[MUSIC] If you're producing a record with vocals, it's really important to keep in mind that the most important thing on the record is actually the vocals. So, let's talk about singers for a minute. I tend to put singers into two broad categories. And of course this is way too easy. And there's a lot of room in between. But it can be helpful to think about this. On the one hand you have the singers who are true virtuosos. And in that category I would put people like Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Sam Smith, on the male side, Robert Plant. These are people who have all sorts of chops. They have range. They can do rapid fire things. They can do very, very technical things very, very well. And on the other side, you have people who are not virtuosos. People with modest, natural gifts in terms of range. But they have something else about what it is that they do when they sing that makes them so compelling. I would put into that category, obviously, Bob Dylan. But also Tom Waits. People like Johnny Cash who is not a great technical singer but still had something that just made you really listen. And Kanye West, I think would be a good contemporary example of that. Someone said one time about Bob Dylan, listening to him sing was like driving by a car accident. Because you don't want to look, and yet at the last minute, you always do. Because that's humanity over there. That could be you over there, if you're driving by a wreck. And when you listen to Dylan sing, there's something about the way he sings that just, there's a humanness to it, that just draws you in. On the female side, I would put people like Norah Jones and Stevie Nicks. Norah Jones is not out there hitting the high notes. She's not out there going for these huge volume things and ballads. But she has this amazing, amazing tone to her voice that's just so lugubrious and it just washes over you and it just makes you feel amazing. On both sides of this, either the person who is the virtuoso singer, or the person who is the vibe singer. The most important thing is not necessarily their technique. In fact, I would say it's not their technique at all. The most important thing is that human factor. How well they are putting across the lyric. How much they are really casting a spell to where we're not thinking about necessarily their technique, but we're thinking about what they're saying. We're thinking about where they're taking us. I have a good friend who's a very successful recording artist, named Kathy Mattea. And she always says to students when she's working with them that you need to sing the words, don't sing the notes. If you're thinking about the notes, if you're thinking about the technique, we can hear that. But if you're inhabiting the character, if you're telling the story, we can see that too. And you've got a much better chance of pulling us in and really keeping us there with you, if you're actually singing the words, you're singing the story, you're singing the meaning. So keep that in mind. The vocals are the most important thing if they're in the track. And also, telling the story, telling the lyric, putting across what the art, what the meaning, what the emotion of the track is in the first place, is more important than hitting the notes exactly right.