1. China Grove – Doobie Brothers Without a doubt, the song I’ve enjoyed the most over this holiday. The guitar riff is cool, but the backing vocals are just fantastic. Pay particular attention to the chorus. Whenever the lead vocal isn’t doing something, there’s backing vocals echoing him or harmonising with him, and when there’s […]
This is one of my favourite concerts by the Doobie Brothers. It’s recorded completely live, no overbuds or fixes. The live audio engineer did an amazing job. Next time you listen to live music, remember that this is what the standard was back in the early 80s, so it’s amazing to think how few artists
We’re back for another instalment of five songs from the last week to share with you: 1. You Make My Dreams – Hall & Oates This is a golden-oldie, but with one hell of a groove, and a remarkable simple and accessible song structure. This is the kind of song I go in for in.
As a singer and vocal coach of many years, I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to sing live, and record singing well in the studio. There are stark differences between the two, both in terms of challenges and also assessing the result. In this article I want to go over these differences, and
One of the key principles that our technique is built on is using the natural calibration of your speaking voice (i.e. chest voice) as a roadmap to build our singing voice. The greater the deviation from our speaking voice co-ordination/calibration (evidenced by a different sound), the greater the level of issues singers tend to encounter.
I received an email this week asking about how to sing when recording. I’ve re-parsed the sentences in the email so that the questions flow for the purposes of this article. “Hi Mark, Do you have any articles [or advice] on how to sing when recording? I feel like my recorded voice sounds both harsh
This week I want to ask you ‘what is your musical diet?’ A Youtube creator I follow called Rick Beato put this great video out last week on ‘Has every song been written?’ commenting on the fleet of lawsuits that artists are firing at each other over copying songs. Now while he sets out to
This week I’ve been enjoying some old classics by Michael McDonald and the Doobie Brothers. Michael has been churning out hits for years, and is a singer that I wish more modern singers would emulate. What is particularly impressive is how well he delivers so many of his songs whilst simultaneously nailing quite tricky piano
