A lot of music sounds better with vocals.

I love creating music, and I’m lucky to be around a lot of other creative people, several of which are good singers.  But, you know, it’s just the way things go that sometimes those people aren’t available for every project I want to work on.

And the fact is, more often than not, I find music that has some kind of vocal part to be more interesting than simply an instrumental.  That’s not to say that instrumentals can’t be amazingly good.  I’m just saying that if I was going to listen to 100 songs in a row, I would prefer that over half of them had some kind of vocal part.  Not everyone is the same way, but most people are.

What if I can’t sing?

I’m kind of a perfectionist when it comes to music sometimes, and for the longest time I completely hated the sound of my voice.  It wasn’t that I couldn’t hit notes, but I just didn’t like the tones and textures that my voice created.  Over the past year or so I’ve started forcing myself to sing more, and to honest my voice has improved because of it.   It makes me wish that I would’ve been pushing myself all along.

But the bright side of all of this is that quite a while back before I was as comfortable singing as I am now, I created a list of ways that I could add vocals to my music without having to actually do any singing.  Even though I’m much more willing to sing these days than I used to be, it’s still nice to have a list of ways that I can stretch the boundaries of “typical” music a little bit.

Non-Singing Vocal Ideas

-Rapping

This may seem obvious, and it may even seem like something you’re not into, but before you automatically discard the idea, think about it for a minute.  Rapping is associated with hip hop music these days, but does it have to be?  Rapping is basically the idea of talking to a rhythm.  Can you fit that into your musical tastes at all?  Toby Keith wrote a song several years ago called “I Want To Talk About Me” that was basically a country rap.  What other directions can you take the idea of rapping?

-Spoken Parts

How about spoken word parts?  Not rapping… not necessarily tied in with a meter and a beat… just talking over your music.  Putting some kind of message that you want to get across into your song without worrying about dividing it up into verses and choruses.

-Sampling/Looping

If you go to Google and search for “vocal samples” or “vocal loops”, you’ll get a plethora of results.  This is something that I’m not personally good at, but there are people with enough ability at arranging sounds that they could come up with very interesting vocal lines just by using samples and loops.  Can you do it?  Have you ever tried?

-Singing Software

This is an idea that’s interesting, but you’re only going to like it if you’re really willing to let your songs be on the experimental side of things, and you’re willing to invest some time in laying out your songs.  Have you ever played around with software singing programs?  The basic idea is you use whatever format the program uses to “teach” the melody of the song to the software, then you type in the words.  The computer then spits out a computer generated vocal part for you.  There are several programs that do it.  One of the more prominent ones (but it’s a bit pricey) is Vocaloid.  Do a search for it and check out some of the demos.  FL Studios will do some similar things, although it wasn’t really built with that function in mind.

To give you an example, I’ll put up a song that I created using this idea.  The song is called “Jim’s Acoustic”, and it was created using a piece of music that my friend Jim had sitting around unused.  I did a spoken part for the verses, then I let a software demo “sing” the choruses for me.

You can download it here:  Jim’s Acoustic

I can’t remember the name of the software I used.  Whatever it was, it was just a free demo program that was a trial of some bigger piece of software.  Do a google search.  You’ll come up with plenty of options.

-Whispering

If you want to try some creative things, try whispering your vocals, then use effects to make them stand out.  Guitar effects do crazy things to whispered vocals.  Experiment, experiment, experiment!

-Using a Talk Box

Think Peter Frampton.  If you’re too young and you’re not familiar with him, then go to YouTube and check him out.  Frampton made the Talk Box famous.  The idea of it is pretty simple:  You play the guitar into this box (basically a miniature amplifier).  The sound comes out of a tube, which you put in your mouth.  You make talking shapes with your mouth while you’re playing the guitar, and the guitar sound comes out of your mouth, basically becoming your voice.

You don’t play guitar, though?

How’s this for some creative thinking… a talk box can be used with pretty much any instrument that can be plugged into a speaker or amplifier.

Can you play the bass through your talk box?  How about your keyboard?  How about electric drums?  What else can you come up with?

Most importantly, mix and match all of the ideas

This can apply to even those of you who do sing well.  How can you take the ideas from above and mix and match them.  Maybe you can…

-Write a song where you talk for a verse, then use a talk box for the chorus
-Write a song where one person is rapping while another person whispers some vocals
-Write a song where you use vocal samples, then use a software singer to harmonize

Remember, the point to all of this is to be creative.  Take my ideas and run with them.  Make them your own.

If you have any ideas to add to this, I’d love to hear them.  Drop me a comment!

Related posts:

1. Text-To-Speech Song Vocals
2. 10 Ideas for Creating Outside-The-Box Music
3. 7 Crazy Vocal Ideas For Your Songs
4. 7 Ideas for improving Instrumentals
5. Write A Song Without Touching An Instrument