The Booth

Fun times innit? You can't help but get excited before you enter into a recording session. Some studios are just lovely, I want to spend the rest of my life there. They shouldn't be too big, or cramped. There's gotta be enough room to put a couple of pizzas on a table nearby, with plenty of distractions that serve as inspiration inside a recording studio.

Then theres the voicebooth. sniff that airconditioned air ahhhhh. You put on some headphones, move up to the mic and say hello. The mic is an expensive enormous thing that resembles a Mere and a spice grinder. "Hello. This is GOD speaking".

I wish for some strange reason that every male NZ born citizen has a deep god-like voice, and then our country would be the international home of corporate voices. At the Olympics, we would be introduced as Uhhh Newwww, Zealannnnndahhh, to which our party of athletes and coaches will hold one hand up to an ear, with the other waving hand signals while muttering to themselves "thanks announcer, it's grrreat to be here at this maaarvelous event, and the people of (pause) New Zealand, are thrilled to be here, and to participate in such..." and so forth. Meanwhile, the simulcasting TV station announcers will mute our comments, overdubbing our deep-voiced athletes with their own "it never ceases to amaze me why New Zealanders have such deep voices".

The room is dead. There are no echoes, no reverberation, its probably as close to outer space as you could get in terms of isolation. Your ears have no reference point for distance in this booth, sometimes you feel short of breath because of it. Some people are addicted to these places, which would explain their weak immune system.

[slate: rolling]

That's the engineer advising me that we are recording. I take a little breath and knock out 30 seconds of pure sausage factory bliss, mentioning the word 'sale' four times. Throughout, my voice acts as a carrier of apparent good fortune to those who care to hear the message. I speak from the heart as if I know what Im talking about, done in waves of energy to sell the message put forth.

"Is that alright?" I ask.
[slate: thats perfect, thanks. you're done]

I carefully move back, place the headphones down, and exit the booth not knowing when I shall return.