics throughout the tune, but those of you with sharp ears will hear some distortion near the end on the vocals. While tracking Erica, I had a devil of a time striking a balance between a good signal-to-noise and getting that nasty breakup. It’s amazing how quietly she sang those opening and closing phrases to make them sound like that. It was truly a whisper. Being the singer that she is, I was tap-dancing the whole time to keep it all balanced. Her dynamic range is… just stupid, stupid good.

At first, I thought perhaps the trouble was due to a bad tube in the mic, in need of replacement, but eventually with further experimentation, I came to the conclusion that my Daking preamp is in need of a cleaning. It’s gotten noisier, and the pots scrape when you’re messing with gain or EQ. I’m going to actually drop it off at the West Coast headquarters in Huntington Beach after the holidays for a service. After losing several good, emotive takes due to distortion, I just decided to live with it and move on.

This isn’t something I’m trying to sell… :)

Does Ella wanna be in a band? My boys are looking for a singer. Can she write?

I love “Some Children See Him” so much - ever since I sang it for church as a wee one and tried so hard to sound just like Evie Karlsson. You guys did a breathtaking job as usual.

I’ve since lost track of the recording - would love to find it again.

So, your thoughts on the song and/or recording?

Thanks?