Vocalists Needed!

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chocolatechips
Push Comes to Shove
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Vocalists Needed!

Post by chocolatechips »

I'm interested in doing more Song Fight collaborations with vocalists where I write the music & melody and the vocalist provides the vocals. I'd like to work with male &/or female vocalists.

Lyrics? I could go both ways there. Maybe for some collaborations I'd write the entire song including the lyrics and just look for a pure vocalist ... but I'm also open to the idea of writing a song (with melody) and having a vocalist add their own lyrics (fitting the melody I've already written - I'd be OK with slight changes probably as long as the main idea were still there.)

In general I think I'd like to write the music first rather than trying to match a melody to prewritten lyrics as I find that to very difficult unless the lyrics are written with musical forethought (ie with syllable counts that make sense for a structured melody.) But I'd be willing to try to write to someone else's lyrics as long as I have the freedom to mold them a bit (and the collaborator could re-mold again when singing.)

Additional Instrumentation? I'm not totally opposed to having someone add something else musically (another guitar part... a guitar solo even... a trumpet solo. live drums would be exciting! whatever you play.) As long as it fits with the music I've written I would be OK with adding it. But that's not my main interest; the vocals are what I'm really looking for.

Harmonies? I would like to write some harmony parts as well, I would create guide parts in those scenarios. But I'm also OK/interested in having you write/sing/record your own harmony parts if that's something you're good at doing.

Multiple Singers? One thing that I think would be really neat is if I had multiple people sing on the same track ... either as a duet or as harmonies... I think it would be cool to hear different song fighters singing on the same track in this way.

Doubling? I like to use artificial doubling (by duplicating tracks and offsetting them with each other slightly) as I think it really makes the vocal sound pop. But if you like to do your own double tracking, that's cool - it'd probably be best to give me the tracks separately to mix back in but if you really like to have your doubled voice mixed in a certain way that's cool too.

Time? I would do my best to get the basic guide track done (including a final melody & chord progression) at least 3 days before the song is due to give the collaborator a chance to get the song down and record a good take, particularly if the collaborator is also writing the lyrics.

The big key here is that I'm interested in having vocalists who want to sing a melody I have written, I don't want to just create a backing track for a vocalist to create their own melody over. The interest I have in this type of collaboration is in working on my songwriting and having vocalist come in and make the song come alive in a way that can't happen otherwise.

So this is what I'd need from anyone who wanted to do this:

(1) The ability to record (in at least decent quality) a vocal (on its own track so I can mix it back in) that matches a melody I have written.

(2) Agreement to let me submit the track to SongFight as "The Chocolate Chips with/featuring YOUR NAME HERE" and to put it up on http://thechocolatechips.bandcamp.com/album/song-fight as a free download & up on YouTube (where I would include links to wherever you want in the description.)

(3) An OK to do some slight tuning with Melodyne if need be. I wouldn't do this in an obvious "Cher effect" type way, but in a transparent sort of way if needed - to make sure the melody is clear. If you're a great singer with good pitch then I wouldn't mess with it. I want a natural type sound that's the idea of this collab request! After all; if I wanted a weird robotic sound I would just do it my usual way.

What do you get out of it?

(1) Well I'm hoping this appeals to people who love to sing but who don't necessarily want to write a song themselves (or who maybe want to do this in addition to writing a song themselves.)

(2) Some slight attention for your own work - I don't exactly have a huge following but I do get some views on youtube etc and I'm hoping my songs would have a lot more appeal with good vocals. I would link to your URLs (just let me know what they are) in the youtube description and give you a shout-out on Twitter/Facebook.

(3) ?

(4) PROFIT!

~~~

Reading over this mountain of text it looks like I'm over explaining this whole thing, but I think it's quite difficult to find collaborators who are on the same page as far as what exactly each person is meant to contribute so I think it's a good idea to be upfront and clear with with I'm looking for so that only people who would be happy with this kind of collaboration contacts me because I don't want to waste anyone else's time (or my own!)
User avatar
chocolatechips
Push Comes to Shove
Posts: 301
Joined: Fri Sep 16, 2011 1:29 pm
Submitting as: The Chocolate Chips
Contact:

Re: Vocalists Needed!

Post by chocolatechips »

just letting folks know that I've already got a couple of responses here (direct messages) so I kind of feel like I need to go with people as they responded ... but I'm sure there will be more opportunities to work together in the future (like a song fight or two down the road) so ... yeah keep 'em (the messages) coming!
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