Recording: Days 10 and 11 (with a NEW SONG to listen to)

The past two days have been a lot of fun. Ben, as it turns out, in addition to being a grammy-winning producer, is also quite the piano player…so he’s put on his “musician” hat over the last couple of days, and we’ve been overlaying piano tracks onto some of the songs. Here’s a very short video clip of him playing (you won’t be able to hear the song he's playing to, unfortunately, since it’s playing in his headphones, but you’ll get the idea):

One of the songs he added piano to was Lullabye for Zoe, a song I wrote to honor a very close friend of mine who passed away nearly three years ago. Mark was only 33 when he died of complications from a cancer that was discovered too late, and he left behind his wife Maytal, and their baby daughter Zoe (pictured with Mark). I wrote the song as a lullabye, being sung from Mark (wherever he may now reside) to Zoe, to help her sleep during those times when she feels frightened or alone. Ben’s piano additions were lovely, and as I listened, I found myself crying…with sadness at the loss of my close friend, but also with a bounding joy…almost as if Mark were here, listening, and smiling at some new beauty that he helped bring into the world. I still miss him terribly.

A fun moment from today’s session was when we were re-recording the vocal for Only Always. Ben’s son Cameron is also a musician, and he’s stored a bunch of odd instruments in the basement, including a xylophone, which Ben had brought up earlier in the day to show me. After we recorded the vocal for Always, as we were listening through, I started noodling around on the xylophone…and the sound was pretty cool! So we wound up using it on that song, as well as one other. I have no idea whether it’ll stay in the mix by the time we reach the final cuts, but the experience really serves to highlight how much fun this process can be.

Finally, at my request, Ben put together a rough mix of If I Were a Book for me to post for you. This mix has my vocal and guitar, along with Ben’s piano and Elana’s violin. While nowhere near the finished product, I think you’ll agree that it’s a big change from the original, bare-bones vocal-and-guitar mixes I’ve been posting to this point. You can listen to it by clicking HERE. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

That’s all for now. Since today was my last day of singing on this trip, I’m going to be going out tonight and enjoying some (or all) the things that I’ve had to forego for the last month because they’ve been bad for my voice: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and dairy products. We’ll see how well I do with moderation… ;)

Enjoy the rest of your day…and THANKS FOR LISTENING!

Steve