Demo CD Recording

I am in the middle of recording a demo CD. Here's a little bit of background for how this whole music thing got started...

I was introduced to a lady named Toni who works on various projects, some of which involve music. I was going to help her with one but the project ended up getting put on hold for a bit. She has a lot of contacts and mentioned it would be nice if I had a demo CD so she could give it to her contacts instead of having me set up a time to meet with them and sing for them. So...she called her friend Alex who has a recording studio in his home and he called me. He did a little bit of "training" with me before I actually started recording, this way I knew how the process worked and didn't end up wasting a lot of money. He sells pianos at a piano store and I went in there a couple of times and did some recording on one of the pianos there at the store. One of the songs I recorded was an arrangement I wrote of I Feel My Savior's Love. I was able to put it on my zip drive and load it on my computer and now I can share it with you! Here's that song...

http://www.box.net/shared/1chj3k5d6z

About a week ago, I went to his house to do some recording for my demo CD. It was such a fun experience! We spent the first little while getting things set up and testing mics to see which one flattered my voice the best. After about half an hour, we were ready to record! It was a little weird at first. Usually when you hear people sing, you hear them sing with what's called a "reverb" because you are far away from them. But when you sing into the mic at the studio, it's like putting your ear right up to someone's mouth and hearing them sing. It was a little weird at first hearing my voice sound like that. Then he takes what I sing and puts the reverb in on the computer...you can put as much reverb as you want. You can put very little, or you can put a lot and it sounds like you are singing in a concert hall. It's kind of crazy.

I first recorded I Feel My Savior's Love. I sang a few takes and he took the best of each piece and put it all together. There were a couple of parts I didn't like so he simply had me get up to the mic and resing it and he basically cut and paste in the new part. Next, I recorded Stand in Holy Places. We had a time limit so I was only able to do a few takes and then it was time to go. I'll be going in again in the next couple of weeks and finishing up my last song and then my CD should be ready to go! (And when I go in, I will take some pictures and post them! I forgot my camera last time)

The guy recording me has recorded with a lot of other LDS artists (Tyler Castleton, Cherie Call and others) so I'm hoping that both he and Toni can hand my CD to the people they know and maybe someone will put me to work! In the meantime...I've written a new song. I haven't done a lot of composing so I'm not sure how good it is...but I enjoyed writing it. It's called He Knows Me. It's about feeling overwhelmed by everything and everyone and wondering if God really knows exactly who you are...and then finding out that he really does.

If no one puts me to work then perhaps I can write enough music to just come out with my own CD. And if not....then it has been a blast recording a demo CD and I'm glad to simply have this experience!