Like last week’s piece, I’ve got another experiment in multitrack recording recording using Audacity and my Logitech Blue Yeti USB microphone (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link at no additional cost to you). My workflow was a bit different. I did start with a Voice Memo recording while driving to play at a Sunday morning camp service for the local Presbyterian Church (the summer is always a good time to be a sellsword hedge pianist), and I used that as the template for building today’s piece.

I tend to walk around the house singing and/or chanting weird little phrases or songs I make up. Dr. Wife calls these my “vocal stims“; she claims (correctly) that I do them the most right before bed, as I get the “zoomies” before crashing out for the night. One I do frequently is saying, “Old Boy” in a slight British accent in a very low register.

To illustrate, here’s the track I recorded on the way to play that morning (converted to a lossless WAV):

I used that track as the base for recording other parts. I used the count-in to assure that I came in with the vocal harmonies correctly. I did a major third, a fifth, and a major seventh, then re-recorded the root note so I could ditch the above track, as I didn’t want the road noise in the mix. I also re-recorded the beatboxing as part of the root track.

To keep effects consistent, I mixed the four fresh vocal tracks down to a single track, and applied a 1980s chorus effect, as well as a “large room” reverb preset and some kind of mastering preset. The only downside was that, for some reason, my mic did not pick up the new beatboxing well at all, even though I was “performing” directly into the microphone, with my generous, pouty lips touching the mic’s grill. Maybe I screwed something up when I was playing with noise reduction, which I tried initially to avoid re-recording the (admittedly) short base/bass/beatboxing track.

Next came the saxophone parts. I wasn’t sure what key I was in, I just knew it was major. It turned out to be something approximating B major, with the vocal parts forming a Bmaj7 chord (B, D#, F#, and A#). That works out to an Ab major on the alto sax, but due to some intonation (and possibly the slight tonal ambiguity introduced by the major seventh A#), it didn’t sound quite right until I started recording. It felt like I brute-forced the song back into major—the vocal parts were taking a minor flavor—with the punchy, vibrant saxophone part. Regardless, I riffed out parts that, to me, sounded like a celebration, which really changes the entire mood of the piece (although it probably does capture something of the chaotic joy of vocal stimulation).

I was recording the sax part yesterday morning in the waning minutes before I had to head out for an afternoon of tasks. That said, I managed to squeeze in four quick sax parts, with the result being today’s track, “Old Boy”: