[Bob Womack]

I've been working on another song with a client. This time the piece is an upbeat Afro/Cuban vocal duet ballad with the trax recorded by actual Cubans during the short open period. A producer actually flew down there with a song and a multi-track recording fly-pack. He assembled an ensemble and recorded the song. I was brought in to record vocals, add instruments, and mix it to make it "work."

The first challenge was getting the rhythm section to work together. The piece was basically done without a real drum kit but with congas, timbales, tablas, claves, and Cuban percussion. The instruments were talking but they weren't making much sense. First, I added a kick and snare to propel the whole business. The trick was to emphasize the offbeats properly while giving it a drive. Then I brought in my friend Pete Spruill to help me sort out the melee. Pete plays Latin percussion and can usually sense the pulse just right. He suggested I pull up the congas a bit so that they really drive the give and take.

With the rhythm section settled I turned to the guitars. The guitar intro part contains a "defect" that is really quite endearing but is an object lesson to us guitarists. It is played as a stair-stepped single-note line that is quite complex, but as the player executes it, you can tell how much of a strain it is because he sort of "moans" the part along in the background with his playing. I've decided not to replace his authentic work because his playing is quite good and the moaning is low.

And finally it was time for vocal replacement. The executive producer for this piece, which is a vocal performance for a video soundtrack, chose her voices before she came to me, the producer. There are two voices: a classically-trained soprano who is hang loose enough to do pop performances and a modern male baritone with a Ron Bonjovi-esque falsetto voice. We were planning to use the falsetto range. For some reason, while we had the gal in the studio we all looked around at each other and said, "Why don't we have her do the guy's verses just for fun? It seemed prudent and in the end it probably saved our skin. Why? The lady talent has a very pure, smooth voice, one that I would call beautiful. When the guy came in and put on his falsetto, we found that it was a very modern emo sort of delivery, quite effected and husky with alternate enunciation. Had he been doing the song alone, no-one would have batted an eye. But when you put him up against the female voice, it was like an exaggerated "beauty and the beast" - the two styles clashed, strongly. In the end we brought out the female's verse performances for the guy's verses and dropped his part to only accompanying the choruses. I edited and blended his performances to make them line up and mesh better with the female vocalist.

So, I'm in the mix phase right now. There's actually a bit more recording to go because we are adding a vocal choir to the choruses at the end of the song. However, with modern technology there's really no need to wait to begin the mix. I can add the tracks and blend them in as they come. In fact, I've been working on the mix since early on in the project so it is becoming a tad artificial to think of projects in terms of distinct phases anymore.

Bob