Boring Girls(66)
The next afternoon was Fern’s turn, and as the rest of us sat on the couch and watched, it became very clear to me that she had improved a lot. And she’d been really good before. As she launched into the solo in “Blood on My Fist,” she absolutely soared and I noticed that it had grown more complicated as well, as if she had slightly reworked it. It was amazing. Even Ken looked over at us on the couch, lifted his eyebrows, and nodded approvingly as she played. I folded my arms. He was impressed because she was a girl, and that pissed me off. But at the same time, I also glowed with pride.
When Fern had finished, she took off her headphones and Ken said, “You’re a f*cking great guitarist.” I waited for him to add for a girl, but he didn’t.
“Thanks,” she said. “Shall we go through them again? I have some harmonies I’d like to put down for a few of the parts, and a couple more things to add to broaden the sound. I’m the only guitar onstage, but I figure that it’s okay to have the CD sound a bit different.”
“Sure it is.” Ken nodded. Fern put back on her headphones, and I heard the tracks start over in her ears.
xXx
That night I found it hard to sleep. I was excited to get started on my vocals the next day. When Fern had finished and I’d gone home, my parents had asked me if I wanted to get a job for the summer, and I’d done my usual nod, smile, and look concerned routine. I felt like I had a job. Our band was in the studio — sort of — and that was work, wasn’t it? I knew my parents weren’t going to understand, but once our CD was recorded we might actually sell some of them and make some money. Being in a band could be a job, right?
The next afternoon we all got back to the rehearsal space. I’d brought my little binder with my lyrics in it, and I was relieved to see that Ken had brought out a little music stand for me to set it on.
“Okay, guys, same drill,” he said as Socks, Edgar, and Fern sat down on the couch. “Rachel, you’ll hear the tracks coming through your headphones. Do your thing. We’ll just go through the songs one by one, and if you need to stop, let me know.” He seated himself at the computer.
I thought about this for a moment. “So you guys will just hear me singing then?”
“Yep,” Ken said.
I didn’t like the sound of that very much. “Can’t we have the music playing along in the room?”
“No, because the mike will pick that up. We need as clean a vocal take as we can get,” Ken said.
My face started to heat up. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
Ken swivelled around in his chair to look at me thoughtfully. So did the others. I started feeling both very stupid and very angry. My cheeks pounded as I tried to find words to explain without sounding like a moron. “It will be hard for me,” I said, “with you guys just staring at me, and all you can hear is just me sounding bad.”
“You don’t sound bad,” Fern said.
“That’s what we all did, anyway. We all went through that,” Edgar said.
“It’s different though, with a voice,” I bumbled. “I have to be all into it.”
“We all had to be into it,” Edgar said.
“It’s different,” I said, hearing frustration in my voice. I was annoyed that I couldn’t even look at them as I tried to argue my point. The old stereotype, I knew, was that singers are all temperamental, and I didn’t want to be that way, but couldn’t they understand that this was completely different than recording a guitar part? I thought of my voice ringing cleanly out in this room, thought of the faces I was going to have to make in order to achieve the vibe I wanted, thought of them all watching me silently, and shuddered with embarrassment.
“Okay, okay,” Ken said. “Well, the rest of you guys can go outside or something and I can stay in here with Rachel. I have to stay here, okay? I will sit with my back to you if it makes you more comfortable, but this is really the only way to get a good vocal take.”
“So . . . all singers have to do it this way?” I said, ashamed, feeling like a true novice.
“In a real recording studio, the singer would go into an isolation booth and everyone else sits outside and hears the voice going along with the music. But that’s because they’re in isolation. We can’t have the mike pick up any sound other than your voice, otherwise it’s going to sound like shit.” Ken didn’t sound frustrated, exactly, but he definitely didn’t have his usual casual tone.
Sara Taylor's Books
- Blow Fly (Kay Scarpetta #12)
- The Provence Puzzle: An Inspector Damiot Mystery
- Visions (Cainsville #2)
- The Scribe
- I Do the Boss (Managing the Bosses Series, #5)
- Good Bait (DCI Karen Shields #1)
- The Masked City (The Invisible Library #2)
- Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)
- Flesh & Bone (Rot & Ruin, #3)
- Dust & Decay (Rot & Ruin, #2)