Secondly, since I would be releasing the disc around the holiday season (I am a huge fan of holiday CD's, having over 50 of them in my personal collection), I decided that the songs I recorded should be holiday selections. SPOILER ALERT: Don't read on if you want to be surprised when you play the CD.
One of my favorite holiday CD's is the "Christmas Album" by Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass. Herb is/was an amazing trumpet player who founded the TJB and also was the co-founder of A&M Records (with Jerry Moss). Even Miles Davis was impressed with Herb's talent. Herb and the TJB were at the top of the pop charts during the 1960's and I loved listening to his music. I even wanted to play the trumpet when I was four years old because of him. Unfortunately, I couldn't hold the damn thing at the time, let alone blow into it, for a trumpet was way too heavy for a little kid. (That is why I ended up playing the piano!)
Anyway, Herb surprised everyone by singing on one of the TJB's biggest hits, "This Guy's In Love With You", written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. I decided that I wanted to try my hand at vocalizing on my two bonus selections. (My Vocal Jazz students and jazz piano students hear me sing all the time, but not in this kind of forum.) As for the songs to be sung, I selected one rather little-known Christmas song, "Let Me Be The First To Wish You Merry Christmas", written by Steve Lawrence; and the well-known holiday staple "What Are You Doin' New Year's Eve?', one of my personal favorites.
So on the evening of November 10th, I recorded the piano backgrounds for the two bonus selections in the Warbeke Room of Pratt Music Hall at Mount Holyoke. I had the option of using the concert grand in McCulloch Auditorium, but I didn't want the piano sound to be massive because of the concert hall acoustic. I liked the idea of recording on the baby grand Bosendorfer piano in Warbeke. The room has a wood floor, a few rugs and a lofty wood beamed ceiling. That seemed to suggest the warm acoustic that I was looking for.
Brian couldn't attend the session, but he instructed me on how I should set up the microphones. Courtney Duhring (a member of my Vocal Jazz Ensemble and the student Jazz Board) supervised the session as assistant recording engineer. Unlike the live Delaney session, I had complete control with my performance and wanted it to be as perfect as possible. I would be recording the piano tracks first and then putting the vocals on later. Courtney was on the main floor of the building stationed in the sound booth to record me while I was upstairs on the third floor, and we communicated by using walkie-talkies. Unfortunately, she had to endure the sounds of crabbiness and exclamations of disdain in between imperfect takes. Courtney remembered a few funny responses from me: "Oh, shoot!" "Man, why can't I get this right?" "Okay, I'm walking around the room right now to regain my composure..."
Well, happily we were able to get the tracks I wanted after about 75 minutes worth of work (and the aforementioned crabbing). On the afternoon of November 17th I took them to Brian's home studio for re-mixing. He was pleased with the sound of the tracks, and I was glad that Courtney and I had done a good job in his absence.
For the piano background track of "Let Me Be The First To Wish You Merry Christmas", Brian and I used take 8 until the pause before the end, and then spliced the ending of take 7 onto it. And for "What Are You Doin' New Year's Eve?", we used take 10 for the bulk of the song- there were at least six takes with false starts, because it took me a little time to get the intro timed the way that I wanted it. We spliced on take 11 for the intro to the song and take 13 for the coda of the song.
We then focused on the vocal tracks to be placed over the finished piano backing tracks. Brian and I agreed that they would best sound very intimate, as if the listener is sitting right next to the piano as I serenade her. That would match the intimacy of the live portion of the disc. So he put my vocals right in the center of each track, with the piano sound warmly wrapped around. I tried three takes of each song, and after listening to them we were debating the pros and cons of combining multiple parts of different takes. But then I think I got inspired and said "Let's just see if I can get them both done in one take, so we can avoid any splices in the vocals." And somehow I did manage to get each song on the fourth try exactly the way we envisioned them.
I asked Brian to supply me with the audiophile information for the whole disc- for anyone who loves that kind of inside info:
- Delaney House session: two Electro-Voice RE16 microphones into a Tapco 6200 mixer
- Warbeke session: two Shure SM 81 shotgun condenser microphones into a Mackie 1642-VLZPRO mixer
- Ecclestone Sound session (vocal): one Electro-Voice RE18 microphone into a Tapco 6201 mixer
- Mixing/remixing of disc: Adobe Audition software
- Burning/finalizing of disc: Roxio software
So that's the story on the bonus tracks. I really enjoyed making them, and I do believe there is a full-length holiday CD in my future sometime down the road- with more singing! Meanwhile, my thanks to Cheryl Cobb for helping me prepare the vocals. She spent some time with me where I was able to bounce a bunch of ideas off of her, and she gave me some great input and suggestions. Thanks also to Courtney, too, for her assistance on recording these hidden holiday tracks!
