The month of celebrations: March
If you are new to this blog, welcome and if you are a returning reader, THANK YOU for coming back!!! In this blog, I waffle on about what I've been up to as a female singer (which includes new music updates) and I then delve into the debate around photoshop and autotune, whilst trying to be as honest and authentic as possible!! After all, that what this whole blog is about, HONESTY!! Be ready to voice your opinion..... I'm SURE you'll have one!!!
The next year ahead is going to be filled with personal and musical milestones, so I'm excited to keep sharing these with you!!
MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC
Three wonderful days in the studio this month and as always, they are one of the highlights of my month!! This month we worked on finalising the backing vocals for two tracks and the final production on another. I also spend one session working through some vocal techniques and planning the release of EP 2; The World Had A Plan. The work that goes into a music release is phenomenal and I cannot praise ChartHouse and the Twenty Twenty Music team more!!! Within a track, you can have anything from the main vocal lead to tiny whispers in verse two that you only notice if you have your headphones on too loud!! The sharp sound of a snare drum through to the sound of a distorted car horn. Raw, desperate, and raspy pleas through to Christina Aguilera style belts (I can dream!!). These are just a handful of things we’ve incorporated into the tracks and you can honestly spend HOURS getting the right sound! It’s an amazing process and the joy of these days are what get me through the dam 9-5 slog (but you gotta pay the bills giiiiirrrrlllll!!)! Stay tuned for more updates on the release of The World Had A Plan which is due to be released mid 2022!!! AAAAHHHHHHHH!
PERSONAL FUN TIMES
All the birthdays happened in March, which meant I ate a monumental amount of cake as I turned 36! I am officially in a new age bracket when filling out questionnaires, which is MORTALLY upsetting, but there is fuck all I can do about it! Instead, I’m sitting here, waiting for my darling fiancé to get back from his stag (what a mess he will be), having smashed a whole cheese pizza (JUST FOR ME) and working through various admin tasks for our wedding and our honeymoon – with the former being later this month!! CAN’T FUCKING WAIT!! There is so much stigma around age and motherhood, both of which I’ll address further down the line, but I literally feel in my prime and like the best is yet to come. I would never have thought that, as a 16 year old predicting what she’d be like at 36!! (LOL) But I will still say that I look back at my years at university and sometimes wish I was back there!! Just hanging out with friends, working for beer money and living independently (with a very large safety net as my parents, THANKS BOTH OF YOU) If only I knew ACTUALLY how CAREFREE my life was at the time, I’d have had EVEN MOOOOOORE fun (if that was even possible)!! I try to channel that now, as a (hopefully) yet-to-be mother, I should probably REALLY enjoy the small things, hot coffee, lie-ins, peaceful journaling time and date nights with Russ! Let’s see what my 36th year brings, hey!!!
Here are some snaps from the last month, mainly consisting of food (including burnt food, DON'T LEAVE ME AT HOME ALONE RUSS!), hilarious birthday cards (I LOVE ROY KENT) and recycling tonnes of shit from our flat!! Happy scrolling!
LAST WORD (and it's a long word, sorry!!)
Is Photoshop the Autotune of the photography world? Autotune was created by Andy Hildebrand in the 90’s to ultimately help producers create a track quickly. In the past producers could spend days getting a perfect vocal, even from the greatest singers, but under the radar, studios starting using the software to allow singers to sound better. Before I go any further, my tracks use autotune, but in situations where the best take has ALL my emotion, bursting at the seams, with the very last part of the note coming in flat. Sometimes, the emotion is harder to capture than the correct note. I know this will split opinion, HARD, and that’s OK, but a singular use of auto-tune isn’t the sign of a bad singer. THE REALITY IS, I must perform that song live, so after the song is recorded, I practise my little ass off, until I DO sing it perfectly. If I can’t sing that song, you will soon notice it when you see me live, so it makes NO SENSE to record something out of my capabilities! I also work harder and harder at perfecting my vocals, so that every time I go in that recording booth, auto-tune is needed less and less! Until, that glorious day when I do a Bowie and record the whole damn song in one go!
I remember as a kid, seeing photos of the campsite my parents had booked for our holiday and the swimming pool was this gorgeous turquoise colour. Even then, as a young child, I said to my mum, ‘I bet it’s not that colour in real life!’ I was under 10 years old!! What a miserable outlook!! Funnily enough, I was wrong because the first thing I screamed when I saw that pool was ‘OMG Mum, it looks exactly like the photos!’ That was back in the 90’s, pre social media. Now we have even more ‘enhancements’ to deal with. Whilst Russ has been searching for suits for the ushers (which is purely down to the colour of the suits), he has come across six, SIX different colour variations OF THE SAME PHOTO, with the suit being a different shade of blue in each photo!! Which begs the question, which is the REAL colour? In the end, he bought a suit from an actual shop, so he could see the colour with his own eyes. THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!
It begs the question, do we need to introduce industry standards for enhancements?? No colour enhancement on items being sold, no artificial enhancements to consumed products (that is a really tough one) and certainly no photoshopping of perfectly beautiful bodies (and by beautiful, I mean NATURAL bodies). If any of the above are being enhanced, it needs to be outlined with a disclaimer, so the consumer knows what they are getting! Every single one of these, if not addressed, results in us being sold a lie, which should be illegal. If auto-tune is used, there should be a disclaimer too, stating exactly that! It’ll probably make me work twice as hard to get that perfect take, but at least the consumer knows what is being sold to them in the meantime. We deserve to know what we are spending our money on, not being told a bare-faced lie to hit a revenue target some dude has set from his big, penthouse office (KNOB)!
Rant over, and blog over!!! Thanks for reading you sexy dream, tune in next month for another update and rant!! Stay safe and keep being you!
x - Silvre - x
P.S. SIGN UP BITCHES!