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you dont have to "quit" something just because it doesnt come easily and you dont have to quit just because you wont be a star overnight. Sometimes you just have to take your time and look into it a little bit ANYONE can sing to one degree or another and maybe you are just missing something basic like decent breathing or something similar? Many people told me I cant sing or play guitar etc....but I cant quit because I suck at gaming too...so im stuck.

As we just about come up on the halfway point of 2016, we've unfortunately lost several big names in music. Prince, David Bowie, and Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire, just to name a few. This is a challenge where we will challenge ourselves by selecting a song from the catalog of one of these great artists and attempting to sing it ourselves. The only requirement for this challenge is that the song must be by somebody who passed away in 2016. As far as time limits for this one goes, I was thinking about 45 days but suggestions are welcome.

The Shadow of the Wicker Man is rising up again!!

... do you think? In regards to rhythm... here is the best firkin advise I can give you... listen up. Stop counting music in quarter note tempo / meter... and start counting all music into 8ths. "1&2&3&4&..." Add the "&"... Without 8th notes, you have no syncopation and without syncopation, you have NO GROOVE! Students that count only in quarter notes, have shitty rhythm and cues. Students that learn to sub-divide into 8ths and accent the syncopated, upbeat 8th, begin to get their rhythm tight and groove on... try it... you'll see... great rhythm starts by... locking in upbeat 8ths.

Hahahah man you are crazy. All this talk of Greyhound buses and road trips is unnecessary. Surely an event that included two TMV moderators would justify the use of the official Modern Vocalist Private Jet. We'll just have Adolph leave us the keys for the weekend. We can all get together and back home in under 12 hours.

I tried multiple times for a cover and I was bad every cover haha... although I do have this one which is kinda alright but it's a pretty unknown tune: http://picosong.com/NAQD/ Kinda cheesy early 60s Bee Gees tune rather than the crazy disco stuff everyone knows.

No you dony have a crappy voice, sounds good. But i would guess you should work abit on your confidence, why? cause there wioll always be people who dislike your voice regardless of how good you get! Heck i i sometimes get to hear i dont sound good and im bloody amazing so chill and have fun

Hi Elise.... I love your videos... your adorable... Always decent if not really good.... you have a future as a singer... keep going!! 1). I like that you are now experimenting with vocal processing... YES, use some reverb, however, this is a little too much. Turn it down a little bit, but just a bit. Never sing with a "flat" signal and no special sauce... Also, if you can, get some compression on your voice. You can get compression on a TC-Helicon pedal like the new Performance-V (see my review of this cool singer effects system in the vocal gear > processing forum), or one of their pedals. Some PA boards/heads have compression as well. 2). You might try improving your intonation by paying attention to not onsetting low and then scooping up. Singers do this ALL THE TIME... so be aware of it! No "poop scoops" into the notes or out of the notes... straight in and straight out as much as possible. There are some blue note exceptions to that, but generally speaking, 90% of the time, no scooping!!! I really don't have a lot of critiques on this performance Elise because it was pretty solid. For me, it almost comes down to production at this point on this song. How to get a better audio, a better video, etc. for your presentation. If you were my student, we would be working learning how to make recordings now... not live recordings like this.. which are fine, but you really need to begin making real recordings... singing into a microphone, into a DAW (digital audio workstation)... or software for recording, learning how to get levels, learning about compression and effects and then... learning how to take your audio and synch it to video so it looks real. Especially if you are presenting on YouTube. Below is a new song I recently completed... Im not posting this to steal your thunder, but to show you the level of production I think you need to begin striving for. It will make you look more pro. SECRET... This video looks like Im singing it live right there... it is an illusion. Now to be sure, I am NOT lip synching... I am actually singing the song and it did actually sound about 90% the save as the audio you are hearing, but the audio you are hearing was done before the video. Audio is produced first... made to sound as amazing as you can... then synced to video for the final presentation. The Audio is actually the hard part. Getting a good performance and mixing, etc... the video is the easy part. You just look pretty and 'act' in front of a camera. This is how the pros do it... very rarely are you going to get this quality of recording, live... and that is the point... if you up your game in the quality of your audio... which you need to do at this point... you may as well synch it to a nice video since you are 90% there. I can teach you how to do this btw... I can give you audio and video production lessons. So I really think that is great advise... you need to learn how ... and get experience recording and start capturing all these songs your doing, at a higher level of production. Your ability to sing, has out grow the quality of your productions. Ha! You thought I was just a rocker didn't ya... If you can take your singing... and turn them into productions like this... you will have the complete package and really start sounding and looking professional. And I think you are probably ready for it. The art of recording Elise, is 40% of the art of singing. It is part of the overall art form... you really need to learn how. A great place to start is if on garageband... if you have a mac book or iPad, you get garageband automatically and it is a great way to cut your teeth on recording and you can make a good recording with garageband... don't let anyone tell you otherwise. When you are ready to get more powerful DAW, you should move up to Macs LogicProX... that is what I use... it is the pro version of garageband... or something like Reaper for PCs... Ron actually knows a lot about Reaper.

You have a great voice! Good choice of song too. However, most of your singing and resonance is being placed in your throat, in more of a speech mode. This will make higher nd lower notes more difficult, even if your more relaxed chest voice range is easy to control. It's also apparent in some of the dynamics of your plosives, the low level of breath suppport, and some of your curbing vowels (vowels resonating further back). You are, however, always on pitch in the more comfortable parts of that range. What I hear you need is better resonant placement, more lifted to the soft palate and a bit forward. A bit more push or lockdown in the diaphram area (your solar plexus specifically) will support that better resonant placement and give your voice more body too. But that's only a start. One way to begin training yourself to resonate and support in this way is to start humming songs while buzzing your lips. This is called "Tracking". Another that I teach is to place a finger across your bottom lip and try to sing up and over it. Are you training? Do you have a teacher? I highly suggest you check out the course, The Four Pillars of Singing, created by the owner of this forum.

Let's see if we can get some fathers misty eyed hahahaha... really beautiful tune with great lyrics and most importantly for me, very easy in my range. Enjoy http://picosong.com/DzJh/

OK, this is it.......... You will have to put up with the out of tune guitar until someone buys me an expensive one. Capo on the 5th fret doesn't help things. Cowboy chords, Folk Style. I am Keeping this microphone.

RIP David Bowie: Great idea gsoul, keep em comming folks!

Messing around with a few song ideas. These are not polished at all yet and are in the early stages of song writing. http://vocaroo.com/i/s0jF0P95iUbn http://vocaroo.com/i/s0aDuD6nAyuB

Took a listen to the last sample (mix) and in my opinion you sound really good... The only part you were a bit more nasal to me sounded more like an intentional part of your interpretation, am I wrong in that regard? Anyways, lets be rational, you sing well, maybe someone can say that its not their cup of tea because of their personal taste, but you sing well and this is undeniable. If someone within a group of singers, someone that is supposed to be an expert, went out of his/her way to say this rather useless piece of information to you while the other folks can't sing in key (and therefore for all practical purposes don't yet know how to sing), I would say its most likely that the problem is really not you. Keep working with your current teacher, and congrats for the work done so far btw. Send more songs when you can

Something I threw together in the wee hours of the night. I did a double track vocal to try and get the sound right and I think besides a few occasional out of syncs it works nicely. Hopefully you guys like it. http://picosong.com/E2RM/

They don't call me "membership support" for nothing.

Points to Jeremy for trying to lighten the mood

Reverse Summer of '96' and what do you get? Bryan Adams you aren't fooling anyone, welcome to TMV.

Hello! As proposed by Elvis_Osmanovic we are organizing a friendly competition, to stimulate everyone on their studies and just have some fun. Due to the friendly nature, there are no prizes and no strict rules about it. The song of the Challenge is : "All of Me" by John Legend I´ve linked here a backing track that I found and that seems acceptable (although it has backing vocals, and they are auto-tuned   ). But, feel free to record the song in any manner you want, accapella, guitar+vocals, a different version, other backing tracks, etc. I know that not everyone has the condition to do an overdub recording, so my suggestion for those that may like the idea but don't have the means (or the time) to do so is: - place a cellphone on the room 2 or 3 meters away from you;- set it to record;- play the backingtrack on a good stereo (set the EQ to flat);- sing on top of it. This way you can balance the sound on the room and you will record what you are hearing. The result will not be hi-fi but at least will not get in the way. Auto-tune won´t be allowed, for obvious reasons. And I also kindly ask the participants to go easy on the editing. To participate, all you need to do is send your version on the review section, on a new thread, and send the link to your thread here. I will keep this thread clean so we can organize it better, to talk about the Challenge, please use the >ORIGINAL THREAD. Postings made here with any other content other than the link to your song will be moved over there. You can participate up to April 30th, I believe its enough time, if you guys think it needs to change, let me know on the original thread and we can adjust it. The winner will be decided by voting right after that. Good Luck!!!John Legend All Of Me (Karaoke).mp3

I got some problem to start a new topic and Adolph is kind enough to try a solve that issue. So is it ok to post my Highway star- training clip here? It was a rainy morning today here in Finland and i had some time so i tryed this month challenge. I´m not too happy with the result, it´s a very hard song for me but here it is anyway

Let me ramble a bit to help understand how Bolton got to where he was. I have read his memoirs and I suggest everyone should, whether you are fan of his music, or not.  Anyway, he started out as a rock singer and he plays a number of instruments. 8 albums that went nowhere and 8 tours that were abysmal and ended in the red. He was planning his 9th album and the producer he always worked with made a simple suggestion. He had done a demo of "Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding, pretty much how he would sing it as a "ballad" on his club dates. And the producer mangaged to convince him to put out a "soul" album. And, after 20 years of being a non-successful rock singer, he became an "over night" sensation as a soul singer and that album blew up on the charts. So, don't be afraid to go where your voice takes you, even if it is not what you were expecting, at first.  

Folks... I don't think this is a competition. If its a competition, it won't succeed. People won't "compete"... this is not about competing... it about learning and getting a review on your singing, ... but at the same time, comparing your version to others, learning from others how they got through it, learning how to make home recordings and to "challenge" yourself, not each other... 

Hey man i heard it, your close but your vowelmods are abit all over the place wich throws it abit pitchy. Try this, im hearing that your closing down abit to much on the closed vowels specialy the ih/ee vowels.

Yo man pick yourself up a cheap keyboard on Ebay for 50 - 100 bucks and just run your voice up and down those notes. You don't have to learn professional piano, but as an exercise tool for intonation the benefits are too vast to ignore. And yeah I know you can get some keyboard app on your phone but having a tangible musical instrument to touch and feel is way cooler. Good luck man and nice work so far.

And sharp. Most of the time for most people... pitch issues are mostly due to a lack of attention or focus on it. There is a subconscious misunderstanding that "close is close enough"... when it comes to what we call "the constant" in TVS,... there is no "close enough" with frequency. Frequency HAS to be on. It is either 100% on or a 100% off... no exceptions, no creative license like other elements of music. Wake up, pay more attention. Working on your parts slowly with a keyboard... one note at a time for just a few minutes is often all it takes.

This was a contribution to the "Legends Lost" thread. Glenn Fry passed earlier this year. I found an old microphone while searching through my things and thought I would try it out. I am not sure how I ended up with it. It turns out that this is an Electrovoice 635A. An interview microphone used by reporters and such. I was using a Shure PE50 super pro(sm57 and sm58 were based on this) and I am not sure if the vocal improvement is from the Microphone or if Lessons are starting to pay off. Anyway I can tell a difference in the sound from this effort and songs recorded a week ago. Any comments welcome good or bad......improvement is the goal. I am aware of the harmony being flat in the final verse. It was getting late and time to stop. Still a major improvement from other efforts.

Reaper here. I noticed some folks record acoustic guitars to sing along. I have a tip that works wonderfully with any 2 channels interface. - Record the guitar using two channels, one with a mic in level with your ears, and close to you, pointing to the fretboard, another with the line out (if the guitar has some sort of pickup, if not, another mic pointing to the bridge). - On the first mic (fretboard), apply some compression, not more than 3:1, with a very short attack, perhaps even 0 attack. This will be the "center" channel, and will carry body and warmth. - On the line out/bridge mic, apply a high pass filter, cutting everything bellow 100Hz, or even higher if you can get away with it, experiment. Also apply compression, but now, leave a decent attack time, something between 5 and 15ms should work nicely. This will be your "side" channel. Now for the trick, duplicate the second channel (line out/bridge), pan the original hard left, and the copy hard right. Then on either of them, this is up to you, unlock the "snap to grid" feature of your DAW and DRAG manually the whole track so that it gets out of sync by a few miliseconds. The offset should be visible with a good amount of zoom but it should be quite gentle, don't overdo. And that's it, a simple technique that can be done with almost any DAW default tools. It will sound rather good, provided that you play it properly (something I can't do )

"Space Oddity" by David Bowie https://app.box.com/s/833kbbutu5ygsbr66sbp

Hi Everyone, This is my cover of the Eagles' song - Desperado. Please critique my singing and performance.

JonJon, I just had the chance to listen to your sirens. You can even see that the second siren in your first clip is almost perfect. My browser shows the little sound graph. in the second siren there is no low energy spot you just switch to a solid sound. I never had trouble producing a pitch between F#4 and E5. My trouble was sounding like Miss Piggy, Ethel Merman or Edith Bunker. When I tried to maintain a masculine sound that is when the Flipping/choking at F#4 happened. You have a nice solid tone throughout. Singing lighter is about shedding vocal cord weight and reducing sound volume. One thing that people do not think about in terms of light singing and Heavy singing is that if you have a heavy cord closure or more mass to the folds as you ascend and approach the passaggio you reduce vocal mass before shifting. If you are already singing light you do not reduce mass you just increase pressure as you shift. If you are singing light and try to lighten more at the shift you will lose connection and flip to falsetto.

Sorry can't help you there my exercices only work for fish...

Teachers that tell their students that they don't sing well, or "can't do it" are uninformed cowards that hide their own inability to meet their student's needs, by taking advantage of their authority so their students will buy off on their bullshit. It is a way of not accepting accountability for what you don't know about the voice and how to train it, and pointing the finger back at your student, with a lie... it is shameful. If any voice "teacher" ever tells you that you can't do it, or you will never be able to sing high notes because your a baritone, or you are just not cut out for this or for that... tell them to FO and ask for your money back.

As it says at the top of the page, you need to link to a streaming player or player page. Box dot com gives you the player page link. Many people here, such as myself, as well as the owner of the forum and others don't want to have to download a file to hear it. So, please, re-post them as player pages and if you have not paid the premium, there is a premium charge to have singing reviewed here. A single song fee and a yearly fee. The yearly fee is less than the price of one lesson. It averages out to the cost of 1 beer a month.

very nice. I had to fight to find anything to critique. One tiny thing you might try. Work on "building" the song a bit more. The song is in 'AABA' form. Something like verse-verse-bridge-verse. So you can sit back and look at that and try to figure out what you want to do ahead of time to keep the song moving forward to the end. The bridge, just by the nature of it going to different chords and different melodies will sort of take care of itself since it already provides a nice change from the 2 verses that preceded it. So that leaves the verses to play with. As it stands you sort of did the 2nd verse as a carbon copy of the 1st verse. So in a way it DIDNT build....it just sort of cruised along...same pace, same volume, same phrasing. Try to find a few small ways to intensify that 2nd verse. Maybe a slight volume increase. Maybe pick a few words and add a little more expression on them. Maybe the words "I", "be" "sin" "cant" (or "help"). You dont have to go crazy but maybe add some extra melisma or slight inflections or whatever Like I said, on the bridge you dont have to go too nuts because its already serving its function to provide variety. The on the 3rd verse youd reach the peak of intensity...more volume, more expression, maybe find a few ways to intensify the phrasing a bit. Then use that very last repeat on the last verse to bring it all back down. Sounds like a lot but its not really. Here is the scheme: 1st verse. Nice calm intro. Nice and relaxed, smooth phrasing 2nd verse. Build it up a bit to a slight peak Bridge. The bridge takes people to a different place. The intensity can actually back off a bit to set people up for hitting them hard on that last verse. 3rd verse. The payoff. The peak. Hit 'em hard and then at the end bring 'em back down gently And im not talking about wild intensity swings here, since the song is a pretty calm song in the first place....more like a small but definite up and down build of emotion etc So really I cant critique the singing itself, but you can plan ahead a bit to form a strategy to draw the people in and move them a bit more WITH the singing skills. -------------- The only itsy bitsy nitpicking singing thing I noticed was on the first verse, maybe you could have held the words "say" and "'in" a bit longer. And then on both verses, the last word "you" could be held a bit longer or softy faded out a bit longer. Sort of going by the Elvis version he held those 2 "you"s almost until the next word started (of course you have to get a breath in). On your version there is that slight gap after each 'you' Other than that, great job! WAY better than I could do lol

All in all, this is a pretty solid attempt. In my opinion, few things could've been done better. Nice riffs throughout. I could feel the emotion. Here's what I found noteworthy. 1:09 The shift into falsetto in the phrase "All my feeling was gone". I think you can make this smoother. Matter of fact, I know you can. 1:50 Very nice melisma! 2:24 Sing "gone" stronger. Sounds like you may have been having a little support dilemma there. 3:10 to 3:19 Your falsetto was getting quiet again, like we talked about before. Just noting it here, in case you didn't catch it. 3:44 The break here, while singing, "Dry my eyes," was a nice touch for the tone of the song. You're good at the use of little accents like that. Kind of like how I complimented you on the hint of rasp you used in your Christina Aguilera cover, a few weeks back. Keep this in mind, going forward. 3:47-3:48 The shift into falsetto here, at, "I had my," sounds just a little flat. 4:20 Nice transition into falsetto and nice ending. Was a little quiet here as well, but it's not as problematic. The difference between it there, and where I mentioned it at the 3:10 to 3:19 area is you don't want that happening in the middle of those smooth runs. People will miss them.

From another era of Faith No More, when Mike Patton changed his approach to his vocals (for better in my opinion), awesome song, has very different characters that needs a different technical approach to handle: https://app.box.com/s/uynjz9dw90c13es50kwofdkvrh2y5275 Hope you like it

Richards is a damn good voice coach and knows what he is doing and taking about... and a trustworthy fellow... And yes, we have all had our moments.

Ron... 1). Experience as a voice coach. Many years, thousands of students. 2). Published: blogs, books, video productions. 3). Innovation in new vocal ideas and understanding of common ones. 4). Ability to PROPERLY explain what your talking about and demonstrate it. 5). An understanding of the fundamental physiology and acoustics of singing. 6). Master Class experience and teacher of teachers. 7). A Master's Degree in Music from the University of Miami and over 15 years of private study from renown coaches. 8). A proven demonstration and ability to sing well. These are a few things that would characterize the resume and experience of someone that could rightfully call themselves an "expert" in the practice of voice technique training and song coaching for singers.

Hi there, another song that will be part of the repertoire and that I was taking a look to see what I was going to do. I decided to go a bit more for the bright sound Mike Patton used at the time, please let me know if it sounds fine https://app.box.com/s/c8e5w3ipxgpicpl8vn9ruc8w8l3oh39o Felipe

Hi Hunter if your having trouble with runs this is what i do, i sing the the part with the runs really slowly and really make sure i get every note then speed it up (it helps a lot. you have a nice voice just keep up the hard work

Did this one today, this is a challenging song in many ways for me. I'm trying to use this song to strengthen headvoice and deepen the headvoice placement, relying more on CT muscle or whatever is going on (leaning into headvoice instead of chest), and letting the TA relax more. So easily this becomes shouting and full power, I try not to. Also trying to manage the abundance of words and consonants What do you guys think? https://app.box.com/s/q4gc9kj3g4avz46x1jpsm2titu3scrhp

    My first consideration in covering a song is finding the connection in my own life. Unfortunately I was never into fast cars and do not get the thrill off driving fast or feeling superior because I can drive 120 miles an hour on a highway that has a limit of 55. I can however find a connection to Sammy Hagar's " I can't drive 55" but that is because I am afraid my car will fall apart if I go any faster than 50.(If you ride in the thing you will understand)     Although if Someone tries to take my "Dew" well that is a different story...."I LOVE IT", "I NEED IT", "I BLEED IT".......Looks like I am in. I just found my connection.    

Hey guys!! I got a Rode NT-Usb so i wanted to see how it performs!   I still didnt really get to hang of the Mic and how to use it the optimal way but here it goes!   Tell me what you think!!! I had alot better recordings but i kept this one for some reason xD     https://app.box.com/s/bnvqdb8lrsxyqkeem72zr14cj4m531v6   I was really off- pitch in a few places!!   Also the backing track is just brutal xD

  I think this forum has some of the toughest critics.  I mean this in positive way.  SexyBeast I am sure has the right things in his mind when he is critical about his impression of my singing and his feedback in the past has been really helpful for me to sort out some of my problems.     Having said that I think the perception of nasality varies across cultures.  Where I live for example, this would not be considered nasal at all.  There are very popular singers who are much more nasal than me.  The issue is that here the focus on singing is as much on the right pronunciation as it is on whether the note is exactly at center.  Vowel modification of any sort is really frowned upon in our music.  I would for e.g. get blasted for being too anglicized if I were to sing traditional Indian songs.  We all at this forum know that singing across a big range without vowel modification is physiologically impossible and western music is more accommodating of accents and modified sounds than for e.g. traditional Indian music would be.     Because the focus is a lot on proper pronunciation, we tend to be more forgiving of nasality, especially when it comes to sounds that are more nasal like "m" and "ng".. I guess the key for singers is to focus on what the audience wants.  And audiences tend to want different things... 

There seems to be a lot of "How to sing like..." videos these days. Is the pursuit of "how to sing like" someone else really the main goal you should be focused on in your singing?  Every voice is unique and every voice has the ability to demonstrate its unique areas of power, tone, range and embellishments. To be inspired by other singers is inevitable and to learn from other singers is a worthy endeavor, up to a point. But if you are going to become a legitimate vocal artist, you have to present YOUR voice to the audience, not trying to sing like someone else. As a voice coach, I am interested in helping you to learn about training techniques, to enable you to find your voice and grow as an singing artist.     Having made that point, here is a song I wrote years ago that has been played in many different ways through the years. A lot of people have enjoyed this song through the years. If it is new to you, I hope you enjoy it as well. It is one of those tunes that just comes together in about 5 minutes that song writers experience from time to time... Some songs just "flow" out... others have to be "built" and take more work.    The less "romantic" explanation is... this is the result of new audio mastering skills for video production. I remastered the audio on this and then rendered a new, "fresh" file... repurposing old, but good content... Enjoy!    "Blue Rain" - Robert Lunte