"Where You From, How's It Going?"

Sean McGhee writes the blog: Comping (short for compiling) is an essential part of recording vocals for almost everyone who makes records. After Rob performs, I chop his vocals up into lines or words and use my comp sheets to navigate through what he's sung. I pick my favourite sections and put them all together. We'll listen through; if one of us isn't happy with something, it's sung again. We very rarely tune any vocals.

Song 1 is more time-consuming than usual as we wrote it at a slower tempo, then decided it was dragging a bit, so we sped it up. Speeding up the music was easy as it was all based on synths and samples, but all the BVs had to be reperformed.

I'm singing quite a lot of backing vocals these days (hi, Alanis fans!) and most of the new songs have got me in there somewhere. I prefer to do the vocals in small sections, looping around a small section of the song and repeatedly singing it again and again. And again. Yes, it's maddening, but it's necessary, and it's always worth the effort.

Don't listen to Rob - it's all about me...

When I know I've got it right, I'll select my favourites, delete the rest, then move on to the next section. After a while, the Logic screen looks like this :

Comp, comp, comp.

Meanwhile, Rob's next door, listening to leaks of Britney Spears' next single. Yes, it's a hard life.

***

Er... actually Sean, I'm not just sat next door listening to Womanizer!!!! Well I am, but I've also been very busy posting the video clip (see below this entry) for all to watch on the wonderful land of YouTube! Incidently, HOW GREAT IS THE NEW BRITNEY SINGLE???!!! Ha ha...

"You got the swagger of a champion", Sean, but the mic is mine!!!

Sean is almost done now with his backing vocals, which means it'll soon be time for me to steal back the microphone from him and sing the last chorus section... I can't wait - well I can actually, I'M STILL WAITING SEAN, stop hogging the mic!!!

Gimme back the mic Sean... I'M WAITING!!!!