Category: News

Over the past two days, I have spent eight hours recording vocals and mixing for one of my new songs. It’s called “So Far”, and it will be up on http://thecitymusic.com sometime in the next two weeks.

Maybe it’s just me, but I totally feel like I am a biased listener when I listen to my own music. I can play some of my recordings side-by-side with those from major artists and hear the difference, but not know whether the difference is bad or good or just different. Their guitars have slightly different tones, their vocals are just a bit more perfect, and my drums are never “Jimmy drums”.

I guess what I’m saying is I’ll let you know when I post the song, and I’d love to get your input about it. You can love it or hate it, but feel free to post a little something here…

I’ve never been excited about recording vocals for an album before. This is changing.

For the past two months, I’ve been training – quite rigorously – using a vocal program called Speech Level Singing, developed by Seth Riggs. I’m not using the *actual* SLS program, because I think it’s like over $100, but I am using a book called “Singing for the Stars”. You can check it out on Amazon.com. All I can say is that it’s freakin’ fantastic.

Like anything worth anything in life, vocal training takes time; and for the first time ever, I can say that I feel like I’m gaining legitimate confidence in how I sing. (When I was in high school, I was overly-confident in an untrained, ignorant sort of way.)

And although I don’t have a “vocal coach” or instructor to walk me through some of this stuff, step-by-step, I do feel like I have a pretty good ear for matching tone quality, and a sense of whether or not something “feels right” as I’m singing it…

All of this to say that I’m actually looking forward to recording lead vocals tomorrow.