Seoul Trip Goal: Recording 5SOS "Teeth" at KING STUDIO

Can you record a song you love in a professional Seoul studio, even if you've never sung into a studio microphone in your life? That's what a DIAMOND session at KING STUDIO — Korea's first K-pop recording experience program for international visitors, in Gangnam, Seoul — is built for, and it's exactly what Marcus, visiting from Macau on a family trip, came to find out with "Teeth" by 5 Seconds of Summer. If a DIAMOND session is on your Seoul Trip list, this is what one really looks like from the inside. 🎤

• The Song: Why "Teeth," and Why It Had to Be Recorded Properly
• Inside the DIAMOND Session: Step by Step
• What He Said Afterward

Why "Teeth," and Why It Had to Be Recorded Properly

Every session at KING STUDIO starts with the same question: what do you want to sing? Marcus didn't hesitate. "Teeth" is the song he sings all the time — at home, out with friends, anywhere a song can be sung. When his family planned their Seoul trip, he decided this was the moment to turn the song he'd sung casually a hundred times into a cover recording made the professional way. Not a phone memo, not a karaoke-room file: a properly tracked, mixed, and mastered version of his own voice on his own favorite song. There's something quietly meaningful about that choice. Most guests pick a song they aspire to; Marcus picked the song he already owns in daily life — which meant the session wasn't about learning a track, it was about meeting his own voice at a professional standard for the first time.

It's worth knowing what he chose to take on. "Teeth" is a single by the Australian pop rock band 5 Seconds of Summer, released in August 2019 and later included on their fourth studio album CALM — a dark, heavy, industrial-leaning rock track, and famously a demanding one to sing with conviction. It is not a K-pop song, and that's part of what makes this session a useful story: KING STUDIO's process — the same vocal directing, tracking, and mastering flow used for K-pop covers — applies to any song a guest brings through the door. The genre changes; the craft doesn't.

But the real challenge in this session wasn't the song's difficulty on paper. It was confidence. Marcus arrived visibly nervous — first time in Korea's studio scene, first time meeting the team, shoulders stiff through the introductions. More importantly, he didn't fully trust his own voice. A song like "Teeth" cannot be sung halfway; it needs volume, attitude, and commitment, and a singer who holds his sound back inside his throat will never land it. In the early going, his takes came out held back — quieter and smaller than the voice his family hears at home, the sound half-swallowed before it reached the microphone. The problem, in other words, was never pitch. It was permission. So before a single serious take was recorded, the session had a clear mission that would shape everything that followed: draw Marcus's real voice out of him, and get that voice — not the guarded version — onto the recording. That tension, between a song that demands full power and a singer still learning to give it, is the story of this DIAMOND session.

Inside the DIAMOND Session: Step by Step

STEP 1 First Hellos — a Family Arrival

Marcus didn't come alone: he visited KING STUDIO with his mother and younger brother, making the session part of the family's shared Seoul itinerary. The team welcomed all three, and Marcus was introduced to the two people who would carry his session — the vocal director who would run his training and directing, and the manager, who also handled interpretation throughout the day so nothing was lost between languages. The first meeting was, honestly, a little stiff — Marcus was polite but visibly tense, shoulders tight through the hellos, answering more with careful smiles than with words. That's normal, and the team has seen it hundreds of times in first-time guests; the session structure itself is designed to melt it, one step at a time, and having his mother and brother in the building made the studio feel less like an exam room from the very start.

STEP 2 Building His Monitoring Environment

Before serious singing starts, a DIAMOND session dedicates real time to the headphone mix. In a full rehearsal pass, the engineer balanced the instrumental, Marcus's own voice, and the reverb in his ears until the monitoring environment felt right to him — not to a preset. This step matters more than most first-timers expect: a singer who can't hear himself comfortably will instinctively hold back, and holding back was precisely the habit this session needed to break. Getting the ideal in-ear balance was the first quiet move against it.

STEP 3. Vocal Training and a Quick Read of His Voice

Next came focused vocal training centered on pitch and tempo. Working through targeted exercises, the vocal director quickly analyzed the characteristics of Marcus's voice — where it sat naturally, how he handled rhythm, and what tendencies would show up once the red light was on.

This is where the session's core issue surfaced in concrete form: the raw material was there, but the sound was staying inside. The training time doubled as a diagnosis, and it gave the director a clear map for the directing session to come.

STEP 4 Rehearsal and Finding His Key

With "Teeth" loaded, the first major milestone of the session was finding the exact key in which Marcus sings the song best. Through a dedicated pre-recording rehearsal, he and the director tested the song against his range until the accurate pitch center — his key, not the original's by default — was locked in.

The team treats this as the first genuinely important checkpoint of any DIAMOND session, because every take that follows is built on it. For a track like "Teeth," where power matters more than acrobatics, the right key is the difference between a singer straining at the edge of his range and a singer free to push.

STEP 5 Ninety Minutes of Vocal Directing and Recording

Then the core of the session began: roughly 90 minutes of recording under live vocal directing. The director had analyzed the song part by part in advance, and worked Marcus through it the same way — returning again and again to timing, to pitch, and to the meaning of the lyrics, asking him constantly to sing the line's intent, not just its notes. (One note for accuracy: KING STUDIO's manager normally also coaches Korean pronunciation line by line for K-pop covers, but "Teeth" is an all-English track, so that layer simply didn't apply to this session.) Take after take, the real work happened here — the steady, repeated push to bring the sound out of his body at full size.

The director's asks were consistent and relentless in the best way: land the beat, center the pitch, and above all stop protecting the sound — let it leave the body the way it does when nobody is recording. And it worked the way it usually does: gradually, then noticeably. As the takes stacked up, the held-back voice from the first hour gave way to something bigger and more honest, and the difference was audible even from the control room side of the glass. By the back half of the 90-minute directing block, the voice going onto the recording was recognizably Marcus's real one — the version of "Teeth" he'd been singing to himself all along, finally at full volume in a room built to capture it.

STEP 6 The Sweet Spot, and the Track He Takes Home

When the roughly hour-and-a-half of recording wrapped, Marcus moved to the final monitoring stage — done from the studio's "Sweet Spot," the listening position in the control room where the monitoring environment is at its best, to hear the full recording front to back. Hearing the full track from the Sweet Spot is a different experience from hearing yourself in headphones mid-take: the nerves are gone, the work is done, and what's left is simply his own voice, at full size, on the song he's sung his whole life. This is the DIAMOND payoff moment: unlike a lesson or a booth-experience visit, a DIAMOND session ends with a take-home master — his vocal takes comped and edited, pitch- and timing-corrected where needed, then mixed and mastered into a finished track that is his to keep. Before leaving, Marcus also sat down with the vocal director and manager to film a short video review for future KING STUDIO guests, closing the session the same way it ran: together with the team that carried it.

What He Said Afterward

Marcus told the team that thanks to the vocal director's well-timed help, he was able to gradually shore up the unstable parts of his singing and shape it into something far more polished by the end of the session.

FAQ: Which KING STUDIO Session Fits Your Trip?

Make It Your Seoul Trip Story

Marcus's session proves the point: you don't need studio experience, you don't need a K-pop song, and you don't even need to trust your voice yet — the directing gets you there. If there's a song you sing all the time, a DIAMOND session turns it into a mastered track of your own, one of the most personal souvenirs a Seoul Trip can produce.

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