Which is to say, I've
(1) Come up with backing tracks, and remixed them...quite a lot. Usually this involves changing one thing at a time until I realise the riff or sound I started with is the one which doesn't belong.
(2) Written a load of (pseudo)lyrics. Eroswings suggested I try doing scat singing - in fact that's more-or-less what I'd planned from the beginning. I come up with a basic vocal melody, and I've written a little program to generate nonsense words, which I can fit to it.
(3) Recorded them. This involves packing my laptop and a crappy old microphone to the garage, where I can make strange vocal noise without anyone overhearing and thinking I'm having a nervous breakdown in Farsi.
(4) Processed them within and inch of their lives. Now, the thing is, I'm a pretty terrible singer. On a good day, I can harmonise to a monotone - which is what I do in recording.
I then run the recording through a compressor, a gate, a denoiser and a pitch corrector - this last to wrench my wandering pitch to 110Hz, aka concert pitch A2. I can then use an offline pitch-shifter to move the pitch of individual syllables around, making a little melody.
Honestly, it would be easier to use a vocoder.
(5) The difficult bit. Arranged my vocals over the music, EQing them so everything's clear, and adding reverb, chorus, tape saturation and whatever effects seem like a good idea at the time.
(6) Taken my five - yes, five - songs, and mixed them into a continuous, er, mix.
Stage (7) will be: Upload the result to youtube.
I'm going to wait a few hours before (7). So I can listen with a fresh pair of ears, do any last minute tweaking, and not rush into deciding this is the final, finished product
After all that, I'm not entirely happy - I made a lot of mistakes, and hopefully learned from them. This EP (11 or 12 minutes) is a practice run, and I reckon I can do the next one much better.
So, at midnight on March 1st, as promised...
That was a whole lot of work! But definitely worth it! I love the finished product!
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