So, as you know I began recording an album with my friends this weekend. I went into the weekend with expectations of some magical moment they show you in the movies (like in one of my favorites: Once.) Well, my expectations were silly. We went in and started recording the instrumentation which meant my job as a vocalist, or at least the vocalist job that I'd envisioned, would be put on hold until next weekend. My job was to sing the "scratch vocals" which basically means I was a placemarker for the guys to keep track of where they were in the songs. Everything I sang over the 40+ hours this weekend was thrown away... That was hard.
I basically battled with myself the entire weekend. I wanted to be selfless, keeping the mentality, "It's for the team! It doesn't matter that none of this will be used on the album." But I'm not going to lie, my selfish side won out more than I wanted it to. Often I thought, "This sucks! Does anyone see how bad this sucks for me?" The guys were patient with me, gave me lots of grace, and built me up more than I deserved... And they did some awesome work on the instrumentation this weekend. It's actually an honor to be able to sing, thrown away or not, to keep them all in sync.
I learned a lot this weekend and expect to learn even more next weekend. I anticipate that actually doing my part, singing for real, and having myself critiqued will bring its own set of struggles, but I'm excited to see what it brings. My friend Rob, the man whose music brought all of this about, sent me an e-mail that gave me some pretty great perspective. He said: "We're just a handful of normal people crippled by self-doubt, pain, and previous failures... united by a wild idea and the pursuit of something greater."
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