Spent some time this week mastering the audio for our Portuguese album that has long been in the works. Somewhere around 5 years ago a Brazilian friend of mine encouraged us to translate some of our favorite songs into his native language of Portuguese. That night we got started and quickly had a large chunk completed before our travels took us on to the next city. Well, it took a lot longer than expected, was humorously more challenging than anticipated, and cost a fair more than we thought it would but we have certainly learned a lot along the way.
One of the most memorable moments came when we were in the studio recording the vocals with the help of our Brazilian Portuguese coach. This is when and where we discovered that Shawn has a Latin soul. Every time Shawn would sing or speak the language, the heavens seemed to open and out flowed the most eloquent and beautiful Portuguese, which was quickly followed by showers of compliments that would flow from our translator. Que Lindo, how beautiful, so good!
Then it came to be my turn. Now going into the recording session I really thought that I would have no problem since I had spent so much time studying Spanish. However, there was just one word for when I would try to sing Portuguese, ‘No.’ This solitary exclamation was often accompanied by an index finger shaking back and forth to emphasize the error of my ways. Turns out you can’t speak Portuguese with a Spanish accent and expect things to go well.
It got so bad that I was writing out each word phonetically and even then they would stop and say how it was supposed to be pronounced, I then would say it a few times the way I thought they were saying it, to which they would say the familiar word and then repeat how it was supposed to go again. Shocked that I was unable to hear the difference between what they were saying and what I was saying, challenged that I was taking a long time which was adding to the bill of renting studio time by the hour, the only option was to laugh or cry so I just kept going till I eventually got it.
Here is a small video we put together when we were recording in the studio and then check out the 4 songs from Steve + Shawn in the beautiful language of Portuguese.
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