“You might sing a take and be like, ‘I feel like an idiot,’ but then you might double the take and poof – it makes total sense”: Jack Antonoff shares tips on vocal productionProducer Jack Antonoff has offered some tips on vocal production in a new video from online recording school Mix with the Masters.
The clip is part of a 30-minute documentary delving into the production process behind The 1975’s Being Funny In A Foreign Language album. In it, Antonoff breaks down his work with the British band, particularly how he double-tracked singer Matty Healy’s vocals on the track Part Of The Band.

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According to Antonoff, Healy’s vocals on Part Of The Band were left “completely dry”: “There’s literally no plugins on it,” he says [via MusicRadar].
Instead, the producer opted to double-track the vocals, a technique he says evokes “early Beatles recordings” while still sounding modern: “A doubled vocal cuts out the ‘80s and ‘90s-ness of music and [places it] only before or after.”
“It’s all about the lyrics,” he explains, noting the role Healy’s cheeky lines (I know some Vaccinista tote bag chic baristas / Sitting in east on their communista keisters / Writing about their ejaculations) played in his decision.
“Lines like that, delivered with a single vocal could almost become self-important, but you put the double in, and it almost reads to me like there’s a humour in it,” says the producer.
Antonoff also shares that vocal production and lyrical content are closely intertwined for him: “It’s not like the vocal’s the vocal and the performance is the performance,” he says. “The treatment of the vocal interacts with the lyric in a massive way.”
“So in the most obvious sense like if something is the voice of God maybe it should be Reverb-y. If something’s whispered into your ear maybe it should be dry. Those are like the most basic terms. If something is said from someone screaming on the street maybe it’s coming from over there but it gets even deeper than that.”
He continues: “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. Of yourself.”

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