JOEY STURGIS, JOEL WANASEK & EYAL LEVI: Why expensive mics fail, the compression debate, saving tone-deaf singers

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Creative Live, the world's best online classroom for creative professionals with classes on songwriting, engineering, mixing and mastering. The Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast is also brought to you by Savior Custom drums, quality crafted drums, handmade in Denver, Colorado. And now your hosts, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:00:23):

Hello. Good afternoon, Howdy. So on today's show we're going to be talking about some vocals. I've recorded a lot of vocals, I'm sure you guys have too.

Speaker 3 (00:00:33):

Yeah, and it's funny, I was thinking about the vocal recording process about how I've gotten vocals that are so horribly recorded that I didn't know what I could do with it, and there's been some times that I can magically make it work in a mix and other times where things are just completely non salvageable and no matter what I do, I just feel like it ends up sounding like total shit. And I think that there's a few environmental factors that make it non salvageable. So I just wanted to bring that up first, that what room a person records the vocals in has everything to do with whether or not the vocals will end up being mixable. Do you guys agree or disagree?

Speaker 4 (00:01:24):

Are you talking about the famous window vocal reverb?

Speaker 2 (00:01:27):

That is exactly what I'm talking about. The vocal booths actually not being good for vocals.

Speaker 3 (00:01:33):

Yeah, exactly. I don't mean that they need to be in a professionally treated environment or in some top vocal studio, but I mean you get vocals that sound like they were in the corner of two windows or recording vocals in the bathroom, yet they're screaming vocals and it's supposed to be mixed up front and center like a good lead vocal and it's just like you can't really do anything about removing the room from it. So I think that at least in my opinion, the first step towards getting really good vocals is making sure that the environment you record in is straight. Meaning

Speaker 4 (00:02:18):

I have one trick for that.

Speaker 3 (00:02:20):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:02:20):

Isotope RX three, I think they just came out with four now they have a D reverb plugin. That is pretty good. Sometimes it needs, I dunno, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But when it works, it really works and it's very good at sampling a vocal and removing unwanted reverb and getting a much clearer picture.

Speaker 3 (00:02:40):

I was not aware of this.

Speaker 4 (00:02:42):

You should try it, Mr. I know every plugin that's ever been made in the history of plugins. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:02:46):

But you want to know which plugins I'm not that familiar with are isotope plugins, so thank you.

Speaker 4 (00:02:52):

RX three is amazing software. I think that's by far the best restoration noise removal. It does things that will make you sit back in your chair and go, wow, that just happens.

Speaker 3 (00:03:03):

Well, then I take back everything I said, vocal should always be recorded in the bathroom. You can just

Speaker 2 (00:03:11):

Use that plugin to fix X three. That's it.

Speaker 3 (00:03:12):

Yeah. Shit. Why have I been setting up little vocal forts this whole time? Because set up walls and walls of panels and then put panels above the head of the vocal list and make sure that literally no extra sound can bounce around in there and that the only sound happening is the vocal going into the microphone. But if I had only known, think about the hours I could have saved.

Speaker 2 (00:03:44):

Well, I record vocals in the control room. I like to be in the same room as the vocalist and I kind of like to be able to turn my head and look at them and tell them different things to do and kind of just have just a better working zone for lack of better words. But what I use to help me get a good vocal sound in the control room is something called a portable vocal booth. It's not one of those rooms that you see. I think you can buy a portable vocal booth room, but it's not quite that. It's made by real traps. You can check it [email protected] slash p pvb dot htm portable vocal booth. It's like this 90 degree angle wedge that attaches to your microphone stand and it stops reflections from getting into the microphone.

Speaker 4 (00:04:40):

You know what else works great. A mic stand and a blanket.

Speaker 2 (00:04:44):

But I've tried the whole blanket thing and it always, I don't know. It's hard to get it to do. Exactly. It always falls down or people bump into it and it's just a pain in the ass.

Speaker 4 (00:04:56):

What kind of mic stands are you using?

Speaker 3 (00:04:59):

That portable vocal booth sounds like a great idea. I used to own the ones that Oral X made, which were just the small ones, right? No, they were pretty tall. They were like six foot tall foam walls with a little window in it for you to be able to talk to make eye contact with the vocalist. Right. What I do is I will put like eight foot tall gobos on either side of the vocalist and then put high frequency traps above the vocalist. But basically, it seems to me like your method does exactly what mine does, but you just snap it on a microphone stand, right?

Speaker 2 (00:05:43):

Yeah. Well, there's the popular one that I think a lot of people probably bought at Guitar Center. It's really small and I think it's made by a different company. I can't remember what company,

Speaker 4 (00:05:53):

The SE reflection filter. What's that right SE

Speaker 2 (00:05:57):

Reflection

Speaker 4 (00:05:57):

Filter. I used to sell that thing back in the day.

Speaker 2 (00:06:00):

I don't think those are good because they sound kind of boxy to me. The one that I'm talking about is made by real traps. It doesn't change the sound at all other than removing the reflections. It's really good.

Speaker 4 (00:06:11):

I'm a tent maker myself. I have all these traps laying around my studio and I just stack 'em up on top of an amp or whatever and building a massive evil fort.

Speaker 3 (00:06:21):

I guess the point is that even though the three of us are doing different things to minimize the amount of room reflections in the vocal mic, the point is that the three of us are doing things to minimize room reflections in the vocal mic. I think that's the moral of the story

Speaker 4 (00:06:41):

From now on. We only record vocals in the bathroom.

Speaker 3 (00:06:44):

Yeah, RX three contest

Speaker 4 (00:06:47):

In Omni.

Speaker 3 (00:06:49):

So what do you do when, say you get a vocal from a band, you didn't record it, it was recorded in a situation where there's a ton of flutter and just weird reverbs and all that. So your first choice is go for RX three, say that doesn't work.

Speaker 4 (00:07:12):

Well, that's a

Speaker 2 (00:07:14):

Have 'em cut it again.

Speaker 4 (00:07:15):

Start queuing and compressing and reverbing and just try a bunch of different things. I mean, every vocal that I've ever had like that, and fortunately I could usually count on maybe two hands the amount of times I've had it in a mix where somebody sent me a vocal like that, but when it happens, you're like, holy shit. I mean, it's a pretty scary thing to attack. So usually I just start trying everything and trying to find ways to hide it. I'll add additional reverb to it or delay or something like that to kind of make it sound like the ambience that was already there is part of a bigger ambience so you don't notice it as much, if that makes sense. It is like a reverse masking, I guess.

Speaker 3 (00:07:57):

Yeah. Yeah. I think I like what Joey said though, which is just get them to recut it if possible.

Speaker 4 (00:08:02):

Yeah, well obviously, definitely that's much better place to start if you have the luxury of doing it.

Speaker 3 (00:08:09):

Yeah, exactly. Not always possible. So now what about choosing a vocal microphone? How do you guys go about doing that?

Speaker 2 (00:08:18):

What I've done in the past is just bought different microphones that I thought looked good to try, and then I actually tried them on a couple different people and just decide if I like the mic or not. I ended up getting an at 30 31st and then tried that out and I liked it. I was recording vocals for a while when I first started out in my career in a garage. So there was a room, it was like the drum room, but also where the vocalist would do vocals and it had a pretty bad ambience problem, which I never really noticed until I got into a really good listening environment because the ambiance that would come through the mic wasn't very apparent in the listening position. But anyway, I liked the 18 30 30, so then I moved up to the 18 30, 35 and then eventually went up to the at T 40 40, somewhere in there. I got an SM seven B and I tried that out for a while and I liked it at first, but the more and more I got into modern production and having my mixes be really polished, it took a lot of work to get the SM seven B to actually fit into that world.

Speaker 4 (00:09:35):

I'll second that.

Speaker 2 (00:09:36):

I tend to use the a T 40 40 now pretty much on everything.

Speaker 3 (00:09:40):

It's a good overall microphone then it sounds like. I've never used one.

Speaker 2 (00:09:46):

Yeah, it's surprising to me because it's, I'm pretty sure it's only a $400 microphone and I know that the U 87, the Newman is very popular. A lot of people use it.

Speaker 4 (00:09:58):

That's my favorite.

Speaker 2 (00:09:59):

Every time I've used the U 87, I've had too many EQ problems, like really weird notch frequencies that I just can't get rid of.

Speaker 4 (00:10:08):

That's interesting because I have the opposite experience with mine.

Speaker 3 (00:10:12):

I think that the U 87 is a great mic, but I think that it needs to be matched to an appropriate voice and I think that that's where noobs get into trouble as related to choosing an expensive microphone because I've definitely experienced lots of guys who want to try the expensive microphone. They want to go for the classic thing that costs three grand or whatever that they've read about so many times, but maybe their vocalist is more nasally in nature or shrill sounding in nature, and then you put one of those super expensive condensers like a U 87 on it and you're going to hear that nasal quality of the voice just become even more nasal and annoying. So I've always thought that it sounds great if you match it to the right kind of voice and sometimes you don't want that amount of detail coming through with some vocalists. There's something about good dynamics I feel sometimes that hide just the right stuff about a vocalist that you need, but

Speaker 4 (00:11:23):

That's an interesting take on it because I kind of have the opposite experience. That's why I like the U 87 is because for, I guess it depends which pre you pair it with. For me it's a 10 73. That's my favorite pre to put a U 87 with. But what I do like about that mic is it, I feel like it almost always works and it's not overly hyped like a lot of condensers. So because it's kind of got a decent mid-range to it, what ends up happening is I can throw it up on almost every singer and it's never going to completely be like, man, that doesn't sound good at all. I mean, it's very rarely that I throw it up that I don't like it or I don't think it doesn't sound great. So that's interesting. You guys had the opposite experience with it.

Speaker 3 (00:12:04):

Yeah, I've had the experience of the U 87 sounding phenomenal with the right kind of vocalist, but I've also had it sound totally shrill just because it's so detailed. It's such a great mic. The reason that I don't like it for everything has nothing to do with the mic not being as good. It's actually too good. So I think that if you're recording Adele or some Angel, that kind of microphone works great, but I've had very, very limited success trying high dollar condenser on say some Death Corps vocalists who's really not that good, who has minimal breath control and really needs to be pieced together. I find that high dollar condensers may not be best for that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (00:12:57):

Yeah, I think another thing you run into with popular microphones like that is there's a potential of getting a Chinese one where they do a knockoff and it's not quite the same quality level as the real deal. And if you're bargain shopping online and you're trying to get stuff off of eBay and other sites like that, you can very well run into a Chinese knockoff and not really know what an actual U 87 sounds like. And I kind of feel like maybe that's what I ran into and didn't know. I borrowed it from someone and I have no idea where they got it.

Speaker 4 (00:13:30):

Well, you're free to use mine anytime you want.

Speaker 2 (00:13:33):

Hell yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:13:34):

I overcut screams through a U 87. I like the detail and the fidelity and for me it's an issue of clarity in the mix. I feel like I use a lot less EQ when I'm using an 87 versus a seven B or any other a 57 or a four 14. That's definitely to me what I like about it is actually that it's so pristine and clean sounding and then when I get in and aggressively compress it and EQ it for me, it seems to work in a mix situation a lot better.

Speaker 3 (00:14:04):

I've definitely experienced that just not every time. I think my favorite thing to do is just put up a bunch of microphones and have the singer try to sing into each one and

Speaker 2 (00:14:15):

Oh yeah, I do that. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:14:17):

Yeah, figure out which micro at the end of the day really what really matters is which microphone pairs up to the voice the best and it's not a one size fits all type decision, but I definitely do think that like your a T 40 40 or an SM seven B or for you a U 87, I do think it's important to have your go-to vocal mic that will work for you 85% of the time and also have a few options for those outliers or those guys who just don't sound good with that particular microphone. It was good to have some options. I've had some really interesting stuff happen where for instance, I'd have a really, really amazing vocalist in that I expected to use the U 87 with or some really expensive microphone we rented and after testing nine microphones going with an re 20 because we liked the way that it enhanced the low end of his voice and provided an overall punch. It just sounded the best for him and it was a total surprise. So I think it's good to know what your go-to is, but I think it's also good to have the ability to just check different things. With a vocalist, you never know what is going to be the right match in advance. Hey,

Speaker 4 (00:15:42):

How do you guys feel about tracking with compression as opposed to doing it in post love?

Speaker 2 (00:15:47):

I don't like the track with compression. I know a lot of people do, and one of my notes on my mixing guide says, don't send me vocals that have been compressed because I like to choose how much compression I want to use and I sometimes I'm automating how much compression is happening throughout the song and that's not something you're really going to sit there and do. I mean some guys do it. I've seen some dudes just ride the knob while they're tracking change the

Speaker 3 (00:16:16):

I do that

Speaker 2 (00:16:16):

Threshold. Yeah, I tend to do it. I'm more in the box. I'm not an outboard gear guy, so I like to just have everything uncompressed so that I can do it in the box. And now I'll try different scenarios of different ratios and different thresholds throughout the song and I might have it really aggressive and then I might try really not aggressive and just kind of do a car test on both. And that's not something you can really do with the outboard gear.

Speaker 3 (00:16:44):

I generally will end up setting up multiple stressors, for instance, and have them set for different types of things that the guy does. One will be for cleans and the other will be for screams. I might even get a third one going for something else and dial it in to a good general spot for each particular sound and then I'll still ride it from there throughout the song to make sure that the gain reduction stays the same and that it's working. But I definitely think that if using outboard compressors on vocals that you do need to be paying attention the whole time with your ears and eyes on the gaining reduction meters to make sure that different vocals, a different level of vocal or different style of vocal aren't having an undesirable effect through the compressor. Does that make sense?

Speaker 4 (00:17:49):

You can get into a lot of trouble with compressing in. I like to do it, but I don't like to use attack and release time compressors when I'm tracking vocals. For example, my favorite vocal tracking compressor is an opto compressor. I use a Shadow Hills, which would be the opto graph equivalent, but I've got the mastering compressor and I love it because it's two knobs in and out and what it does is it allows you to sit there work a threshold or a range of reduction that is going to be acceptable to you and levels off your vocals, but the attack and release times are very forgiving, so you're never going to screw it up and you're never going to be like, man, I wish I would've changed the release because this part feels weird or it's too poppy or it mitigates a lot of those problems. So I kind of like to go into that because of the tone sweetening effect and it gives the vocal a nice little organic distortion and kind of like a halo around it in the mixed position, but it definitely helps control some of the dynamics and level out the performance.

Speaker 3 (00:18:46):

So I guess the moral of the story is that if you are going to use it, just be careful to not get yourself into a situation that you can't get out of later on. So what you're saying, Joel, is that you do like a little bit of compression, but not so much that it really alters too much of the sonic quality of the vocals going in.

Speaker 4 (00:19:13):

I should also note that I hate getting vocals that are pre compressed when I'm mixing. That absolutely drives me nuts. I being the mixer, I want to have the control of being able to compress the vocals because sometimes they over compress them and bring up too many of the breaths, for example, or any other possible array of problems that could happen. So I'm kind of with Joey on that one too, where when I'm tracking my own stuff, I always compress in, but I'm also mixing it. So

Speaker 2 (00:19:39):

Yeah, I was going to say if you're doing all parts of the process, it doesn't matter, but if other people are involved then be considerate or at least ask them like, Hey, do you care if I compress on the way in?

Speaker 4 (00:19:50):

I've

Speaker 2 (00:19:51):

Had people email me that.

Speaker 4 (00:19:52):

Yes, exactly. Totally on board.

Speaker 3 (00:19:54):

Oh, a funny story about that one because I'm with you guys on this, that if I'm getting tracks from somebody else, it's a big bummer if they've compressed it because usually they did a bad job. I recorded a band once and I guess before I recorded this band, I mixed something for them and one of them is friends with a guy that works for Will Putney and I guess that they somehow through the grapevine herd of some compression saturation outboard trick that will uses on vocals, and so they thought that that was just the thing to do when recording vocals. So these tracks that they sent me were just square wave distorted and they recorded in a bathroom too, but through this crazy, yeah, square wave distorted, compressed to all hell and back vocals recorded in a bathroom because they heard that that's how Will Putney did it. I talked to Will about it and his response was, oh dear year. So yeah, I agree with you guys. If I'm getting tracks from somebody else, unless if it's one of you guys or something like someone awesome, I'd prefer there to be no compression on the vocals. But yeah, if I'm doing it myself, then I'll go to town because I know what the end goal is anyways.

Speaker 2 (00:21:28):

So what about your tracking procedure? Because I know there's a couple different ways to do it that seem to be effective. I've tried a lot of different things. I prefer to have it where I do the vocal takes and then immediately afterwards I'm editing the vocal take. But that doesn't work for everyone because what I've found is you can destroy someone's energy level or their mojo or whatever you want to call it, when every time they do something they have to sit there and wait for you to edit it real

Speaker 4 (00:21:58):

Simple, get faster. It's the only way

Speaker 2 (00:22:02):

As fast as you can go, but sometimes it does take a lot of care to get the edit right, and I've tried to hire a lot of different vocal editors and never really liked anybody's edits because they don't take the time that I take to really make sure it sounds exactly how it should.

Speaker 4 (00:22:21):

I'm with you on that one,

Speaker 2 (00:22:23):

But do you guys have any interesting techniques or are you doing similar methods of tracking the vocals?

Speaker 3 (00:22:29):

Okay, well, here's the thing. I'm with you on this that you got to be paying attention to the vocalist the whole time because there's these guys where they lose their mojo, that's it for the day, and so you don't want to be the reason that they lost their mojo,

(00:22:49):

But in an ideal world, I prefer to edit while tracking, get the take, edit the take, move on. The one thing though that I will insist on is that if we're doing doubles and triples and quads and all that, I like to be at the very least time aligning them on the spot, and I use Revoice Pro for that, but maybe pitch editing will do after the fact, but I want to at least make sure that, and especially with screams, if we're getting layer upon layer upon layer, I want to be getting the time alignment right on right then and there. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:23:30):

Nothing on earth pisses me off more than time aligned, layered screaming. I just want to put that out there. It's

Speaker 3 (00:23:36):

Awful, awful so bad.

Speaker 4 (00:23:39):

When you're mixing, you get a session. Sorry for the off tangent, but I kind of feel like this is an important point. Sometimes when we're mixing, somebody will send you a large session and you'll have four to eight layers of vocals going on and all these screams and every single one will end at a different time and they'll start and the P's and the S's will be at different times and it just sounds like shit when it's all compressed and slammed together. It's supposed to be.

(00:24:03):

And that absolutely drives me up a wall. So I'm kind of with you. I generally loosely time edit where it's all tight and really good and then I go back with a fine comb after we've kind of gotten through the song and we're like, okay, and then I'll pitch correct, because then the vocalists can take that home that night and they can listen to it and they can be like, I really hate how I sung this line. Can we do it? And then you can kind of nip it in the ass right away and you're not sitting there four months from now and being like, Hey dude, I really don't like how I sung that verse. Can I redo it? And you're like, ah, yeah, okay,

Speaker 3 (00:24:37):

Yeah, I know what you mean. Normally what I'll do is when we get the first vocal, I'll basically quantize it with elastic audio or whatever right away and then actually use Revoice bro on the doubles to match those to the original. That's perfect. I've gotten pretty quick edit though, so I think that's pretty much my process is spit the vocal if we like to take correct it, then double it and then revoice pro it into being perfectly in time with the original and then on and on and on and on. But I don't know, there's probably a million different ways to go about this.

Speaker 2 (00:25:21):

I prefer to do Free Warp. It's a thing in Cubase. It uses Elastic audio as its algorithm and then it's got its own user interface built into Cubase to handle it, and that's how I do all of my time alignment for my vocals. I use autotune for tuning. What do you guys use to tune autotune?

Speaker 4 (00:25:41):

Very audio stock Cubase.

Speaker 2 (00:25:44):

See, I don't like the built-in cubase for tuning vocals. To me it sounds a little bit too, too much like a keyboard.

Speaker 4 (00:25:51):

You're on 6.5, you got to,

Speaker 2 (00:25:54):

I still get the same vibe from Meddy as well. I know a lot of people use Meddy, but to me Meddy also sounds like a keyboard. I agree.

Speaker 4 (00:26:03):

You got to get off Cubase 6.5 and move up because I feel, but

Speaker 2 (00:26:06):

See, I don't want to, I know

Speaker 4 (00:26:08):

Seven and eight, I feel like they did a whole new deal on that very audio and it's much better sounding. I personally love it. I think it's the best sounding autotune, but that's my opinion. I also use it every day and I know every single little in and out and minuscule trick or Glip that the program has. So definitely I like just being able to go back and tweak something three months later and not having it rendered into some file that I can't tweak and not lose the take because I overt tuned or under tuned a word.

Speaker 3 (00:26:40):

What do you guys think about that technique of say when you have doubled vocals tuning one of them perfectly and lightly touching the other one?

Speaker 2 (00:26:51):

I kind of do it. I don't do exactly that. What I do is I tune one the least amount that can be tuned just to make it the right part I guess. And then the second one is tuned like, okay, if one was tuned at retune speed 30, then the other one will be tuned at retune speed 40. So I'll try and I kind of correct them the same way because I want the part to be correct, but I am letting the inconsistencies shine through a little bit more on one of them to create a little bit more of a chorus effect.

Speaker 4 (00:27:34):

I like mine super tight, absolutely perfect, both the main take and the double take, but what I do is, I don't know how you guys mix or whatever, but I like to run my doubles into the same vocal compressor and vocal chain. So instead of individually compressing each one and then for example, having your double minus six DB with its own compressor, I like to take both of them and slam them in and that kind of gives it that I would say two thousands radio rock doubled wetness sound and it's like the same thing but kind of different, but it is just a different approach I guess.

Speaker 3 (00:28:09):

Do you think it doubles as something to turn down and just strengthen the main vocal or do you think of them as an equal power type situation or does it depend?

Speaker 4 (00:28:20):

I'm mostly equal power.

Speaker 3 (00:28:22):

Okay, okay. Well then if you do it equal power, I definitely do see why you would want to make them perfect. That makes total sense. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:28:30):

My doubles are very background sounding. The way I do it, I have the main really loud and then the doubles are where all the ambiance and the reverb and the wideness takes place.

Speaker 3 (00:28:44):

So I guess the moral of the story is that the louder you want, your doubles the tighter and in tune they have to be to the original. I

Speaker 4 (00:28:53):

Think it's a genre thing too. For example, since I do so much radio rock and stuff, that's just kind of the sound, at least it sounds like it when I listen to back what I'm doing versus what I hear on the radio. That's just the sound I grew up listening to and I expect to hear when I'm hearing a vocal on the radio. But when I'm doing metal, I do, for example, I'm familiar with Joey's approach and I think it's pretty cool. I mean it's good to have them all in the pocket because you can sit down and play with a couple of different setups for vocals and kind of hear which sounds best with each singer because sometimes the double singer needs the double really loud, but sometimes it sounds like crap, so you got to bring it back. I mean everybody's different.

Speaker 3 (00:29:34):

Yeah. Speaking of which, how do you go about giving the vocalist their own mix? I use a hear back unit to where they can dial it to the heart's content, but I've noticed that generally they just like to have a stereo mix on one knob and then their vocals with effects on another and then they're done. But what do you do?

Speaker 2 (00:29:59):

That's a good point. I actually never learned how to set up complex headphone mixes, so I always just hear what the vocalist hears. If they want their vocals louder, then I just literally turn the vocals up in the whole song. They're hearing what I hear, I'm hearing what they hear.

Speaker 4 (00:30:17):

I do it the same. I never give them any effects or anything like that. This audio card that I have, the RME cards have a direct zero latency monitoring mode and it doesn't allow you to put effects on it. I mean, I think there's a way around it with the cubase control room, but I've just rolled the same way for so long and I'm comfortable with it and none of my, I mean I've only had maybe one or two guys ever in my entire career complain like, dude, can I get some verb on the voice? And in that case I'll switch it, but I kind of just hearing what's actually coming off the mic, and again, I'm usually in the room with the guy or separated by a single pane of glass within 10 feet of them. So I like the run or action and to hear what the singer actually sounds like coming up straight. If it sounds great, straight off the take when you're listening to it straight voice, then you've got a great take. And it's not hidden by some guys like the track with pitch correction, for example in the pop realm, and I'd rather know what I'm getting right away and if it's going to be a unicorn or if it's going to be bullshit, instead of trying to patch it to sound like a unicorn coming in.

Speaker 2 (00:31:19):

I think it can also depend on your workflow and mine is to have one track at the top that set how the vocalist wants to hear himself, and that's where all the takes get recorded. And then I have a bunch of tracks underneath that to have all the different mixing settings that I want to hear with the eq, with the reverb, with the delay, kind of all my vocal effects all in different tracks, and then I just drag each take into the different track that I want it to sound like. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:31:47):

I do the same if

Speaker 2 (00:31:48):

I want a vocal take to be distorted, I already have a track down there with distortion on it and I just drag that take into that track.

Speaker 3 (00:31:56):

Yeah, I do that too actually.

Speaker 4 (00:31:59):

I think that's another good point is being able to hear what it's aside from being able to hear the raw take, but then being able to hear what it's going to sound like in as close as you can to downstream early on so you know what it's going to sound like, how it takes a distortion. For example, it's kind of like prem mixing. For example, when I track guitars, I already have my drums mixed in the tracking session, so I at least know what kind of kick and snare so I can dial my tone in a little bit better. It's kind of like the same thing to use an analogy.

Speaker 3 (00:32:27):

Yeah, well that's actually why I really like to use a Hear back unit because I like to know what's coming right out of the vocalist mouth when I'm tracking him, but what he might want is a mix that makes him feel like he's rocking out on stage or something, or he might need it to sound more mixed. So with the hear back unit, it gives me the option to separate those two worlds so that I can maintain as critical of an ear as I want, for instance, on a different topic. It also helps with drummers who need to blast their click tracks with the Hear back unit. They can have it as definitely loud as they want, and I can have it basically muted. I hate listening to click tracks when tracking drums

Speaker 2 (00:33:21):

At Crazy Volume. Dude, I love vocalists that have in ears. Yeah, they're great. They, that's like the best thing ever because then you get zero bleed into your microphone and it's so crisp and clear. Headphones, man, it's always a bitch because people want it to be too loud. They want it louder and louder and then it's coming into the mic and it just ruins everything.

Speaker 4 (00:33:44):

Why is every musician deaf

Speaker 2 (00:33:46):

Because

Speaker 3 (00:33:47):

They didn't use earplugs growing up.

Speaker 4 (00:33:50):

I knew the answer, but I always wore earplugs

Speaker 3 (00:33:55):

That shit don't grow back. Yeah, I don't know how to set up a proper headphone mix really either. In the traditional sense, every time I've tried to do that with Oxes and sends and all that, it just starts to turn into a fucking disaster. But with the Hear back unit, it's really, really easy because you're just sending outputs to it and then the musician decides on his own mix.

Speaker 4 (00:34:22):

I feel like going back to what you were saying a minute or a few minutes ago about the vibe with a vocalist and not killing it, I feel like you have to get your chain set up, for example, like your compressor dialed in your Q mix set up, and you have to do that rather quickly because if you don't, sometimes the vocalist is all warmed up, they're primed and ready to go, and if you're sitting there turning knobs for 25 minutes, you've just killed it and you haven't even started yet. That kind of makes me think of that sort of scenario.

Speaker 3 (00:34:49):

Sometimes if I have a good amount of time with a vocalist like a few weeks or something, we'll just take the first day and understand that it's going to be like that so that nobody stresses out and there's no mojo lost or whatever. But yeah, I make sure to always be totally set up and have everything ready to go before we start tracking anything. There really is no faster way to kill a musician's vibe than to just leave them twiddling their thumbs waiting for you.

Speaker 4 (00:35:23):

And it's awkward to have the whole band and the singer sitting there looking at you and you're like, hold on a second guys, let me just sing that one more time for me. I got to fix this. Hey, when you guys are tracking vocals, do you guys ever kick out the band and just have one-on-one with the singer? Because I'm a huge fan of that every

Speaker 2 (00:35:40):

Time. Yes, absolutely. I kick everyone out of the booth.

Speaker 4 (00:35:42):

Yeah, it's difficult

Speaker 2 (00:35:42):

Too. Hate people being in the booth.

Speaker 4 (00:35:44):

Sometimes you get that control freak guitar player for example, or bass player that's a principal songwriter in the band, and they want to sit there because they're like, oh man, I got to make sure I'm here for vocals. This guy's going to screw it up, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the singer that's in his head, so he was like, get that asshole out of here. And you're like, okay, well what am I going to do? I have two people adamant that it's got to be one way or the other, and neither of 'em are on the same page. And that's always an interesting challenge of a session. You want to accommodate the singer. I mean, obviously you don't have a choice because if the vocal sucks on the record, you might as well trash the entire thing.

Speaker 2 (00:36:18):

And I try not to do any more than four hours of vocal tracking because then you're just going past the point of diminishing returns burnout.

Speaker 3 (00:36:30):

I think in response to what Joel said, you also got to find out how the singer feels about that band member and make sure he's not lying to you. Because sometimes if you get a pacifist kind of guy, he won't tell you that he would prefer to have the guitar player out of the room. He won't tell you that that guy fucking kills his vibe. So you have to be looking for body language indicators as to ascertain whether or not that guitar player is positive or negative for the thing. But I have actually had a couple of experiences where that one band member was helpful to the vocal process, but I mean, I'm talking one or two times over all the years in general. I say, get rid of the band, work with the vocalist, be happy the end.

Speaker 4 (00:37:23):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:37:24):

And with that, I'm going to take my pants off. I'm

Speaker 4 (00:37:26):

Just kidding.

Speaker 3 (00:37:28):

But I mean, how do you guys go about getting rid of the band though? If they are touchy about that,

Speaker 4 (00:37:35):

Tell 'em to get the fuck out and they're distracting from the session and they need to leave and they can come back and have all the opinions they want after the session has happened or after we've tracked or when we're comping, if they don't feel like they have enough good takes, for example. But I just throw 'em out. I'm like, listen guys, I just want, I need to really, you give 'em some touchy feely bullshit butter up speech.

Speaker 2 (00:37:57):

Well, what I was going to say is if the vocalist wants it, then I pretend to want it. But normally I agree, so it's not very hard to pretend, but if the vocal is like, Hey, I just want it to be me and you only, then I'll take it upon myself to be like, Hey guys, I just want it to be me and him only. And then most of the time people respect my decision because I think it's kind of common knowledge that if you're hiring a producer and you want them to do a good job, then you do what they want.

Speaker 4 (00:38:26):

The cool thing about being the producer too is you have that leverage where the vocalist may not want to hurt the guitar player's feelings, but you can come in and be that middleman and be like, you need to get the fuck out of here. And they have to listen to you, but they're not going to be bitter about it and pissed, and there's not going to be that inner relationship strife that you're going to be adding to. You can kind of take the fall for the singer and then they'll appreciate that, and that helps build rapport.

Speaker 3 (00:38:50):

Yeah, one

Speaker 2 (00:38:51):

Hopes

Speaker 4 (00:38:53):

What helps most of the time. Yeah, I should.

Speaker 2 (00:38:56):

So how long do you guys normally do vocal sessions for?

Speaker 3 (00:38:59):

Kind of like you? I try to not go over four hours. I think that I have had guys over the years who can do monster sessions, but I noticed that for the quality of the vocals as well as the quality of my own ability to stay current and pay attention and really care somewhere in four hours is great because after a while, just from my perspective alone, not as a vocalist, but just as the dude recording wearing headphones for that long starts to really hurt, you start to get headaches and all that, especially if I'm recording the vocals in the same room, we're both wearing headphones or he's wearing in ears and I'm wearing headphones. There's a limited amount of time where you can do that without going into some sort of a hearing warp. So I'd say two and a half to three to four hours. And that's good. And the thing is, a lot of guys say that that's not enough time because there's whatever, there's a lot of vocals on the record, and the way that I get around that is to try to start recording vocals as early as possible in the entire recording process. And Joey, I know you do that too, even as early as the first week of the album, just start getting vocal sessions done and prioritized around the vocalist.

Speaker 4 (00:40:29):

I think that's huge.

Speaker 3 (00:40:30):

I try to record vocals within

Speaker 2 (00:40:32):

The first two days. There you go. Boom.

Speaker 4 (00:40:33):

You have to, if you don't pace 'em out, a lot of vocalists usually like to give that extra 10% in the studio, and they don't realize, especially on the aggressive stuff, that you can actually burn out your entire voice and be out for a month or two. And I've had that happen several times where somebody's blown out a vocal box.

Speaker 3 (00:40:49):

Same.

Speaker 4 (00:40:50):

You got to pace it.

Speaker 3 (00:40:51):

Yeah, I've definitely had guys blow themselves out on the first day because they were trying to go too hard and just wanted to go more and more and more. I should have stopped them in retrospect, and now I would, but also now we would've been starting vocals like four days in, five days in or something. So I think that there is, I guess a tradition out there of vocals being the last thing you always hear about, well, we had X amount of time to record the album, whether it's one week or four weeks or two months, and you always hear about, but I had to do all the vocals, like seven songs in one day and two songs the next day, or I had to do all my vocals in three days, and that just sucks. That's not going to lead to amazing results. It's going to lead to burnout. And really, I guess just coming short of how good the vocals could actually have been, if you paced them out properly and went with the strengths of the vocalist body,

Speaker 4 (00:42:07):

You can hear too, when they start to go to shit, they start getting that hoarseness and then you ask them, you say, Hey, how's your voice? How's your throat? Are you feeling good? You're starting to get a little bit of hoarse. Okay, we're done for the day.

Speaker 2 (00:42:18):

And some people don't know when to quit, and that's why I like to just cap it at four because I also want to keep my sanity as well, and I think it just makes sense to kind of throw a number out there and just kind stick to it so that you don't really overdo it, stay fresh.

Speaker 3 (00:42:37):

Yeah, I mean, your sanity is a huge concern when recording vocals, at least mine is. There's just something about having the headphones on for that long that really starts to wear down on me. But the minute I start to hear any hint of the guy losing the fullness of his voice or with screamers, I start to hear their talking voice come through, whatever the signal is, there's a bunch of 'em. The moment I hear it, I call the session and I actually have a vocal drink that I've been making for bands for a few years now. That seems to work very, very well. I know everybody has their own little herbal remedy for voice, like herbal tea this, herbal tea that. But this actually has been working for years and years and years, and every vocalist I've given it to has loved it and says that it really does help their stamina and their recovery. So what you do is go to the grocery store and buy a gallon of apple cider. Now, I don't mean the alcoholic drink, I mean like Thanksgiving cider. So just buy a gallon of apple cider, buy a large ginger root, a thing of honey and a couple lemons, and all you do is boil the cider and put the ginger root in it and cut up the lemons, throw them in, dump some of the honey that's up to you and just boil it for about 20 minutes. And that's the drink.

Speaker 4 (00:44:29):

You know what you should try adding to that or experiment with is adding turmeric because it's one of the most naturally powerful, and there's a tea that I drink. For example, I have carpal tunnel in my wrist from drum editing. Imagine that what it is is like I take black peppercorns, whole turmeric, ginger root and cinnamon, and I boil them in water and then make a tea out of it, run everything through a sieve so it's just a liquid, and then drink the liquid and it's awesome. Turmeric is the best thing for cracky joints, anything that's inflamed in your body, so you might want to experiment with that because it reduces inflammation overall in the body.

Speaker 3 (00:45:10):

So the shopping list would then be apple cider, ginger, honey, lemon, and then experiment with turmeric. And I'm going to, and that sounds like it would be a grape benefit. I have no idea what it tastes like, but

Speaker 4 (00:45:25):

It's the yellow powder. It's like what? They make mustard I believe out of, it's like an Indian spice. It's yellow, it stains the shit out of everything, but you can also buy a fresh root version of it, which is a little bit smoother and it doesn't taste very good by itself, but in conjunction with ginger and cinnamon and anything else that you mentioned, it's pretty good.

Speaker 3 (00:45:47):

Okay. Yeah, it would probably be fine. And I guess the last thing I'll add about that is that the vocal drink is meant to be sipped while working on vocals or directly after, and it's supposed to be warm, so I'll cook up a giant batch at the beginning of vocals and just have the singer be constantly self-medicating with it. It really helps.

Speaker 2 (00:46:11):

Yeah. I have a lot of guys that use the throat coat tea. Yeah, that's a class that seems to be work pretty well.

Speaker 3 (00:46:18):

I think that the drink I'm talking about works better than throat coat. That's cool. Yeah, we did some research on throw coat and what goes in it and all that and throw coat's good. It is a classic, but I think that this vocal drink recipe I gave out will, we'll work better for people. They just have to take the time to go to the grocery store, buy the ingredients, and then cook it. That's where the toughness comes in because most guys don't want to do that part. Its easier.

Speaker 4 (00:46:54):

Speaking of endurance and vocal burnout, I got a kind of an interesting story, which is going to predicate a question. I'm curious how many takes you guys usually do on, for example, like a section, like a half a verse or a line? Because the guy across the hall who's awesome and he's a good friend of mine, I'm going to give him a little bit of shit here and throw him under the bus, but he's also a producer, and when he does vocals, he'll record like 50 fucking takes of a line. And to me that's like, holy shit. I mean, I get it. He wants to get it absolutely freaking perfect where it's the absolute best possible representation of that vocal, but I kind of feel like I never usually do more than three to 10. If the guy really sucks, it's closer to 10, but I try to be very decisive, and if he hits it on the second take, I'm going to keep that one. Okay. Give me a double boom. Alright, moving on. I don't want to sit there and go through a very, very long process because you get burned out. If you got to do 50 takes of every line in a song, by the time you get to the chorus, your voice is going to sound like you're talking with chalk covering it.

Speaker 3 (00:47:55):

Well, he literally does 50 takes.

Speaker 4 (00:47:57):

Yeah, something ridiculous like that dude. He'll be sitting there doing a gang vocal and it'll be like three o'clock and I'll walk out in the lounge and I'll go back and I'll come back a half hour later and they're still on the same fucking line, and I'm like, what is going on over there?

Speaker 2 (00:48:11):

I usually will do, I'll tell the vocalist to focus on something like, Hey, try to make your E more sound, more like an A and then have them do a take. And then I'll say, okay, now focus on getting this st just right like this, and then do a take and then I'll comp it. So I'll try to, instead of trying to get them to do all 10 things that I want them to do, and in one magical take, I'll just tell them to do that thing. And they usually will do it, but they'll mess something else up in the line and then I'll go back in and comp it all together, cut it all up and make one Frankenstein line out of all the different takes that they have. I'm totally with you on that.

Speaker 3 (00:48:56):

Yeah, I think that's much better than just arbitrarily recording a million takes to then go through afterwards for some reason.

Speaker 2 (00:49:05):

Yeah, you need a reason for each take. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:49:08):

Yeah. Yeah. They're not just going to magically get better. I feel like a lot of people tend to go for too many takes on the assumption that 99 takes of shit, but on the 100th it's going to magically become great, and I just haven't really experienced things working that way.

Speaker 2 (00:49:34):

If you're not getting it on take three to five, it's just not clicking. So you need to do something different. And I've been fortunate to work with some people who understand their voice really well, and so I can hear them actually using different parts of their throat to try to get it to come out better. But sometimes it's really hard if someone doesn't know how to do that, it's hard to tell them, well try using a different part of your throat. And they'll be like, well, what do you mean? I don't know how to do that. So sometimes you just have to break it down into little things. I don't really like how you're hitting this vowel here. Try warping that vowel to a little bit of a different sound like this. And then nine times out of 10 they'll do that one thing that you said, but they'll mess everything else up, so just comp it. Totally.

Speaker 3 (00:50:21):

Yeah, I think that's a great way to do it.

Speaker 4 (00:50:24):

I feel like every singer or screamer too, especially screamers, should go watch screaming tutorials. For example, the zen of Screaming by Melissa Cross is fantastic, and usually when I get a screamer who doesn't have a lot of stamina or they're very throaty, they'll be like, go watch this DVD and come back in a week and train it and they'll come back and it'll be night and day.

Speaker 3 (00:50:45):

Let me just say that I've had nightmares with that scenario though, where a guy comes in with no training and I give him zenna screaming and then he does it wrong and makes problem.

Speaker 4 (00:50:58):

Thankfully, that's never happened to me, but that terrifies me.

Speaker 3 (00:51:02):

Doing the screaming wrong is probably even worse, but doing the zen screaming wrong, if you already have no technique, it's probably worse than not doing it at all. I've come to notice, I did have one guy who then went and tried the full DVD and practiced it for about eight hours and totally destroyed his voice. Holy shit. But I mean, that was his own damn fault, honestly.

Speaker 4 (00:51:29):

Okay, we'll preclude that statement with a forewarning disclosure.

Speaker 3 (00:51:35):

Yeah, don't be an idiot.

Speaker 2 (00:51:39):

I think that applies to everything. Yeah, I think so too.

Speaker 4 (00:51:43):

We could sum up this entire podcast in one sentence. Don't be an idiot.

Speaker 3 (00:51:49):

Well, I definitely agree with you on Zenna Screaming though, and the vocalists that I've worked with the screamers who have been using Melissa Cross's work as a guide over a period of years or many months, they always do a better job than the guys who don't. They just have better stamina, better control. They're just easier to work with, just much.

Speaker 2 (00:52:15):

Their

Speaker 3 (00:52:15):

Voice is just much more of a defined instrument. That stuff really works.

Speaker 2 (00:52:21):

Yeah, I can echo that experience as well. I just did and co-writing with Ms. May I on their fifth album, and we were doing vocals pretty much every day. We were writing the songs, trying different vocal patterns and stuff, and Levi and Ryan, I'm pretty sure both have worked with Melissa Cross extensively, and Levi says that he really, he seems to think that the reason why he is even still here today is because of Melissa.

Speaker 3 (00:52:53):

I believe it. My band, when my band switched vocalists, one of the things that we had to do with our new vocalist was send him to Melissa Cross to help get him up to speed. So he went and did two and a half days with her in person at her studio, New York, and he had already been doing this in screaming for a couple years, so he went there already knowing her stuff. So he became kind of like a master student to where she could really go deeper with him. And man, I tell you, this guy could go on tour and play 35 shows in 37 days without even complaining about his voice once. That's

Speaker 4 (00:53:40):

Amazing.

Speaker 3 (00:53:40):

We could be recording for the album and do 10 hour vocal days, 30 days in a row without him losing his voice at all. Still perfect technique, perfect delivery, and I'm not exaggerating, he took the Melissa Cross stuff religiously to say he did it every single day and was just a maniac about it. But I've never really seen anyone else with that kind of just stamina and control besides him. I just really think that the Melissa Cross stuff, if you do it right, is a huge, huge benefit to anyone who uses it.

Speaker 4 (00:54:23):

I've had one guy like that, that was Travis Neil from the Bloodline on another century. Travis is like, you'll start screaming, and I usually start my sessions early and we'll sit there and go eight hours and his tone will not have faltered at four o'clock in the afternoon. He sounds just as good as nine in the morning. So it's just like we kind of sit there, me and my assistant, and we're just like, holy shit, this is great. Why can't all screamers be this good when you get a unicorn like that, that actually has that kind of endurance? It's just really inspiring because they take what they're doing so seriously and so few singers do.

Speaker 3 (00:54:57):

Yeah. Well, the thing is about these unicorns though, is that at least in my experience, the unicorn vocalists I've recorded who have that sort of endless stamina or whatever greatness you want to attribute to them, they all take their vocals very, very seriously. They take their health seriously. They take their warmups very seriously, and they're not messing around. These guys don't just drink fifths of whiskey, smokes packs of cigarettes, don't warm up, and then suddenly come record eight hours a day. That doesn't work that way. You don't like the whiskey vocal,

Speaker 4 (00:55:40):

Hey, that shit's rock and roll, man.

Speaker 3 (00:55:42):

I actually think that whiskey can help at times, but I just mean as far as long marathon sessions and overall stamina, I've just noticed that lots of the better vocalists do treat themselves as if they're athletes, at least to some degree.

Speaker 2 (00:56:03):

Yeah, absolutely. I've seen the same thing. Yeah, usually the ones that are really good are very conditioned and definitely practice and do warmups. And I'd have to say one of the best vocalists I've ever worked with was lights. She just kills it. She has perfect pitch and she understands her voice and stuff and takes it really seriously like a professional.

Speaker 3 (00:56:27):

It makes a huge difference. The same thing, dude from monuments is an amazing, amazing vocalist. What's funny about him, the reason I want to bring him up is because there was a time period where he wasn't that amazing. He used to be in periphery, and if you listen to recordings from when he was in that band, he didn't sound too good and they booted him, and I guess he took it upon himself to get better. But he's in with Melissa Cross as well, and he started really just making his vocals his priority, and by practicing warmups and exercises for 90 minutes a day and drinking two gallons of water and just doing everything absolutely right. And so then recording vocals with him ended up being just an extension of that. Super well-trained, took total care of himself, and it was just a pleasure to record. It's not an accident that it went that well.

Speaker 4 (00:57:35):

Here's a one for you guys. Did you guys ever get back in? I mean, I haven't had one of these in a long time, but you ever get one of those guys that comes in and cups the mic and has no power, just kind of gurgles into the mic and you're like, what the fuck are you doing?

Speaker 3 (00:57:48):

Geez. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:57:51):

I've kicked people out of my studio for doing that.

Speaker 3 (00:57:54):

Yeah, I've had that happen here and there. Not too much lately though,

Speaker 4 (00:57:58):

That was always more of like when I recorded local bands kind of thing. I mean, sometimes some kids would come in and it'd be like, what are you doing? You're not even screaming. I can whisper louder than you scream, dude, you don't cup the mic. Why? Where did you get this idea from?

Speaker 3 (00:58:12):

Yeah, I've made bands fire their vocalists, and sometimes it ended up in the band breaking up, which I felt really bad about. But at the same time, it was one of those things where the vocalist is so bad, just so outrageously bad, just beyond salvation, bad, just worst shit you can ever possibly fucking imagine coming out of this idiot's mouth with the worst lyrics on earth, and he's an asshole. It's just like they're paying me to do a good job for them and get them to the next level and all that, and there's

Speaker 4 (00:58:54):

Just no way.

Speaker 3 (00:58:55):

I know full well that it is not going to happen with this guy. It won't happen. There's a reason for why session vocalists used to come in in the older days. There's a reason for why big time producers wouldn't work with certain vocalists, and there's a reason for why some local bands never make it and it's because of shitty fucking vocalists. So yeah, I've taken that gamble a few times in really extreme circumstance to try to get a band to just replace their vocalist. And a couple times the bands have broken up, but a couple times or more, the bands have done that and gone on to better things. It's a weird gamble to take.

Speaker 2 (00:59:37):

I've done the same thing, man. Sometimes you just have to be the voice of reason. Say, Hey guys, I know this guy's in your band for some reason, but I don't think those reasons are going to outweigh the fact that this is just garbage.

Speaker 4 (00:59:52):

I got another fun one. So what about the Tone Death singer, Joey? I'm not going to say the name of the band, but we had both worked on a band. You did the one record for them, and I did the one after, and we had worked on this one band, let's just say in sequence. There were three songs on this record that Joey had done, and the rest I had produced, and this is maybe four or five years ago, and the vocalist was literally tone deaf. You'd be like, hit that note and he would shoot it up by three steps. Then Sue, you'd be like, what the fuck was that? Just hit the note and he'd be like, it's what? He sounded like a D frog. And I was just sitting there looking at the band. I'm like, guys, I don't know what the fuck or how the fuck, but this is bullshit. This isn't going to work. You guys are signed. This is bad. So we just Franken taped together a working performance out of it, and he sounds great on the record. His tone was good, but he is absolutely tone deaf and it was just the worst experience I think I've ever had recording vocals because I can only imagine what kids seeing it live. How did you deal with that, Joey? Do you know who I'm talking about without saying the name?

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):

I don't know who you're talking about right now. I think I know who you're talking about, so I'll just talk about that. The way I dealt with it was probably a little bit, I dunno, maybe it was the wrong way of going about it, but at the time I just didn't have any solutions, so I just kind of recorded whatever he would do. And then later on I removed my name from the project. So

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):

I've had this experience with a few people. If we want to talk about dudes that are pro instead of just a shitty local singer, I've recorded a couple guys who tend to have a hard time staying in bands and just kind of bounce around where they think they're this big awesome melodic vocalist, but a bunch of stuff like say there's a seven note passage and the first note is in the right key and the last note's in the right key, and they're the same note, but everything else in between is a half step off of where it needs to be. Oh God. And the guy just cannot tell that he's clashing so hard with the music, no matter what I say or what I do or what I show him, dude can just not hear it. It just does not connect. I've definitely seen and experienced some dudes in pro bands that are tone deaf. They can't hear that they're singing a half step out. It blows my mind.

Speaker 4 (01:02:35):

You almost have to Auto-Tune it and be like, here, sing along. This is what it's supposed to sound like. Oh, I'm singing it that way. No, you're not idiot. You're singing it like this.

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):

But I do that stuff and they still can't hear the difference.

Speaker 4 (01:02:49):

I don't get it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):

I think tone deaf and colorblind are the same thing, even though I haven't seen any scientific fact to back me up. I have a theory that tone deaf is to music what color blind is to colors, because there are some people who, no matter what you show them or play them or whatever, they cannot hear the difference between two half steps. It's like trying to say, can you see this green apple against this background? And they don't see anything. It's right there. So they can't see it. They're fucking colorblind. Give 'em a break. I think tone deaf is a very similar thing. It's just weird. It's just not exactly something that you would expect from a front man in a popular band or something. It's like,

Speaker 4 (01:03:42):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):

You have one job, a cop that doesn't know how to drive or something.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):

Well, if I write vocals with a band, I always have a guide track that shows the vocalist exactly what melody to sing.

Speaker 3 (01:03:51):

Yeah, well, that's my point. If they have that guide track and they still can't tell they're off, then they're fucking tone deaf, then they're tone deaf.

Speaker 4 (01:04:01):

Yeah, yeah. You have one job and that's to sing and that's it, and look cool on stage. So if you can't do that, why are you even in a band trying to be a vocalist? It doesn't make

Speaker 3 (01:04:11):

Sense. But I maintain that they probably can't tell that they can't do that because you're right.

Speaker 4 (01:04:18):

Yeah, the

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):

Delusion, I just think that they think that they're okay. And the reason I think this is because usually these guys are just oblivious to how bad this shit sounds. And you know how perfect pitch works, where if you have perfect pitch, you can tell immediately if something is just slightly off and it just bugs you. So there's got to be the other end of the spectrum too, which is where I feel like, I feel like these guys inhabit the opposite of perfect pitch. So they just can't tell. It's got to be that because nobody in their right mind who hears this garbage will sit there and be like, yeah, I sound great. No, it can't be that. It's got to be that their brain is not perceiving it. There's certain types of things like being in the wrong key or singing a half step out or being slightly out of tune that the human brain perceives it instinctually and it bothers us. So I just think these people are missing that. It just blows my mind. It's like having a blind pilot or something.

Speaker 4 (01:05:33):

Those are like the worst session days. Absolutely terrible.

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):

So I say if you're encountering someone like that, then

Speaker 4 (01:05:44):

Run.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):

Yeah, get out and run. You can always. It's weird. Really weird.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):

I was going to say, if you guys have any other questions about vocals, vocal tracking, vocal editing, vocal mixing, you should definitely check out the, what are we calling it? The Producers Private. The Private Producers Club. It's on Facebook. I'm sure we can throw out a link on the website somewhere. If you're a subscriber, go in there and just ask us questions and maybe we can find enough topics to put on another episode about this, and otherwise we will just try and answer your questions in the future. But thanks for tuning in and listening to the Joey Sturgis Forum podcast. And with that, see you later. Thanks guys. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):

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