Vocal Session Rachel Margolin
At House Recording Studios, we have the privilege of working with a plethora of diverse, talented artists. We do not specialize in one particular genre of music and we enjoy working on any project that comes through the door; Be it hip hop or heavy rock or pop or jazz. We also record college auditions for those who are applying to a serious music program at a university. We do voice over spots for major television networks and we also provide songwriting and production services in addition to our engineering skills.
One of our clients, Rachel Margolin, who is a young, ambitious and highly passionate pop vocalist/songwriter is recording an album with us at House Recording Studios. She writes deep, meaningful lyrics that are sung to an incredibly catchy melody. She decided to work with us because she needed a musical composition to embody her original lyrics/melodies. What I had Rachel do was practice her songs to a metronome so we could determine a comfortable tempo for the song. I also asked her to determine the key/scale information (D Minor for example). When Rachel was completely comfortable with her vocals, we scheduled a pre-production/vocal recording session, in which she sang a cappella alongside to the metronome. I now had this great vocal track in which I could create musical backing elements to surround and accompany the vocal. Some of this will be done electronically with various synthesizers/soft synths and much of it will be done by bringing in studio musicians (acoustic guitar player, background vocalists, etc.) to give her songs that live, authentic feel. We have had much success creating songs this way. It is imperative that the vocalist is comfortable singing to a constant tempo that a metronome puts forth. We will most likely have Rachel come back to re-record her vocals once the song is complete. The purpose of her preliminary vocal recording was to act as a guideline and blueprint for the full production which will be created. Here are two video clips from the pre-production recording session with Rachel. You will notice that we pride ourselves in making our clients feel extremely comfortable, as the recording process can be rather intimidating for some. We ensure that everyone who walks in the door has fun 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mi1cU9NrkI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJFivOUswM8