Take One

I wanted to write about a recording that I did, few days back for a Japanese Music Director.

Before this, I had done two recordings in my whole life. One for my classmate last year. A tamil song which he later made an album and submitted for college project. I never saw the final version. That took one whole night. And the other for my senior. This happened some three years back. He wanted to create a sample track for submitting it to a producer. I really loved that music and had a great time doing alaap for that track. He just let me sing what pleased me. My voice was good those days (I used to practise for one hour in the morning. But as days passed, you know what happened). The same senior called me last week to audition. I was not that sure whether I would do justice as I had not practised music for such a long time. But still landed up at the studio.
The studio was beautiful with great interiors. The first things that caught my attention were the colour schemes and the choice of furnitures. Very neat. My audition started. After singing few alaaps of random raagas, he finally approved of me or rather my voice. They gave me the track that I needed to practise and told me to come after two days.
I had prayed fervously that the pitch should not be that high, as I had base voice. But when I listened to the track, the pitch was extremely low! Did not see that coming! C grade, which is oru (one) kattai. I played the song again and again and again and soon enough my whole family was humming that song. Finally the D-day happened.
I reached the studio and was in the recording room by 10.30am. Ah! What a whole lot of retakes I did. I was quite nervous to get the song right, that I forgot to enjoy singing it. I had to also do a lot of false voice stuffs which when I heard in my own head sounded very gritty. Inside a recording room, it is literally pin drop silence. So when you do a mistake, it shows so profoundly. It just magnifies. After takes and takes and more retakes I finally got done with the song. And I had enough of it too.
When I came out of the studio, it was 4pm! I never thought I would take this long and felt quite dumb. Cos the song was not that complicated and..
So now he has taken the tracks with him to Japan for refining the track. 'Its going to be famous in Japan', he said. I smiled. I hope so too.
Anyways, was quite an experience. Got paid for my voice! That has never happened you know, before. Parched, but happy :)