72 DIGITAL NATION
THE LAST REAL DJ ALIVE SHOWS YOU HOW....
...TO MAKE VOCALS STANDS OUT IN DANCE MUSIC
Making vocals stand out in electronic music is a bitch. That’s why vocals are is to stick with a minimalist arrangement. Beats, bass and a vocal are easy to mesh;
usually sparing or peripheral to something else in underground dance music. beats, bass, Reeses, stabs, instruments, scratches and vocals are not.
I think it’s pretty safe to assume that you can all get away with throwing in a
“Yeah!”, “URGH!” or “Oh baby!” vocal into your productions, but what about a full- My second crucial tip is to use a chorus effect. Get your singer to sing a verse / chorus
on lyrical verse? dozens of times, then start stacking them up. You can keep all the copies central, and
have them looming large over your track, or be adventurous by applying individual
There are drum & bass tunes that have done it and been extremely successful – ‘LK’ by dynamics and EQ and then panning them all over the stereo field. A rule of thumb
DJ Marky & XRS and ‘Shake Ur Body’ by Shy FX & T-Power, for example. The former is a here is to have one, nicely EQ’d central vocal, one on the left and one on the right. This
good yardstick for putting your own vocals in dance music. The track is minimalist. It will make your vocals full-bodied and distinct, even on huge sound systems.
doesn’t have wide stereo effects and a dominant mid-range, leaving a nice big space for
a vocal to sit. And here lies your first tip: the easiest way to put vocals in dance music NEXT ISSUE: How to ensure your records will sound good on a club rig.
DIARY OF AN UNSIGNED PRODUCER
NO. 2 – LEARN BY COPYING OTHERS
The best advice about making music I’ve ever heard is, ‘you’ve got to learn the Until I finished the tune it didn’t have a name, it was just ‘Dillinja tune’ on my hard
rules before you can break them’. When I first started making tunes I wanted drive. But listening to it the next day I realised that, even though the sound was kind
my music to sound completely unique – I wanted to have my own style – but of reminiscent of Dillinja, you could tell it wasn’t by him. Come on, the man’s a legend.
the truth is that, before you can develop your own style, you’ve got to learn by Who was I kidding thinking I could emulate him just like that!?
copying others.
Importantly for me, I realised that the tune did sound like it was by me. Just from a
I recently started making a tune using the drum break from ‘Kick Back’ by the Buena series of small choices I made – what processing to apply to the break, how much
Vistas. It’s a classic break that’s been used on tunes such as ‘It’s Yours’ by Eskobar distortion to add to the bassline etc. – I had stamped my mark on the tune. I’ve now
feat. Lemon D. Something about the break and the bassline I wrote reminded me of named the tune ‘The Goat’. I think it’s one of the strongest tunes I’ve made and I’m
Dillinja. When I first started out, this would have annoyed me. I didn’t like to think planning to get it cut to dubplate in the next couple of weeks.
that I was copying his style. But this time I decided to roll with it and see what would
happen if I deliberately made a tune ‘in the style of’ Dillinja.
K70-72_DigitalNation1.indd 72 24/4/08 10:31:16
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