I need some vocal production related help

[ahjteam]

I'm still bursting out a lot of ideas for songs and I'm like making a song almost every week, sometimes even more sometimes less, but I have now 14 song demos and about 52 minutes worth of material for my debut album (edit: 15 songs and 56 minutes). Some of the material will be b-side stuff, and about 40+-5 minutes will make it on the actual album. The material will be mostly clean vocals and I would still call it melodic pop metal even tho the genres vary between metal, grunge, rock, punk and many other stuff. Anyway, the first 6 songs are the kind of music I would want to listen when I want to get some adrenaline pumping and after that the songs get a bit more varied. You can listen the song material here, the playlist file should open with most media players (Winamp, iTunes, VLC, Real Player, Windows Media Player).

The whole album will be vocal driven music, but my problem is that it is all instrumental so far (with semi-decent production and my god-awfully sloppy playing), but I have left room for vocals, but some of the songs might be a bit too busy. The thing is that I'm really fast when it comes to writing lyrics, for example I think it took me about 30 minutes to write the lyrics for the Guitar tone competition 3 song when I got the theme from Jeff and heard the Javi's gibberish Spanish demo vocals. But my problem is that since it's my material, I've never written any vocal lines and when I heard the demo vocals Javi did for the Guitar Tone Competition 3 song, he approached the vocals very differently than I would.

I like layering vocal stuff a lot, but if I would approach the vocals of the songs my current way, it would have so much lyrics that it be closer to rapping than singing and that's not what I'm after, so I find it really hard, as it is a new field to me as I'm not a singer (yet).

So, my question is, how would you approach the vocal melodies and phrasing for the songs I have? I have a very few random ideas like for example for the chorus of Accell (the first song in the playlist) during the tom-beat like a really cheesy "HEY - HEY - HEY - HEY" gang vocal, but then the rest of the song just hit's blank for me.

 

[amarshism]

Maybe program a synth in the phrasing and melodies you want as rough ideas for vocalists to go by so there's not so much room for a different interpretation.

 

[dcb]

maybe do what thomas haake does for meshuggah:
speak the lyrics so the singer gets a feel for the rhythm that your after.
next program a synth (as amarshism said).
its also cool for singers to have gguitar pro files with a programmed vocal line.
this way he has notes as a guideline.
id always leave much roomm for singers interpretation.
coming up with great vocal lines is 9 out of 10 times the singer just playing
around with the lyrics, trying out different things.

when i write vocallines on a different insrument, most of the times they dont translate
well from for example guitar to my voice.
its always faster to just sing the lyrics them with melodyne to where i want them,
then resing the stuff.

thats actually something you could consider. sing your lyrics and melodies as good as you can
and pitch correct them. even if they sound unnatural, its just to get the idea across.

hope that helps !

 

[Lodge]

I listen to and write mainly epic power metal type things, but I find a good approach is to just mumble jibberish in key while listening to the part you want to write lyrics for. If you are alone and can get into it without feeling like a retard, usually you will stuble upon something that sounds cool. Then, once you find something you like, just go back and write lyrics to mold to the phrasing/timing of the jibberish.

 

[guitarguru777]

What i normnally do for melody ideas is play solos over the entire song with no more then 16th note subdivisions. This will five me a feel for what notes and harmonies work well over the chords. From there I write lyrics and sing them to the melodies I played.

 

[ahjteam]

What i normnally do for melody ideas is play solos over the entire song with no more then 16th note subdivisions. This will five me a feel for what notes and harmonies work well over the chords. From there I write lyrics and sing them to the melodies I played.

I just did this for one song last night. After a good night sleep I noticed that the guitar is horribly off tune, but it gets the idea thru.

 

[Mago]

Danny spoke truth here, 9 out of 10 times great stuff is beeing made when the singer fools around or or maybe even when he just tries something the first the he hears the material
writing vocal melodies on really doesnt translate very well (at least for me), so danny is also right on that one...

 

[ahjteam]

Yeah, but the problem is that I will have to write the vocal melodies and I really suck at it. And since I've literally heard these songs thousands of times (my last.fm profile says I've listened my own songs for 11,047 times, +~20% for the times I've listened on a non-last.fm player), so I'm getting really deaf to the songs also.