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Let’s be honest, finding the right vocals for your track can sometimes be a nightmare. It’s hard to know what you’re going to get when you hire a vocalist and whether the end result is going to be what you were hoping for. Vocals are tricky and an art in themselves and its not always easy as a producer to know what you should be looking for or how to navigate the process. 

In this article we’re going to break down the top 5 mistakes we’ve encountered after working as songwriters and topliners ourselves collectively for the last 10 years. I’ve spoken to our writer team to come up with this list so hopefully it might help you avoid making these mistakes yourself when searching for that golden vocal. 

1. AI Guide Tracks

Many songwriters and top liners have commented to me about the recent increase in requests to re-sing Ai vocals to give them a “human touch”. It’s something I’ve personally seen and encountered in recent years myself, being sent demo vocals to re-sing. At first I was intrigued and interested as I hadn’t really come across a lot of AI tools at that point, except for AI mixing tools and ai vocal remover tools online. This started happening late 2023 and I began looking into it further. 

An interesting thing I realised which I didn’t see anyone talking about at the time, was that AI doesn’t breath when it sings! Haha. If you’re a singer you understand how absolutely fundamental breath is to a vocal. It not only creates rhythm and a human element, but I would argue it mimics sounds patterns that as humans- get our heart racing and get our attention. There’s something about hearing someone else breath that is actually incredibly intimate and forms a sonic connection to them. Trying to re-sing AI vocals however, with no breaths involved, was not only a huge challenge for me but I also found the end result never hit like it should have. People can still tell when a vocal is AI and they don’t arguably make a human connection to that vocal in my opinion. 

This is a whole pandora’s box which I could explore in another article, as to whether human emotions are being triggered when we listen to an AI produced vocal or not? Whether a frequency shift is occurring in the human body (whether real emotions are being triggered?) Or whether in frequency terms, we feel nothing. 

There’s no doubt that something essential is lost when vocal are written by AI at this point. If and when AI becomes “conscious” that could change, but as it stands I think using AI to create lyrics or vocals of any kinds is probably not going to allow your listener to make a powerful connection to your track, in the same way a human vocal will. Only my opinion, but watch this space I guess. 

2. Having a pre-written melody if you don’t know music theory 

If I got paid for every time I’ve been sent vocal ideas or melodies written by producers who chose a key which wasn’t singable for females, I would be rolling around in money. It happens so often that when I was working as a freelancer I got to the point where I stopped accepting work where the producer had a prewritten melody of any kind. 

The temptation for producers if they have an idea in their head is to play it on a synth and send it the vocalist to re create. The issue here is if you don’t know much about music theory, octaves and vocal ranges often the melody you’ve written is a terrible fit for the singers range, or even impossible to recreate. 

I was once sent a vocal melody to topline that was so low even some male vocalists would probably struggle. But its easy to make that mistake with synths because to the naked ear the melodies can sound quite singable. What we often do when we hear a instrumental melody is automatically transpose it an octave up, which gives it that singable quality but has nothing to do with the original melody. 

It’s counter intuitive but its usually safer to let the vocalist write something that suits their vocal range and give them guidance about the elements you want, whether you want a melody to move “up or down” at certain points, but usually creating a synth melody before hand rarely works out for the best in my experience. It also doesn’t allow for natural breaths, similar to the first point. 

3. Don’t be afraid to turn left 

I find that some producers often have a belief that their favourite hits were created first time around. They have a utopian vision that the team got in the studio in person, sat down, wrote the top line in its entirety and left with a finished song- first try. In reality my experience has been that songs usually evolve. Teams of writers adjust a line here or there, add a phrase and the song exists like a living document, being edited and listened to and analysed. 

Sometimes it is true, especially with good writers that the track is literally done after a single session. But that isn’t the only way to get a good vocal. If the vocalist your working with doesn’t get something good on the first try, that doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t be able to strike gold on the second try. Sometimes making changes to the vocal is just the process of getting the best outcome and doesn’t mean the collaboration won’t work. However on demand top lines like ours at Vocal Buzz can be good because it cuts down uncertainty and time that you need to spend on that process. Hearing what the vocal is from the get go saves a lot of pain, sweat and tears and sure does shortens the process. 

But if you are working with someone in person, don’t be afraid to scratch what you have, try a new idea, make big cuts and adjustments and let it evolve. Just because you don’t get it right the first time doesn’t mean you don’t have a hit on your hands. Some tracks circle for months and months before they “become hits”. 

4. Too any cooks 

There’s an expression my mum used to say which is that sometimes if can be a problem if there are “too many cooks in the kitchen”. What I think this mean’s (after grappling with it for most of my childhood) is that too many opinions start to muddy the creative process or become harder to tame. 

Being able to write a track with a lot of people is hard- more opinions, more difference, different approaches, different timescales- it can get messy. In my experience most of the time -the smaller the team the better the writing process will be. If you have a lot of writers be prepared that the track will likely take longer to complete. It doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing but it can be more challenging, especially if you are just starting out. 

5. Dummy “Placeholder” Beats 

I remember when I got my first collab offer from a major producer. I won’t names names but at the time he was as big as it got in EDM and I was stoked. I read the email, got worded up by my manager in advance and eagerly opened the track to listen to it. 

…..and it was the most basic, crappy sounding beat I had ever heard in my life. 

At first I was shocked. I knew this guys could produce or at least I thought I did. I’d heard so much of his music and I didn’t know him to use ghost producers that often. But what I was told was that this was just a track for me to have something to sing on, so the prouder could “capture my vocals” and write around my topline. 

That might be all very well, but for a songwriter part of the creative process is responding to the instrumental. It’s a pretty important part of the process, because often it informs the decisions you make. I had never worked like this before and I had no acapella lists created to send to said producer, so I knew I would have to try to make something with what I had been sent. I had never been more uninspired creatively trying to write a track in my life. I had no idea what vibe he was going for (at that point he probably didn’t know yet either). And I had no insight into his creative process whatsoever. I was flying blind. 

I attempted to do my best but ultimately the track was shelved and I learn’t a super important lesson. 1). I don’t fuck with the industry like that but also 2). Most toplines really need to be created with a beat that’s half decent to begin with. 

I guess the advantage of having topline catalogues and beat catalogues now is that its much easier to get ideas flowing and have a direction in mind before you begin. I guess in my mind thats part of the creative process itself. It all starts with the ideas. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you do produce better working with acapellas its good to get a cheap vocal that’s non-exclusive- write your track around it, then remove that vocal and shop it to vocalists to get the final vocals written. Back when I was sent this instrumental, possibly due to time constraints as the producer was on tour, that didn’t happen and I think the track really suffered as a result. It never did come out and I knew quite a few other vocalists who gave it a go too- with no luck. I wasn’t shocked. It really does pay to give topliners something to go off, even if its rough or not the final version of the beat.