In the gentle art of music production, it’s almost always the simplest instruction that gets the best results.  Naturally, that always reminds me of the scientific principle known as Occam’s Razor.   For the last few days, I’ve been working on a very fun project with a couple of my neighbors (who are very busy professional musicians) and an excellent singing bassist with whom I’ve played with a number of times before.

This evening, we were working on vocals, and Singer took a few takes of one of the songs, but the vibe wasn’t quite happening.  It’s a very strong, haughty song, and she felt she was being a bit too gentle with the vocal.  When you’re working with amateurs or people without much experience, sometimes you have to hold their hands a bit, but when you’re dealing with professionals you can push them a little bit harder.  I told her simply to “Step back from the mic a little, and just sing the hell out of it.”

She did, the song completely came to life, and we had our vocal take.

Occam’s Razor strikes again.

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