“Thoughts are the language of the brain. Feelings are the language of the body.”
— Dr. Joe Dispenza
Words have power. Thoughts have more power. Feelings have the most power.
The Starting Point
We can hear the state each take was recorded in.
Same singer, same mic, same words, and take fourteen is almost always worse than take two.
Nothing moved on the desk between them, and what changed is what the singer was feeling by take fourteen.
The tuner will not show us that, and neither will the meter.
The Invitation
The other move costs nothing and takes about a minute.
Tell the singer what is already working before we ask them for anything.
Build the headphone mix so they want to sing to it, not so they can hear themselves over it.
Say the one sentence that puts them back inside the song, then get out of the way.
None of that is a plugin, and all of it ends up on the recording.
The Test
Linda Perry already ran this experiment for us.
Christina Aguilera sang “Beautiful” as a rough demo, and that rough demo is the vocal that went to radio.
She asked to sing it again properly, and Perry said no, because the song is supposed to be about imperfection and being vulnerable.
It reached number two on the Hot 100, went to number one in eleven countries, and won the 2004 Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
The tidy version was never recorded.
The Guidepost
Tuning fixes a note and editing fixes a timing.
Neither one can put back the state the singer was in.
That's why a comp built from twenty takes often sounds worse than take three, because every join is a slightly different person.
The Change
Stop producing the take and start producing the state.
Ask what the song is actually about before asking for another pass.
Then give one instruction, and make it about the story rather than the pitch.
The take we want is usually one sentence away, and the sentence is rarely a technical one.
The Return
We already know which of our sessions had this, because those are the songs we still play.
The forced ones we only ever hear as a list of things we fixed.
The feeling in the room goes onto the recording, and it stays there.
During your next take, don’t ask:
“How do I get a better take?”
Ask:
“What do they need to feel?”
Free Ableton Live Course and Music Production Resources
Song of the Week 🎧
Christina Aguilera — "Beautiful"
Linda Perry kept the take Aguilera sang before she knew it counted, breaths and all. The words in that song are about what words do to a person, which is the whole point of this one.
YouTube Wisdom of the Week đź“š
Three Brains — Thinking to Doing to Being (Joe Dispenza)
You Are the Placebo — Joe Dispenza
Dispenza's practical bit, stripped of the mysticism: the body reacts to a rehearsed feeling much the way it reacts to the real thing. Rehearse the argument on the drive in and we arrive already in it, and that is the state the first take gets recorded in. It is worth knowing that before we blame the singer.
Plugin of the Week 🔌
M15 Distortion. Two valve stages that you feel before you hear. Push the pentode gently on a vocal bus and the take stops sounding like a recording.
Free Plugin of the Week 🆓
Free saturation and colour.
Unsolicited life advice for music makers
Responses