10 ways to get a better performance out of a singer in the recording studio

10 ways to get a better performance out of a singer in the recording studio

I just had the honor of being on an expert panel at the Summer NAMM Conference here in Nashville, and the topic at hand was "How to Get the Best Vocal Performance from a Singer in the Recording Studio."  Before I showed up, I jotted down some notes, and as I promised the people in the audience that day, I'm putting it in a blog post. And since most people skip all this intro text, I'll get right to it...

10 Things to Be Mindful of When Recording Your Own Vocals for Someone Else

In today’s internet age, it’s entirely possible to collaborate with someone on the other side of the planet. It’s wonderful as a producer to be able to hire someone in L.A. to track vocals for me on one of my songs when their sound is exactly what I want and no one that I know in Nashville will fit the part.  I’ve learned in this process what I need from a singer in situations like this, and today I’m going to discuss several aspects of what a singer needs to keep in mind when they are tracking their own vocals on their own gear to send off to a producer.

As a service provider, you want to be great to work with, and you want to give the producer something that sounds fantastic and goes into their track easily and quickly. If you pay attention to the following points, you should be well on your way to that goal.

They're stealing our music and robbing my life...

They're stealing our music and robbing my life...

Well we found another site that is illegally giving away our music without our permission and with zero compensation to us. I found out when a friend of mine who is rather new to being violated in this way contacted me, asking what she could do about her band's music being on this site, wondering if I knew anything about them. The first thing I did when I got to the site was search for Worldwide Groove Corporation.  This is what showed up...

Fast Lyric Writing: How to write single concept song lyrics for licensing. #songwriting

In my last blog post, I discussed ways to write several songs at once and how to keep them from all sounding the same. Today I'll talk about writing a lyric with a singular emotion quickly. [Scroll to the bottom if you'd like to hear a finished product of something we did last week.]

One of the few remaining lucrative frontiers in songwriting and production is for film and TV licensing. Not only do films and TV shows need songs for IN the shows, they also need songs for the advertisements ABOUT the TV shows. Each of these contexts has special requirements lyrically and musically. Today I'm going to specifically talk about the types of lyrics that are appropriate for use in an advertisement for a TV show...

"Year of the Groove" juicy details, credits, liner notes & more!

We just completed our "Year of the Groove", where we put out one music release a month for a year, starting July 19, 2014. Let's look back at the last 12 months and see what it all amounted to. We'll tell who did what, what we spent money on, what we spent time on, and what we have to show for it.

The Story Behind "Make Me Free"

This month's release is the final installment in our Year of the Groove [where we've put out one electronic music release a month for a year,] and what a year it has been!  As much as I'm tempted to launch into a recap of the Year of the Groove, that is for another blog post. Today is all about this month's maxi single "Make Me Free". Giddyup!