Today we were doing finishing touches on Elevenpoint's big project. In case you weren't aware, I've spent at least one day a week for the past year writing and arranging songs with these guys. The songs are intended for a wide audience with the core being modern rock / pop, but one of the goals was for my girlfriend who hates 90% of the music I enjoy to actually like this record.

Missed The Vocal Track

Anyway, I made a breakthrough today. I made a mistake. I had everything mic'd up (about as quickly and badly as you could get) since we were simply going through the song. Actually, the only reason I mic the band up at all is so we can go back later and critically evaluate drum fills, timing, or whatever. Well, I goofed up and ended up missing the vocal by setting the track to the wrong input. I didn't catch it early on as I didn't look at my screen so I just let the band finish playing the song.

Useless Song Without Vocals

This song is one of my favorite songs on the record. I have very high hopes for the song. Well, guess what. When the vocal was turned off (or missing in this case) this song was the most boring crap I had every seen (or heard). I couldn't stand to listen to it for 3 seconds because I was afraid that I would fall out of my chair from boredom. I couldn't believe just how dependent that song was on vocals. With vocals, one of my favorite tunes. Without vocals, manure times 1000!!! It's important to note that we wrote over 250 songs in that one year period, narrowed those down to 50, and then narrowed those down to 11. In other words, we feel strongly about this tune.

Why Most Band Screw Up Their Songwriting

While this doesn't apply to every genre of music, I've came to the conclusion that many bands screw up because they don't put enough pressure on their singer when it comes to the hooks of the songs. In other words, many bands think they can overcome shortfalls in either the singer's ability or the singer's melodies with cool guitar riffs and intricate playing. (That's about like saying you can cover up a crappy singer with reverb...YOU CAN'T!) While I certainly listen to a variety of music and there is room for riffage based metal or whatever from time to time, it's very difficult to beat out a song with an incredible vocal melody in my opinion. If a song is great, I couldn't care less what the guitar or whatever is doing. What, the guitar player is just using C or G.???...Why should I care? I'm not tabbing out the song, I'm enjoying it!!!! Maybe you should try it!!

Who's Your Favorite Guitar Player?

I was asked this when signing up for some website today. There was a day when I could rattle off 30 names before you could even blink. Well, times have changed. I guess I'm not really a guitar player anymore. (This past week, I've been a full time producer). The only answer I could think of was ?me?. Not because I'm an amazing player as that wasn't the question. If was going to give any guitar player $1,000,000 it would have been me. So I am my favorite guitar player. Seriously, I had no interest in answering FILL IN THE BLANK WITH YOUR FAVORITE GUITAR PLAYER. Anyway, it occurred to me that specialized world of guitar playing bores the living shit out of me these days because it has very little to do with music. In other words, I don't really give a damn what scale, chord, or trick you use to inspire me musically, just play the damn thing. MAKE ME FEEL SOMETHING!!!

Hiding The Guitar Player In Your For The Sake Of The Song

I must say that there are a ton of songs that I love that the guitar is an integral part of the song and no other instrument could possibly be as effective for that song. However, there are 10x as many songs that really don't matter what instrument you play. In other words, the instrument isn't all that important because the music that it's playing is a supporting role.

If you are having problems with your music not being as effective as you want it to be, maybe you should try putting more pressure on the vocalist in terms of singing and put more pressure on everyone to come up with great vocal melodies. You may find that writing a song that is totally useless without vocals is exactly what you are looking for.