Amen. Life Sized Ghost is one of my favorite bands to work with. We've done 3 EPs so far. Their vocalist, Tali, is absolutely amazing and I've never pitch corrected a single note. She walks into the booth and usually does all of he singing in one take. Actually, everyone else in the band is the same way. Their lead guitarist only re-takes solos if he doesn't like them, because he always just improvs them on the spot and never plays the same thing twice. Bonus, they're also one of the most humble bands I've ever worked with, and completely trust me with the mix. I would LOVE to get some of these cocky local bands in here next time I record Life Size Ghost and show them how real musicians work. Absolutely phenomenal band of talented musicians. Highly recommend listening to them for fans of Fiona Apple, Phish, Company of Thieves, etc.
Another great band I recently worked with is The Burial (Facedown Records). Their vocalist did all of his vocals on the album, 95% of it, in one take, first try. Same thing with his solos (he plays lead guitar and vocals live). Their drummer is only 17 and recorded all of the drums only 2 weeks after joining the band... Really great band, and again, very humble musicians.
I've had several other bands with amazing vocalists, like Wolves & Machines (GREAT band, if you like bands like Boys Night Out), Great American Beast (kinda like Every Time I Die), Beneath The Sky (singer was amazing, did all of the singing for In Loving Memory in ~ a day, not a huge fan of their screaming style), Andy and Blake from APFP. Real talent comes from hard work, and constantly pushing for better performance, so talent and humility seem to almost always go hand in hand. It's beautiful.
Amateurs fuck around in the vocal booth, either doing one take and expecting effects/correcting to fix their dead/lifeless/out of tune voice, or wail on the dead horse with half a zillion takes that all sound nearly identical, and nearly shitty. They don't have the ear for nuance, and of course they never practice, so they can't ever figure out what's wrong, but they know it is. So of course, it's up to us to somehow fix their lack of talent. This can be extremely frustrating.
I've been doing the recording thing on and off for the last 10 years, and I'm finally getting to the point where a good portion of my yearly projects are legitimately talented musicians. I'm also at a point where if a musician sucks, I will tell him to his face in front of the band and tell him exactly what he needs to do to fix it. Usually, it's practise way more, and play shit you're actually capable of, not stuff you HOPE to be capable of in 5 years of said practice. "Play within your actual talents". That should be the golden rule of any publicly performing group.
Thanks for this topic. Working with talented musicians is exactly what I've always been wanting with my studio. Sure, it's fun to work with a band who wants/needs you to write a good portion of their music everyone once in a while, and it can be very satisfying to tutor some of these young musicians on how to play their instruments better, but I end up feeling like an audio janitor/local band babysitter. Praise Andy Wallace I'm getting less and less shitty bands these days.
Anyhow, I could write a book on all of this... probably should, since I'm a good way there, haha
