“You might sing a take and be like ‘I feel like an idiot’, but double the take, or octave the take, and poof... it makes total sense”: Jack Antonoff on the power of vocal production techniques

Jack Antonoff recording vocals with The 1975 | Sneak Peek - YouTube

Watch On

Jack Antonoff has given us an insight on the vocal production techniques used on The 1975's 2022 single Part of the Band in a new video from Mix with the Masters. 

In the clip, taken from a 30-minute documentary on the production process for The 1975's Being Funny in a Foreign Language, Antonoff reveals that he left lead singer Matty Healy's vocal take "completely dry" on Part of the Band. "There's literally no plugins on it," he says.

Instead, Antonoff chose to double-track Healy's vocal, a technique that he says reminds him "early Beatles recordings" while sounding distinctly modern. "A doubled vocal cuts out the '80s and '90s-ness of music and [places it] only before or after," he says. 

The Grammy-winning producer explains how it was Healy's wry, tongue-in-cheek lyrics that compelled him to avoid the use of effects on the vocal and double-track it instead. "It's all about the lyrics," he says, before replaying a portion of Healy's vocal that features the lyrics: "I know some Vaccinista tote bag chic baristas / Sitting in east on their communista keisters / Writing about their ejaculations". 

"Lines like that, delivered with a single vocal could almost become self-important," Antonoff says, "but you put the double in, and it almost reads to me that there's a humour in it [...] One person saying that, I’m like: ‘f*ck off bro’… but two people saying that, I’m listening". 

This, Antonoff says, illustrates an important point about the connection between vocal production and lyrical content. "It's not like the vocal's the vocal and the performance is the performance," he says. "The treatment of the vocal interacts with a lyric in a massive way."

"Any artist who records their own vocal will know this feeling. You might sing a take and be like, ‘I feel like an idiot’, but then you might double the take, or octave the take, and poof - it makes total sense, and the areas in which you felt naked now feel as if you have this army of two."

Watch the full series at Mix With The Masters' website.