“The key is learning to describe the gap – or difference – between your story and the other person’s story.”
— Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, Difficult Conversations
In music production, the singer can walk back into the control room sure that the last take was the one.
The producer heard the same take and is just as certain that two of the notes in the chorus were flat.
They're both telling a story, and nobody has played back the recording yet.
The Starting Point
Every argument about a vocal take has at least three stories in it.
There's the singer's story, there's the producer's story, and there's the third story: the one somebody with no stake in it would tell after hearing the playback.
The first two usually come with blame attached, but the third one only describes what's on the timeline.
Most of the fights we have in the studio are two people defending the first two stories.
The Invitation
Before we argue about a take, play it back and say only what we hear now.
Skip “good” and “bad”, and stick to things we can point at: the second line of the chorus lands under the note, and the breath before the bridge is louder than the word after it.
Then ask the singer what they heard, and write it down next to our list.
The gap between the two lists is the conversation we need to have.
The Test
Take a vocal we've already argued about, and open it in a pitch correction plugin or app like Melodyne.
Look at where the notes really sit, and compare that with where each of us remembered them.
Both stories are often partly right: the take is a little flat in two places, and it's also the take with the most feeling in it.
If the editor shows something neither of us heard, that's the third story, and it's usually the part worth fixing.
The Guidepost
The recording playback is the closest thing a studio has to a neutral person in the room.
When we start from what it shows, nobody has to defend their ears or their talent.
The feelings are still in the room, but they're about the song now instead of about each other.
A singer who feels heard usually sings the next take better than a singer who feels corrected.
The Change
Change what we say after a take.
Instead of telling the singer what was wrong, start with what we both heard, and then what each of us heard differently.
Something like: “We both liked the energy in the first verse; I heard the chorus as being a little off, and you heard it as the best one yet, so let's listen to that chorus again together.”
Then decide together whether to fix it, keep it or sing it again.
Pro Tip: Record every pass into Take Lanes in Ableton Live (or playlists in Pro Tools), so we have a bunch of potential magic to choose from. Keep it to a manageable number of takes.
The Return
The more often we start from the third story, the less often it turns into arguments.
Singers come back to the producers who listened to them, and producers get stronger ears from hearing what other people hear.
That's usually the difference between a studio singers avoid and a studio they book again.
The next time you and a singer disagree about a take, instead of asking: “Who's right?”
Ask: “What does the playback say?”
Pro Tip: When friends and family drop by, ask what they think. They hear with consumer ears. They don't know anything about mics or EQ.
Free Ableton Live Course and Music Production Resources
Song of the Week 🎧
Lauryn Hill — "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You"
|
Listen to how loose the vocal is on this one; Lauryn Hill sings it like she's in the room with you.
Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio wrote this song for Frankie Valli, and in 1967, his version went to number two on the Billboard Hot 100. It was his biggest solo hit until "My Eyes Adored You" went to number one in 1975.
Hill recorded her version in 1997, while she was pregnant with her first child. It was in the film Conspiracy Theory that year, but it wasn't on the soundtrack, and her label never released it as a single. It ended up as a hidden track on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1998. A DJ at KMEL in San Francisco put it on a CD and started playing it, and other stations followed. In 1999, it was nominated for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the Grammys, the first hidden track ever nominated for a Grammy.
A great song. Her label's story was that it wasn't a single; the radio stations and the listeners told a different one.
YouTube Wisdom of the Week 📚
How to Handle Difficult Conversations (Sheila Heen, Empathy at the Table)
|
Difficult Conversations — Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen
Heen teaches at Harvard Law School, and she wrote Difficult Conversations with Douglas Stone and Bruce Patton. The book argues that every hard conversation is really three conversations: what happened, the feelings, and what it says about who we are. Its way in is the third story, the one an impartial observer, like a mediator, would tell, and it starts by describing the gap between your story and the other person's story. In a session, that means starting the talk-back with what's on the playback before anyone says who was wrong.
Plugin of the Week 🔌
Melodyne shows a vocal as notes instead of waveforms, and each note is a blob you can grab. You can change the pitch, vibrato, volume, sibilants, length, timing and formants of each note, and it runs inside your DAW through ARA or as a plug-in; the entry edition, Essential, covers pitch and timing. Open the take you and the singer argued about, look at where the chorus notes really sit, and A/B any fix against the untouched take; sometimes the note we were sure was flat is right on the line. It's the third person in the control room: it shows what was sung, not what anyone remembers singing.
Free Plugin of the Week 🆓
A free automatic tuning plugin for vocals and other instruments that play one note at a time, with formant shift and stereo widening built in. Put it on a backing vocal, keep the depth low, and A/B it against the dry track. MeldaProduction gives it away in its free effects bundle, MFreeFXBundle.
Unsolicited life advice for music makers
Responses