Hello from Milpitas!

Hello from Milpitas, CA! Emily Misch and I are sitting in the recording studio/basement of Bill Hare, a cappella recording producer extraordinaire. It's an exciting day in the mixing process---today we're doing:

Happier (originally by Guster), a particularly nice and creative arrangement from OOTB alum Sean Pool '08 (and featuring Ryan, who sounds fantastic on it);

Higher Love (originally by Steve Winwood), our group's closing song, always really fun (and thanks to Maryellen for nailing the solo);

and Love Begins, an original song by OOTB alum/pirate Trevor Hochman, sung by three lovely members of the class of 2012.

We're nearing the end of mixing Happier, and it's sounding very cool. (Bill just pumped up Ryan's cheesy/charming riff at the very end of the song. I am happy.) He has some nice distortion effects on some of the background vocals here and there, but it's actually one of the more natural-sounding mixes he's done for us so far. I think that works well for the arrangement, though. It's pretty mellow, and it sounds good that way.

Next will be Higher Love---it should be a lot of fun to mix, though it'll be a big undertaking. There are a few things we forgot to record earlier in the semester, so Emily and I will record them here with Bill (some clapping stuff in the beginning, some soprano-riffing near the end, and maybe some extra layers of vocal percussion where the background drops out)... Aside from that, it'll just be a balance between making it sound cool and modern and also capturing the natural energy of the end of a concert. (Rather than using the original song as a reference, which we do for most songs, we're using our live recording from Jam 2008 as our point of comparison.)

After that, Love Begins should also be a lot of fun. We can get pretty creative with it, since there isn't really a definitive recording of it. (Though there is one that Trevor recorded himself something like a decade ago, and that's fun to listen to... but the song has also evolved a lot since then, so this recording will probably sound pretty different.)

We're about to go to lunch---just finished Happier! We'll report back later.