Software sampling

Kim: Another area we haven’t talked about yet is the software sampling side. You don’t get more prescriptive than that! I was part of the choir for Hans Zimmer’s [famous Hollywood film composer] choral sampling software session recorded in a converted cathedral in Hampstead. We had to sing every note in unison from an F# below middle C to a top C in a wholetone scale (which you had to be able to pitch accurately) on pretty much every vowel imaginable, lots of different consonants, different lengths, different dynamic levels, so soft ones, loud ones… There’s no creativity involved in that, it’s just you being a ‘machine’.

Last Friday I did a session for an educational website which was just me by myself having to sing every note in the solfege scale from a G below middle C to a top B chromatically, each one held for 5 seconds completely straight. So again I had to be able to pitch the chromatic scale – you have to have a good musical understanding and education to actually know what a wholetone scale is and what a chromatic scale is and be able to sing them accurately. So the sampling software stuff is the polar opposite to creativity because it’s all about you as a technical vocal machine – that’s all you are in those sessions.

Jeremy: It’s the real precision thing isn’t it?

Kim: The precision required is ridiculous. It even comes down to how you breathe before you come in. Because it’s being sampled, you can’t make any extraneous noises whatsoever. So, we don’t want to hear your in-breath, we don’t want to hear your lip noise, we don’t want to hear your stomach rumble because you’re getting hungry (which did happen!). I had to do a retake because my stomach got involved. Everything is being heard with such a high level of scrutiny that it has to be absolutely blemish-free. It’s a strange experience, that’s the only way of describing it. It’s like no other form of vocals that any professional singer has to do. If you look at what most professional singers have to do, they don’t generally have to do this sort of stuff where you’ve got a magnifying glass on every aspect of your vocal technique.

Jeremy: I can’t think of anything that’s comparable for a singer, but for an actor it would be the equivalent of doing some of these programmes where you have to read words out, and by the end of five hours they mean nothing to you, they’re actually just symbols.

Kim: Yes. I also did a dance-based vocal sampling package at the end of last year that was not dissimilar to that. I was given five pages, in a very small font so there were probably 50 words and short phrases on each of these five pages – there were hundreds of words. I just had to sing them in any key and in any style that I felt would work. That’s where you’re bringing in the creativity side again, and I had to come up with endless ways of these phrases being sung a cappella.

Jeremy: That’s quite a brief!

Kim: Uh huh. I just don’t know what I’m going to be asked to do next!

Soundalikes

Kim: Another thing we haven’t discussed yet is the ‘soundalikes’ side of the session world. Not that this is a huge speciality of mine, but it can be a speciality of certain types of session singers who are so excellent at mimicry that they get a lot of those sorts of sessions. I’ve only dabbled in it, but I had my very first soundalike session about 18 months ago. I was asked to do soundalikes of Kate Bush…

Jeremy: That’s quite extreme.

Kim: For me definitely, I sound NOTHING like Kate Bush naturally. I’m in the opposite camp to her vocally. And when I got asked to do it I just said “Oh. My. God. Where do I even start?” So I had to listen to her and said “OK, high larynx, thin folds…” etc, go through the ‘recipe’ of what I was hearing and try to get my voice to comply with something nearby. It didn’t have to be absolutely perfect, but it had to be as close as I could get. So I had to mimic Kate Bush, Britney Spears, Madonna (this is in the one session), and Roberta Flack. What a variety. Ridiculous! It started with Kate Bush. I’ll play it you. So here is my first soundalike…

Jeremy: This is on your website?

Kim: Yes, under ‘Character Showreel’. And you know my singing voice, so you know this is not really ‘me’! [Plays example]

Jeremy: I would NEVER have guessed that was you!

Kim: That was my first ever attempt at doing a soundalike. I was also a couple of years ago asked to do a satirical operatic jingle. And I said “you have booked the wrong person!” As I’ve said before, you never find out what it’s going to be till you arrive. And they said “we want this to be opera-like, but taking the mick.” And I said “You’ve booked the wrong person, I’ve never done that sound, I don’t really know how to do that sound, it’s not really me at all…” and they said “Well, you’re the one we’ve booked!”

Jeremy: Yes, get on with it.

Kim: You’re here. Exactly. So this was the result. [Plays track] The thing that was interesting about doing that was my vibrato kept running out! I’ve never required my voice to do operatic levels of vibrato before. I must have gone through a year’s quota of vibrato on that one session!

Favourite sessions

Jeremy: I have another question. Are there any favourite sessions that you remember?

Kim: Are you asking about recording sessions or live sessions?

Jeremy: Either

Kim: Yes. Two would be live, and one fairly recent one would be one of my favourite recording sessions. Live-wise, doing backing vocals for Natalie Cole and Michael McDonald; those were absolute career highlights for me because they’re two heroes of mine.

Jeremy: Is that not on your showreel?

Kim: Yes. Musically incredibly satisfying, the backing arrangements were to die for, they as artists to work with were to die for, they were every bit as nice as I was hoping they were going to be which doesn’t always work out. I’ve worked with other people sometimes that you hoped were going to be nice that didn’t turn out to be, and were quite disappointing. But they were actually more lovely than I could have even imagined they were going to be. And half the time I didn’t actually want to sing, I just wanted to listen to their voice coming through the monitor on stage. It was like “I don’t even want to touch that. Can I just listen to this private concert?”

So those experiences were fantastic, and especially with Natalie, a lot of her arrangements were from her dad [Nat King Cole]. Some were the original arrangements that he had. This was like “I’m singing pieces of history here!” It was absolutely fabulous – the harmonies were sumptuous and gorgeous and the backing vocalists I was working with were fantastic. That was just an amazing experience.
 

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Part of this interview originally appeared in the Vocal Process eZINE. Remember to register for the Vocal Process eZINE to stay up to date.