It's the actual recording of the vocal that is the most boring thing you'll ever do in your life.
I do most of my vocals - aside from a couple of little one-shot vocal samples. I record everything into the Saffire with an SM58 then scratch it with loads of plug-ins. I don't do much vocoding to be honest. All my vocals are usually done with Melodyne and a ton of other plug-ins to make it sound weird.
I have my own studio that I sing in.
But when I record my next studio album, of course I'll do the lead vocals.
If you're working with a producer like Rick Rubin or whatever, you sing each line probably 30 different ways. Each time, they're like, 'Can you try it this way? Can you try it that way?' That's each line in the song, for each song.
When I've produced a song, I try to record a vocal over it, and sometimes it becomes really hard. Sometimes I've already said a lot that I want to say within the production. The vocal is just adding to it, rather than it being a song.
I have a tape recorder, and I just sing into it. I like to write that way. Sometimes I'll just get melodic ideas, and then I'll go home and sit down and add the lyrics. Or sometimes I'll get a lyric idea that I love. Usually it's pretty combined. Usually I get some kind of a lyrical concept and a melody and work with that.
It was fun trying to use a few different voices for the vocal track on 'Country Heroes.'
I always layer my vocals a lot. I sing a minimum of three layers of the same line every time, and then it's always one or two or sometimes even more harmonies.
I started singing by default, I think. Because there was a guy in the group that thought the group wasn't going to ever be anything. And I was getting ready to record, and I'd never recorded my voice. It was always other people that I featured because I thought they did a much better job.
Singing and playing live can be difficult. Like, in the studio, I would record either the music track first or the vocal first. I don't necessarily do them together.
I can do some vocals in England; I can come across to LA You can do various versions - replace this, replace that. You can use software that almost makes the record for you.
As a producer, when I'm trying to make something soft, I start with a slow tempo. Then after that, it would be straight to acoustic guitar and vocals, or I'm going to go strings and just piano.
The original vocals had an awful lot of work put into them at the time, and I wasn't really sure that I could better them - I don't know if I have bettered them.
My dad got me the same mic I use on everything now - this $200 mic from Guitar Center.
At the age of 15, I bought a USB microphone on a trip to the United States with my family, and that was my first recording studio.
The vocals are the very last thing I do. So, it's kinda the opposite: with country. it's singing and guitar first, but with rock, I worry about the riff and music, vocals last.
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. But while I'm doing vocal in a studio, I can't stand it.
Most records, you build from the drums and bass up. This one, we started with the vocals in Nashville and recorded them live with just the guitars and tried to make that complete and lovely-sounding without any adornment at all. I really wanted to get something with the vocal that I've never gotten before Armchair Apocrypha.
I usually prepare a track and then I work with the artist when it's time to do the vocals.
T Bone is genius. The way they've recorded my voice and the instrumentation to these songs is really quite extraordinary.
Getting comfortable again and being in a vocal booth on the opposite end of the spectrum, when you're normally the one tracking the vocals, is kind of scary.
To be fair, I did come out of nowhere. 'Ghost' was the first song I ever did in a studio, my first time ever cutting a professional vocal.
You go in and record and sing them some and you go back in and rerecord and sing them some more. That's kind of how I did this album [The Art of Elegance].
I normally work like a vampire. Around 8 to 9 P.M., what I call 'the spirits' actually show up, and then I just go in the booth and scream on top of a track. I only sing on the mic. I don't sit down and write anything.
