I learned a tremendous lesson about recording vocals at the Michael Wagener Recording Workshop. Our singer was great! She had the best pitch I had ever heard and she was just a talented human being. It was a pleasure to watch her and Wagener work. Well, she was singing and she did a great job, but the song just wasn't the same. We were covering Skid Row's “18 and a Life” which is off the first Skid Row album which Wagener produced.

Anyway, I've always been a big fan of the song. I remember watching Dial MTV when I was a 9 year old kid and seeing all the hair band videos. This song was part of my upbringing.  This song was one of the reasons why I got into audio recording in the first place.

Back to the recording. The vocal take was pretty damn amazing, but the song just wasn't as effective as I remember it being. I couldn't quite place it. Then Wagener told us about what he calls the “over the top” track where he would record a take with the singer acting stupid. Make the singer do a take like Macho Man Randy Savage. Make them do a take imitating King Diamond or whatever. Basically, the idea was to take the most intense words and use these extremely over the top vocals in the real take.

I thought this was a pretty silly idea until Wagener pointed out specific words that he had used in the original version with Sebastian Bach. It was clear as day. When you listen to 18 and a Life, it's obvious that those words were comped in from a take that was ridiculously over the top. Now, of course, some of that was acceptable because of the times, but the concept still remains true today. VOCALS NEED TO BE OVER THE TOP!!

This doesn't mean that vocals should always be loud and aggressive. It means that vocals should be over-intense. A sad song should make you feel like you just cut your weiner off. An angry song should sound like Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. A boring song should make you feel the paint dry. It's up to the producer to squeeze this out of the singer.

I wish I could get other bands to understand. A song is NOTHING but emotion. This is why I hate when people play me a riff and say, “What do you think?”. I always answer, “Make it a song and I'll tell you”. Take that possibly intriguing piece of music and slobber some mega emotion all over it and you'll have something great.

A singer should walk into a recording studio thinking that he is about to create something great that will make girls cry or girls smile or girls get naked. (Even if the singer is a girl!! ha ha The last thing I want a song to do is make other dude's get naked). The singer should not be worried about some sort of standard that he has to live up to. I don't mean to abuse autotune, but if I've got a gut wrenching performance with some tuning issues, guess what! I'm going to start drawing lines!! That's what autotune was designed for.

Conclusion

Listen to any song you like. I mean ANY song that you like. You will find that the singer is really pushing and really overdoing it. The singer is NOT just singing like you were taught in elementary school music class. The singer will have something to say. If you have something to say, say it! If you don't, then don't waste an audio engineer's time.