Out of tune Vocalist~!!!!!!

[Brandon Hook]

I'm in the middle of recording a local band who are absolutely amazing with their instruments.....but the damn vocalist is always out of tune hitting and sustaining notes....

I could offer him singing lessons, but I don't want to step in where I'm not welcome. I did mention to him that he needs to concentrate more on just finding a pitch (any pitch!!!) and sticking with it for a while....and he replied that he purposely wants the album's vocals "off key and winey"

I'm really not sure how to approach this situation without overstepping my boundaries. I'm relatively new in this business and haven't had the 'pleasure' of dealing with such a performer. I do not want to put my name on this album with vocals that sound this bad!.....but I really need the business....


if anybody has any suggestions on how to handle this delicate issue, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanx for your time and consideration!

Brandon

[cmchamp]

Brandon:
Are you the Producer? If so, he should take your advice, and if you have the right contract, he HAS to take your advice.
If you're just the engineer, grin and bear it and share your concerns with the producer. Depending on your rig, if you're DAW'ing it at all, you can always go in and tweek those sustained notes. What he thinks he's doing, and the results of what he's doing are two different things.
Have had a similar situation here with a self producing group. Not recommended at all with local bands. I produced the first project, and we got 3 tunes down, tight, retro-classic sounding Christian rock. Was well recieved by college age kids. He, the lead vocalist and manager of the group, well basically the guy who runs the show, decided he wanted to produce the second project. 12 hours on 1, yes ONE tune, changed to a kind of industrial sound, and it flopped. Since the contract we had indicated I was just to record, mix, master and duplicate, that's all I did. I gave him my opinion, but he wasn't very receptive to it.
A friend of mine in the business simply put it: Do only what you are supposed to, but fix what you must when you can.

[Chris Jude]

...or run it all through AutoTune :p

[cmchamp]

Chris, Brandon et. al.
An editorial in Mix Magazine, November or December, don't remember off the top of my head, says it all. I wish it were on line, but it's not.
In the article, the author Stephen St. Croix asks one simple question: "WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO SINGING?" The author continues to elaborate on the great vocalists performances such as Robert Plant, Hendrix, Joplin, Lou Reed, Yma Sumac, KC & The Sunshine Band, Don McClean, all as an example of the fact that "Singing sin't just hitting the damned notes, although it's always a pleasant surprise whtn someone does. It's about how the singer gets there. It's about what's in those notes: the texture, the feelings, the organig honesty, the effort or, in some cases, the lack of effort."
So, maybe Brandon's vocalist thinks his 'bending' of notes is "off key and whiney." It might work in the REGION, but if his band wants to go anywhere besides just being a regional underground group, he's gotta change his ways.
I'm a music educator who's always tinkered with audio stuff, and pretty good at it - so I decided to give up teaching. The money and benefits really aren't that great when you consider the grief you go through anyway.
I just finished a Jazz Band project with Hillsdale College where one of the vocalists couldn't for the life of him get up to an E-flat. So, on "My Funny Valentine", if you purchase the disc from the book store on line, you hear James Casey singing his E-flats as close to on pitch as I could get it without auto-tune. I can't see spending $500 or so on a plug-in to fix a performers inadequacies when I and my software can fix a note or two and keep things as 'pure' as possible.
Another friend of mine put it this way: You can spend as much money as you want on equipment, top of the line stuff, all the toys tools and gadgets, but what it really comes down to is the quality coming from the artist. No amount of money is going to fix a poor performance or in this case off key and whiney vocals.