Singer selection experiences

[Bacizone]

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