There's not a day that I don't work on vocals, have vocal coaches, go to acting classes, read books.
Aaron Carter
I sang in a reggae band. And then there was a soul band where I sang back-up vocals and some lead. And I was also in a women's a capella group. And I was in the gospel choir at school. Actually, I've always been in choirs. Or some kind of group. Just because I love singing so much. But I truthfully never thought of it as a career.
Abigail Washburn
If I improvise vocals at an early stage of the song, I just kind of listen to the roll, and then I kind of have a little vocal hook.
Adam Granduciel
I'd gotten used to recording background vocals perfectly, doing 18 takes of them until they line up. Not recognizing the inherent beauty in each performance, but just making something good.
Adrianne Lenker
The neighbors prefer I don't do vocals at night. It gets a little iffy when I'm screaming.
Aesop Rock
The only time it dominates is during a solo, or when we play a low blues and I put figures in behind Eric's vocals. There's never any real problem fitting guitar and organ together.
Alan Price
Later on, when I signed with Sony, we wanted to re-release 'Fade' as 'Faded' with a brand new mix and with vocals by Iselin Solheim. I think Iselin was the first person who sung demo vocals for 'Faded.' And it worked out great! The way I got in touch with Iselin was through a guy that I work with in the studio.
Alan Walker
I had my first band. it was kind of a progressive metal band kind of thing. I just started writing songs that required more and more challenging vocals, and I just did them. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? So I just sort of did what I had to do to make the songs sound the way I wanted them to.
Alissa White-Gluz
I do guest vocals all the time.
Electronics, samples and vocals are all fed into The Log.Os' music, and a fresh take on soul comes out. The band's songs splash around in the same gene pool as neo-soul artists like Erykah Badu, but they reach forward to pull ideas from glitch-hop producers such as Flying Lotus and Prefuse 73.
Anthony Fantano
With its breezy guitars and sweet backing vocals, 'Norway' blows away any semblance of Beach House's previously bleak approach to pop.
Bands such as LiLiPUT and Essential Logic were just as unorthodox as Gang of Four or Wire, even taking their sounds a step further with shrieking vocals and saxophone.
I grew up writing songs in my room on GarageBand, and I would make the beats just out of layering my vocals over and over again. Very Imogen Heap-inspired.
Ariana Grande
My training has been in Hindustani classical, and I have done a six-week course in English vocals at Berklee. The holistic learning has helped me a lot.
Armaan Malik
I love vocals and what they can do, and the different layers they can create, and I really want to bring that into folk music in terms of arrangements and stuff.
Avi Kaplan
I used to chop up C-Span soundbites or interviews with politicians like John Kerry or Bill Clinton into a radio-esque show hosted by Awkwafina and her producer, Mookie. I would pitch down my vocals to have male guests and would send them to a small circle of friends after they were done.
Awkwafina
I write the vocals last, because I wanted to invent the music first and push the music to the level that I had to compete against it.
Axl Rose
I usually prepare a track and then I work with the artist when it's time to do the vocals.
Babyface
Blind Willie Johnson is a pretty big vocal influence. He can be very harsh, like gargly, gruff vocals, but also just slip into some very delicate, vulnerable soft stuff. I like that combination.
Benjamin Booker
In hip hop, it's a lot more about lacing a hot track. I start it, I help mix it, I help write it, I help produce it, I cut the person's vocals. I'm involved from the beginning to the end of a song. I'm not just giving someone a beat, you know?
Benny Blanco
I started as a guitarist and couldn't find a decent singer, so I started providing my own vocals.
Yeah, I'm just blessed to have this very strong thing, my vocals. I'm very healthy in that regard.
I'm tired of being around men all the time. I'm going to start a band called Skirt with three girls and I'll play the guitar and sing backing vocals in drag. I went window shopping when I was in New York, saw a lot of amazing dresses.
I think I'm a vocal genius, not a musical genius. I like background vocals. I consider myself a voice, not a singer. A voice is a sound, and singing is what you do with that sound.
There's not a whole lot to do in Athens. When I was 13, I just started entertaining myself by writing songs. I'd sit in my room for 10 hours playing the same song, stacking vocals, trying out different drum beats, realizing no one would ever hear this but having so much fun. I guess I got my voice from just doing that so often.
My son is in a band, and he's a singer, and his vocals... they're screaming-growling stuff... and he's got a pretty reasonable voice. Yet he practices really hard to get the screaming-growling thing without losing that voice every five minutes. So I'm, like, 'Hats off to you.'
Maybe I was just born with a little bit of vocals or natural talent, but I feel like I taught myself.
Maybe I was just born with a little bit of vocals or natural talent, but I feel like I taught myself. I just started taking vocal lessons to just work on my breathing, my vowels and stuff.
I like Kehlani a lot because she's on her grind; she does everything herself. She's writing her own music and, you know, putting all the vocals together, and she's just dope. She just reminds me a lot of me.
One of the goals we had when making 'Moth' was to have the vocals sound less treated and less processed than we'd ever had before, to just let them be exposed and very audible.
Before getting on 'The Voice,' I was very critical and judgmental of people's vocals. After getting on the show, I was so nervous, I realized my low notes were gone, so nerves do take a big toll on your voice.
I do sing a bit, a solo called 'Rubies,' and the female vocals on 'In Paradisum,' 'The Sound of Silence,' and 'Sapphire Clouds'.
I have a routine to work on my vocals. I always get some honey and some extra virgin olive oil to coat my throat, and I go to bed.
Back in the day, I was afraid to speak out. When I get music behind me, it feels like I can soothe the hurt and put it in vocals and say it to the room the way I feel it.
Hip-hop I never really got really into mainly just because I'm not a big fan of rap. I do like R&B artists like Beyonce. I'm a big fan of her mainly because of her vocals. They're just so awesome. I love her and Christina Aguilera, and that whole urban kind of feel is really great, especially with my voice.
Oh man, I love what the South brings as far as the soul, and I really have noticed from even the early days of listening to OutKast and Goodie Mob that Atlanta and the South has a diverse sound to it. You have bounce music. You have soulful musicians. You have artists with vocals who try to do different things.
I'm not a singer. I double-track my vocals. I'm just not secure in my voice. I can't do single-track - I sound weird.
I can remember the first time I ever recorded my vocals on to a beat. Cat Coore from Third World - a legendary Jamaican band - had a little demo set up at his house. I'm very good friends with his eldest son, Shiah, who plays with me now. So we were rhyming over a track by the dancehall artist Peter Metro. I've still got it somewhere.
As a musician, I don't think I'm the greatest guitar player. I'm a bigger fan of the drums than I am the guitar; I just happen to play guitar. I play drums almost every day at my house. I wrote a lot of songs behind the drum kit, just having the music and vocals in my head and playing the rhythm.
When I listen to the radio, I just hear so much music that doesn't even sound like people. The vocals are all tuned, and the drums are all fake.
Recording vocals has the same kind of physical demands as you experience a lot in theater work.
All my vocals were recorded at home, which was great for me. You can actually have a studio in a computer program called ProTools. I did half the record with ProTools.
A lot of my vocals were the first time I ever sang the song.
I pay such close attention of the record making process that most people would assume are very little and wouldn't be that big of a deal; the packaging, the title, and the harmonies, I think, are arguably as important as the lead vocals.
It was a song I wrote for my wife as a present, never intending for it to be a Styx song. 'Babe' was a demo. The demo became the hit record, including all the background vocals, which were done by me.
Actually, if you listen to the vocals on my grandfather's records, you will hear we sound similar. We both sound kind of dry. We have a dry voice, and we both love harmony - he was a man of harmony, I'm a man of harmony. I think it just runs in our blood.
I've always loved the sound of female vocals.
I guess I'm not really into female vocals that sound masculine, I guess. A lot of times, the heavy female vocalists always end up sounding like they're screaming or whatever.
Enya was a huge deal for me. That kind of woman vocals and how wide those productions were.
As a vocalist, I can scream, and I've got a really good singing voice, but I can't do the really heavy vocals.
