First off, it's the maiden voyage for a brand new microphone, a Neumann TLM 67. I have to say so far I'm impressed and I'm liking the results over my AKG C414. I bought this completely spur of the moment and on a whim so I was hoping for positive results. It's nice when things just come together.
I guess I should say that I'm working on recording an album that I wrote 30 years ago. In fact, this was like the "big" album for me personally in a lot of ways. It was the most personal music I ever wrote, I did it in a completely different manner than anything I'd written before since this one was completely acoustic based, and it was the first album that I really felt 100% connected with (I think I had written 5 albums total at that time), enough that I've played these songs for years now. I started working on these recordings about 5 years ago and figured I should return to them now since I'm finally feeling better about recording and mixing.
In any event, it's fascinating recording vocals on this because I did do a rough demo of it back in '96. I'm obviously 30 years older now so my voice has changed but I've also suffered from chronic voice problems due to reflux, etc., etc., and if you're wondering that's kind of why I didn't really purse a music career in one form or another. In any event, I've had to learn to fight through my vocal issues to a degree, learn new techniques, try to avoid burn out, and basically sing in different manners. My musical tastes have of course altered greatly in the past 30 years so there's that as well.
Anyhow, two nights ago when I was working on vocals for a different song, I was marveling how much Carly Simon had influenced my singing style. I was going through the track and editing and I kept thinking, wow, I'm really Carly-ing it up! It brought a definite smile to my face for I had no idea I had been affected in that way.
Tonight, I'm marveling over how I not only sound older but actually in a way better and more experienced as a vocalist, and I never really thought about it but I really use a more soul-ish inspired singing these days, soul meaning like a Van Morrison kind of vibe, if you will. I also hear a ton of Steve Hogarth in my singing that somehow crept in there, which makes sense since Marillion has been pretty much one of my all time favorites for over 30 years now.
I guess older doesn't mean better or worse...but just different. Oddly, I kind of like my older voice for it sounds more refined. My younger vocal sound had a ton of power and sometimes amazing soaring ability but tended to have a young person's feel to it; now, I feel 'refined'. Yeah, I like that.