Anyone else take notice?

  • Thread starter Thread starter sweetpeee
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sweetpeee

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Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone else noticed this or had similar experiences. Most if not all of the demo's I've listen to lack a certain amount of life in the vocals. For instance, I listened to a whole CD of a friend of a friend who asked me to critique it. Some minor things I thought might have been different, were the songs (lite rock/pop) all seem to be played at the same uppity speed...kind of peppy, no slow balads.

The main criticism I had was his vocals lacked a certain spontinaity/life to them.I heard no "yeah...uh....Mmmm...baby....Huuuhhh!" nothing like that. It sounded like the person wasn't feeling them as much as memorizing them or reading them off a paper. Even if he did a little microsecond "humming along with a phrase"..it would have helped. But it was just lyrics...no ad lib. To my ears it sounded lifeless.I find this with a lot of demo's but not with a lot of recorded "on the radio" artists.

Anyone else notice anything similar?

J.P.
 
I think people take vocals for granted>> "anyone can sing" >well it's just one step away from speaking, isn't it<. I mentioned in another thread one of my heros and one of the greatest ever vocalists - Billy Makenzie. The amount of feeling he was able to get into his songs was crazy, bono admitadly (spell err)ripped off the band he used to be part of "the associates". He also said "Billy had a great voice i could never rip him off".

There seems to be an awful lot of vocal masterbation going on nowadays aswell, people don't relise an amount of poinancy is removed by filling the scales when singing. Billy had a huge range (could go extremely high) but when you listen to his vocals they seem much lower. He was great at the simple things like audibly breathing out after emptying his lungs. His songs were definatly not the best but his vocals were incredable. Try & find "baby". He also took lots of takes, over 100 for "pain in any language" he was a perfectionest. Singers nowadays are really not singers. RIP Billy :)
 
That is in part why most writers hire the best vocal talent they can find, pay them well and try to keep them busy enough so that other writers can't use them.

I allow a large part of my budget to vocal talent for those songs that I'm actually presenting to publishers. It does not matter (in a demo) if my guitar parts are not inspired or if my bass lines are rather basic - but the vocal (which is what really sells the song) must be outstanding, and I am willing to pay to assure that the song is well presented from a vocal standpoint.
 
When recording an idea live it is easier to "bounce" off of a talented vocalist, get more energy into the song. The way in which the singer carries on greatly adjust tempo, dynamics & even arrangment.
 
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