The Native American Indian pow-wow singers were understandably reluctant to be recorded by "white-men". So before granting permission, they required us to introduce our children to the Chief of the reservation. The reason for this is that they believe that a man's character can truly be judged by seeing what his children are like. Not a bad idea, really.......
Another great find on Vocal Planet came from a place where we wouldn't have normally looked....the grocery store! We noticed a young bag-boy was making all manner of weird mouth noises while bagging our groceries. So we asked if we could record him. He was so excited about it that he wanted to give us his whole repertoire of strange vocal noises, but that he had to do it privately (with no one looking). So we dropped off a DAT machine and a mic and he went into his closet and a week later gave us over an hour's worth of incredible FX like "Wind in a wheat field" , "Dentist Drills" and even "Harmonic Wind multisamples"! His stuff ended up being some of my favorite sounds on all of Vocal Planet!
Working with singers quickly teaches you much about the possibilities and limitations of the human voice. Tell a singer to sing the highest note of his range -20 times, at pianissimo with a slight vibrato- and you'll see what I mean!
