"Quick Studio Sessions: Myles Kennedy's Tips for Achieving the Ideal Vocal Take Without Burnout"] - Guitar | Technique

Recording an album isn’t easy on anyone. It’s a marathon process. It’s hard enough on the guitar players, trying over and over to nail the perfect take, but it can be brutal on vocalists. There is only so much load the voice can handle.

Myles Kennedy knows this only too well. Vocal burnout is real. The Alter Bridge frontman and co-conspirator of Slash says it takes monastic discipline to keep his voice in working order when on tour.

“It is a life of no fun! [Laughs] It’s the lonely, lonely life of a singer,” he says. “You sing and you go, you get to the bus, you shut up, and you get to your bunk and you get as much sleep as you can. And you don’t party. You don’t talk a lot.”

In the vocal booth, it requires a more calculated approach, and over time he and Alter Bridge’s long-standing producer, Michael ‘Elvis’ Baskette, have got it down to a tee.

It wasn’t always like this.

“You’d be turning it in, just singing it down, singing it down, singing down and singing it down, and then the voice would get worn, it would get tired,” says Kennedy.

Alter Bridge – Silent Divide (Official Video) – YouTube

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The secret is to pick your moments. Baskette knows when to push Kennedy’s voice, and crucially when to rest it. It’s all about maximising how much energy is left in it.

“You just have a finite amount of power and pitch control, and once that stops with the human voice, okay, just put it away,” says Kennedy.

Some producers might ask for a best of three then let the singer rest. The takes can be comped together to see what works. But Baskette is a a little more exacting about what he wants from Kennedy. They get the vocal engineering down cold so everything is all set up.

“It’s the idea of, ‘Right, we’re going to sing this down, we’re going to get it to open up, make sure everything sounds right, with preamps setup for the volume, blah blah blah…’”

Alter Bridge record in 5150 Studios, the studio that the late Eddie Van Halen built, courtesy of an invite from his son and friend of the band Wolfgang Van Halen

(Image credit: Chuck Brueckmann)

They go over the song, take it section by section, and let it rip.

“Elvis has really figured this out for my voice – he knows my voice better than any producer I have worked with because we have done so many records together,” says Kennedy. “One thing we do is we’ll hit a certain part really hard, give it maximum intensity, and then let it rest for a few minutes.

State-Sanctioned Killings for Drug Offences in East and Southeast AsiaInstead of just going, ‘Okay, we’re going to do three passes, just give it a 100 per cent, and then we’ll put a comp together and take it from there.’ What we do is we’ll focus on a section, know what we need to do, and that way we are in and out of there – sometimes in an hour-and-a-half! – and we’re done with the track.”

Alter Bridge – Playing Aces (Official Video) – YouTube
Alter Bridge - Playing Aces (Official Video) - YouTube

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Alter Bridge recorded the lion’s share of their new studio album at 5150 Studios, in Los Angeles, the recording facility built from the ground up by the late Eddie Van Halen, which is now owned by his son, Wolfgang.

With Wolfgang a close friend of the bend – playing in Tremonti’s solo band for a while and sharing management – he extended an invite that no one in Alter Bridge was going to think twice about.

“It was literally, the minute we walked in the door, it was very Wayne’s World. ‘We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!’” said Kennedy. “Being able to go into a sacred space like that and start the process was a dream come true. I think Mark and I can both testify to that.”