Yesterday was a big day for me!! I started recording for my upcoming Christmas CD yesterday after work. When I got home I took a nap because I had donated blood and I was still really tired and felt a bit weak. The nap was wonderful, but I woke up later than I wanted to so I was scrambling to run out the door! And then of course there was rush hour traffic and two accidents had happened on the route I decided to take! AH! I thought surely I was going to be late! But I reminded myself that God will take care of me, even though it seems hopeless doesn’t mean it completely is hopeless! I actually got there with a few minutes to spare! Yay!!
My wonderful accompanist, Karen, was there to greet me and Jay, our recording engineer, was just finishing up this last project. Phew! I started feeling a bit nervous, but I kept deep breathing and I was glad that I had a few minutes to collect myself. Jay helped us get set up – we moved the piano so Karen could see me in the box and and for some reason my box didn’t have a mic, which was easy enough to fix. With all of this set up I was feeling a lot calmer. Jay is such a nice guy so I’m sure that helped my nerves as well!
We did five songs: The First Noel, The Christmas Song, Merry Christmas, Darling, O Holy Night, and Twas in the Moon of Wintertime. Overall I did well on the songs, but I definitely have stuff to work on. Jay seemed impressed with both Karen and me, which makes me feel really good. Karen is obviously spectacular! I think the song I really need work on is Merry Christmas, Darling. I love Karen Carpenter, who sang it first, and I need to not think about filling her shoes!! She was an amazing singer and I can’t think about her when I’m singing this. If I do, I’ll keep psyching myself out and basically make myself fail. I don’t want people to think I did a horrible job – there are good parts to it, but there’s still room for improvement. (I’m a perfectionist, what can I say?)
I didn’t realize how much work goes into recording. It definitely is hard work, but it’s good work as well. I really enjoyed myself and I’m proud of what I was capable of. I was exhausted afterword – we did three takes of each song. That’s basically doing 15 songs in a row!! We found that the third take was the charm because I was still warming up to the song and by the third take I was comfortable and I sometimes was able to fix something I did wrong in the prior takes. Jay was gracious enough to give us a copy of what we did so now it’s time to be critical. Overall, I know I did well, but I also know I am capable of great stuff so if it’s not great then I need to do it again.
I can’t wait to go back in for another session! We have five more songs to record so Karen and I will be practicing a lot before then. We didn’t schedule the session yet though since we have the more difficult/challenging songs to work on. Once we see what we’re dealing with, we’ll know how far out to schedule. And then we’ll go back again to fix whatever is not perfect.
Again, what a great experience this was! I’m very excited about how it will all turn out in the end!
