Greetings, Christmas participants worldwide.
Mercifully, this blessed season of joy, peace, and early bird specials is drawing to a climax, with the big day just around the corner. This being our first year of Christmas in the post-church-employment era, and consequently also being the first Christmas of the post-regular-paycheck era, Erica and I have decided to augment our gift giving with a couple of homemade goodies.
First, we present Ella. Ella is 4 and a half years old, and we decided that she was old enough to participate. I do not believe I am just speaking from a perspective of proud papa when I say that if you can get through the next 3 minutes without a big, stupid grin on your face, then bah humbug indeed.
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Next, the grownups would like to serenade you about the children.
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I have some commentary for the tracks if anyone’s interested. I’ll post in the comments section in time. Tracking a vocal session with a 4 year old? Yes, it was entertaining, thanks for asking.
I’ve actually got a 3rd one cooking and if I can get it done before New Years, I’ll post it for ya’ll. If not, We wish you a very Merry, peaceful Christmas to you and yours in the days to come. I know that I’m trying to reconnect with Jesus in 2008, and I hope the same for you.
Very nice, Chad. Ella had me grinning from ear to ear. And man o’ man, that wife of yours can sing, damnit.
Oh wait, Ella was singing? I thought that was her on the Rhodes!
uuuhmmmm…
Thanks?
I love that song, by the way, Some Children See Him. My first introduction to it was on a jazz piano album by Marcus Roberts (long-time accompanist for Wynton Marsalis). He does this arrangement that is alternately sparse and lush, and I just fell in love with it.
I’ve since lost track of the recording - would love to find it again.
So, your thoughts on the song and/or recording?
Geez, are you trying to KILL me? I swear my heart stopped when Ella was singing. Her voice has an appealing lilt beyond your run-of-the-mill child-voice cuteness. And I love that you can tell when she’s grinning.
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.
Good stuff.
Does Ella wanna be in a band? My boys are looking for a singer. Can she write?
Well… comments…
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… :)
Actually, I take that last statement back.
Ya’ll owe me $10 each.
Why not? Seriously, why not put it up on Aime Street and see how it moves? (www.aimestreet.com)
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.”
Ella has a new fan. My daughter. (approximately the same age)
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.”
(listening again)
Camille: Mommy, who is that?
Me: Ella. That is her daddy (pointing to picture of Chad)
Camille: Why is his picture silly?
How precious is your little girl? Man, she’s good. I love her gravelly little bottom note and scoop up “boorrrn”. Too cute. What a wonderful gift for your family. I’m sure they loved it.
Why indeed, Camille. Why indeed.