Vocal “Decathletes” – inside the hidden world of Session Singing!

What is a session singer? Officially it’s a freelance, short-term “singer for hire” brought in to be part of a live or recorded musical project. However, it’s more generally understood to be the “behind-the-scenes” singer who is regularly booked for paid recording work. The type of work (and pay) varies a lot. The following are some examples:

• Advertising jingles & station idents
• Singing on new material that songwriters have written - "demo songs"
• Backing vocals on tracks/albums and new shows, e.g. for cruise lines
• Lead vocal features on songs written by others for release - “feature vocals”
• Vocals for movie soundtracks and TV series

To be employable in this role, singers are best to have a generic rather than distinctive ‘signature’ sound, be stylistically very versatile (vocal “decathletes”), have a reliable, robust vocal technique, a great ear for vocal blending, quick melody learning & harmonising, a solid understanding of music and be able to thrive & deliver under tight time pressure in the challenging, unique performing conditions of the recording studio.

Session singing is a side of the music industry that is largely hidden from the public and isn’t easy to find out much about, even online. So, with 35 years of session singing experience, the presenter will cover around ten different types of session work, provide examples, outline what skill set is required for each one and give some advice on how to get into this sort of work.

As further background, here also are some videos on this topic featuring the presenter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtpmH_zJ0WE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7Vw9p4l5Uk&t=22s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMe8D8Mppxg&t=30s

🏷️ Price £30 (UK VAT inclusive)
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