Singer selection experiences
 

Hi,

Sorry for a bit OT, but I think this is the forum where I could ask something from more experienced colleagues about the girl singer casting:

Our band made some songs with a singer girl some months ago. The girl was not an educated singer, but sings for ages and she has a very distinctive character. However, it depends on different songs: sometimes her voice fits well into the current song, sometimes not. Songs are written for her voice range of course.

So we decided to search for new voices for different songs and annouanced a singer selection for girls. The musical genre is dance music.

The selection had two rounds:

* at the first round is to filter the girls with no voice, or who does not have ear for music, etc. This time they had to sing something they liked, they usually sing, etc. It was usually within 20 minutes.

* Who were selected by the results of the first round, they were invited a week later to a second round, where they had to sing one of our song, which was previously sang by our original singer and sounded great.

We provided 3-4 hours to learn the verse-refrain and to record a huge amount of takes at each girl. All girls had similar backgound in singing, some learn it in school, others sing very often in karaoke bars, etc.

The result is quite strange: nearly every girl, who prodcued well (sometimes amazingly) at the first round, failed at the second round. Who sung with great emotions and feeling at the first round, performed flat and often out-of-tune at the second round.

As we did not girl singer selection before, I would have some question:

1. The singer selection method above should work? If not, what should work?

2. Why sometimes girls has feeling in their voice at one track (what they know well) and no feeling at all at a track what they do not know at all?

3. Even professional singers were sometimes not able to add the "touch" to the song, which was well performed by our curent singer.
Should we leave her not to follow our original singer, but to creatively create a vocal that suits to her voice?

4. If somebody sings a song for ages and LEARNS all the feeling and sighs of a song, performint it well can be misleading when changing to a never heard song?

Real experiences are welcome!

greetz,
bacizone

the only times ive asked for a vocalist to add something to a track, ive never asked them to sing something i want. also ive never got them to sing something of somebody elses (for example a song they are currently listening to)..i usually get them to sing anything they want as long as it completely original!

Well, I think the key to getting good vocals is pretty much that the vocalist truly loves the song that he or she is singing. I've worked with a few vocalists over the years, but when I actually found a guy who was into the same music as I was we simply formed a duo. While he has his limitations as a vocalist, I think we nearly always get excellent results because you can clearly hear that this guy LOVES the tracks. With some pop tracks, you can almost hear if it is a "hired" vocalist - the vocals sound pro, because the vocalist can sing, but it is devoid of any true emotion, which IMO is vital for a strong impression.

You can listen to the stuff I do with the guy in mention here: http://blue-swan.mymusic.dk - whether or not you like the music, you can tell that the singer DOES like it! :D

Blueswan hit the nail on the head. The girls sing well in the first round because they have chosen the song, obviously must like it and therefore put more feeling into it. My advice though would be to keep auditioning singers because sooner or later you must find one that suits your music. They must be really into the music itself and not just singing because they like their own voice.

Another thing that you're probably overlooking is the fact that you had heard the second song so many times with your original singer....There were times when she was out of pitch, too (everyone goes out a little bit, here and there, just like drummers are 'humanly' out of time); but your ears become accustomed to hearing it. If you wanted to have them sing something that wasn't theirs, what I would suggest is write one verse and one chorus of a new song....it wouldn't take too long to scratch something like that out. That way, you're not internally biased to how the song should sound, and would be listening more to the girl than perhaps you were before.......