"Roberts, Nora - Once More With Feeling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Nora)

studio. Raven was made for the stage, for the live audience that
pumped the blood and heat into the music. She considered the studio
too tame, too mechanical. When she worked in the studio, as she did
now, she thought of it exclusively as a job.

And she worked hard.

The recording session was going well. Raven listened to a playback
with a single-mindedness that blocked out her surroundings. There was
only the music. It was good, she decided, but it could be better.

She'd missed something in the last song, left something out. Without
knowing precisely what it was, Raven was certain she could find it.

She signaled the engineers to stop the playback.

"Marc?"

A sandy-haired man with the solid frame of a lightweight wrestler
entered the booth. "Problem ?" he said simply, touching her
shoulder.

"The last number, it's a little..." Raven searched for the word.

"Empty," she decided at length. "What do you think?" She respected
Marc Ridgely as a musician and depended on him as a friend. He was a
man of few words who had a passion for old westerns and Jordan
almonds.

He was also one of the finest guitarists in the country.

Marc reached up to stroke his beard, a gesture, Raven had always
thought, that took the place of several sentences. "Do it again," he
advised. "The instrumental's fine. " She laughed, producing a sound
as warm and rich as her singing voice. "Cruel but true," she murmured,
slipping the headset back on. She went back to the microphone.

"Another vocal on "Love and Lose," please," she instructed the
engineers. "I have it on the best authority that it's the singer, not
the musicians." She saw Marc grin before she turned to the mike. Then
the music washed over her.


Raven closed her eyes and poured herself into the song. It was a slow,
aching ballad suited to the smoky depths of her voice. It-the lyrics
were hers, ones she had written long before. It had only been recently
that she had felt strong enough to sing them publicly. There was only
the music in her head now, an arrangement of notes she herself had
produced. And as she added her voice, she knew that what had been
missing before had been her emotions. She had restricted them on the