So when you are recording a vocalist, how do you,  how do you go about directing them as, as a producer with your producer’s hat on, rather than your songwriter’s hat on? You know, how do you go about directing them, especially if they’re inexperienced at, at, at singing  or recording rather? Yeah. well, the first thing that I will do is I will start by recording. Oh, hello? Yeah. Yep. Okay. Better? Good. Yeah.  Perfect.
So, the first thing is I will, I would record,  first of all, without saying anything to the singer if I don’t know the artist, because I want to first see,  you know,  what they, what they have, how they feel about the song, their interpretation, first and foremost before anybody’s had a chance to, you know, just tell them what to do or what not to do or whatever. so  I’ll do that first  and that will allow me to see first if they connect to the song, you know, how they connect to it.
And  if I  only, if I feel like they’re not really, they’re just singing it  and not feeling it, then I will start to, talk to them and I will say, okay, for,  do you want me to turn the lights off? Or, you know, because you create atmosphere, create vibes.
sometimes, I know that sounds crazy, but you, you might be able to, you say, you know, Â do let actually, do you wanna go for a drink first? Let’s go for a drink. Let’s, let’s have a whiskey, or let’s have a beer. And, actually let’s talk about the song and talk about your life and talk about, you know, and you actually understand what we’ve just written here, and does it actually, you know, mean something. so that, that’s all part of the, of preparation to get somebody to sing something. and then once you know you’ve done that, you are on the mic, Â I will go with what I feel.
So if I need to direct them, if I feel like they need direction, then I will sort of say, you know, you are talking, you’re talking to her right now. You are talking to the love of your life that you let get away. Just freaking, just like, forget about everybody. Just, just freaking cry. Cry if you have to. Just speak to her, tell her how you feel. and  that’s how I would direct someone. I would often get put some, you gotta be in an emotional state that, that  is, you know, that  works with the song that you’ve written.
otherwise, if you don’t feel it yourself, Â nobody else is going to feel it. Â Yeah. I, I think that’s absolutely key. I I, I, I learned my vocal recording, process I guess through Chris Neal, who’s, Â let’s say he’s produced some of the finest vocalists in the world. Everyone from Celine to Jose Carrera and, Â and, he, he’s very, very much of this school, you know, of.
 It’s about creating the right atmosphere and it’s being able to push the vocalist enough so you get what you want. Mm-Hmm. But still, studies feel comfortable because the moment they feel tense,  it’s like, you know, so it’s, it’s about, you know, sometimes it’s just about cracking a joke and just having a laugh and just getting people to relax, isn’t it? Yeah. And putting ’em in different scenarios. You know, I, I sometimes say to people, you know, be in the video,  you know? Yeah. That’s a good one. Or it could be like, imagine that you’re standing at the, at the front of the OTA arena and the person that you are singing this to is right on that front row.
You know, you know, what are you, what are you trying to tell them? Or,  you know, I think trying to help them visualize and what absolutely, what you said about understanding the lyric is it sounds like a really dumb thing to say that somebody doesn’t understand what they’re singing, but I’ve experienced it so many times where they’ll hold the lyric sheet up  and they’re singing the words. Yeah. You know, as opposed to, oh my God, this is really real.
it’s maybe, maybe, you know, some, some, some artists, they haven’t simply had that particular life experience. You also have to remember that you are recording sometimes people that haven’t had a heartbreak or not necessarily lived, you know, the heartbreak the same way that you have, or they haven’t experienced certain things. And so you have to be able to, you know, explain that and make them understand that. Because otherwise it, you know, they’re like the listeners, somebody who’s gonna listen to that record. You have to  convey that emotion and it has to connect the, the, the emotion has to connect with the lyric for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And what sort of, what sort of microphones do you use?
Oh, we’ve got a question. Yes, sure. Hi, something  on,  it’s more of, on what you were just saying, when I, was doing a session vocal, I had to do Robert Cray, I Wonder.  And I kept singing it and I did  technically a great version in the afternoon. Mm-Hmm.  And because I knew the producer, he went upstairs afterwards and about three o’clock in the morning he just went,  no, it’s not. Got it. And I went, what do you mean?
So I went down and he made me read the lyrics out loud. Yeah. And as I was reading the lyrics, I went,  oh, He wasn’t upset with her. He was this. And he went,  now try and sing it. And then when I sang it, it was completely different because I understood what I was singing and the emotion was there. And although the, the, the take we got wasn’t technically  brilliant, you know, there was a few notes off here and there. He said the emotion, he said, the hairs on the ya, you know, went up. Whereas before it was a really nice version, but it didn’t really mean much.
Yeah. But just reading the lyrics out loud, because I, then  I fell in what he was saying ’cause I was reading it. Yeah. And, and then I thought, ah, gotcha. So, and that made a lot of difference. It’s, It’s, it’s a very interesting, it does make a lot Actually chalk morning as well, the voice of warning. Yeah. I, I would take emotion over technique seven days a week.  Absolutely. Because, you know, if there’s a tuning issue, we know we can fix that. Like you were saying earlier with Melaine or whatever, a timing issue, we can fix that, you know, we can fix all of the, the, the nuts and bolts about something.
But you can’t, there is no emotional plugin, you know, that can say, you know, sad, happier, you know,  it’d be f*****g awesome if there were, Hey, no, That’s, there you go. Any developers here, you know, plugin developers want to, But, but that, but that’s the, the truth of it. And  you know, I a slightly different tack. I, I, I used to be a very, very keen photographer and you could take five photographs of the same thing, but one of them would have the balance and the light and just a feel about it where you go, oh, that’s clearly better.
And certainly when I hear a vocal take, a bunch of vocal takes, there will be one where you suddenly feel that the, the artist has, has, or the vocalist has got, Â has, they’re in the pocket, they’re feeling it. The strength of the tone is right. Not in the first one as well. It can, it can be the first one. The first one, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Completely. But other things that you can try with vocalists, is getting them to use different mouth shapes.
So a lot of vocalists because they, if they know the words already, they’ll, they’ll sing with very small mags. They’ll almost mumble the words because they know it, they know, you know it, and there is no kind of, they don’t feel the need to, to articulate the words properly. So getting them sometimes to open their gob a bit wider, to when they’re singing is, is, is a really powerful thing.
 And, the other thing you can do is get someone to smile. that can change the mood of the lyric if they’re smiling, can hear it, you know, instead of like concentrating on the lyric like this, you know, they, you, you get ’em to smile and, and suddenly the whole tone of the thing changes. there’s creaking door where you get, you know, a bit more of that in there, a bit more gas in the vocal, a bit more note in the vocal. But try, you know, I would always say try, try different things.
If you’re not getting what you want, you know, get them to use different strengths and tones. Definitely.
