308: Two Backing Vocal Approaches Every Self-Recording Artist Needs To Know

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Episode show notes:

Most self-recording artists overcomplicate backing vocals, or ignore them completely, because they're having a hard time coming up with something interesting that really helps the song.

Both are mistakes.

Backing vocals and harmony layers can be the difference between a boring, amateur sounding chorus and one that hits. 

They make great lead vocals even stronger and give a chorus the lift that it needs.

In this episode, we break down two simple, powerful approaches to backing vocals that can completely transform your songs. And we're using real session examples you can actually hear and apply.

If you’ve ever felt like your chorus is missing something, this is probably it.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Does this vocal part need a harmony? And if so, how do I go about it? Do I sing above the lead vocal? Do I sing a harmony below the lead vocal? And you know, how do I come up with these? What are some approaches that would actually help my part stand out even more? Maybe you're trying to create a lift for the chorus, or you're trying to just support the lead vocal, make it a little thicker, or maybe, you know, something else you just have a feeling something's missing here, and you want to add additional harmony back or backing vocal layers. This is what we're going to talk about today on this episode. We're going to show you different approaches. We'll have audio examples prepared so you can listen to those. And then hopefully, next time you record vocals or you finish your arrangements, you have some ideas and some approaches that you can try to make your vocal arrangements even better because at the end of the day, that's what most people listen to. First, the vocal just matters a lot. And this is one of those episodes that will help you with that. My name is Benedict Tyne. I'm a mixing engineer. I run a mixing studio called Outback Recordings, and I also run the self-recordingband.com, where we help self-recording artists make better records from their jam spaces and home studios. We do that through our coaching program and also through this free podcast that you're listening to right now. We're on episode 308, which is every time I say this, it's kind of crazy to me for how long we've been going, and we're not stopping yet. Um, when I say we, uh, it means I'm not doing this by myself. I'm doing this with my amazing friend and co-host, Manel Espinosa Berenguer. Hello, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Hello, Benedict. I'm great. And as I always say, just in case you don't know me, my name is Manel Espinosa, and I'm a music producer and mixing engineer from Spain. Always ready to turn your demos into finished and lovely songs through a lovely process.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Yeah. Yeah. It's always the laugh and the year for me. Oh man. So happy to be here again with you. I'm excited because today you're gonna lead us through the episode. I have lots of audio examples prepared. Uh, you have prepared them. I have prepared them for the like technically for the recording of this episode, but you have prepared them. You're gonna walk us through these. And yeah, you've shown a couple times on like our group coaching calls inside of our program, the self-recording syndicate. You've shown that, you know, you know you absolutely know great ways to, you know, arrange tracks, make a song even better, uh, come up with additional layers and like all this nice production stuff. You do that with your artists as well all the time. So I'm excited to share some of that on the podcast today as well. So, yeah, walk us through what we're gonna be doing and what we're gonna be listening to.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Well, basically, we're going to look at two different approaches to arrange your backing vocals in your songs. Uh, we're gonna use a simplified approach because we're only gonna talk about two approaches, and there are many other ways in which you can classify the way you arrange vocals. But basically, we're gonna talk about first when you arrange the vocals in a way that the backing vocals are above the lead vocal. Above, when I when I say above, I mean in pitch, right? They are higher in pitch than the lead vocal. Uh, that leads to a backing vocal that is very upfront, very obvious, very powerful, right? Because when when we hear something that's higher in pitch, it's way easier to like make it stand out, right? You can you can always roll the volume off and stuff, but if it's higher in pitch, it's it always is gonna stand out more, basically. And then the the other approach is basically the opposite approach, which is having the vacuum vocals below the lead vocal in pitch, so that it works more like a pad or something that you know supports the lead vocal without having uh you know an important role, you know. Okay, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Okay, cool. So should we just dive in? Is there anything we need to explain? Um, I got lots of examples here, uh, but I let you do the structure for us so we can follow along.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Uh yeah, not really. I think we can explain it along the way. So we're gonna listen to two songs that I've been working on uh lately, my own songs. One of them has a lot of vocals and has like it's more based on the first approach, where basically almost every backing vocal is above the lead vocal. And then we're gonna uh listen to another song where which has the opposite approach basically. Alright. So so I guess let's start by listening to the full chorus of the first song, first song, which is called Sin Miedo.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Alright, so I I assume that the tracks you gave me are in the right order. Yeah, you have to list here anyway. So track one is chorus full. Yes, okay. So full chorus of a song called Sin Miedo by Manil. Let's listen to this.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Yeah, so before doing anything else, let's listen to the second track, which is basically the same colors, but only with the vocals.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Lead plus backing vocals, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Yeah. Is this all you?

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Every voice? No. The like the crowd. Oh, yeah, I don't know. Vocals, that's not me.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

But the backing vocals, the harm uh the harmony vocals is you, right? It's the lead vocals and the harmony vocals, just the OOs, that's a different crowd.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Yeah. Yeah, the other the backing vocals is me suffering a little bit, and we're gonna hear that clearly now. But the thing is that for you guys that are trying to work on your backing vocals, the way that I reach to those notes basically is by intuition. But just because I've been doing this for years and years and years, it's so easy for me to go to the notes of the chords. But if you're lost and you don't know what to sing, what I would recommend you to do, which is what I used to do before, is just pick your guitar, play the chord, and start on a different note every time, right? And if you feel that some notes are off, just check what which chords are you playing at those moments and see if the notes are notes of the chords, right? With time you will learn that you don't necessarily uh have to sing notes from the chords all the time. That's not mandatory, but if you do that, it's gonna work always.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

So it's a safe option, basically.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Yeah, yeah. So I wanted to say that just in case someone is like listening to us and being like, okay, but how do I do this? So now we're gonna listen to uh all the different uh voices uh like separately so that you can distinguish it uh easier.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Okay, so let's start with number three here.

SPEAKER_03 8:42

Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Also, side note, um you I mean people are obviously will hear that, um, but uh you've exported these with the the evaxon, so there is also a lot of like reverb going on, and you can hear like if you remember the first example, and I think at the end we should go back to the finished thing uh one more time, but you hear that there's a big like depth aspect to this as well, where the lead vocal is really upfront and and clearly audible and and and like clear in general, and then the lead uh the backing vocals have this huge ambience around them and and all that. So that's absolutely intentional in case you're wondering why it sounds so reverb-y. So that's that's not you recording in a church, you just intentionally added that reverb um to create that depth and and size to it, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Yeah, yeah, cool. Yeah, and also important to note that I recorded those tracks twice. So that's why you can hear it on the right and left side at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

You doubled every harmony layer basically. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Oh, great. That's a great piece of information for most people. Um that and like if people are not aware of that. Even if you end up using just one and put it in the middle or something, when you record harmony layers uh I would or doubles, I would always recommend you record them in pairs because you can always mute one if you don't need them, but in many cases it makes sense to pan them left and right of the lead vocals. So the lead vocals typically stay in the center, but then the backing vocals or harmonies or what doubles, whatever, uh are kind of surrounding the lead vocals and creating a stereo width as well. And doubling means recording it twice, and it doesn't mean just copy and pasting that won't work, so you have to copy, uh you have to record just two takes of of each layer, basically. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Yeah. So yeah, basically the line that we just heard is already above the uh the main vocal. So then let's listen to the next one and you'll see how I suffer.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Oh wow, that already sounded like you're hitting the uh edge of your comfort zone, sort of. So let's see. Right? Like yeah, yeah, that's great, awesome, man.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

I mean that's crazy high, yeah. Those vocals would not sound good if they were the main focus, right? Yeah, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Awesome. Should we just jump straight to the next one?

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Yeah, the next ones are the only ones that are below the main vocal. But basically, what we're gonna hear is the same melody we just heard, but an octave below.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Okay, so we're having we basically uh but so they are also below the lead vocal?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Uh the like the the ones that we're gonna hear now, uh those are below the lead vocal.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

So we have both approaches in one example here, basically. Uh above and okay, cool. So again, back to the topic of the episode. Um, what we're trying to show is different approaches to backing vocals or harmonies where some, like the ones we just heard, might add additional energy and like sparkle at the top and just open up a chorus, for example. If you want to create a lift, it's usually a good idea to try and put a harmony on top to just make it extra sparkly and and and open and bright in the chorus and also add some width. And then there's the other approach where you can go below the lead vocal to thicken it up to just add additional texture, but not necessarily creating that lift. And in this case, we have both in one, just making a big arrangement, sort of. Okay. Cool. All right, here's the next example. Cool. So this was an octave below the the first high one that we have heard, and then we got number six, which I assume is an octave below under the other one that we've heard.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

No, number six, I think it's uh all the vacuum vocals at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Oh, on my notes it says differently, but we'll see.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Without those backing vocals, uh it would be a completely different thing, it would completely fall apart to me. This is like essential almost here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Yeah. And as you can hear in the example, like the energy drops at the beginning of the chorus in purpose because I wanted to make it a vocal moment. So yeah, it everything was thought for that to be important and happen.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

So being intentional with things, right? Yeah. Cool. Okay, so now we have a counter melody, the crowd vocals.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Yes, I would like to, you know, uh take a look at how those vocals were recorded basically. Because we used two figure of eight mics. I don't remember the name of the technique, but you told me. Bloom line? Yeah. So so we had the two figure of eight mics uh in the middle of the room, this room, actually, and everyone was uh singing around the mics, right? I think we were like eight people or something like that. And so what we did is caused people were from tenors to sopranos to everything, right? So what we did, we made all of them to sing the same melody, you know, and uh it depend depending on their register, they could do it like an octave below or above, right? So for example, we have one melody and everyone sings the same melody, one act one octave below or above, depending on the register, and then we do it again for the other side, and then we find another melody and we do the same twice and another melody. So everyone sang three melodies two times, you know? Yeah, and so yeah, that's what we interesting what we did. So can you play track seven? Absolutely. Um, okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Before I do that, just uh for context so people know what this what this meant that that I said there real quick. The bloom line technique just means two figure of eight mics. So you have a microphone that's sensitive in the front and sensitive in the back, and you put two of them at a 90 degrees angle, like you would with an if it was cardio eight mics, like this one, and you did this. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see what I do now. You have a 90 degrees angle. This would be called an XY pair. And if you do this with microphones that are sensitive in the front and the back, then you call it a bloom line uh technique. And it basically gives you a full ambience around not surround, but like a you can record all around the mics basically, and it's very roomy ambient and all that. And then you pan one left and one right, and you do that a couple times and add additional layers, so yeah. Alright. Yeah. So and so everyone sang two different melodies and you sing each of those twice, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Um no, like it's the same melody. Okay. But depending on if you are a woman or a man, you can sing the melody on the octave or below or above, depending on but it's the same melody.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

All right, okay, cool. All right, let's uh listen to example number seven then. And you said uh oh, it's in the notes here as well. Everyone's singing the same melody twice, three different melodies. Let's look at them. Okay, cool. And the third one. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't remember that one going down there. Oh yeah, cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

And there as you can clearly hear some out-of-tune people in there. But when you put it in context, it's it works.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Yeah, totally. And this is a trick. Also glad you bring it up. This is a trick, by the way, where if you record a group of people and some people have a hard time hitting some of those notes, the the more the more layers record you record, the better it gets. Not just because they're warming up and actually getting better, but it kind of evens out, like it averages out over time to a degree. It's like the phenomenon, like this this thing that happens when you go to a football stadium, a soccer game or something, you know, where if when the entire stadium is singing, like most of those people can't sing, but it still sounds good if you just have enough people, right? It just averages out. And so, yeah. But those people you had there, to be fair, they were not bad singers, of course. Like you could hear it in the first one, it worked. But yeah, there's little out-of-tune things in there, but total, it absolutely works.

unknown 20:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Great. So um, so in total, in this song, we have or this chorus, we have a clear lead vocal melody that's the focal point, and then we have uh higher harmonies above that, two different layers um that go above where you were struggling a bit. That creates the lift that makes it more exciting and opens it up. Then we have layers below that make it thicker and add like a almost, like you said, like a pad sort of thing to it. Um and then we have the counter melody with a similar approach. Like I don't know if there's a clear I I would say that it's also kind of a lead melody or one that is more important than the rest.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Yes. And then there I would say there's the again the main melody, and then there's one melody that's above that, and another one that's below. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Basically.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Yeah. Cool. Perfect. Love it. What are the some any other takeaways from this? I mean, it's like you what's always important to us is that it is an advice buffet, as always. It doesn't mean that every chorus needs all of those specific harmonies or something, it's just ideas for you to try. Some choruses only need one harmony above, and that's it, or some phrases in a verse or whatever, and might need that. Some need additional harmonies depending on how big you want to make it. Manel said he wanted to create a vocal moment, so it has to be big and like almost has this like choir. Like it sounds like a choir, and it also sounds like a big room, like a church almost, or something with the effects you chose. So naturally, this is supposed to sound big and have more. Layers. Sometimes you only want to have like a lower vocal to just make it a little bit thicker. So this is ideas for you to try. One other takeaway would be what you said about the chords. So if you play the chords on the guitar and you pick the individual notes and you can try, you know, notes that are that belong to that chord, you have a pretty safe option that will probably work. Another way of doing it is if you have a hard time coming up with something while singing, what I like to do is I like to grab a little MIDI keyboard and then just play the melody, or I might play along, so I might play the lead vocal melody, or I do sometimes what you can also do if you don't have a keyboard, you can tune or analyze the lead vocal. So you have the MIDI notes, the actual note values, and then you can just duplicate it, and then you can manipulate the pitch to a fake harmony first until you have something that works, and then you can sing along with the fake harmony. And so what sometimes works for me is that I play the main melody and then I play um a third above that, for example, or I duplicate it and make an artificial harmony, a third above, for example, and then there might be the occasional note that is off that sounds wrong, and then I just grab that and make it half a step higher or lower because you know it's not a perfect third all the time. Um so that's the starting point. You can do the same with a fifth, you can go below. But start if you have a hard time coming up with something already just by hearing it, just do that. Start with a fake harmony, play around with the notes until you have something that sounds good, and then practice that and sing along to it, or play it on a keyboard, play the harmony first before you sing it. That always helps me as well. And over time you'll get to a point where if I hear a melody now, I can pretty much immediately sing a harmony to it. That's just with practice. Uh but in the beginning, if you have a hard time coming up with things, do it. And sometimes I get to a limit as well where it might be easy for me to come up with one or two, but if I want to add more, sometimes it's hard for me to come up with an additional one, and then I need to play around with it a little bit as well to find another one, and you know, so yeah, and and sometimes um you're probably going to find out that if you go, if you always go with your intuition, you're always gonna go to the same places.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

And sometimes it's better to find a different approach so that you do something a bit different.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Yeah. That can be good or bad. Like honestly, there are some bands that have a certain way of writing their vocal melodies and harmonies that are it's almost a signature thing. And if I hear a melody line like that and the harmonies, I know, oh yeah, that sounds like that band almost. So it can be good, but it can also be boring and bad. So one thing that comes to mind if you're into um so I'm I'm I've been growing up in the punk rock scene and all that, and I still do a lot of that music. So if you're into punk rock and you know a band called Lagwagon, uh Joey Cape, the lead singer of that band, he has a certain way of writing melodies and then also singing harmonies. And the same is true for like other bands like that, No Use for a name, or there's certain bands, melodic punk rock bands, that have that rely heavily on certain harmonies, and they do the same thing over and over again across their songs, and it almost gives that signature vibe. Where if someone writes a melody like that, I'm like, oh yeah, that sounds like no use for a name or something, you know. So yeah. Okay, cool. So then we have um another counter melody with panning in the bridge, it says here on my notes.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Yes, yeah, let's take a look at that because that's interesting, because instead of doubling the all the layers on the both sides, I only had one layer which starts in one side and goes to the center, so it creates a different effect, and there are some vocals that join not at exactly at the same time, so let's just listen to that.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

So the approach there is that you don't always have to sing exactly the same thing at the same moment as the lead vocal. But still we're in that part, we're using the approach of like singing higher things, you know, to make it more powerful.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Yeah, and it actually creates this like epic moment where you know one thing comes in at a time and it just you know, and then it can starts over again, so you go up in pitch and that's you just keep adding things, and it's yeah, it's a great way to to create that kind of build-up there. And yeah, I I love it. It's very cool. Also, again, side note, uh, what also helps here a lot is at least to my ears, is the uh are the delay throws that you have in there. So in between in the gaps, there's this like quarter note delay that comes in as well. So this is not how you sing it, this is an effect that happens there, but it really helps because it adds this rhythmic element to it as well and just lets it flow really in in a really nice way as it builds up towards the higher notes. So that's great.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Yeah. So yeah, I guess let's move to the other song where we have mostly the second approach, which consists again of singing lines below the main vocal line. Alright.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Let's do that. So this is the full outro of the song, and then we're gonna dissect the individual layers again. Um so in the first example, there was your friend Pablo playing the leads of the solo, and then there were people doing the backing vocals with you, so that was also a team. Pablo is also inside of our coaching program. He's a great musician, uh, by the way, and friend of Manel's. Uh, in this song that we just heard, it was uh our our friend Michi doing drums. He was uh also part of the self-recording syndicate. He also went through the coaching program. He's a fantastic drummer from Munich. Uh, he played drums on that for Manil. And then um Manel sang and recorded and all of that, and then I mixed this one. And when I heard that for the first time, that outro, I was like, how, like, where does that come from? And like you were honestly, you I I hope people agree with that, but you are such a great vocalist when it comes to you know getting the emotion across and everything. That was just giving me goosebumps. It was just a m such a magical moment. Um, especially like you gotta listen to the song. Is this released already? I don't even know. It's I don't know if it's ever will be, but like if you listen to that song and the beginning of it, it's great all the way through, but then that outro comes in that we've just heard, and and and the energy and emotion you put into that is just mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

So yeah, thank you. I think you know uh the result was the best it could be because we we worked together, and you know.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

What a moment, what an emotional moment in this song. Yeah, um, okay, so we heard the full thing. Uh the clear focal point was the the lead vocal, also when I mixed it because I I was really like that was just a mind-blowing performance. But there is stuff underneath that that helps it. And so let's listen to those backing vocals.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

So track 13 here. Let's go. It's probably the lead vocal still. Or is it just the uh backing vocals? So we listened to the full thing, and now we have the different vocal layers 13, 14, and 15. Yeah. We'll see.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

I think so.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

Yeah, that's gonna be the backing vocal. Ah, the backing vocal. Okay, let's let's play number thirteen here. I hope people are not passing out at this point. All right, okay. So you basically this was above the lead vocal, but it's again just the low harmony, but an octave higher with a falsetto. So you're just supporting that the uh the low um harmony and just adding that top layer to it, basically. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Yeah. And that that top layer comes every two times only, not uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

I have one one question, Manel. I have no idea if this was intentional or not, but uh what I'm hearing as well. This is a trick that I do intentionally all the time, um, not all the time, but very often. Um, and that's like what I'm hearing here is the lead vocal, and I'm gonna play it for context again after I'm saying this. Um the lead vocal to me has, like I said, a lot of emotion. It's a little bit raspy, it's like loud and has energy, and it sounds it sounds natural. It doesn't sound like obviously tuned or artificial in any way, shape, or form. It's just an energetic performance. But then when you listen to the backing vocal layers, I can clearly hear that they are tuned relatively accurately. Uh like, and um there's nothing wrong with that, but I can I can hear that, that it's like pretty spot on, and there has been some vocal tuning going on. The thing is, I do that a lot, that I kind of almost over-tune the backing vocals and leave the lead vocals a little more organic or completely organic. Because what that does is it makes the the backings on their own a little more boring. It's almost like you play keyboard notes, but that makes them an even better supporter of the lead vocal because you don't want to take the backing vocals. Um, you want you don't want the backing vocals to, you know, take the center stage and like be the focal point. You want them to be behind the lead vocal, almost a little boring by by uh you know by uh on on on purpose, um, so that the lead vocal can stand out even more. And if the backing vocals are a little bit out of tune and a little bit, you know, not controlled, then they don't have, to me at least, they don't have this pad-like character, and they it can be a little bit distracting sometimes. And I don't want them to distract from the amazing lead vocals, so I make them very even, very well tuned, and that way they blend in super well with the guitars, the rest of the arrangement. They sit behind the lead vocal, and it's almost like you're playing keyboard pads behind uh the leads, um, the lead vocals. And so I don't know if you if you did that intentionally here or not, but this is also why I think this part works so well. And I I often take this approach, and it doesn't, it's not cheating, it's not wrong or anything. It even works with like very organic, natural sounding bands because all you're doing is you make sure that the backing vocals blend in and do their job, which is support the lead vocal and create this pad thing without getting in the way and without being distracting. They're not the star of this moment, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:25

Well, I normally it's pretty often when I hard tune the backing vocals. That's yeah. And I think there are also a couple more topics that come into play here, which is the first one is that because of my register I just I cannot sing those layers with a lot of feeling because I just I can't it's too low for me, you know. Uh and also when making the melody, I think the more the melody moves the more of a main role it has. Like if you sing if you try to sing the the backing vocals moving the notes the you know the less you can, then it's gonna sound more supportive, you know. Yeah. And I think that's what happens here in this case.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Yeah. I love it. It totally works. So let's play one more time for context and then go to the final example that we have here as a bonus point, sort of. So one more full context. So again, we have this lead vocal, the energy, and then remember the low uh layers we just listened to, plus the one falsetto thing that comes in every other time.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

Love it. Ah, okay. Yeah, before the last. Because when listening to the song, no one's gonna notice the strings. They are so far uh buried in the in the song. Yeah. Uh well, the thing is that in this case the strings play a very similar role than the vocals, so that's why I wanted to you know show you.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

Absolutely. So we have a bonus thing which is the strings in the section. Cool. Let's see. Makes me think if I should have featured those more in the mix. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

It felt right to me, but you know. I can totally hear the Lord of the Rings influence in there.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally. Fun fact for uh the listeners now uh like if after editing, and well now that you're listening to this, you'll hear these examples in stereo, hopefully, if Manel did a good job editing this. But um, as we do this live, we only hear it in mono because of the podcast software that we use, and when we fire these files, the software can only do mono anyway. But what that means is if I listen to the full example, I'm mainly hearing drums, vocals, and then everything else collapsed to mono in the middle, basically, which makes it hard to hear to make out all these layers. They are there, of course, and it should work in mono to a degree as well. But it's definitely easier if you have the stereo image and you hear all those the nice width that comes from that. So um that's what makes me wonder, you know, if I if if they need to be louder, but also I don't hear it properly at this moment. But no, I like how it sounds, I like how it turned out, and it was definitely an intentional mix decision, also, to really focus on those lead vocals there and it make it an the this moment that it is. So yeah, uh, but all those layers, even if they're quiet, they they really help, they really support, and those fantastic strings plus the backing vocals you did there. Yeah, I mean, you heard it, it it just works, it creates a nice, um, really nice vibe.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

So yeah, so I and I think that that's something that's maybe interesting if we talk about this is that I've been talking about this in the group calls on our uh coaching program. The thing is that when we do these coaching calls, uh group calls, sorry, uh you know, people can uh ask questions about this, we go way more in depth about you know also like the vocal chains in those songs and all that. So yeah, just to let you know that if you're interested in uh uh going into something like that and going in depth, you have that option.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, no, you're totally right. And um you're you're actually hosting one today, right? Um another uh group coaching call. So uh in case you're wondering what we're talking about here, um, like we said a couple of times now, and in the beginning I always mentioned it too. We have this coaching program called called the Self-Recording Syndicate, and it's it's not an online video course where you just watch videos and hope for the best. It's actual coaching. We do it in one-on-one settings as well as group settings. And uh part of the coaching are live calls where you can be there while Manel is showing something on a session or I'm mixing something, or you know, you can ask questions, you can get feedback on your own songs. We listen to references and dissect them and reverse engineer how they're done, stuff like that. And so, yeah, if you want to see the vocal chains, if you want to see the tracks in front of you in the logic session that Manel has and stuff like that, and want to ask him questions about how he does certain things, that's what happens inside of the program. That plus um unlimited one-on-one support every single day, whenever you have questions, um, one-on-one calls that you can book, uh, you know, uh always a clear next step, always knowing what to do with your songs, and eventually finishing your projects as a DIY uh producer and self-recording artist. So if that sounds at all interesting to you and you want to figure out if you're a great fit for this, then you can apply if you go to the self-recording band.com/slash coaching. Uh, the way it works is you fill out a quick questionnaire, you give us info that we need so we can listen to your music, we can uh see what you're what you're trying to do, what you're struggling with, and all that. If we think you're a great fit, then we'll jump on a free call with you, no strings attached, we just talk and see what the best way forward would look like for you. And if it makes sense to move forward together, you can join the syndicate. And if not, no sweat. Um, there's this application process because we're getting a lot of applications. In fact, like right now, I'm having about 10, 12 of these calls every single week, in addition to mixing records all the time and coaching our people. So that's why we gotta see who is a great fit, who who this makes sense for. And also we don't want to waste your time on a call if it's not a good fit, anyways. So yeah, go to the self-recording band.com slash coaching, apply for that, and then we'll talk and hopefully create a great plan for you and then execute it together so that at the end you'll have your own songs sounding the way you've always wanted them to sound. And uh yeah, we'd love to do that with you. Great. And I gotta say, Manelle, uh, from the feedback that we've gotten from our Coaching people from our coaching community members in there. Since we've started doing in the beginning, just for context, I've been doing all the group calls and the one-on-one calls and everything. Now Manel does some of them, and Thomas does some of them. Thomas is the engineer working at my studio. And we all have our specialties, sort of. And since we started doing that, the feedback that we've gotten from people is incredible. They really appreciate you and your perspective and your production skills. They appreciate Thomas's editing skills and like everyone has their own unique thing. And it just increased the value of the program so much. So I really appreciate you. You're also a great teacher, and I learn from you every single time I see something like that. And uh it's yeah, really, really cool.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

Yeah. So, all right. Um, I hope this was a helpful episode. I hope this gives you some ideas and inspires you. I don't know if there's a way we should wrap this up or sum this up. Um, it's basically again, there are there are many approaches to backing vocals, but the two that we wanted to emphasize here is adding vocals on top, like above your lead vocals in terms of pitch. Even if you're struggling a bit, even you have to tune them, doesn't really matter that much. It just adds a lift, it makes it more sparkly, it opens up a chorus or certain phrases. Or you can go below and just add this nice pad-like quality, like we heard in this outro where the lead vocal is really energetic and higher up, and then we had the softer, smoother, pad-like backing vocals below it, uh, in addition to the strings. So there are these two approaches that have a different emotional impact and uh do different things to the song. And at the end of the day, all that matters is the emotion, the vibe that comes across, and what how it serves the song. So these are two um approaches there. There's things like counter belodies in there as well, as like bonus tips, um, and those gang vocals that you recorded with the figure of eight mics. So there's lots of actionable stuff in there that I hope you can try now. And we'll see you all next week. So thank you for listening or for watching. If you're watching on YouTube, we appreciate you. See ya. See you. Bye bye.