Sitting in silence looking up at my lyrics and notes thinking I'm so close, yet feeling so far away.
I was up till 5:30am this morning filled with anxiety that my voice wouldn't hold up for the final song. I’ve started losing my voice thankfully towards the end of sessions, since about 4 songs in. My glands swell and I’m completely physically exhausted. Because of what I’m aiming to achieve, I’m not surprised. As a general rule because we don’t have time to commit, I have recorded from around 8am to 1pm, rested, then back on again from 8pm to 2am daily. Tracking, listening, correcting, repeating.
My daily life has been dumbed down to basics, wake, eat, warm up, record, rest, sleep and repeat, wherever time allows. SLEEP is absolute key in healing I believe. Very hard for an insomniac with an over active mind, it’s intense but I know what I want so I know the rules. GET REST! After last night I thought I may have pushed things over the edge. I lost total control of my voice. When this happens, it's soul destroying for me. As dramatic as this sounds, all I've ever lived for is this moment to be able to finally prove to myself, that I have the chops to record an album vocally raw from scratch from start to finish and to do this in such a way that when effects go on, I know the ground work underneath has been laid out perfectly.
So listen up all you YouTube channels who get a kick out of exposing vocalists in their raw form and manipulating them to sound even worse… yeah you know who you are... Fuck you, go right ahead, make my day! haha
I have been warming up with my favourite “go to” and I believe that this has been the only reason I have managed such an intense album session in such a short time frame. I must write a blog about that separately at some stage soon, it will be too long if I put it here. For now, thanks M, you are an important part of my world. Thanks to you, I managed to pour the final essence of everything I had to offer into our last recorded song. Now I’m done, I have nothing left to give today.
Karl took me to brunch as a bit of a booster, he knew how hard that was for me. I was so drained and exhausted that I basically just sat in the cafe like a sad ass all vagued and looking like I had the roughest 2 week drinking session ever because “my dog left meh”. I could have thrown back a dozen flat whites and it wouldn’t have mattered, nothing was enough. I was mentally shot!
250+ vocal tracks later, the stress and the thrill to know we did it. Biggest challenge ever. Learned loads. Now to rest my voice for a few days and prepare myself for any final issues in mix down.
Charlie xx