We started today with the Angels Medley (a compilation of O Come All Ye Faithful and Angels We Have Heard on High.) We took an early lunch after completing the medley so that we could do O Come O Come Emmanuel and What Child is This together. After lunch, we started with What Child is This. It’s very soft and soothing, very much the lullaby it was written to be. The next song was definitely more complex. O Como O Come Emmanuel we did acapella, which is always difficult. We decided that it sounded more natural to sing without a click (a drum loop in the background that keeps us on beat). With no music and no tempo to follow, the challenge was to have Alika sing and then have everyone else match her timing. We had the mics setup so that whoever wasn’t recording their vocal at the time was standing in the control room singing into another mic. The person recording their vocals in the booth could hear the other singers in their headphones. Alika sang first and then Eric suggested that she direct everyone else when to come in and cut off the endings of words. She looked like a choir director that didn’t know what she was doing, it was hilarious, but it worked. The toughest part of the whole day and probably the whole album was during the second verse when Alika didn’t sing at all. Danika had a solo on the second verse after which everyone came back in on the chorus. She had to fit her verse in this specific space of silence that Alika had left for Danika’s second verse. Thankfully she got it on the first try and everything went very smoothly. It was actually took the least amount of time to record O Come O Come Emmanuel than any of the other songs on our album. It’s the shortest song, but still, usually recording a song acapella takes us forever. O Come O Come Emmanuel was the last song that we sang so we ended up finishing the vocals a day early! It was bittersweet to be done already. I didn’t want it to end…