One of the great things about being a record producer is that you get to do things other guys cannot imagine with girls they can only dream about! That’s been the case recently, as my side project with a female singer has developed. We originally set out to do a few demos with a view to getting publishing on a couple of songs. It now looks as if we may be making an album in 2009 and launching a new artist.

I want to talk about my voice this time. If you look at any sheet music you’ll usually find the legend “words and music” at the top, which suggests that the words (and therefore the singing of them) should have equal prominence with the music. So how do I start to get a balance between all of the instrumental performances and the lead vocal?

Again, it’s all down to planning and my planning takes three stages. First, are the words right for the context of the song i.e. is ‘I am unable to obtain any satisfaction’, while grammatically correct, accurate in terms of meter and for the character who’s singing the lyrics? ‘I can’t get no’ is so much better…

Secondly, what is the right voice for these words? Is it one with a shout in it, a cry in it, clear diction or slurred? Do certain phrases or words demand a different delivery?

Finally, to whom am I singing? Is it me, one person or a crowd? Again, this will affect how I deliver any given line, as a song may change audience from section to section or even line to line.

I’ll talk more about how I make this happen in the next instalment.

Cheers

As I said before, it’s been my turn to be busy over the past couple of weeks.

Keyboard parts first. Mostly nothing fancy, although I do try and avoid the blindingly obvious block synth wash wherever possible. I see the keys as pretty much a colour instrument behind the guitars in the band, so I like them to play a mainly supporting role.

Sometimes that role is standard – for example, on the ballad ‘Girls Don’t Look’ the song cried out for a string part and so it got one which lifts the second half of the verses nicely and swoops into the big choruses. Having said that, this song is an exception in that the piano is the major instrument and acoustic guitar takes the secondary part.

There’s also moments where the keyboards step out and take over – on ‘Come To Know’ we break out into a Bruce Hornsby style solo and the piano takes the lead line for a change. And that’s my point – it is for a change; for me it’s all about striking the balance between featured instruments.

I like the odd rock organ sound as well – so when you hear the record keep your ears peeled for a touch of the old Hammond coming subtly to the scene in several places.

Brings me to the instrument that’s always featured – the voice. While laying the keyboard parts I’ve been working out the last lyric changes, where the melody is going to move and how I’m going to interpret the songs.

All of which I’ll tell you about next time!

OK, I promised to talk about techniques for putting core tracks down, so here goes.

I guess the first advantage is we know pretty much what the melody line is from the guide tracks, so we have an idea about how the orchestration of the song is going to work – in other words, where to leave space for backing vocals, keyboard parts, colour parts etc.

This makes it simple enough to decide on some key aspects for keeping the basic tracks interesting – when to reharmonise a final verse or chorus, when to slip an unusual chord in, and just as importantly, when to keep the chord structure nice and simple.

For example, the opening track on the record is going to be Hook in My Heart and that will be at 212 bpm. At that speed, there’s not a lot of room for anything fancy, so simple approaches like restating the main hook as the solo break work fine. Later on, when the album slows down a bit, we can look at everything from playing the reprise chorus a tone higher to using completely different chords under the same melody line for a reprise chorus.

Our watchwords are ‘never the same pattern twice’ – in other words we’ll change an inversion, or substitute a chord, or add further instrumentation; and never the same technique too often – in other words, not every reprise chorus will rise a tone, not every song will fade out into the distance.

It’s time now to live with the basic tracks for a few days and then move on to vocals and keyboard parts – looks like this will be my busy time as the singer and keyboard player in the band!

I’ll tell you all about it next time,

Cheers for now

Well, here we are back at my place recording rhythm guitars and bass parts.

Why the two together, I hear you asking. The answer is inversions. Being a guitar based band with a songwriter who also plays keyboards can lead to some tricky situations. I might write something that hinges on an inversion that’s really easily to play on the keys, but twists a guitarist’s hand into a distorted mess.

Fortunately I also play the guitar so I’m aware of the risk – not that this stops me from wanting to use these types of chord positions. So, the approach I adopt is to ask my guitarist to play the normal chord shape but to ask my bass player to move his low note around to invert the root of the chords.

Of course if you’re doing this to set a song out it makes sense for the guitarist and bass player to work together in putting the core tracks down. So, rhythm guitars and basses go hand in hand for me.

It also a nice change to spend time working in sub-groups rather than the full four-piece. Spending some time with just the guitarist or just the bass player gives me a chance to maintain our working relationship and keep the social side of the band firing on all six cylinders too.

I’ll talk some more about the sort of techniques we’ve been using in putting the core tracks down in my next entry. Meanwhile, it’s back to work on getting the basic songs down in an interesting form.

Bye for now,