Vocal Parts Don’t Have to be Singing Parts

I’ve been writing musical parts, pieces, and songs for a long time.   Guitar riffs, chord progressions, piano parts, synth layers, loop arranging… I’ve been into creating things like that for years and years now.  It has just been in the last two or three years, though, that I’ve ventured into writing lyrics and vocal parts to songs.

Even then, though, I was striving to search for things that were different.  I have and have had the luxury of working with some really good singers and lyricists over the years.  I’ve had band mates that have done it, Casey from BHP, my dad is a songwriter, my wife is a songwriter, I’ve had several friends that are good singers… so for me, writing lyrics or vocal lines wasn’t always a necessity for me to complete a good song.

Because of that, when I started writing I felt like I had a lot of room to explore and try weird things, even if I knew they might not be “hit song” material.

Singing?  Computers Can Do That?

One of the things I’ve played around with is using Text-To-Speech (TTS) software and/or websites to do vocal parts for me.

I’ll tell you right now that if you experiment with it, it’s not going to sound natural.  Don’t really even attempt it if you’re looking for a fair substitution of a real singer.  They’re really only good for experimental sounds, weird projects, and “for fun”.

But since I personally love experimental sounds, weird projects, and “for fun” music, I was all over it.

A few months ago I mentioned a song called “Jim’s Acoustic” in a post.  That was an example of using text-to-speech software to sing the chorus of a song.  I wanted to go a little farther on the next song.

For my musical experiments I often use pieces of muse that me or Jim (James Blair, part of BHP, occasional writer for this blog) have laying around that never got used in anything else.  A quick side note, Jim and I write a LOT of stuff, and we record EVERYTHING.  What that means is that the best parts and pieces get selected for projects, and the others lay around in a “riff library” that we’ve built over the years.  When I’m just trying to experiment with something or hone my lyric writing skills, I often go digging through that library.

I wrote a collection of about 10 “experimental” type songs to riffs that Jim had written over the years, and to challenge myself, I tried to keep the title of the riff that Jim had originally given.  “Jim’s Acoustic” was one of those songs, for example, so I wrote the lyrics about Jim’s Acoustic guitar.

Okay, back on track… the reason I brought all that up is because the text-to-speech song that I’m talking about today was another one of those songs.  Jim had originally entitled the riff “Falling Behind”, so I wrote the lyrics based around the title Falling Behind.

The verses were done “spoken word” style, but I used a website TTS program (I don’t remember which… there are tons.  Just use Google) to record the parts.  For the choruses, I used a very simplistic melody and programmed the singing with FL Studio (Image Line FL Studio 9 Fruity Edition Regular)

Here’s the song:

(If you’d rather download it than use the play button, click here)

Here are the lyrics to the song:

Verse 1
——–
Sometimes I feel like I can’t keep up
Like the waves are over my head
I feel like I can’t face the day
Like I should’ve stayed in bed

When life gives you lemons you gotta make lemonade
Boy, that’s sure easy to say
But the truth is sometimes the lemons taste so sour
That they can ruin any day

Chorus
——-
Life keeps throwing me curve balls
I can’t stop falling behind
Life is loaded with pitfalls
I can’t stop falling behind
With hurdles coming my way
I have to stop and pray
Guide me through my life
Stop me from falling behind

Verse 2
——–
I know I have to stay calm and keep focused on my goals
And keep the end result in mind
So that I don’t fall off the track in life
So I don’t keep falling behind

Even though it’s easier said than done
I know that I can make it through
I can do all things through he that strengthens me
That much I know is true

As you can see, it creates a different sound, but for the musicians out there looking to experiment and find odd and unique sounds, it might be something worth playing with.

Has anyone else ever tried stuff like this?

Last week I showed someone playing the Super Mario Brothers theme on a ruler.

Today I have something that was a probably little more time consuming to set up.

Someone set up a series of glass bottles in the proper order and spacing so that when they drove a remote control car past (set up with something to hit those bottles on the way by), the Super Mario Brothers theme song would be played.

I can’t understand what the people are saying (they’re not speaking English), but this is an impressive feat!

I understand the meaning and the reason behind writing good solid songs that don’t do anything outside of the ordinary.  I try to write a lot of them myself.  But I really love spending time trying to find new ways of making great sounds.

Here are some quick outside-the-box things that maybe you want to try.

1. Try to write a guitar riff where you pick can only touch a string on the 1 count of every measure.  All the other notes have to come from hammer-ons, pull offs, or taps.
2. Run your keyboard through your guitar effects processor.
3. Run your vocals through your guitar effects processor.
4. When working with VSTi’s and MIDI, load 3 or more VST instruments on the same MIDI track
5. Write and record a riff or chord progression, then reverse it using your computer.  Write the rest of the song around the reversed track.
6. Using MIDI, write/design/program a musical part that would be nearly impossible for a human to play on whatever instrument you choose.
7. Experiment with mic placement and your guitar amp.  Put them both on separate sides of the room.  Put them both in an echo-ey bathroom.  Face them in the opposite directions from one another.
8. Buy an instrument from the Toys department of your favorite department store.  Try to write a serious sounding song around a riff or progression that you can get from that instrument.
9. Get the cheapest keyboard and cheapest mic you can find ($15 each at Walmart?).  Write an entire song using only musical sounds you can get from that keyboard and vocal sounds you can get with that mic, and spend time trying to make it as good as possible.
10. Pick up an acoustic guitar.  Write and record a full sounding song using that acoustic guitar as your ONLY source of instrumentation.  Use it to create percussion parts, chord progressions, record a bass line then drop it a couple octaves on your computer to fill the low end.  See how many interesting layers you can get using only that guitar

Try some of these out.  Maybe they’ll inspire you.  If not directly, maybe a new idea will pop into your head because of what you read here.

If anyone tries any one of these out, I’d love for you to send me the results.  Email me at jason@creative-music.org

I stumbled across an article today that I thought I would share with you guys.  The article is titled “Outside The Box Creativity Tips”.  It’s not specifically a music article or songwriting article, but inspiration for general creativity is definitely helpful among those of us who want to creatively explore music.

In the article the author gives 11 tips.  Each of those tips is a link to an article that goes more in depth about that idea.

The 11 ideas are:

Tip 11: Cloud Your Creative Judgment

Tip 10: Purposely make silly things

Tip 9: Take a nap to recharge your creative battery.

Tip 8: Act as if.

Tip 7: Ignore your inner critic (at least this once)

Tip 6: Take steps to manifest your creative idea

Tip 5: Try something new

Tip 4: Spend playtime with kids

Tip 3: Meet new people outside of your demographic

Tip 2: Finish reading that book

Tip 1: Do something radically different with your art

Click HERE to read the article and to get more information on each of those tips.

If you want to talk about musical creativity, maybe one of the most outside-the-box ways of thinking you can find is creating your own musical instruments.

I’ve always thought the idea was incredibly fascinating, but to be honest, I’ve only done very simple things when it comes to instrument creation, and they’ve all been percussion-based things.

Some people, though, are creative, innovative, AND handy, and those kinds of people are the ones that can do some amazing things.

Check out this site I found.  It’s called “Bret Hart’s Ho-made Instruments”

It looks like it’s an older site that hasn’t been updated for a while, but the site has some descriptions and diagrams of several of the instruments that the author has invented himself.

Here’s another site that has some diagrams and instructions for making your own instruments… some of them traditional instruments, but several of them unique variations of common instruments:

WEBPAGE of DENNIS HAVLENA

And if you really want to see some interesting stuff, search YouTube.

In fact, click HERE to link to my YouTube search for HomeMade instruments.  There are all kinds of crazy things on there.

This just goes to show that if you want to make music you don’t have to have the high dollar guitars and pianos, and you don’t have to spend years taking lessons.  You just have to be willing to try out your own crazy ideas!