Where should I start... Well, I'll start by saying that the guy was a rapper and I listened to the preview of his previous songs from iTunes, and my jaw just dropped, for a reason. It was so bad.
We had 4 hours booked, from which about 1 hour took for setup, tear down, bounces and backups. He was optimistic and brought in 5 beat tracks to sing in those 3 hours and he wanted it to sound pro. The beats weren't half bad, but he didn't make them tho.
We started with that song that he told that he is only singing the chorus for the song, which was fine by me. The guy was a rapper, but he was ordered to sing a melodic line for a song. But he was as multidimensional singer as Steven Seagals face. His entire vocal range was THREE(3) notes; A#, B and C#. But the most amazing thing is, that he actually stayed in pitch with them. Since we didn't have much time for fine tuning, so I just forced him to sing instead of auto tuning him. We tried it quickly, but since he didn't know the keys of the songs, we gave it up after like 10 minutes because we were short on time.
Then at some point he calls his producer who made the beat and the producer said to sing it more agressively (or as he put it "more hyped"). Okay, I was cool with that. I asked him to sing it more agressively and with more emotion. He sang it EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as before. Seventeen times. Well, we added a few emphasis tracks and after that he called the producer again, and he wasn't satisfied but wanted it to be more mellow (or has he put it "harmonized").
Well, I tried to guide him that if he wants to sing it in harmonies, he should sing it a third or fifth above the original pitch and sang him an example. Well, he sang it the first time from the same pitch as the original for reference, then I said, sing it higher. He constantly sang it EXACTLY AT THE SAME PITCH as previously, only louder. I repeated to say "higher" about 15 times, then I gave up. He just didn't have the range for it or then he just was tone deaf.
Well, after we had wasted like about 65% of the time to do the one chorus, I did the thing what a good professional engineer would do; Rather make 2 songs sound good than make 5 sound like absolute horseshit. We did his verse for the next song, which was more in his territory and we got it done in about 45 minutes.
Even though I had so bad preconseption about the session, I decided to still be pro. We did a quick mic shootout between mics and then after we both had decided the best mic, we proceeded to setup the chain for the vocals. The final chain was Neumann U87 to Avalon preamp to Distressor, and it sounded pretty good for a 7500€ signalchain. I only added a bit of reverb and chorus to the vocals ITB.
Now I'm at a bar.
We had 4 hours booked, from which about 1 hour took for setup, tear down, bounces and backups. He was optimistic and brought in 5 beat tracks to sing in those 3 hours and he wanted it to sound pro. The beats weren't half bad, but he didn't make them tho.
We started with that song that he told that he is only singing the chorus for the song, which was fine by me. The guy was a rapper, but he was ordered to sing a melodic line for a song. But he was as multidimensional singer as Steven Seagals face. His entire vocal range was THREE(3) notes; A#, B and C#. But the most amazing thing is, that he actually stayed in pitch with them. Since we didn't have much time for fine tuning, so I just forced him to sing instead of auto tuning him. We tried it quickly, but since he didn't know the keys of the songs, we gave it up after like 10 minutes because we were short on time.
Then at some point he calls his producer who made the beat and the producer said to sing it more agressively (or as he put it "more hyped"). Okay, I was cool with that. I asked him to sing it more agressively and with more emotion. He sang it EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as before. Seventeen times. Well, we added a few emphasis tracks and after that he called the producer again, and he wasn't satisfied but wanted it to be more mellow (or has he put it "harmonized").
Well, I tried to guide him that if he wants to sing it in harmonies, he should sing it a third or fifth above the original pitch and sang him an example. Well, he sang it the first time from the same pitch as the original for reference, then I said, sing it higher. He constantly sang it EXACTLY AT THE SAME PITCH as previously, only louder. I repeated to say "higher" about 15 times, then I gave up. He just didn't have the range for it or then he just was tone deaf.
Well, after we had wasted like about 65% of the time to do the one chorus, I did the thing what a good professional engineer would do; Rather make 2 songs sound good than make 5 sound like absolute horseshit. We did his verse for the next song, which was more in his territory and we got it done in about 45 minutes.
Even though I had so bad preconseption about the session, I decided to still be pro. We did a quick mic shootout between mics and then after we both had decided the best mic, we proceeded to setup the chain for the vocals. The final chain was Neumann U87 to Avalon preamp to Distressor, and it sounded pretty good for a 7500€ signalchain. I only added a bit of reverb and chorus to the vocals ITB.
Now I'm at a bar.
