Legend Of Valley Doom Choir Vocal Recording: Conclusion!

Well that's a wrap, folks! March 6th, 2015 after months of practice and weeks of recording I finished my choir vocals for Marius Danielsen's Legend of Valley Doom (http://www.mariusdanielsen.com). It was a great experience to be a part of and I have to say two big "thank yous."

Marius Danielsen

One is to Marius Danielsen for choosing me to be a part of this project. It was great to work on some music from another source, and it was great practice and experience to do exclusively choir styled vocals. It helped me get a better feel for my voice, and techniques for recording this style for possible future endeavors.

My second thanks goes out to my friend Ryan Patane, who helped me by engineering and recording the vocals. Without him helping the quality wouldn't be there, and I can't thank him enough for opening up his time and home setup to help with me with this.

Album art for Optic's "Iris In"

By the way...Ryan is the keyboardist for NY Progressive Metal band, Optic. You should go to their bandcamp and check out (and buy) their debut album "Iris In." (http://opticband.bandcamp.com)

Thanks, buddy! I had a blast.

Well a little more hype and info on the album for the songs I did this round. I ended my sessions with the title track "Legend Of Valley Doom." By this time the beers popped open and Friday night was official. As we listened to the final recordings and all the other songs we have done, Ryan shed a single tear stating "This was beautiful." He couldn't contain himself so he is now fasting until the album comes out.

Did that actually happen? No, well except the beer and celebrating. But what I can say about the title track is it has an epic "national anthem" type of sound and feel, featuring most of the singers (i think all) from the album. Still, my all around favourite track is "Chamber of Wisdom" but that might be because Edu and Jonas have been a part of two of my favourite metal bands.

Without giving too much away, I believe this is a solid album let a lone metal opera. Marius should be very proud of it, and I think it will have a nice following. Of course, I have not heard any final mixes and some tracks didn't have vocals in them so I can only give my opinion from the demos and stuff, but what I heard is very nice. It has a nice balance of feeling epic but reserved. Not every song is a bombastic symphonic fest, but the choruses will always have a bigger feeling.

Well that's about it. Hooray! Thanks again to Ryan and Marius...I can't wait for the album to be finished \m/

Legend Of Valley Doom Choir Vocal Recording Part 2.

Here's just a quick update on my end about the recording process for Marius Danielsen's "Legend of Valley Doom." (http://www.mariusdanielsen.com)

Roger Watson

Last Thursday (February 26th) I did some more vocal recordings for the choirs on this epic project. I actually got delayed a bit after I finished the track "Chamber of Wisdom." I had forgotten to record the key change at the end of the song, and I had to go back and finish that track, but the writing is such that the phrasing of the chorus changes, so the harmonies I had recorded before would not fit in the chorus with the key change. After some hard work I finally finished it and was able to push on! The writing on the album has very subtle and sophisticated nuances like this that makes key moments shine.

The second track I recorded was "Lost In My Dreams" which features the great Elisa C. Martin (Hamka, Ex Fairyland, Ex Dark Moor) and Marius Danielsen himself; my introduction to the track was the great narration by Roger Watson. Hearing his epic voice over the booming studio monitors was ridiculous haha. I finished up this track and again, its another epic track made even better by Elisa C. Martin's voice. She has such cool voice that's really unique and it helps make the track shine nicely.

Elisa C. Martin

By this time, after hours of no food, and working on making sure my choirs, harmonies and all, were the beat they could be I was pretty burnt out haha. I began to start one more track but was running out of wits. After a long day of work and recording  I had to post pone recording the remaining choirs for this week. Get ready everyone!