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Norah: I didn’t realize the notes were too high for me until I tried to sing [laughs]
-I guess you could say that it was improvisational in a way, considering that we had so little time and so little to fix. Tell us about each song. Let’s start with “Running.”
Norah: That one is a little eccentric. First of all, I had the idea of following the melody “da da da da da da da da da da da da da” with the answer harmony “I keep running I keep running”. When I played it with Leon for the first time, the groove of the drums was really good, and the piano sounded cool too. But it took us a long time to finish it.
That’s because I changed the chorus, which originally sounded like a pop song, but I wasn’t very comfortable with it. I changed the chorus a little and it sounded better, so I took out the whole part and it didn’t come together and I had to put it back in (laughs). (Laughs) Then I added some more harmonies, and it was finished.
-How about “Swept Up in the Night”?
Norah: I wrote that song for recording with the band. Leon started playing the tambourine in the studio. I wrote it in Wurlitzer to go along with that. When I recorded it later with the band, I didn’t put the tambourine in, but it sounded great, so I kept it. The groove of the drums was especially great. Brian Blade (Brian Blade) played on it, and it sounds great any time he plays it.
-“On My Way” also has a very interesting sound.
Norah: I wrote this song at home a long time ago and finished it with my husband (Pete Remm). We first wrote it on a drum machine, so we always played it on the drum machine when we recorded it. I knew I would probably change it or add to it later. It ended up being a song full of harmonies [laughs].
-Harmony was mentioned earlier, but the texture of your vocals in “Visions” seems different from your previous albums. What are your thoughts on that?
Norah: I think Leon recorded it with a lot of different techniques, so you might want to ask him [laughs]. Many of the songs were recorded with a very small microphone, hand held by me. It was an old microphone, but I don’t know the details. I didn’t really think that much about it myself.
-For example, on “Staring At The Wall” and “I’m Awake,” your voice sounds with different textures and depths within one song. different textures and depths within a single song. What do you think about those vocal innovations?
Norah: Whenever I sing a song, I just sing. And then I just see “how the words and emotions of the song combine with each other. I think I am open to a lot of trial and error. Depending on the song, I may make adjustments such as changing the key to fit the range or speeding up or slowing down the tempo before adding my vocals. In some cases, that’s one important factor.
-Does “vocal texture and resonance” like the sound Leon created affect the way you sing? Because if the texture changes, the emotion and temperature delivered will change.
Norah: That may be true. Because I think everything affects everything. Incidentally, on this album, I wrote the songs with the vocal harmonies audible in my head before I actually sang them. So on this album I sing in a higher voice than I ever have before. I sang in a voice so high that some of them didn’t make sense, but if you put them in the right place, they work. That’s how I feel it was completed.
-Why did you decide to sing higher than before?
Norah: I wasn’t thinking of singing higher notes, it was just that the harmonies I heard in my head were too high when I actually sang them [laughs]. I can’t do that, my throat hurts! But it was the right harmony. I didn’t realize until I sang it that I had written the notes too high for me.
