Sculpting Guitar Parts Around Aimee Mann Vocals
From the interview with Michael Lockwood
Cris Cohen: And then, you mentioned you try and back the singer. You try and create a guitar part that fits the vocals. You’ve worked with a number of really impressive women in the world of Rock. Aimee Mann and Susanna Hoffs and Fiona Apple. And something that I’ve never really asked anyone before -- but I was just curious -- if you’re creating a guitar part for a female voice, do you choose, I don’t know, maybe different tones or make different choices than you would if it was a male voice?
Michael Lockwood: I never thought about that, but I do think I’m always trying to sculpt whatever sound I feel is needed in it. It gets sculpted around the vocals. So, you work with three different guys, you’re going to probably sculpt and record stuff that suits their voices. And the difference between working with maybe Aimee or Fiona or Susanna is they’ve all got really different voices, and there’s things that work. Aimee’s voice was interesting because, a lot of times when we recorded, everything around her was very dry. So I tended to make everything very atmospheric around her, so that there was some sort of yin and yang in that. So, I think it’s not female versus male more than it’s just every voice is different and would call for some sort of thoughtful process about what to put next to that voice.