So we've been talking a lot about the musical conversation between parts, but we also need to make sure that we stress the importance of the lead vocal as the centerpiece of the song. You really need to make sure that whatever part functions you're adding, whether there's several rhythm parts, whether you have a melody in there that's a counter melody to the lead vocal, whether there's a response melody that you are leaving enough frequency range space as well as rhythmic space for your vocal to shine through as that centerpiece, and stay in the foreground. If you look at a picture, like any picture, someone takes a picture of a scene, someone's standing in front of a mountain range, let's say, you have the person in the foreground that's the lead vocal. Behind them you have these mountains. Those mountains are not in front of the person. They're behind the person. So you have to make sure that no birds or people photo bomb your lead vocal. Even if you built the mountains, they should occur in the background. That's to beat the metaphor to death. All right. So this happens to be a lot when I'm arranging where I'm so in love with a part that I write, and I'm creating the rest of the arrangement and I want that part to be loud because it's so good, but unfortunately, I often end up removing that part or turning it down or padding it off to the side or taking it out of the main conversation, the main focus because it's just distracting from the vocal. Reasons it might be distracting is that it might be in the same frequency range or you might have an intricate melodic pattern within your rhythm part, where it might be right on top of the vocal melody in the same exact octave or pitch range. Especially on the piano, the piano has so many harmonic overtones. If you're playing piano, you really have to steer clear of playing on top of the vocal pitches with the same exact notes as the vocal. I feel like a lot of times piano players want to play in that main register. That kind of a brown middle scene, seven or eight notes in either direction but when there's a vocal that's presenting an idea really it's best to keep the piano out of that frequency area and go higher. It makes piano players feel like, I'm calling more attention to myself but it's actually getting out of the way of the vocal. All right. So frequency range is really important. The other thing that's really important is rhythmic space. In terms of looking at counter melodies or answer melodies, you want to make sure that if you have a guitar part in there for example, I had a guitar player come in and overdub a part on a track that I was recording one of my songs, and he came in and started ad-libbing all these solo lines right over my lead vocal part. I kept saying well, you're not listening to the vocal. You're not listening to the lead vocal. You need to make sure that you're playing in the free spaces between my vocal. I wanted those ad-lib parts in there but I wanted him to listen for when I was pausing between lyric lines and utilize that space. So you really want to listen for where that space is happening. A lot of times at the ends of those lyric lines, there's a little pause. Those are great places for answer melodies. If you're working with counter melodies, you also want to look at not playing too busy of a part. If the lead vocal is quite, lots of fast lyric rhythms let's say, perhaps the counter melody should be long-held tones. So you're not having another really busy rhythmic part that's right on top of the lead vocal. This sounds obvious but it's interesting how micro-focus we get in a situation like this, where we really are attached to the idea of having a part but the part is really getting in the way of the vocal. So it really is important to take that step back, but I think it's also important to say that the vocal can happen, and then there will be space, and in that space, we want something to happen. It might not have to be something very active but there does want to be a conversation just like there is in the drums and the bass, that's going back and forth between elements because that's the most interesting thing. Exactly, so make sure you keep your vocal as the centerpiece.
