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Stay Cover (Rhianna)

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Hi, I'm posting this here as I want truthful opinions and critique on my singing.

I have had no singing lessons, I'm far too shy to stand in front of someone and sing but I do use warm ups before singing and a few techniques such as open throat, breathing using diaphragm etc...

Also I feel like I have a deep voice for a girl and when I'm hitting high notes I'm not sure if I'm doing it correctly.

I'm open to critique no matter how bad as I truly want to try and make the best of my voice. I also research on YouTube and this forum for guidance.

Thankyou :-)

http://www.smule.com/p/77855144_9698365

Also this one is a cover of She Will Be Loved which I think my voice sounds a bit different in.

http://www.smule.com/p/82668823_9891794

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Hi Elizax.

For both song samples, your bottom register (chest voice) is good -- I can hear your stylistic approach, however I still hear you holding back the sound within your throat (back of mouth).. You need to bring that sound forward by using more mask and flattening your tongue...

The higher sections and vocal breaks, you have to be careful with..

You break into falsetto when full head voice should be used. So, doing so, you are bending the note slightly - which knocks you off key, and allowing too much air to pass the vocal folds. Stylistically, this works in " She will be loved " more, but you should pull back the air.... and in "Stay" you should eliminate the falsetto and only use full head voice.

I would recommend you concentrate your scales on the vocal breaks, as they are not clean (You produce a yodel when going from one register to another)..

Vocal breaks and high parts.

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Hi Elizax.

For both song samples, your bottom register (chest voice) is good -- I can hear your stylistic approach, however I still hear you holding back the sound within your throat (back of mouth).. You need to bring that sound forward by using more mask and flattening your tongue...

The higher sections and vocal breaks, you have to be careful with..

You break into falsetto when full head voice should be used. So, doing so, you are bending the note slightly - which knocks you off key, and allowing too much air to pass the vocal folds. Stylistically, this works in " She will be loved " more, but you should pull back the air.... and in "Stay" you should eliminate the falsetto and only use full head voice.

I would recommend you concentrate your scales on the vocal breaks, as they are not clean (You produce a yodel when going from one register to another)..

Vocal breaks and high parts.

How do I access my head voice? If I try to move up from chest it automatically breaks into falsetto because I feel like im straining I go any higher from chest.

Is there any ways to figure out how to hit head voice?

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Hello Elizax,

It is difficult for me to analyze your voice because I am not hearing it up front enough. In other words, in the first song "Stay" the music is louder than your voice. Could you re-record “Stay” with the music being lower in volume? Also could you write down the lyrics because there is a note in there where I think could already be in your head-voice but just don’t know it. I don’t know the song so this makes it difficult to explain and to point out to you where that note is. Also, when you record the song could you do it without the guitar and just the piano.

I know the words to “She will be loved” so you don’t have to write them down. However, could you sing the song the whole way through and take out the male voice throughout the whole song so I can just hear you.

By the way, you have a beautiful texture to you voice and I definitely think that you should pursue a singing career.

Jeff

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Quote Nicogratouille: The jazz guitarist ruins the song in my opinion! Next time tell him to go and practice somewhere else

Nick is correct, this is not a jazz song it’s contemporary. Though the guitar playing is good it is in conflict with the lead voice. For example: This is what happens when the listeners hears a song in this fashion. One second they’re listening to the VOX, (lead voice), and the next second they’re listening to the guitar and can’t focus on the very main part of the song which is the melody and lyrics. Never should there be a conflict.

If you are a duo and you want guitar interludes within songs they should be within their own sections and in a contemporary song like this I would not put any.

I am speaking from a guitar player’s point of view. I’ve played guitar since I was eight years old and started my professional career when I was fifteen. I am now sixty and I never did a guitar solo over the lead voice. All background instruments should complement whatever is taking place in the foreground. For example: If your guitar player was playing in a band, how would he like it if the drummer decided to do a drum solo while he was doing a guitar solo.

Jeff

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Thankyou I'll record again within the next hour!

The app has the option to do duets so the other person was just a guy playing a guitar, I don't personally know him haha.

Thankyou for the responses :)

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http://www.smule.com/p/86614364_10161102

I hope this is better quality. You can tell straight away I struggle on high notes and somewhere I'm going wrong because I have a little pain in my throat.

Thanks.

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Kirsty,

You are definitely breaking into falsetto on this song. However, you are breaking into it on notes that are well within your chest voice. Let’s fix that first.

The very first time that you sing, “I through my hands in the air”, on the word “hands” you are singing a G4 and I can tell that this is well within your chest voice range and you hit if with comfort. The next thing I hear you do is you sing the words, “come a little closer”. On the word “closer” you’re hitting three notes. On the second note of that word you hit an E4. That’s four half steps down in your vocal range than the G4 on the word “hand” that you hit earlier. If you are trying to get a yodel effect then this is good, but if you are going into your falsetto just because you think that it is a higher note then you are just fooling your psyche into thinking that your larynx has to flip into falsetto when it is totally unnecessary. You should be able to hit this E4 with more comfort than the G4 you hit earlier.

On the lyrics “tell me now you know” on the “know” you are again hitting three notes. On the second note you now go back up to the G4 as in “hands” and again this note should be comfortable to you.

Later you sing, “I want you to stay”. On the word “stay” there are three notes but the first note is the same note as the third note where you break it back into falsetto again and you don’t have to. It’s the same note. Then I hear three notes on the “ooh”. Here is one place where you may be singing in a disconnected head voice which would be the sound that you might want in this song. However, if you want this to be a strong sounding like chest voice, you have to learn how to connect. You will still be in head voice but it will give the appearance that you are singing in a strong chest voice. Leave this part alone for now and let’s see if we can get the chest voice corrected first.

It is difficult to tell if you are singing in head voice on the “ooh” because you are singing so lightly throughout the whole song as well as on the “ooh”. It’s like you are singing as though there is a child asleep in a crib next to you and you don’t want to wake the child.

Try this experiment. It’s not a replacement for learning to sing properly but I just want to see what happens. Picture the person that you are singing to as though he was standing on the other side of a large room. Sing out to that person without shouting and let’s see if we can get you to project a little better. Remember, you are not shouting you are just singing out.

Also I want you to sing, “She will be loved”, by yourself because I think I heard something in there that was head voice but you didn’t know that you were doing it. Again sing out to the person on the other side of the room. Keep your breathing correct and while doing this with everything in your upper body completely relaxed.

Jeff

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Thankyou very much, listening back it does sound a bit all over the place. I'm really grateful you've took the time to really help me right now.

I will have to record the other song tomorrow as my parents are back now, I hope you will be around then!

Thanks again, you give amazing advice!

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Hi Elizax. I only listened to the cleaned up version and I didn't really feel that I heard you going into falsetto unnecessarily - it felt more of a stylistic thing. Your style actually reminded me of Florence Welch a little bit which I appreciate is nothing like Rhianna but then I've never heard the Rhianna version of this so maybe I had the advantage of not having any preconceptions.

If I'd listened to that and someone said it was a Florence and the Machine song then I wouldn't have been surprised - whether you are into them or not (and I'm not really) you have to accept that Florence has a great voice so this is really a compliment!

Of course if you are trying to sound more like Rhianna then that's a different story but I think you have a style going there that suits your voice and I liked it.

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Hi Elizax. I only listened to the cleaned up version and I didn't really feel that I heard you going into falsetto unnecessarily - it felt more of a stylistic thing. Your style actually reminded me of Florence Welch a little bit which I appreciate is nothing like Rhianna but then I've never heard the Rhianna version of this so maybe I had the advantage of not having any preconceptions.

If I'd listened to that and someone said it was a Florence and the Machine song then I wouldn't have been surprised - whether you are into them or not (and I'm not really) you have to accept that Florence has a great voice so this is really a compliment!

Of course if you are trying to sound more like Rhianna then that's a different story but I think you have a style going there that suits your voice and I liked it.

Oh, thanks haha. I do love a bit of Florence I have to admit so maybe it's a habit of copying the dips she does.

It is a huge compliment, her voice is something else and completely unique, unlike a lot of the more pop girly singers :).

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Kirsty,

Keep in mind that we are trying to find your head voice. To do this we must first establish where your chest voice ends and your head voice begins. That’s not to say that there is only one particular place where a singer can enter into head voice. Once you find your head voice you can enter into it at earlier times within a scale or later within that same scale and it depends on the melody of the song and where you want to take it emotionally.

Quote ElWin: "... I didn't feel that I heard you going into falsetto unnecessarily..." and this is correct if you intend to do this, but let’s first establish your range by having you sing it more like Rhianna. You can always go back to this style, which is called yodel effect, anytime you wish. I would just like to hear you sing the two songs with a forward projection as I stated earlier.

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Jeff is right of course that developing your head voice and bridging will improve your singing overall. You shouldn't be put off from a certain style if that is what you are aiming for but it is better to be able to come at it from a position of complete control.

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http://www.smule.com/p/86614364_10244965

Ok I did it by doing as you said and tried to project my voice.

I have a bit of trouble going back to chest voice after going to falsetto on the loved parts as you can tell, so I just stay there.

Hope this is clear enough.

Thanks :)

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Kirsty,

I like your style and how you are turning it into your own song instead of doing it just like Maroon 5, like within the lyrics, “wound up at your door.” You’re giving it a nice feminine sound by flipping back and forth into your falsetto and chest. Keep this within you style of interpreting songs. It’s a nice touch and it is what ElWin was talking about when ElWin said “… I didn't really feel that I heard you going into falsetto unnecessarily…” and “You shouldn't be put off from a certain style if that is what you are aiming for…” I definitely don't want to put you off your style.

On the lyrics, “and she will be loved”, within the chorus it sounds like on the word “will” that you are in your head voice but it is hard to tell and here is why. This note is an A#5 which is around where the common female voice would go into head voice. However, because this is in the lower register of the female head voice and is disconnected and light it is difficult for me to definitely tell whether it is the head of falsetto. If it is head voice I would say to keep this disconnected because you make it sound nice.

On the words, “be loved” these two notes are G4 as in the word “hands” that you sing comfortably in the song “Stay” in your chest voice. However, it sounds as though you might be running out of air and this might be why on the words “be loved” you are having a difficult time coming back down into your chest. Try practicing just that line, “and she will be loved” with a little more air and see if you can get yourself back to chest.

ElWin, listen closely to the word “will” in the chorus. To me it sounds like she is into a light head voice. Let me know if it sounds like she is in head to you.

Jeff

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My advice is going to harder to follow than the others.

Please, step away from the reverb. In any of the versions, the reverb is too strong, too wet, whatever you want to call it. You don't need as much of it as you think you do.

The second version of "She Will Be Loved" was better because you did not have a duet partner. Did no one else notice that in the first version with the guy in the duet, he was off pitch in nearly everything? I don't mean like he was singing in another key. I mean, he couldn't hear pitch and could not trust his own sense of interval. The baby making noise in the background was not nearly the distraction as his pitchiness was.

Your voice is fine, Eliza, and what you are doing with these songs is right. Some people are going to find it hard to believe that adult contemporary (which can include jazz influence, by the way) is not going to be sung the same way as, say, "Full Moon" by Sonata Arctica. It just isn't. Okay, off my soapbox.

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My advice is going to harder to follow than the others.

Please, step away from the reverb. In any of the versions, the reverb is too strong, too wet, whatever you want to call it. You don't need as much of it as you think you do.

The second version of "She Will Be Loved" was better because you did not have a duet partner. Did no one else notice that in the first version with the guy in the duet, he was off pitch in nearly everything? I don't mean like he was singing in another key. I mean, he couldn't hear pitch and could not trust his own sense of interval. The baby making noise in the background was not nearly the distraction as his pitchiness was.

Your voice is fine, Eliza, and what you are doing with these songs is right. Some people are going to find it hard to believe that adult contemporary (which can include jazz influence, by the way) is not going to be sung the same way as, say, "Full Moon" by Sonata Arctica. It just isn't. Okay, off my soapbox.

It's the app that I use as I have no other way to record it, I do have it on basic setting.

Sorry about that :)

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Kirsty,

I like your style and how you are turning it into your own song instead of doing it just like Maroon 5, like within the lyrics, “wound up at your door.” You’re giving it a nice feminine sound by flipping back and forth into your falsetto and chest. Keep this within you style of interpreting songs. It’s a nice touch and it is what ElWin was talking about when ElWin said “… I didn't really feel that I heard you going into falsetto unnecessarily…” and “You shouldn't be put off from a certain style if that is what you are aiming for…” I definitely don't want to put you off your style.

On the lyrics, “and she will be loved”, within the chorus it sounds like on the word “will” that you are in your head voice but it is hard to tell and here is why. This note is an A#5 which is around where the common female voice would go into head voice. However, because this is in the lower register of the female head voice and is disconnected and light it is difficult for me to definitely tell whether it is the head of falsetto. If it is head voice I would say to keep this disconnected because you make it sound nice.

On the words, “be loved” these two notes are G4 as in the word “hands” that you sing comfortably in the song “Stay” in your chest voice. However, it sounds as though you might be running out of air and this might be why on the words “be loved” you are having a difficult time coming back down into your chest. Try practicing just that line, “and she will be loved” with a little more air and see if you can get yourself back to chest.

ElWin, listen closely to the word “will” in the chorus. To me it sounds like she is into a light head voice. Let me know if it sounds like she is in head to you.

Jeff

Thankyou for your input. Head voice is pretty tricky huh :(

It's really hard to go from chest to head voice when you don't even know where to start, I read all different things on the Internet and none are specific whatsoever.

I definitely did feel like I was running out of air on the loved part, as if I was straining to pull the note out. I think another problem I have is my breathing, sometimes I take too much air and other times to little but I've been working on that.

Thankyou for taking the time to help so far, I really appreciate it :)

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While I don't disagree generally with Jeff's advice I think it may have caused you to focus too much on aspects that in trying to resolve have caused your overall sound to worsen. I know what Jeff is aiming for but in the latest version of she will be loved it sounds like in trying to project you are throwing more breath to the front of the mouth. This will not help with projection and actually due to less control of the air flow over the vocal chords your overall resonance and stability has suffered. Concentrate on forming the sound at the back of the throat and directing it out more using the shaping of he mouth to improve resonance. You can't learn this from comments in a forum but there are lots of videos on YouTube on this if a personal coach is not an option. Also look up breathing using diaphragm as this also key to controlling the flow of air - not sure you are doing that presently.

As for the head/chest voice - if you get the stability in the first place right where you are able to produce consistent tone using good support and breath control then you will be able to more easily identify where the bridge between chest and head naturally occurs. Doing scales is an excellent way to identify this as you will just feel the point where either your voice will break and you will have to change to head voice or if you are able to bridge seamlessly then you will feel the nature of the resonance change more from your throat to also in your head but the key to head voice v falsetto is that it will still be nice and resonant and you shouldn't lose volume.

It's a shame that some of the other folk on here haven't picked up on this thread as there are some very good technical people on here but you know you have the basics of a good sound that just needs to be perfected so you are in a great position to improve.

Just re Rons point on the reverb - what room was this recorded in as that can make a difference. Was it a kitchen or room with no carpets?

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