hey chris liepe here with special guests barrett jones and blake mclean barrett is
a multi-award-winning producer responsible for foo fighters uh presidents of the united states
of america pearl jam some nirvana and we get to go through this video on muse they just released
it a couple days ago uh with barrett and blake who has a wonderful youtube channel i've left a
link to that channel uh in the description below we also have been working on a music production
and vocal production course together this week and if you'd like more information about that
click the link below and join the waiting list and you'll get emails periodically that will
be updating you on the cool things that are in that course and when it will be finally released
all right the the distortion that's on the voice is amazing that is likely uh you know soundtoys
decapitator or the like kind of plug-in highly compressed and it's putting that right here and
it's helping to blend with the synth sounds which is which is really really cool for me
one of the coolest things like i pay attention to melody more than anything chris pays attention to
like kind of where the voice is sitting and stuff like that and i bear it probably everything um the
something to pay attention to is just how rhythmic that vocal is
here because of where it ends up going it's just providing that contrast between these
sections they do such an amazing job with it both instrumentally and vocally you know and melody
wise it's really hard to do distorted vocals um with a plug-in because it usually brings out all
this high-end stuff that will overtake everything ah um yeah and that sounds really smooth
so it could be hardware on the front end well no oh or they're using this plugin called soothe oh
um which automatically takes those things away it's pretty awesome okay
um plug in i'm gonna have to check that one out yeah like and with regards to his approach here
having that amount of distortion on his voice is helping bridge the volume gap between being
in chest and head voice but matt bellamy has always been really really good at the
going up there and utilizing a powerful head voice a powerful mixed voice
i'm excited to see where he goes with this but even right now
he's he's got that going on which is super super muse and super awesome
i've opened my eyes i've opened my eyes hitting those pitches in those two different resonances
super key to matt bellamy's approach and it sounds so great with all of that layered distortion sound
won't stand down
that portion
it almost sounds as though he's he's in chest no and we've talked about that matt bellamy approach
before where we've got this uh it's the sort of squeeze sound and he widens his vowels and then
closes them and then combines that with vibrato he's got this worried thing happening too
which when he goes up into these higher notes and these higher tonalities
and seamlessly blends between his chest head and mixed voices that phrase is is
a a huge one to lean into when we're trying to embrace them the matt bellamy aesthetic
i'm going to exaggerate it of course but head voice
and then this opened up wonderful sounding mix combine that with some of the distortion
honestly i just have to say because we've been sitting here for the past couple days working on
you know the music for my band and the course the things that chris has taught me have kind
of like opened my brain up to listening for these things and it's so cool because it's almost like
everything kind of comes full circle because now i understand a little bit more like the effort that
goes into this or the lack of effort that goes into it or maybe just thought yeah right like
yeah and i think a lot of uh well i get a lot of comments um depending on the vocalist right like
they don't think about any of this stuff they just sing and and uh sometimes that's meant
derogatorily and sometimes it's it's just a fact right like he's probably not thinking oh it's true
i'm going to be in chest voice here and in head voice here and i'm going to say this vowel this
way he's not doing that in the moment but as you practice and as you develop your character
as a vocalist you may not be thinking about that when you're performing or when you're recording
directly but the things that you program into your voice muscle memory wise will come back
to serve you in an unconscious way when you are when you are actually making real music that's why
it's so important that we take time to listen to vocalists and put things in our own voice because
we're drawing inspiration we never know where that inspiration is going to pop out it's so powerful
psychological
creepy video by the way i know it's so weird
it is it's like a play a very theatrical sounding voice operatic is what it is if imagine dragons
were metal that's exactly what this would sound like because especially those verses
but it's the drums i'm paying attention to a little bit more this time around yeah and
it's very open it's very queen we will rock you you know for the for the verses yeah then
you go to this like super syncopated rhythm for the beginning of the chorus right and it's like
extremely busy you know and the the snare it's almost a little hard to follow even as a drummer
but then it opens up again it's doing the exact same thing that the vocal is doing
yeah which is really cool and it's a cool way to think about it because you know music is literally
just percussion with tone that's a really good point the way that the the the instrumentation
and the vocals are moving in tandem is is really key in this song yeah yeah it's a halftime to
full-time kind of thing that they're doing it's really interesting syncopation in the
halftime versus yeah um with the big like uh sort of canon shot gone go
favorite right they've totally changed the kick drum sound by the way between the two i noticed
that yeah because you don't have that clicky because it's open you know because there's so much
space in the verses that you can have a full kick drum sound but when you go into the metal stuff
you basically turn it into all just the click yeah no interest yeah to listen more carefully for that
i'm
stand down
yeah you can definitely hear how he leans into that word alone right he's got that swell
he's hitting that distortion harder it's more powerful up there it's probably not quite as
extreme as i just did classic wonderful map and also that feels very indicative of memes
i'm you know my ear isn't as good as yours you know both of yours but like is that it sounds
like it's the seventh going up into the into the one or the octave essentially because like that
feels like that's the that's basically home you know absolutely does that all the time
well so it has this minor feel right yeah yeah what's neat about this is you
you have that now that's like the that's a major sounding yeah uh resolution to
and that this is the way that harmonic minor will work sometimes where you might normally
over this minor progression think about it as now die alone right those were those uh notes da
but they've made it now
they've made it sound major with that resolution which is a totally different cadence
and really adds to the creepiness of this song so cool that cut again contrast yes it feels
like he's singing in the major scale and then the rest of the music is in the minor relative
minor it makes it creepier the melody makes it creepier because we've gone into this we've gone
from very minor to major someone's going to sneak up behind me and deceive me that's cool
okay we gotta talk about these screams here these
i'm fairly certain between the distortion and the effects on there this is not an all-out
it's not that at all this is very quiet you could barrett was talking about
how uh you get a lot of these sounds sometimes based off of inhales right
yeah it's like the it's like the grudge girl you know what i mean like that's kind
of what it goes back to this is almost whisper screaming he he gets a little bit more elongated
towards some of the the ending parts there
but i i really don't think these are all out screamed as much as they are
reserved fry whisper type type things which is is very different than
i usually hear things and i think i think a lot of screams that we hear particularly in the metal
genre they are much louder not so with these the band that i showed you hurling talks a d that i
was in with dave that guy was he was very quiet and did the inhale screaming singing yeah um okay
but somebody like kurt who had an amazing scream he was all out yeah he was not quiet with his
screams if you listen to that song oh the guilt that i'd recorded i've never of kurt of nirvana
the chorus of that he has a unbridled scream um that is just totally amazing
but it was full volume but it doesn't have to be with the right the right amount of sinister
production surrounding it these quiet uh sounds can be every bit as is impactful
won't stand down
oh
great song yeah way heavier than you normally hear muse um the fact that they've got that
stuff in the background um and the heavy riffs and the transitions between
the the verses and the choruses like you were talking about blake the the rhythmic differences
is it's pretty pretty remarkable i love and muse does this all the time with their melodies you've
got fairly busy instrumentation lots of rhythmic things happening then you have these really s
almost soothing deceptively soothing soaring melodies that are slow in their phrasing
and that's another one of those contrasts that makes me love muse yeah yeah agreed
his voice has real always been really great i mean i love it oh even live so theatrical and
just so smooth yeah i mean it's like you know jeff buckley yeah yeah there is some
jeff buckley in there absolutely well especially the high stuff you know when he goes up to the
the falsettos that are almost full voice anyway yeah and it's just so smooth he has no trouble
transitioning yeah now it's pretty amazing thank you for watching this with us for digging into
again the style of matt bellamy he's been on the channel quite a bit so it's fun to dive into the
new music again if you would like to find out a little bit more about what blake barrett and i are
doing click that link below join the waiting list for our new suite of courses let's see for more