Perfect little Angels

SpeakerSonic

Two mornings this week, I went into the city for a remote recording project with Dan Costello and several groups of 4 year olds. We're recording holiday songs for the kids to give to their parents.

Remote setup. Cones!

A remote recording is any time a session takes place outside of the studio. In this case, it was in a preschool classroom in Tribeca. The backing tracks are already recorded and sound great. Dan Costello played the music as explained in a previous blog. The goal of these remote sessions is to capture the cute little kids voices singing the holiday songs. 

Initially we wanted to have them sing most, if not all of the songs. As things go with 4 year olds, plans change quickly and often. In rehearsing with the children the day of, it was apparent we would be lucky to get a clean and confidently sung chorus. 4 year olds have the attention span of fish. From moment to moment they are drifting off into teasing, nose picking, wanting to talk about princesses or wanting to distract Dan from singing the songs he's chosen. 

The kids were great on the first try in rehearsal, but once this tiny magical moment passed, they were kind of over it. We brought them into where the microphones were set up, a long carpeted room with high ceilings. I had two mics set up in a stereo XY pattern to capture the chaos. And that really is mostly what it was. Once Dan stopped singing along, he was trying to direct them with his arms. To which the kids emulated him masterfully. They also stopped singing and used his arm motions as an indication to dance around voicelessly. Hilarious! I just had to laugh, but it was "frustrating" in terms of trying to get a quality product. 

The calm before...

Eventually we recorded a few outtakes where Dan had them repeat after him, "Frosty the snowman!", "Dredil, Dredil, Dredil," Feliz Navidad" etc. I think now, the back - backup plan is to have the teachers come in for a session and sing along to the tracks just in case we don't have enough here to work with. We have two more days of recording with an entirely different group of kids. Oh Boy!