October 30th, 2003
Last night I listened to a couple of songs that Ken and I did:
I've got to redo some vocals. There's just not enough emotion in them, and they are all thin and nasally. Now, I don't have a stunning singing voice at the best of times; I mean, it's a fair timbre, intonation is good, breath control decent, but nothing spectacular. (But gawdamighty, you should hear my sister sing!) It's primarily technical problems that are hindering me.
The biggest part of the problem is that I don't have a pre-amp for the microphone signal into the compressor/limiter; there's a lot of signal loss. So I have to really belt out all songs--even the quiet ones--in order to get the levels in my recorder up to something approximating normal. And then I worry about pissing off neighbors, so I get all timid again. Inside of each song, I'm juggling the two every time. All that concentration and worry, plus the fact I have to sing too loud for my own comfort, makes it very very difficult to do a good job of singing.
There are a number of solutions, none of which appeal to me:
- Don't worry about the neighbors; they'll appreciate hearing my singing voice.
- Spend money, buy a pre-amp.
- Spend money insanely, go to a recording studio to get the engineering and production done by people who know what they are doing.
Well, unless I want to continue producing a sub-standard product, I'm going to have to do something, probably the second option ... great, more "wall warts!" :-)