I collaborated with my friend Rysia Kaczmar to work with vocals for the sound of this project. Rysia is my bandmate and also a very diverse vocalist. We booked the composition and foley room at LCC to record lots of vocal tracks for the piece. I showed Rysia The Alphabet and told her the concept of a child’s nightmare and she liked the concept and I started working on a script for her.
I wrote a script for Rysia consisting of lines from The Alphabet I wanted to keep like “Please remember you are dealing with the human form” and the children reciting their A,B,C’s. Rysia is a very performative and an intense vocalist, she is very good with improvisation which I think worked well for the piece because her expressive and intense style adds to the eerie atmosphere of the short.
The script I wrote for Rysia was done in my notes, which I really regret. I did go on to write a script which I timestamped where the vocal lines will go. I wish I did that before we recorded so now I know to do that beforehand. The reason I did do it on my notes was that Rysia is a very improvisational vocalist and diverse, so I thought the fewer instructions the better. I do agree with this to an extent but I do wish I wrote the script earlier.
The composition room gave us some technical difficulties when we started, with issues of no sound coming out. But when that was troubleshooted and solved we went straight to recording. I recorded onto Ableton as I was recording and creating my score on Ableton. I do plan to mix it in Pro Tools and not Ableton. All the lines were recorded dry with no effects on the vocals, as that would all be done in post by me.
This recording session taught me how important vocal and foley recording is to create the overall sound of the film. Having this hands-on experience with recording was very beneficial to me. I learnt a lot about setting up microphones, routing them to the computer, troubleshooting issues, monitoring vocals, giving instructions on what to do vocally to Rysia, recording vocal foley, and working in a space like this.
This last paragraph was written just after the final edit was done before mixing.
The vocal sounds I was left with after this session was incredible and very important to the sound of the film. After some experimentation with the vocals by using effects and techniques like transposing, I found how the vocals should sound. I did lots of manipulation with Rysias vocals, I used them for the gasp of the figure at the 02:25:26 mark. Rysia imitated a baby crying which was used at the 01:00:00 mark. The crying sound transposed down -12st and was run through a plug-in called MISHBY, which is a tape machine emulator that specialises in detuning, distorting, and warping sounds. I found that worked really well on the baby crying and is also used on most of Rysia’s vocal tracks as a distortion.
The alphabet recite at the end of the alphabet was performed excellently by Rysia, it synced up perfectly with no editing, I only edited out the breathes between words. These vocals are run through a soviet wire recorder emulator called Wires. This gives the vocals a crackly and distorted sound, they also detuned Rysia’s vocals slightly creating more of an uneasy atmosphere.
Here are some of Rysia’s Vocals dry, then with effects.
Baby Crying Dry (Only Transposed) – Baby Crying With Effects
Please remember you are dealing with the human form (Only Transposed) – Please remember you are dealing with the human form (With Effects)