Do you memorize lyrics before recording?

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A White Rebel

New member
Hello,

I'm a political rapper, who often has delivery issues. I'm wondering if I take the time to memorize my verse before recording... will it sound better?
 
A White Rebel said:
Hello,

I'm a political rapper, who often has delivery issues. I'm wondering if I take the time to memorize my verse before recording... will it sound better?
Click to expand...

Memorizing the lyrics won't make it sound better. That is done by selecting proper gear and using mic techniques.

Memorizing the lyrics will help in capturing a better performance IMO which of course is very important. You can make is sound better during mixing but you cannot fix the performance during mixing
 
A White Rebel said:
Hello,

I'm a political rapper, who often has delivery issues. I'm wondering if I take the time to memorize my verse before recording... will it sound better?
Click to expand...

Always nice to start off with some semantics... :facepalm:

Yes, you will sound a lot better if your lyrics are committed to memory. When you're singing/rapping, your entire focus should be on giving the best performance you can give, and you can't do that if you're waiting for the words to run out.

It's no different to a guitar part or any other instrument. The better you know something the more confidentially you perform it.
 
Yes. What Steen said.... and it's even better if you've memorised it and performed it live in front of real people, as you'll get a better handle on how to perform it live in a studio - you can stop worrying about what word comes next and put more into the performance.
 
Armistice said:
Yes. What Steen said.... and it's even better if you've memorised it and performed it live in front of real people, as you'll get a better handle on how to perform it live in a studio - you can stop worrying about what word comes next and put more into the performance.
Click to expand...

Having performed it, or at least sang it in the car a million times, makes things way easier. I recorded a singer yesterday that had some brand new lyrics for a song that's been waiting for vocals and the words/melody had never been put together before. It was strictly figure it out on the fly. It wasn't a trainwreck, but it took several takes and overdubs to get it all flowing together well. Other songs that they'd done a million times went through in one take.
 
Most times I'm recording my own vocals I'm reading the words. Most times, though, I am familiar with the material, and I find it relatively easy to switch into performance mode and get out of read-and-recite mode.

If the material is new to me, maybe I will give it a couple of test runs to see how I will put it together.
 
I don't memorize, I have them in front of me, go through them probably 20-30 times so I know how they are coming and how they are to land. Use the word sheet as much for reference as first time looking. Either way, you have to be very familiar with them to put them in the song as intended or else you will be playing catch up all the time.
 
A White Rebel said:
often has delivery issues.
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I used to have delivery issues......it was no fun delivering newspapers on freezing January mornings.
A White Rebel said:
Do you memorize lyrics before recording?
Click to expand...
Yes and no. I don't specifically memorize them but I've often found myself doing vocal takes with my eyes closed even though I'm holding the sheet so I guess I must, at some level on some songs.
A White Rebel said:
who often has delivery issues.
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What exactly are your delivery issues ? While I agree that the better you know a part, the easier it should be to perform it, that's not always necessarily the case. Sometimes, not knowing it inside out can be beneficial.
That said, a good vocalist should be able to communicate their vocal with whatever is necessary, be it in their head or written down. Any stiffness or lacking is not going to be just because your lyric is written down.
 
A White Rebel said:
Hello,

I'm a political rapper, who often has delivery issues. I'm wondering if I take the time to memorize my verse before recording... will it sound better?
Click to expand...
Hi A White Rebel,
I am surprised that nobody has asked you what you mean when you say that you often have "delivery issues".

Do you mean that you fumble the words because you cannot remember them, or that you do not stress or enunciate the words that you would like to emphasize? Or perhaps something else.

If it is a straight memory issue, then you could try to improve your recall of the words - by practice, or using some memory techniques - but why bother if you can have them right in front of you on a piece of paper, or the computer/tablet when you are recording?

I find it incredibly useful to have the lyrics in front of me for my songs. Partly because I do not remember them all any more, but mostly because it gives me a chance to read ahead a little and decide how I want to sing a word or a line (I find that it takes me a while to 'get to know' my own songs in terms of how I want to perform them).

The best of luck with this.

gvdv.
 
I've usually memorized the yrics by the time they come to be recorded.
Mind you, I don't sing or rap so the fact that I commit them to memory, for a short period of time, is just me having written, edited, reworked and revised the lyric a squillion times. Something I'd imagine a political performer would want to do.
Not long after the song's been completed the my memory fades.
It's the same with the chords or lines I play. 3 months later they're, largely, gone so I refer to the chord charts & lyric sheets Im prepare as props for performance so that I can revisit stuff.
I have limited space in my HDD so employ auto delete to unused information that matches the RAM space needed in my frontal lobes to perform the current task & recall it for repeats over the short term.
 
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