Vocal phrasing is key for your songwriting – this is why!

Let’s dive into what vocal phrasing is, how it impacts your songwriting, and my own personal experiences as a singer and songwriter. If you’re not thinking about today, you’d likely benefit from doing it.

About the author

• Stefan Nordström
• Musician, songwriter, content creator, digital freelancer
• Stockholm, Sweden
• Bands: Desolator, Soliloquium, Ending Quest, Ashes of Life, Trees of Daymare, The Ashen Tree
• Social: Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

What is vocal phrasing?

Vocal phrasing refers to how a singer uses timing, rhythm, emphasis and breath to deliver lines and melodies. How are the lines and melodies placed within a song’s overall landscape? Vocal phrasing applies to both clean and extreme vocal styles. In extreme metal, it’s one of the key factors in making your arrangements stand out, as you mostly rely on rhythm as opposed to melody.

Why it matters

There is so much predictable music out there that sounds almost the same. If you don’t make unexpected moves with an interesting rhythmic, melodic or emotional impact, you risk not being noticed. Saturation aside, most musicians and songwriters are here to connect the listeners, and hit them as hard as possible with our underlying message. Vocal phrasing can highlight and embellish the emotional side of your compositions, not to mention make them catchier. It’s become one of my main weapons in creating more memorable songs.

My experience with vocal phrasing

It took me quite some time before I actively started thinking about vocal phrasing. As an old school death metal guy, my instinct was always to sing on the first beat. 99% of my songs had singing that started that way, and so did the vocals for my more experimental band Soliloquium in the early 2010’s.

My aha moment was when I started featuring guest singers on my albums. I was listening to a song and admiring how well the arrangement stood out, especially in comparison to my own clean vocals. The singer let every chord ring out, waited and then hit the most expressive vowel on the snare’s downbeat. This lit a spark in my brain, and I immediately started researching vocal phrasing.

Since then I’ve been singing ahead or after the beat in many of my songs, both extreme and melodic. I’ve also taken care to move around in the same section, trying to do the unexpected. It makes all the difference.

Vocal phrasing key factors

The main factor is vocal phrasing is where on the beat you come in and eventually land/end. Are you pushing or pulling against the beat? How does it impact the music? Does it make it more urgent, or maybe heavier? Getting this part right makes a huge difference, and it’s worth experimenting with when writing songs.

Like all living organisms, vocalists need to breathe. Where you place your breaths can and will cause pauses, and being deliberate with these can colour your vocal phrasing. Have it in mind when composing to get the best out of your voice.

Articulation is another important factor. Words can be twisted any which way in music, so use it to your advantage when composing phrases, melodies and rhythms. Think about how clearly and softly you sing words, and hone in on details that could make it more impactful.

Examples of amazing vocal phrasing

As a listener, you probably don’t specifically think “oh, that’s some killer vocal phrasing”. The same goes for me when trying to find examples. Just some off the top of my head here:

• Let the vocals lead the riff/music: Warrel Dane (Nevermore) and Oddleif Stensland (Communic): starting off a section or riff by having the vocals come ahead of the riff can be very powerful, even song-defining in the Communic examples. Check out the phrase “we will fall” from Nevermore – The River Dragon Has Come, and the “sea weeds in the ocean shall be my death” bed hook in Communic – Ocean Bed. Both these are perfect examples of how metal singers can drive the song without following the riff structure.
• Pacing over melody: Loïc Rossetti (ex-The Ocean) is a master of getting the most out of his notes. Lots of his stuff is not highly melodic, but the rhythms are super inventive. The first vocal part of the song “Triassic” (“You feel so disconnected..”) is an excellent example. Super-creative and unique vocal phrasing that makes the song stand out immediately.
• Overlapping vocal ideas: Letting vocal lines or even verses and choruses overlap eachother can hit super hard and make a song. Peak Katatonia had some unbelievably creative arrangements that hit super hard. “Dissolving Bonds” (“you said you/would always be caring”, etc.) and the verses of “Teargas” great examples. Vocals trade off and ring out over eachother in a way that perfectly communicates the song’s message. A Perfect Circle‘s “The Noose” and Sleep Token‘s “Euclid” both end on amazing sections where the verse and chorus ideas glue together as a crescendo. This is an unbelivevably effective method to tie up a song, and if you do it right it feels seemless. Definitely something I want to do in one of my songs when the right idea pops up.
• Overlapping vocal styles: in extreme metal, many bands feature both clean and aggressive vocals. This opens up new possibilities. A great example is an early favorite of mine, “The Smoke” by Amorphis, where Tomi Joutsen turns his combination of death metal growls and clean vocals into a mega hook. And I’d once again like to mention Loïc Rossetti and his amazing scream/clean tradeoffs in the verses of “Cambrian II: Eternal Recurrence” (“…always be reversed”, etc.). So unique and so memorable. This kind of vocal phrasing ideas can really make the difference, especially if you have an ecletic vocal setup in your band.

As I said, this far from a comprehensive list, just what I came up with at the top of my head. There is so much you can do in this department. Allow yourself to be inspired by the best, such as the musicians above.

What happens when you move the vocal phrasing around in an amazing song? Find out here:

How to develop your vocal phrasing

Here are some useful tips to develop it:

• Listen analytically: study how artists phrase familiar songs. What makes it pop out? How does it fuel the emotional impact of the music?
• Record yourself: always record yourself during your progress and listen for monotone phrasing or unintentional habits. If all your songs and ideas sound the same, try to change it up
• Experiment with timing: sing slightly ahead or behind the beat. It can make the arrangement sound more urgent or unique
• Mark breaths and emphasis: treat your lyric sheet like an actor’s script
• Study speech rhythm: recite the lyrics as if you’re speaking them naturally. This way, you can find a flow that naturally translates to vocal lines
• Improvise: scat singing or gentle humming helps explore natural flow. Doing this before writing lyrics can make your lines and melodies more creative and catchy

Mistakes to avoid

Some of the most common vocal phrasing mistakes are:

• Going on autopilot: a lot of music sounds the same, so try to avoid the autopilot phrasing that makes your compositions predictable
• Ignoring natural speech rhythm: ideally, you want rhythm and melody to flow in terms of storytelling. In the end, you want to communicate something.
• Over-singing (no space for emotion to breathe): I’ve been in bands where the lyric writer bombards the songs with non-stop machine gun lyrics. It’s no fun, and it doesn’t sound good. Personally, I’ve written pretentious and clumsy songs that doesn’t translate much emotion at all. Don’t cram your songs with too much stuff. Letting it breathe and keeping it simple is often the best way to go.
• Neglecting lyric meaning: phrasing is a great way to highlight important peaks and valleys in your lyrics.

Vocal phrasing – conclusion

Keep vocal phrasing in the back of your head when jamming and composing. Treat it as a method for personal expression, not a fixed technique. Personally, I’ve only just begun discovering what I can do with it. No matter where you’re at, developing it is a key factor. Don’t sing everything on the first beat. Unless you’re in a crust punk band, maybe.

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