Music Release Journey: I'm Here + TOTYL (Patreon)

I am genuinely so grateful that I can wholeheartedly say this process wasn't just better than it was for "Honestly", but it was fantastic every step of the way! 🥹

And I am so unbelievably grateful for Alanna ❤️

After the whole debacle with the last release, it was tough to push for more, even after having Dan swoop in. But shortly after "Honestly"'s release, I finally made my first attempt at putting out feelers for the Villain Era. Thankfully, I was very quickly directed to Alanna, who I reached out to immediately!

Just kidding...I didn't work up the courage to reach out to Alanna for 2 more months 😅🫣 BUT I had recorded demo tracks and sent them over with my email, and thankfully Alanna was interested!

The first step was obviously professional talk about fees and dates and expectations, blah blah blah 🙄

But then! I spent the next few days doing things I had never really done before: identifying the BPM for each song and song part, recording demo guitars to those BPMs, and using those guitars as a guide for recording demo vocals, just to get things workable for Alanna to start building the production around. All of those things are reasonably easy, but...I had never done it myself before 😅 But I downloaded a metronome app and managed to get things pretty close to right, so I could that as a win!

I also made sure to send over the chord sheets and individual reference playlists, although for "I'm Here" I pretty much just said "just acoustic" and left it at that 🤷‍♀️

Once I'd sent all that over, Alanna got to work making some tracks for me to record studio vocals to. I had asked her if I could send demo vocals first because I honestly find it easier to sing the song when I have a working track to sing along to. It helps me keep the tempo (playing live, no one keeps a properly accurate tempo; we sing/play by emotion 😅), and it helps me get in the right headspace.

Alanna. Was fantastic. Every single step of the way. She always understood my nonsense and the vibe I was going for, and constantly reminded and reassured me that these were my songs and her job was to bring about my vision. So there would never be any hurt feelings or disagreement over any of my feedback. It was often a discussion (because I was always asking whether things were possible or if we could just try something to see even if I decided I hated it 🙈), but Alanna was always on my side and always working to make sure my songs sounded the way I wanted them to. Nothing else mattered.

And that was amazing ✨

To be treated like I know what I'm talking about and should be taken seriously with regards to my own art.

Once Alanna and I had settled on a few things and she was able to get me full rough tracks, I headed straight to the recording studio! I managed to record all the studio vocals in about an hour (although I was there a bit longer for chatting and adjusting to the space).

The studio was so much smaller than the last one I'd recorded at, which wouldn't have bothered me, except that I could see the audio engineer on the other side of the glass and was so scared the whole time 😅🙈 He also played back every recording. Every time we stopped. And I was like "I actually don't need to hear it" 😂 aka "I don't want to hear my own voice, thanks" 🫣

And I received the vocal tracks...the day Alanna left for her tour 🤦‍♀️

Thankfully, I didn't have a deadline in mind for "I'm Here", so I was able to tell Alanna to focus on her tour and not worry about trying to get the song done while she was away 🙌

The most nerve wracking parts of the whole experience:
1. Being in a sound booth 😂
2. When they did play the recordings back, the headphones were borked, so the recordings would cut out randomly and I was genuinely not confident that I wouldn't have to go find somewhere to re-record 🫠
3. Making sure TOTYL got finished on time 🫣

But Alanna is *such* a master of her craft, that we only had one revised mix for I'm Here and two for TOTYL 💁‍♀️

And that, ladies and gentlefolk, is what happens when the artist and producer work together to bring forth THE ARTIST'S vision - you CRUSH it and come out with a banger (or two...and hopefully more) 😎