The Rockstar Within Me

The Rock Star Within Me - Chapter 44

Copyright 2013

I bobbed my head up and down, tapping my leg as I stood in the recording booth listening to the instrumental of the new song we were working on.

Baby, you were my picket fence,

I miss missing you now and then.

Chlorine kissed summer skin,

I miss missing you now and then.

Sometime before it gets better,

The darkness gets bigger.

The person that you’d take a bullet for is behind the trigger.

Oh, we’re fading fast.

My voice pumped out of my lungs as raw and as heartfelt as I could get it. At the same time I did my best to convey range and perfect pitch; something that was a lot harder to do then most people thought.

 The music cut off from my earphones.

“That sounded good Alice. How do you feel about that?” Dave the producer asked from the other room, sitting behind the large desk of controls. 

I took a sip of water from my bottle and nodded.

“I think that’s the cut we use. I think this song needs more of a shotgun drum snare though. ” I suggested, remembering how the song in my head didn’t sound like the song I was listening.

Dave went straight to work playing around on the controls then looking over to the computer adjusting levels. 

“Listen to this.” He offered.

The instrumental song blasted over my headset and sure enough, the drums sounded louder and more isolated.

“Gosh, I love that.” I grinned.

“Here, let’s start with the backing vocals.”

And just like that, I was back to the grind. I would sing a small bit, Dave would listen to it, make a couple tweaks and then I’d have to sing it again until it was perfect. Then we would start on the next part. Tracking vocals was fairly stressful for an artist even with modern technology that could alter my voice. I really wanted the record to be genuine with my voice and not some computer generated version of it playing across it.

The same went with the instruments. Tracking our own guitars, bass and drums was really important to not only me but also all of Shatter.

Drew, Mason and Jess all insisted on playing their own instruments instead of someone else or using a simulated version. It wouldn’t feel right if we were to call this album our first without actually contributing all that we could.

Of course, we couldn’t do everything. In one song there was a piano intro and one song had required a string quartet to play so obviously we needed to call in people to help play those parts. It was such a cool experience to see other musicians play instruments that I couldn’t even imagine playing.

All in all, the record was shaping up really nicely.

We were so close to finishing it up; just little touches here and there to get the songs ready for mastering.

I exited the both, a ridiculously large smile on my face.

“Today was a great day!” I sang, walking into the control room where all my friends were.

“A couple more days like this and the whole thing will be done.” Mason said smugly, spinning around in a chair. 

I save him a pointed look.