Happy Birthday Grandma Bev!

My grandma is turning 85 this month, so the Sorensons are celebrating.  Our Birthday present to her is a CD, one that has recordings of all her children and grandchildren singing various songs.  Unfortunately, it would make the most sense for her to receive said Birthday present on or before her Birthday, but since that day has already come and gone and the CD still isn't ready, we're now shooting to have the perfect Mother's Day gift.

Lucky for Heather and I, we got to sing a duet together for the CD.  And while it was a little stressful to finish a final project, compile it, then type an oral presentation in the car on the way to the studio to do the recording, I still loved it.

We frantically sang through our parts twice in the car, hoping we could get the harmonies right when we got to the studio.  If we weren't Sorensons, we probably would've been better prepared to "enter the slaughterhouse," as our composer Barlow so encouragingly put it, but we are Sorensons, so we were grateful just to arrive on time. We walked into the studio feeling very intimidated, trying to quickly clear our voices of any phlegm that might've been present and sucking down the last drops in our water bottle to make sure our voices would be in top condition. (I mean, this is the CD my grandma will listen to every day for the rest of her life, not to mention all the prominent people she might be sending these CDs to come Christmas time. Naturally, we wanted to sound okay.)

We were ushered by the composer and studio owner into our own soundproof room, where we were placed in front of our own mics, music stands, and headphones.  We put the headphones on, heard them say, "alright, we're going to cue the music now," gave them a thumbs up through our little window overlooking the control room, then sang our hearts out.

Well, it wasn't long before we overcame our intimidation and felt like full-blown moviestars.  We sounded GOOD. And not just because we are incredibly talented (haha, which of course we are), but because when you sing being accompanied by a professional orchestra to an arrangement composed especially for your voice, you sound a lot better than usual.  The real stardom didn't kick in, however, until the photographer came in and started snapping action shots "for the jacket art."

And that's about as cool as I'll ever get. My life is all downhill from there.

Haha. Not really.  But I did feel pretty amazing--I just hope I will still feel that way when I actually hear the recording for the first time.  Let's all just keep our fingers crossed.