Tina,in one of her reviews on a track of ours,inadvertently raised this subject and I thought it may help some others,or even provoke a bit of discussion. You never know where these things go when you toss them out there.
Because I mostly write in isolation,then work with others to expand and evolve the original idea,I frequently run into the problem of a suitable key for the vocalist being different to the one used to write and record a song.
Quite often the song will require starting all over again and I don't know about you lot,but once I have an idea out and recorded,I don't have the same enthusiasm second time around. Add this to the fact that sometimes changing the key utterly changes the feel and sound of the song. This is especially true for guitar players and guitar based songs,if a lot of open strings have been used in riffs/solos etc. Using a capo can preserve some of the original tone,but only for the first 3 or four frets,then it goes all mandolin on yo ass.
To address this and to reduce the workload necessitated by redoing a song,I thought we could try something different. (for us,anyway)
What we tried this time was,I leave out my vocals and vocal melody and Fiona puts her own tune to the words,this way key doesn't matter,since she can choose a melody that suits her range. This process goes a lot smoother if Fiona doesn't hear my melody to confuse or give her preconceived ideas,though often it's the only way to discover if she does like the key.
'Memories',our current track in finished songs is the first attempt using this method. From my point of it's oddly disconcerting at first to hear the song with a different tune,but after a while your ears get used to it. It's the preconceived idea thing again.
I'd be interested to hear if others have used a similar method in their writing process,or what other ways are available to skin the cat.
