The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Some suggestions for RxRx (and anybody else who's in a skill/creative rut). Please add your own ideas, but don't be an ass! There's other places for that.

Sing (or 'talk') using your lungs. Say it like you mean it. Don't be shy. Don't be weak. Weak sucks. Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody. Be forcefull. Be convincing. Practice. Stand up when you record into a mic. Do a dramatic reading from a book with dialog for practice. Sing (or 'talk') like you're onstage. You are. Tell a story. Be in the story. Be an actor. Conflict, resolution. Make us care. Even a little bit. Be someone else. Use dynamics. Be loud, be soft. Project your voice. Don't overload the signal chain. Learn to back off from the mic when you get loud. Use emotion. Use your voice like an instrument. Move a lot of air through your vocal cords, even when you are not yelling. This helps control your pitch. Change pitch. Up. Down. Yell. Scream. Cry. Laugh. Shout. Whisper. Try everything. Try effects on the vocal like reverb, chorus, flange, rotary, telephone, phaser, tube overdrive. Sparingly. Save a clean copy of the vocals, without effects. Do multiple takes. Listen to them through speakers. With different effects.

Use drums as the timekeeper. Then make them interesting by themselves. Don't have the same exact groove thoughout the whole song. Bend it. Change it. Then come back to it. Or not. Evolve the groove. If the rest of the instruments relax or take a break, have the groove get a little more interesting. Use bass as a connector between timekeeping and key reinforcement. And groove reinforcement. Spread the instruments out in the frequency spectrum. Some low. Some high. Leave room in the middle for voice. Always have something going on besides drums. Or almost always. Don't bore your audience. You will always be the last person to get bored with your own music. Everybody else gets bored sooner. Guaranteed. Don't let them get bored. Keep the song shorter than you really want it. Write more than you will use. Use the best parts and leave out the weaker parts. Always have at least 2 different parts in a song. 3 is better. If you don't have an extra interesting part to throw in, use the same chords but change the order. Or move everything up a whole step, two whole steps, a fifth, whatever. Do the chords in reverse order. Turn two different songs into one. Three different songs. Surprise us.

Synchonize utterances with the beat. But not at the extreme of sounding mechanical. Flow. Hold/sustain vowel and 'hard' consonent sounds here and there. Sheeeeee... bannnngggs... haaaarrrd. Variation is important. If you repeat something, do it differently each time. Or just one time. Unexpectedly. Play an instrument in the vocal melody and use it as the timing for when you record your voice. Then mute the instrument. Or not. But don't cover up your voice. Learn, understand, and develop unison, harmony, and counterpoint in melody. For vocals. For instruments.

Write early. Write often. Record stuff before you know what you want to do. Save it for later. Learn to play an acoustic instrument. Something simple like bongos. Harmonica. Get a book. Practice.

Learn how to use all the features of your recording hardware/software of choice. Get a book or read the manual. Look online for tips.

Copy the style of some favorite artists then tweak it to your satisfaction. Do a cover. Make it shorter, or longer with new parts. And listen to the constructive things your audience says -- and try some of them! None of this has anything to do with genre or musical style -- it's the tools I'm talking about.

Good luck!

I'm printing this and keeping it near for reference. Seriously...good stuff.

Regarding singing using your lungs: imagine you're actually singing from your stomach and try filling your abdomen with as much air as possible. I've also discovered that sometimes you can belt something out and it may sound terrible as your doing it, but sound great in the playback, so don't be shy. A lot of times a weak falsetto can be replaced with singing the part louder than you normally would. It feels awkward to yell while your recording in a silent room with headphones on sometimes, but listen to a lot of your favorite recordings and you'll probably hear people shouting a lot more than you realize. You just don't notice because the compression keeps the vocal volume in check.

Practice lots. At least a couple of hours a day, every day. That's how I got to be so good at sex.

Sick and Wrong wrote:Always have at least 2 different parts in a song. 3 is better.

Most of the rest of your advice is harmless enough, but this one is just plain wrong. Almost any one-part Bob Dylan song kicks the ass of any unnecessary-bridge Bon Jovi song all the way to hell and back. The way to make songs more interesting is not to keep adding parts, it's to make sure that all the parts that you have in the song sound interesting and complete when taken as a whole unit.

I would rephrase it to be something more like "If you're not talented enough to write a one part song that blows people away, try to make up for it by having two or more pretty good parts. That way people will be distracted and not focus entirely on how no one part isn't that amazing."

I think Rone should continue to be Rone. He can improve if he wants to, but I think it is more important for him to make music he likes than music we like. And if he's just making a song for fun, he shouldn't have to spend all day trying different techniques to get every line perfect for you bastards.

bzl wrote:Practice lots. At least a couple of hours a day, every day. That's how I got to be so good at sex.

And boy howdy.

erik wrote:

Sick and Wrong wrote:Always have at least 2 different parts in a song. 3 is better.

"...The way to make songs more interesting is not to keep adding parts, it's to make sure that all the parts that you have in the song sound interesting and complete when taken as a whole unit."

I agree that just adding parts doesn't necessarily make a song better. I was using the term 'parts' in a simplistic way, referring to verse, refrain, break, etc. Changes in a song, IMO, usually help make it more interesting. I can't think of a Dylan or Beatles song, for instance, that has only one chord sequence repeating throughout. But writing additional 'parts' beyond the standard in/V/V/R/V/R/end can help an aspiring songwriter learn how to connect (even slightly) different musical ideas together in a (hopefully) cohesive way. As an exercise towards developing one's craft it may help. Perhaps saying "Always... " is going too far.

Denyer wrote:I think Rone should continue to be Rone. He can improve if he wants to, but I think it is more important for him to make music he likes than music we like. And if he's just making a song for fun, he shouldn't have to spend all day trying different techniques to get every line perfect for you bastards.

If Rone is satisfied with his music, then of course he may well ignore these suggestions. Art is subjective, and beauty is in the ear of the listener, or, more importantly, the artist. But I'd rather have a workshop full of tools that I don't use than have only a hammer when I need a drill. This is meant to be a start. And I'm not challenging him to use any of this... just read it.

Sick and Wrong wrote:I agree that just adding parts doesn't necessarily make a song better. I was using the term 'parts' in a simplistic way, referring to verse, refrain, break, etc. Changes in a song, IMO, usually help make it more interesting. I can't think of a Dylan or Beatles song, for instance, that has only one chord sequence repeating throughout. But writing additional 'parts' beyond the standard in/V/V/R/V/R/end can help an aspiring songwriter learn how to connect (even slightly) different musical ideas together in a (hopefully) cohesive way. As an exercise towards developing one's craft it may help. Perhaps saying "Always... " is going too far.

Yeah, I was referring to "parts" in the same way. Most Dylan songs are Verse-Verse-Verse songs. One part. No choruses, no bridges.

One chord sequence repeating throughout is an effective technique used by lots of rap and funk bands, and by lots of rock bands aping the Pixies. "Gigantic" does not need a bridge.

Hoblit wrote:

bzl wrote:Practice lots. At least a couple of hours a day, every day. That's how I got to be so good at sex.

And boy howdy.

Remember, Hoblit, that was just practice!

kill_me_sarah wrote:It feels awkward to yell while your recording in a silent room with headphones on

Single best thing I did with singing was to take the headphones off one ear when singing so I could hear my voice in the room, not through the cans. I think I owe this to JB. Or Frankie. Thanks!

roymond wrote:Single best thing I did with singing was to take the headphones off one ear when singing so I could hear my voice in the room, not through the cans. I think I owe this to JB. Or Frankie. Thanks!

I think that's an advanced technique. I'd actually recommend the exact opposite (to non-experts, anyways): sing into loud headphones with your mike relatively low in the mix. You'll find yourself singing louder to compensate, which is good, and you won't be as self-conscious about yodeling into a silent room, which is also good.

bzl wrote:

roymond wrote:Single best thing I did with singing was to take the headphones off one ear when singing so I could hear my voice in the room, not through the cans.

I think that's an advanced technique. I'd actually recommend the exact opposite (to non-experts, anyways)

I'm a non-expert at best
It helps in keeping pitch (or in my case, hitting pitch). Hearing yourself lets you focus on your voice. I mean this was very quickly a no brainer. Try it, anyway.

I do both, depending on the occasion. What I was actually referring to was just the awkwardness that comes with yelling loudly in a room where people may hear you yelling loudly w/out the benefit of hearing the music you're yelling to.

Denyer wrote:I think Rone should continue to be Rone. He can improve if he wants to, but I think it is more important for him to make music he likes than music we like. And if he's just making a song for fun, he shouldn't have to spend all day trying different techniques to get every line perfect for you bastards.

Who are you and what have you done with Denyer?

kill_me_sarah wrote:yelling loudly in a room where people may hear you yelling loudly w/out the benefit of hearing the music you're yelling to.

I call that "fun".

roymond wrote:

kill_me_sarah wrote:yelling loudly in a room where people may hear you yelling loudly w/out the benefit of hearing the music you're yelling to.

I call that "fun".

Then you probably sound better doing it than I do