Hi Stoner Bill,Lose the autotune!!!
I wanna hear it without the autotune because it could have some substance to it. Even if you can't sing, it's still better to sound out of tune rather than autotuned.
Obviously the engineer who worked on that track did some pitch correction because this is final release record but there's not really all that much.
"Fire them!" Hahaha I can't even - too funny! Good sense of humor. Even so, I couldn't imagine life without an audio engineer...I remember the first time...and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 50th time I tried to understand how to EQ and compress effectively...and then somehow connect all this with side-chain bussed reverbs and delays...I felt like...I was going insane. Plus the number of times you have to re-listen to the same song to do that job...geez haha shout out to all the engineers out there who have the tolerance for that!Fire them! LOL Don't do that I'm kidding!
I'm just preferential to raw vocal talent without any modifications (I could just be closed minded). In all honesty though, the only time I've really accepted ANY autotune on vocals is Akon and Young Jeezy's "Put On", and it took a long time for me to get used to Akon's... I could tell there was talent in your voice but I'm just not a fan of the sound autotune makes on vocals. For me personally, it sticks out no matter how little is used.
Engineering is... well... it's one of those things that the only way to really understand it is by doing it over and over and OVER and... well yeah. Hell, I still feel like I'm guessing half the time. Trial and Error is a B* but that's the only real way to learn. Pick up a few tricks, apply them, and then hope you come across somebody, or something, that can point out how it isn't at the level it should be and what needs to be changed. Then the trouble of going back to your earlier projects and remastering them... finding new better ways to do things... re-remaster... it does get daunting even for engineers but that's where you gotta have a passion for it.
My girl doesn't sit around me for too long when I'm making music mainly because she can't listen to the same thing repeatedly for all that long. Play it back, change one note, play it back, change two notes, play it back...
I don't think I would have a problem with AT if it weren't for everyone using it... it just makes everyone sound the same... Half the time I don't know if I'm listening to Kyle, Lil Yachty, or a new T-Pain... I do however get using for effect (i.e. "Put On' by Young Jeezy, or to flare up a segment of the lyrics that need the most attention)... but for the whole thing? One of the "rules" for hip-hop is that the music has to change-up. I feel that the vocals should also adhere to the same respect.
I used to think the same way about Trap music, and to my surprise, it hit the point that producers start spinning it different ways. I have the same hopes for AT to do the same... Hell, I'll use AT if it hits that point. But at the moment I can't really give it much credit.
Interesting you say this. Fetty Wap does this for me too. Now, Fetty can sing to be honest, he really can, but on record you can tell he's not thinking about pitching or technique at all he's just going for full energy and it's so palpable. Yeah once you find the right groove you can make it work.As for live performance... that all depends on the energy coming from the artist. For example, Serj Tankian from System of a Down, (and this bleeds into my point on out of tune vocals) has a HORRIBLE voice when he's live. But the energy he brings is just astounding. As far as him being completely out of tune... SOAD is a classic case of changing the music to work with the vocalist to tie everything together. Put him on anything else and it would sound pretty trashy, but with SOAD, his vocal style just fit perfectly.
He also I think is responsible for many artists who have since broken through like Lady Gaga way back when so I think he's collecting a lot of royalty checks...and just chillin' out. Pretty sure he was doing some charity work with bringing light back to Africa too but for sure his sound has been missed.And I think Akon is too wrapped up in the industry to really release anything much as an artist lol. xD~~
Thanks for the feedback. Pretty cool how many points we've touched on in this discussion. With the beat do you think the beat is too overpowering relative to the vocal? Should the vocals have been more in your face in your opinion or was the balance where it needed to be for you? With regards to the freestyle comment, do you mean freestyling over top of the chorus and panning these things all over the place to create energy or did you mean literally replacing the second chorus with completely new lyrics?On a different note... I've listened to this song about four times now (ignoring the AT of course) and the beat is definitely on point. There is heart in the lyrics. As an R&B track it's got everything it needs. I think it could benefit from a freestyle verse on the second chorus to sink the power in (pulling a page from the early 2000's). In today's market, you need to get a crew behind you and push the promotion on this, and it could probably hit the charts fairly decently... Even though I don't like AT, I'll spread it!
When you say little being said are you speaking literally in terms of the amount of words jammed into the chorus or do you mean in terms of substance/depth as in little being said in terms of the importance of the song theme? Also from what I'm understanding you do not see the value of beats cutting out and silence in R&B songs to build tension or do a climax? Or just for a switch up?For a song like this you don't want to cut out the chorus. Filling in the blanks is more suited towards songs where there is little being said in the chorus but needs to be spread out for 'x' amount of bars. Which is why I said only for the second chorus. I personally believe dead air should be used very sparingly. Like in Jazz, moments of silence are used to force the audience to process the information before continuing the story. In EDM genres, the dead air is intentional to cause anticipation. In R&B, Rap, Country, and Rock, there really shouldn't be dead air. Instead artists use rests for those purposes. Most genres stem from Blues and Classical which have very few rules that can actually be broken effectively.
Definitely understand this I know a bit about the 12-bar blues concept from my music background. Trap is a sub-genre of Hip-Hop not R&B though...but you're saying it follows R&B rules of being 4/4 by 3/4? Also from an artist perspective, is it that important to keep this in mind or is it more for the producer to be knowledgeable of that?Now take what makes a song fit a certain genre. R&B comes from Blues. So for it to be an R&B(Rhythm and Blues) song, each bar is done to a 4/4 count beat but to a 3/4 count rhythm causing every 12th count to match up. This is what separates Blues from Jazz(4/4 by 4/4). Trap generally follows this tone automatically which is why it has become so popular for modern R&B.
Spoken word would imply something is more like slam poetry though would it not? As in the rhyme scheme becomes less important whereas in rap for the most prat there is still rhyming? This has been my understanding...you would disagree?The lyrical content plays a part in it, though very small, but the VOCAL STYLE doesn't change the style of music. I've heard all different vocal styles cross into other genres. I once heard a person roaring on a Boom Bap song. It's still Boom Bap. Check out Ice-T's band Body Count. It's a Metal group... Ice-T is still rapping in their songs. Granted he's not "speed rapping" or "flow rapping", but he's not singing either. So putting a freestyle on an R&B song doesn't make it a rap. It just makes that portion of the song a "spoken word" verse.
This makes sense for sure. I think that's why we have a lot of self-proclaimed "genreless" artists out there now because they are constantly blurring the line between singing and rapping so you cannot really tell if X artist is really a singer or really a rapper...I think it's good for music...less boxes to confine ourselves to the better in my books.When you break down what makes a vocal style fit into a certain genre is all about the criteria it meets. Prime example: Poetry vs. Rapping. keeping a rhyme scheme while speaking doesn't automatically make it a 'rap'. In the same regard, speaking on beat without a rhyme scheme doesn't make it 'not rap'. If you listen to Bizzy Bone, he sings a lot. By paraphrased definition, singing is elongating words into a melodic form. That doesn't mean you can't sing and rap simultaneously.
This is kind of harkens back to the prior point. Is it really that bad that artists would rather not be confined to a box? I understand that in theory one might say to be honest X artist is really a hip-hop artist...just a sub-genre of hip-hop artist...but if an artist wants to make up their own genre like Swavey, trapsoul, EDM-infused hip-hop, or something...if that's what gives them the drive to innovate creatively, the idea that they are so unique even in reality they truly are just a subgenre but not willing to acknowledge that, then in my opinion I think it's still good because the music and creativity is more important than the label that may otherwise make an artist feel like they are just "one of the rest"...I don't know if that makes sense but basically I'm saying here that if an artist would rather call themselves something other than what they really are by textbook definition because it helps their ego feel better...enough to inspire increased creativity...it's good to me.The problem with music these days, and it doesn't matter the genre, is that there are so many artists coming out that want to label themselves as something different (usually for publicity) than what they actually are. So there are so many different genres that shouldn't exist, but they do. Dubstep being one of them. Dubstep has been around since the 80's, it was just called something different. There was only one thing that separated it from techno(which was what EDM was called before dubstep) was a particular sound being used. Trap, in itself a genre all in it's own, because it follows a different schematic than general hip hop. Since it was derived from hip hop, it's a sub-genre of hip hop. It's the same correlation between R&B and Blues. R&B has the time signatures of blues (4/4) but at the same the has the rhythmic patterns of hip hop (3/4).
I used to try to write from verse 1 to the end in a linear fashion but I find, like you, that if I do that...I end up just writing through and never really getting a solid hook because I just keep writing...linearly...like a poem, rather than a song that in most instances has a recurring section (hook) because in reality, stories should be linear, and we're trying to tell stories, but in songs of today, the readers of our stories (listeners) do expect that recurring theme to come back every 45 seconds or so to keep them with us. So I write hooks first now to say "this is the core of what I'm saying...if you don't pay attention to anything I'm saying in the verse at least pay attention to this" haha...that's why often my choruses of now I will opt to just repeat a phrase over and over...such as "You don't love me"...so by the end just maybe the point will get across...that someone doesn't love this person...and they're not happy about it from the sounds of it lolI had a point to all this but I got lost in thought LOL.
I generally have the opposite problem when writing. I'm a poet so I'm not very good with hooks. Or chorus' for that matter. So I'll usually just rip out part of one of the verses, use it for the hook/chorus, then rewrite that section of the verse.