better than a sharp stick in the eye

We went into the studio Wednesday night and emerged with five songs from which to choose for our demo.

Generally, I DREAD the recording process. I hate the pressure of having to be perfect. I hate hearing precisely where and how much and how often I sing entirely wrong notes. I guess playing any instrument is equal parts physical and mental, and probably emotional too. I've always found my voice to be a rather unpredictable instrument. No matter how much I practice, I can't always depend 100% on what will come out of my mouth. Sometimes that's bad, sometimes good. I love hearing what I/we sound like, though, and it's handy to have a demo.

We did between 2-4 takes of each one; it wasn't too incredibly painful. God, the recording process is SO much easier with an experienced sound person. And laid back doesn't hurt either. I am ridiculously lucky to have access to this situation. What's more, Bob (friend and recording engineer extraordinaire) offered to do this for us; I didn't even have to beg. It took us less than three hours to record the songs, and then there were several hours of listening and commenting and mixing and cleaning up.

In general, the songs sound great. Our voices blend very well and there is so much potential there considering we've only be singing together for a few months. There is at least one mishap in each song, but the question is: does it matter? Onward.

We're going to post a few on MySpace soon. Stay tuned!

li'l roadie

Tessa, 4/8/06

I just love this photo. It was taken a month ago at our friends' very cool art gallery. I opened up for Steve's band. It was a fun, low-pressure gig.

fermata

Rehearsal wasn't incredibly productive today, but we did a fair amount of strategizing. There are a couple of open mic nights that we might try to do, and Alex and Mary both have upcoming shows in which we could appear as guests.

The most exciting news is that we have some studio time set up for next week. The plan is to record a 4-song demo and use that to get gigs. Hooray!

Also, while we're waiting for Mary to construct our website, she is going to set up a Birth of Venus page on MySpace. We recorded a song that doesn't sound too bad, so we can put that up there along with our photo likeness and voila. We're out there. [UPDATE: Here it is!!]

I'm really itching to work out some new stuff, and also to write something. We'll focus on the old stuff for next week's recording and then I've got to get a few charts written out so we'll have fresh material.