Sneak Peek: Vocal Placement (Patreon)

It's a common misconception that the goal of recorded music is to replicate, as accurately as possible, the experience of hearing that same music live. To an extent, that is often true: A song on a record should sound like the same song when you hear the band play it on tour. But the tools of the studio, and especially the mix, provide incredible opportunities for clever artists and audio engineers to enhance the listener's experience, creating a better, clearer, and richer experience that what could be performed live. A key component of that is vocal placement, or the use of different elements of the mix to create specific personas for the singers, allowing them to more accurately embody the song's story. It's an area that music theorists really haven't looked too closely at, but we're starting to see some really interesting approaches begin to take shape.