Stop singing. There’s nothing in your vocal chain that will substitute for a good performance. I can fix your pitch, I can fix your timing, but if the vocal doesn’t move me, there’s no such thing as auto-care.
Setting up a vocal chain is easy. Get yourself in a room without a lot of reflective surfaces. Keep away from walls and corners, point a directional mic at your piehole, and stay about this far away from it.
Use your best mic pre or interface, turn it down so it doesn’t turn red at the loudest bits, and then turn it down a little more than that. But before you start obsessing over EQ, compression, plugins you don’t understand, or techniques you’ve got to look up, and before you start worrying about hitting your notes or supporting your breath, I ask you to stop thinking of yourself as a singer and start thinking of yourself as a communicator. You’re not singing to a microphone.
You’re singing to me. Okay, and as your producer, I’m not going to ask you to gaze meaningfully into my eyes. That’s just weird.
But choose a target. It can be your cat, a picture of someone you care about. Picture a place that’s meaningful to you.
Tell it to furry. I don’t care. Douglas Adams writes, “The secret to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
You’ve got to forget that you’re falling. And if you want to be a better singer, you may have to forget your singing.” Vocal Kitchen starts soon, two instructors addressing vocal pedagogy, production, vocal engineering. They’re going to guide you through six classes, and you don’t need to be a vocalist.
You just need to want to work with vocals better. And if that sounds like someone who belongs in a Beat Kitchen class, please share this post with them.
