Tales from a session of Ulf Sandström
I got a call from a producer who wanted to test hypnosis to find the perfect state of mind for recording a complex vocal track in the new album of Marie Lala, and I thought it made a lot of sense – hypnosis is deeply focused state of mind where you can be both relaxed and active at the same time.
In this session I hypnotized Marie, a talented and open minded young singer, in the studio just before the take of a pretty complex tune to find her “inner golden tap” for channeling the exact right emotions into her rendering of Deep Dark Blue.
This included gathering her best moments on stage, experiencing what it would feel like to sing it inside her favorite artist, having a very special person in the imagined audience and listening to it 50 years from now and getting the very same feeling again.
Normally a complex song track can be recorded any number of times in search of the “right” feeling and take – and normally in the end the result is a matter of slicing the best parts from all takes into the best take. This can take hours at no end and sometimes its a sound puzzle asking for the skills of an audio surgeon involved.
She did three straight takes after another, each as good and with multiple subtle qualities…. Both she and the producers said her perfomance was beyond what they hoped for or had believed could happen. They didn’t need to say – I heard.
This is her experience in her own words:
“This song, Deep dark Blue, is about that place between awake and asleep one can get stuck in. You know that place where sadness and worries can grow from little seeds to take over your whole existence. And also this song is about the beauty of finally falling asleep, of dreaming, of being able to meet your lost ones.
We wanted to get the feeling of me acually being close to sleep when i sang this song, and when the idea came up to try hypnosis we all got very excited. I have always wanted to try hypnosis and felt this was the perfect time to do it. I didn’t know what to expect, but thought that it would definately be worth a try.
It was amazing! I have never been so free and present during a recording.
This song is a very hard song to sing, and I guess that I would have had to spend a lot of time on it on a normal recording session. But it all went really easy, I sang it from beginning til end three times in a row, and then it was done.
The experience of singing under hypnosis has given me a lot. Even though I can’t put myself back into that calm and pure state of mind yet, I am definately moving towards it. All the vocals that were recorded after the hypnosis session went smoother and I was less hard on myself then I have been in the past. Highly recommended! :)”
Ulf Sandström
Mental Coaching >>