Thunderstruck cover

[jonpall]

Hi guys, long time no see. I thought I'd post a very recent live recording of myself for the fun of it.

This is me joining up on vocals with an Icelandic band called Rökkur (translates roughly to "Dusk") last weekend in a pub called Bar 11. We did many 70s and 80s rock songs that night. This is one you all know - called Thunderstruck by AC/DC !

Let me know what you think

 

[MDEW]

Great to see you are back. One thing though, you forgot to link.the video.

[jonpall]

MDEW - fixed!

[Robert Lunte]

Jonpall, great to see you in here again. Where you been? Don't be such a stranger.

Well, I have to say you do have that sort of Brian Johnson thing going on.... NICE JOB.

Sort of sounds like a hyper squeezed falsetto... 

[jonpall]

Thanks Robert.

[kirkovin84]

How do you do that sound? There's a comedian who is super good at this too. Always been a mystery to me. Brian Johnson kind of talks in this spot but the comedian who does 'hokey pokey' in ac/dc style speaks totally clean, so it's got to be some kind of coordination.

[Robert Lunte]

It is producing noise in the vocal tract, distortion, inside what would otherwise be a Falsetto position.

Thoughts Jonpall?

[jonpall]

Now that I've been practising vocals for 7+ years with this type of singing in mind, I feel in some ways that I know less about singing  But such a thing can happen on the road to mastery, if that can truly even ever be obtained.

To answer your question, I believe it's a matter of several things but the most important ones are overtwanging to create the distortion (and actually conciously trying to make the sound ugly, evil and angry - and then perhaps pull back slightly if you want a bit less of the distortion), thinking about being in head voice and not chest voice for such high notes, bending slightly forwards during the sung lines to support your voice (probably the most important element because you will be experimenting with this and occasionally hurt your voice a bit, which is when you must take a break for a few minutes, and this is what protects your vocal folds from being fried to dust with too much airflow when you're doing vocals like these) and finally, try to "project" your voice to the back of the room instead of tensing up in the throat (this makes your voice big and I've found that it sounds much better with a powerful band behind you and the audience connects MUCH more to such a sound).

There are other important things too, but these are the things I found to help me the most. But you guys might already be doing all or some of these things - and maybe lacking in other things, so what you need to to could be slightly different. In that case, look into stuff what you probably already have learned on this forum, like inhaling on a slight smile while keeping your shoulders down, not overly pronounce consonants, merge your vowels into the most resonant ones (Eh and Ah can help in this type of singing), etc...

Good luck and hope this helps.

[jonpall]

8 hours ago, Robert Lunte said:

It is producing noise in the vocal tract, distortion, inside what would otherwise be a Falsetto position.

Thoughts Jonpall?

Yes, that's probably correct. It can actually help to think falsetto, but then really try to project to your voice and make it as loud as you can while bending at the waist and knees slightly each time you sing a line. And it can also help to think that you just want to go for it and basically scream your lungs out. Here's another tip, ask a band if you can try to sing Back in black and don't expect to nail it until after many, many tries and tell your band mates that you're just experimenting with this. That's what I did. They'll just be happy to play a song like this because it's a fun guitar song  . The lines are so high that it's impossible to land in chest voice and singing this stuff with a band is the only way for you to see all the difficulties of this type of singing style. If you're just practising this at home, you may THINK that you're covering all issues but might found out that some things are missing when you try this with a band.

[jonpall]

I still have a bit of a difficult time handling distorted lines that go down in pitch and maintaining the distortion. I sometimes get to thin sounding. That's what Brian Johnson does as well, but I'd prefer not to. I'm going to work on it.

[Robert Lunte]

7 hours ago, jonpall said:

make it as loud as you can while bending at the waist and knees slightly each time you sing a line. And it can also help to think that you just want to go for it and basically scream your lungs out.

Although that sounds a bit silly, I believe that it actually helps with this... lol.

7 hours ago, jonpall said:

Here's another tip, ask a band if you can try to sing Back in black and don't expect to nail it until after many, many tries and tell your band mates that you're just experimenting with this.

I recently had to coach this song with a student a few weeks ago and found it to be REALLY hard. You are correct. The only way to make it work is to break a lot of rules and just give it frick'n hell into some kind of chaotic, Falsetto position. Hats off to anyone that tries it.

But another good point, be careful, you can hurt yourself with this.