I received a phone call yesterday from one of my clients. He hired me to mix and master a song a few days before. He was calling because he had a friend give him feedback about the song. Negative feedback….Now even though my client had lots of positive feedback from other friends, the only feedback that really mattered to him was the negative feedback.
The song featured a very talented female singer with a great range. My client’s voice is a more straight-forward style voice like Drake but obviously different than Drake but you know what I mean. His friend commented on the track saying that his vocals couldn’t compete with the female feature on the track. He was insisting that my client redo all of his vocal parts and push to sing more advanced and belted out like the female artist.
I’m glad my client called me because he needed a DIFFERENT opinion. I told my client, is this a song we are talking about or a singing competition? It seems your friend is viewing it as a competition. I told my client that no one listening to the song is going to say “man that girl sings so much better than that guy” instead the listener will either like the SONG or not like the SONG. Can they sing along? Does it get stuck in their head? Can they connect with the lyrics? That’s what matters. You can really tell when someone is too attached to the “skills” or “talent” and not attached to if it’s a great song or not. Do you want OBJ to make a one handed catch and The Browns still LOSE the game? Or the Browns WIN the game, with NO one-handed catch? You know the answer to that.
So I went on to tell my client to ask 10 other friends what they thought without giving a disclaimer or being specific on what to listen for. Simply ask 10 friends…”what do you think of the song? Yay or nay? See what they say and weigh it against what your friend said. Odds are, no one will give the feedback that the one friend did.
In conclusion, I feel that it’s important to have your own opinion. After all, you are putting out music with YOUR name on it so your own opinion should matter the most.
Perfect Vocals Academy 