Friday, February 01, 2013

P

Anyone who records vocals will tell you that 'p' is for  'pop', that plosive sound that acts like a minor explosion when mediated through the tender diaphragm of a microphone.
The letter 'p' and to a lesser extent the letter 'b' send the dials and the engineer's faces into the red.
The shame...
With my hick kitchen setup, and while recording demos in between marking bouts, I realise that I don't have a pop shield.
Amateurs make these by stretching an old pair of tights over a coat-hanger, placing the contraption between the offending singer's lips and the microphone, and intercepting the blast of air before it gets there to shoot the VDU off the scale.

I wander around the house.
Not only do I not have a spare coat-hanger, I haven't got (a) old tights and (b) even new tights of the required delicate denier not to muffle the voice altogether (it's winter, innit?).
Also, I haven't got three hands: one to hold the microphone, one to hold the lyrics and one to hold the makeshift pop-shield that I haven't made.
The mike stand is in the boot of the car and it's cold out there. The music-stand is deep down inside the umbrella stand which will finally break if I burrow down inside it because it's made of second-hand dried up wicker.
Meh.
Suddenly, I hit upon a wheeze!
I go through the lyrics, substituting new words for all the words that include the letter 'p' abart from the ones that I can reblace with the softer and less risky letter 'b'.

Ho ho!
Off I go...
Demo, Dem-o!!!!!

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