No singer - no problem!

I love singing in the shower, in the car or even on the occasional Karaoke night with friends but unfortunately, I typically sound more like a choking black Raven than the songbird I’d love to sound like. I wasn’t born with a great v

oice and even though I can sing in key most of the time and create a melody for my songs I do feel my vocal abilities limit me as a songwriter and producer. To solution this challenge, lately I have been writing and producing demo’s with instruments as the vocal melody and there are a few reasons why I like this idea as a songwriter and producer.

• For most of my songs that I write solo I have been laying down the basic idea and structural melody with my vocals but then when it comes to making the demo in my DAW I will use a piano or dobro as the vocal melody and “top line”. I use midi and a VST and program the melody notes in my DAW and this allows me to not only hear the melody but also SEE the melody in the midi notes. At this point now with an amazing singer at my fingertips (the piano or dobro) I can tweak the melody and add inflection’s, ghost notes, passing notes, sustained and cool rhythmic changes and even unique harmonies with other piano notes. What is also great is I can SEE the melody line so I can try and avoid being too repetitive in certain sections or add notes to go higher or lower in the key range.

• Another great aspect of using this strategy is the ability to change your melody on the spot and go back and change it again and again as the song production evolves. There is really no logistical challenges of having a singer around and doing multiple takes as your “virtual singer” is always around ready to be changed or tweaked when you desire. Basically it gives the producer the ability to “try” lots of ideas to make the melody the best it can be.

• As the song gets produced with the instrumental top line melody a producer can turn off and on the other instruments in the production and really see and hear how they blend with the melody. Yes this can be done with a vocalist but once the vocals are laid down it's much harder to change the melody line if required.

• I feel that there may be some benefits to these type of demo’s when pitching to professional artists for cuts as they won’t hear another singers bias and may be able to hear their own voice in the song easier. To add more depth to the presentation of the demo I have been making lyric videos to go along with the demo so a listener can read the lyrics as the instrumental melody is played.

• Some professional examples of this is the Bluegrass “Pickin’ on Series” where they cover pop songs with bluegrass instruments and in many of the songs they use a dobro, piano, fiddle/violin or acoustic guitar as the melody and top line instrument.

• The example video I provided is of a working demo of a song I wrote called “This Kinda Good”. The midi programmed melody notes played by a piano are in red and as you can see you really can visualize the melody in certain sections and it becomes very easy to tweak and change if the song requires it.

As we all know there are so many ways to create and produce great songs and this is just one more idea and tool for the toolbox that can help us all write the best song we can.

Stay in tune and in touch and keep on writing and producing!

Cheers,

Kent