Bruno Amstad sang on my song Exonerate, Pt. 2.
I reached out to Bruno after a mutual friend of ours had recommended him to me, as I was looking for a vocalist for my new song. Our mutual friend recommended Bruno to me. I had seen him perform before and I really liked his style, but he was out of my league. That was my response to the suggestion of asking him to sing on my song. I really felt this way; ‘I can't ask Burno Amstad, he's way out of my league.’ He's performed with so many great musicians and artists, he’s been a professional performer since forever and was a teacher at the HSLU Musik where I was studying music.
Anyway, after contemplating for a while I sent out a text message to Bruno Amstad. I was really nervous. He replied very fast and super friendly. He liked my message and asked for more information. So, I sent him a demo, a karaoke version of the demo and the sheet music. Well, that happened sometime after lunch. That same evening, I get a text message from him back. He sent an audio recording of him singing the song, the whole song! With the note: ‘I’ll be on vacation for the next two weeks. Let’s arrange the dates after I come back. Cool song, looking forward to working with you. Cheers, Bruno Amstad.’
Fucking awesome! This guy was working on a whole different level. Needless to say, the recording he had sent was already great, I had to really prepare well for our upcoming recording session.
We rehearsed once for like an hour, got to know each other a bit (mind you we had never met before) discussed music, my intention behind Maze to Eden and talked about artistic expression. This dude was very inspiring to me. You know, the kind of person you wanna have as a friend or at least be associated with because he’s so inspiring.
Recording with him was a freaking pleasure. On the day of recording, he came with nothing but the sheet music and a bottle of water. The song Exonerate, Pt. 2 has a lot of lyrics and is a challenging song for vocalists. There’s almost rapping in the verses, singing in the chorus and screaming in the bridge. That is quite demanding for any vocalist. Bruno did it all with ease. Recording him was really like recording a performance. He moved a lot, it felt very theatrical, he was very expressive and giving his all to the music, to the lyrics and to me. We took regular breaks, but far less than I had anticipated, he was a work horse. We could have recorded the song within an hour, easily. But he kept giving me more and more performances with slight variations, all of them great performances. He just said: ‘Well you know, when you’re editing it’s nice to have options.’ Amazing.
The bridge was something I was a bit worried about. I had even told him that I could also record another vocalist for the screams. Pff. The screams were no problem for him, he could have screamed all day long without getting tired. I worked and still work with metal singers that don’t do anything but scream but after rehearsing three songs they lose their voices, grab some tea and blame the dry room and bad monitoring. Not Bruno, he had total control over his vocal performance.
It was just an amazing and inspiring opportunity to have worked with Bruno. I didn’t know him other than for those two days that we rehearsed and recorded Exonerate, Pt. 2 together. We crossed paths maybe once or twice in Lucerne and in the Migros in Kriens. I wasn’t his friend, and we didn’t keep in touch, but he sure left an inspired mark on me and my artistic future.
Thanks Bruno,
Patrick Buzo