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The Evil That Men Do (Iron Maiden Cover)

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Dude you're blasting at this in chest. My honest advice, if you want to sing this style, I'd do some extensive pitching exercises. Forget about high notes, forget about a lot of stuff. Just super hard work on intervals, drone notes, ear training, scales, and singing really slow, every note on the piano or whatever instrument you have access to, on all vowels (including things that use R like world, her, mars, etc).

 

You see I like a lot of singers whose aren't pitch aren't perfect, I'm biggest Lou Reed fan of the forum, and if you do a more talk singing style then some of the pitching issues are more forgivable. But Dickenson/Tate these guys with their operatic metal kind of thing, it's very sustained notes, and it doesn't just glance or bend around them, it hovers and it stays. 

 

Maybe rehearse the song with the piano or something. If you don't have a real instrument you can use something this:

 

http://virtualpiano.net/

 

As slow as it possibly needs to be. Pick out the entire melody of the song and match it one by one.  I think you can get it, but to my ears, the notes are just too sustained for it to hold together for me. If you glance on a flat note, and pull up or glance on a sharp note and pull down. It's different than if you hover on one and just hold it. That's my 2 cents. I saw you've been working your sirens. And that's good, it will train a lot of things. But I think you'll get better progress on the other direction. The slower the better if you want to sing in this style. The bar has been placed high on this style. I'm not an expert, but it's tough. You're gonna have to keep training hard. It's one thing to be able to make a high pitch sounded physiologically. It's another to sing a whole song with the control that might be expected in this genre.

 

One things for sure, you put a lot into. Sounds like you're blasting and really in the moment and passionately performing and I don't want t be harsh, but these are your heroes, so put all you got into it. I think for most people, it will have to be closer, unless you're working on a different style.

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Killer, thanks for taking the time to give feedback. As far as the blasting chest comment goes, I was looking for a belty style like Bruce for this song. I went with a more late bridging medium mass approach. I didn't feel any strain and it was resonant so I went with it. 

 

What do you mean by too sustained? And "it will have to be closer" ? 

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Killer, thanks for taking the time to give feedback. As far as the blasting chest comment goes, I was looking for a belty style like Bruce for this song. I went with a more late bridging medium mass approach. I didn't feel any strain and it was resonant so I went with it. 

 

What do you mean by too sustained? And "it will have to be closer" ? 

What he is saying is that pitch has to be more accurate and crisp. You touch the note then go flat whereas you should stay on it during the word or a phrase so it goes abit all over the place.

Btw really nice performance. Only thing that is a lil problematic is pitch and im sure youll get that in no time

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Dude you're blasting at this in chest. My honest advice, if you want to sing this style, I'd do some extensive pitching exercises. Forget about high notes, forget about a lot of stuff. Just super hard work on intervals, drone notes, ear training, scales, and singing really slow, every note on the piano or whatever instrument you have access to, on all vowels (including things that use R like world, her, mars, etc).

 

You see I like a lot of singers whose aren't pitch aren't perfect, I'm biggest Lou Reed fan of the forum, and if you do a more talk singing style then some of the pitching issues are more forgivable. But Dickenson/Tate these guys with their operatic metal kind of thing, it's very sustained notes, and it doesn't just glance or bend around them, it hovers and it stays. 

 

Maybe rehearse the song with the piano or something. If you don't have a real instrument you can use something this:

 

http://virtualpiano.net/

 

As slow as it possibly needs to be. Pick out the entire melody of the song and match it one by one.  I think you can get it, but to my ears, the notes are just too sustained for it to hold together for me. If you glance on a flat note, and pull up or glance on a sharp note and pull down. It's different than if you hover on one and just hold it. That's my 2 cents. I saw you've been working your sirens. And that's good, it will train a lot of things. But I think you'll get better progress on the other direction. The slower the better if you want to sing in this style. The bar has been placed high on this style. I'm not an expert, but it's tough. You're gonna have to keep training hard. It's one thing to be able to make a high pitch sounded physiologically. It's another to sing a whole song with the control that might be expected in this genre.

 

One things for sure, you put a lot into. Sounds like you're blasting and really in the moment and passionately performing and I don't want t be harsh, but these are your heroes, so put all you got into it. I think for most people, it will have to be closer, unless you're working on a different style.

​I  agree, you ´re out of pitch in most parts of the song, it´s like the backing track is in one pitch and you in other, you have to feel the pitch in the music or do the exercises. Just work on it.

 

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If I can ask, how are you monitoring while recording the vocal track? Through the software or with a zero latency interface?

​I have my headphones plugged into the audio interface and there is a knob: on one end there's "input" and another there's "feedback". For this song I had it mostly turned to Input.

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If I can ask, how are you monitoring while recording the vocal track? Through the software or with a zero latency interface?

​I have my headphones plugged into the audio interface and there is a knob: on one end there's "input" and another there's "feedback". For this song I had it mostly turned to Input.

If you can, set it up so you hear both the track and your voice at the same time. I find it helpful to make the voice little louder than the track, but if you're in the beginning of the ear training process you might need the backing track a bit louder to hear it more clearly if you don't have a 'feel' for where the pitches are.

 

Something that happens to basically everyone with relative pitch, is if we sing without a reference note, we'll eventually slide away from the reference. I'm at a point now where I just need a drone note, don't need a backing track, but even if I sing very very loudly for a long time to the point where I can't hear any reference at all, I can slip just a bit and might start singing relatively flat/sharp relatively to the track and more in tune with what I imagine is a reference.

 

You've got to develop a feeling of where things are, how each note relates. But then you've got to train to be able to actually sing it on any vowel. I noticed your 'oh' vowels in particular would go most flat, which doesn't surprise me as it is a very chesty vowel and you were already blasting a lot of chest. I did listen to the original here:

 

 

 

You're right, Bruce was really pushing/belting here on this track compared to what he might have been able to do. I think he might be my favorite of the high pitched 80s era singers. To my ears he at 1:41 he is actually micro tonally just a tiny bit flat on that huge roar, and scoops up, maybe not quite reaching that note? t might be on purpose. I love that kind of thing when the raw passion takes over and even a virtuoso like Bruce might go a bit flat/sharp. To me that's like the same unbridled passion that I enjoy in punk rock, listening to Joe Strummer. Dio wouldn't go flat there. He's too good, and very controlled. But Bruce, yeah, he's rock n roll.

 

I think for you though, you gotta get closer to sing this style of music. How far you can go, depends on a lot on the style of the music, the emotion being expressed. I get bored when music is always in tune. It sounds soulless to me, robotic, and with tuning software it always is nowadays, but when it goes too far out, it can lose people, even if the motion is authentic. But if you end up more like Dickenson and less like Dio at the end of the day and t here is something raw and unrefined sounding in there somewhere. Just know there are fans of that side of you too. Every artist needs to find their personal balance.

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Hey Jabroni, this is what I hear:

You don't know how to sing in your mid/upper range. Basically you're just yelling and that's why you sing flat most of the time. You're in tune in your lower range so you don't have any pitch problems per se. Work on registration/bridging, whatever you wanna call it...

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Hey Jabroni, this is what I hear:

You don't know how to sing in your mid/upper range. Basically you're just yelling and that's why you sing flat most of the time. You're in tune in your lower range so you don't have any pitch problems per se. Work on registration/bridging, whatever you wanna call it...

Thanks for the  feedback Sexy Beast. I noticed after practicing a bit more in the  car that I can definitely sing this with lighter mass. This rendition was too heavy giving it the shouting quality you described. I think it can still be medium mass and belty, but not sound like shouting. Thanks again! 

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Hey Jabroni, this is what I hear:

You don't know how to sing in your mid/upper range. Basically you're just yelling and that's why you sing flat most of the time. You're in tune in your lower range so you don't have any pitch problems per se. Work on registration/bridging, whatever you wanna call it...

Thanks for the  feedback Sexy Beast. I noticed after practicing a bit more in the  car that I can definitely sing this with lighter mass. This rendition was too heavy giving it the shouting quality you described. I think it can still be medium mass and belty, but not sound like shouting. Thanks again! 

​Just keep working at it, Jabroni. Pitch comes in time, whether you focus on it or not.

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Thanks for the  feedback Sexy Beast. I noticed after practicing a bit more in the  car that I can definitely sing this with lighter mass. This rendition was too heavy giving it the shouting quality you described. I think it can still be medium mass and belty, but not sound like shouting. Thanks again! 

Could you record that and post it?

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Thanks for the  feedback Sexy Beast. I noticed after practicing a bit more in the  car that I can definitely sing this with lighter mass. This rendition was too heavy giving it the shouting quality you described. I think it can still be medium mass and belty, but not sound like shouting. Thanks again! 

Could you record that and post it?

​I plan to do another take will a little less mass in a few days. I'll be sure to post it in this thread when I get a chance.

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