Today, I rented a small recording studio to work on a song. These days, small is all you need.
I was asked to sing a pop song and send back "vocal stems" to the music producers who want to release the track. Vocal stems are the individual audio files for each part I sing like the lead vocals, harmonies, and adlibs, or noises heard in the background of a song.
In music biopics, artists sing the song once and it’s ready to go on the radio.
In reality, going into the studio to record vocals is only the first of many steps to get vocals ready for release in a commercial pop format. Rarely is a song ready to publish at the end of a recording session.
This song isn't long, only clocking in at just under 3 minutes with the chorus repeating 3 full times before the song concludes.
But beneath those few minutes is 10-15 hours of precise editing work to record and edit vocals. So far, I’m about half way done.
There’s recording, comping, removing breaths, removing noise, Melodyne, Autotune, more Melodyne, Vocalign, EQ, compression, and final tweaks to all shape a vocal into something usable.
And that’s not even including mixing and mastering the final track.
There are times I cut corners and don't bother with all the polish on my voice. And it’s usually because I’m on a deadline.
My deadline for this song is 8 days ago.
But right now, I’m taking my time. I’m used to rushing through the process of editing so that I can move on to the next track.
I'm writing this going into my 3rd hour of editing lead vocals. I haven't even made it to singing harmonies or adlibs yet. Those will come tomorrow.
Or maybe Monday.
I almost said I can’t wait to be finished with this project. But I’m not sure if that’s true.