by patrickwatson » Fri Jan 21, 2011 11:08 pm
Thank you very much for your response.
When I used the word "precision", I was talking about mainly rhythm and pitch. The way we recorded the album is we holed all 17 of us up in a large house for a week and a half, beginning each day by recording the solo scratch track, VP elements and bass parts. The singers would record with a dressed up midi, a provisionary percussion track and the scratch solo playing into the headphones. Next we would record the tenors, altos, sopranos, and then we would record the final version of the solo that evening. After that we would add "sprinkles", last minute ideas for the arrangements, little back up parts or harmonies we had come up with over the time we have been performing the songs. The number of parts in each arrangement ranged from 6-16. After the week and a half of recording was done would come the months-long work for the producer to put it all together. Due to the vast swath of work involved in sorting out all the recordings, it was prudent to try and get every performance recorded as close to the final product as possible, without needing a ton of little corrections for every singer, in every part, in every song which would make a massive tedious job that much more massive and tedious. And that meant making sure each singer sang their part correctly as well as with the appropriate attitude/feeling or sensitivity, which I thought I made sure of for both. I was sure that we were striking a good balance, but critical opinion says otherwise. If that isn't the way you do it, then how is it done? How do you achieve the best balance between accuracy and energy? They shouldn't necessarily be mutually exclusive, but that appears to be the paradigm in which the album was judged. Do the singers really have to party and drink Red Bull before singing happy energetic songs, and should I really be breaking them down to tears before singing a sad song or giving a motivational speech before they sing an inspirational song? Is that what people do? How do you coax an accurate performance with energy?