ronws

Great cover and I liked how you approached. Listening in my car, I thought the vocals had a bit too much sparkle in the EQ. Then, I remembered, I adjust the eq in my radio to deal with radio and if I had left it flat for USB media, it might sound more balanced. Because, at work, where I listened to it first on some fairly decent desk top speakers, it was alright.

I liked it a lot, too. In fact, I have d/l'd it to my flash drive so that I can hear it in my car on the flight home. Get on the tollway, set the cruise at 80, try stay awake, most times. But this should wake me up.

I really liked it. Like I said before, you should be recording, releasing, and touring and obviously, you already perform in public.

This is really good. You started out shaky and then found a good stride about halfway through. Here is how to solve the shakiness. Quit speaking the words. Sing them. That means staying with the vowel sounds that are working for you on the chorus and the bridges when you are doing the main verses. That is, sing the melody line, rather than reciting prose in however you would normally speak English. For example, your pronunciation of "through" has an oo sound that that is affecting the note. Relax that back to more of an uh or short oo sound.

Here is a little trick you can try. Pick a vowel shape like ee. Then sing and hold a note wherever you like and articulate the lip movements for the letters a, b, c, d, and e, with minimal to no movement of the tongue. Record that and listen. And i bet you will hear those letters even while you were maintaining one vowel shape. You have to sing differently from how you speak.

This song is absolutely perfect for you because it sounds good in your voice. It is also a good song for you because the melody ranges so far and the vocal style ranges from an almost choir-like dirge to a rock scream sound. And it will also serve as a litmus test for your improvement. Keep doing this song at different stages to gauge your changes.

16 hours ago, EisaCurry said:

My voice was pretty tight that day. I tried singing nasally today and my mix really opened up.

Isn't it funny how something that may seem counterintuitive is the solution, at least to a problem at the time? Just like using some nasalance or resonance in the nasal cavity actually can lead to a less "nasal" tone, even if you are feeling just about all of it there.

Well done. And I could see this also getting synchro licensing on this. If the show were still going, this could be on "How I Met your Mother." I could also see it in a John Cusack movie. He's got the right melancholy look. It's funny, really, he and I are about the same age but he still looks so young.

Anyway, excellent song, excellent singing. Dude, you are pro. You are the next rock star people didn't know they were missing. I mean like how everyone is now going koo koo for 21 Pilots? That is you, next.

Short answer, yes. And I don' think it matters too much the word, though obviously, for any person, one vowel or another is going to be more stable, especially when beginning. But yes, you were mixing voice and even the high note, which some might consider head voice can still sound a little mixed and that is okay. In the end, does it sound good for the song, regardless of how people want to describe it?

Just agreeing with G. And yeah, the only challenge, as it were, is with yourself and not to put pressure on yourself. And also, remember, go back and listen to some of your earlier sound files so that you can also hear how you have improved. Which gives the inspiration and confirmation that you will improve more. It may not always be fast or overnight, but progress does happen. Then, one day, you look back and go, wow, I had this voice? Who knew?

Well, you always had the voice, you just learned how to unleash it.

Also well done. I think you have the right voice for these romantic ballads and adult contemporary. You should keep this one in your ready to go set list.

I had to listen, it is a song from my childhood. Pacific Ocean. Naval shipyard at the Port of Los Angeles. My first step-father, a boiler tech, seaman 2c aboard the USS Ogden. He had a Mercury Zephyr with the electric back window. His brother had a 69 Shovelhead built like "Captain America" with a diamond-shaped tank instead of teardrop.

Anyway, hearing you sing this in your soft voice, you sounded a lot like Peter Cetera. That was cool.

Awesome work. And you have a silky, beautiful voice. And having built such a strong and consistent foundation, you will be at C5 soon enough.

5 hours ago, muffinhead said:

Love the positivity and confidence you have in me. Thanks. 

I think you misunderstood Draven. What he means is that you are the greatest obstacle to what you want to achieve. I have found that improving on singing mainly involved getting out of my own way, to learn how to walk without stepping on my own feet, so to speak.

You said if you had that range nothing will stop you. He said, you will. That means that you can often hinder yourself with preconceptions about what you can or cannot do, what you think is happening to make a sound, which may be different from reality.

But can you sing that range? Yes, you will.

I really liked it. And I want to say that the folky rock and southern fried rock and assorted outlaw country and stuff is really good in your voice.

side note: my wife and I know a guy in Austin who has been singing all over the state for decades. A guy named "Shake" Russell. He actually helped Clint Black craft "Nothing but the taillights" when Clint was unknown. Anyway. so Shake sounds just like Harry Chapin. I have expected him to sing this song.

Another side note: I have been working on an original song for quite some time. And even have entertained the notion of making it a three-way singing thing between myself, you, and MDEW. We may not be able to get together for brisket but we can sing about it if I ever get it finished. Kind of medium shuffle with a ZZ Top kind of turn-around in the riff.

And another side note: back in the 90's, I auditioned for as a singer for a band called XLR8, headed by a guy named George Chapin, one of Harry's nephews. I ended up not getting the gig. They took back their old singer because he coughed up some recording eqiupment they were needing. That band didn't go as far as the previous band George was in, which was called Silverado, a locally known band that was big around here for a while.

I agree with Gnee. And I, like you, Muffin, tend to play guitar and sing at the same time because it is what I have done since 1974, when I started learning guitar (teaching myself.) But Gnee is right, you will get better recording quality if you record the tracks separate. Also, it sounds like the G or D string is out of tune. Something mid-rangy.

Also, I liked how you sounded on the high notes. You handled those better than I expected, considering you are a beginner. Though you have certainly been working on it.

And this song is definitely in your wheel house, But I agree with Gnee, clean up your articulation and really make the song yours.

I listened to this again and liked it even more and I can hear now that this song really suits your voice and vice versa. And you may find, as I have found for myself, with any given singer, covering some songs works out good and others not so much. For example, I think I sounded good on Dio's "Holy Diver" but kind of weak on "Rainbow in the Dark."

On 8/5/2016 at 11:39 PM, muffinhead said:

Thanks a lot  Right now I'm focusing nearly 100% on power for high notes, not on dynamics or agility, which I'm pretty lacking in at this point, and which, as you mentioned, aren't so important for much of the music I want to sing. I really want to be able to produce phonations like these 

as always, very happy to hear I'm going in the right direction. 

And your progress is following the curve of what mine was. I developed huge power and volume up top and the finer control, when needed, came later. And true, it depends on style or genre of music as to how much softer, finer passages are needed. As long as what you can do is repeatable and does not result in loss of voice or pain. Notice I did nt say fatigue. Anything, including singing, can be fatiguing after a while because it is involving the use of tissues and muscles, etcetera, the body corporeal.

With practice and the actual training effect on muscles, down to a certain size, it becomes less fatiguing especially if staying within an expected limited of vocal usage specifically for singing. For beginners, I would suggest no more than 3 hours total in a day. But that's just my amateur idea.

But I do know a smidgeon about anatomy and mainly a little bit about how musculature works because I used to lift weights. I could butterfly 110 lb (50 kg) free-weights, or 135 lbs (65 or 70 kg) on machine. Muscles, when challenged with a workload greater than normal, tear down and re-build bigger, to handle the increased work load. You don't grow more muscle tissue, what you have tears down and re-builds bigger.

But if the muscle, instead, is now being tasked to complete the same work load but more often or for longer durations of time, then it re-builds the same size but more dense. The muscle cell then remains the same size but its material gets thicker. You can see this effect on fingertips when you learn to play guitar. Your finger developes a callus. The skin of the fingertip has not grown bigger, it has grown more dense. Muscles do that, too, to handle the workload expected.

In fact, a vocal nodule is the same thing. One point or another on the meeting surfaces of the folds that suffers repeated collisions, similar to how your your fingertip collides with a string on a guitar, rebuilds itself in that area thicker, to withstand repeated collisions and, in so doing, it is protecting the rest of the tissue and ligaments inside. Nodule is not a cancer, it is a callus. And it can have an effect on the sound produced because it is thicker than the surrounding tissue and may not vibrate as fast as surrounding tissue.

How do you get rid of nodules or any callus? By not doing what brought that on. A guitar player who quits playing guitar will eventually lose the calluses. Because epthileal tissue replaces itself all the time. You are literally not the physical person you were seven years ago.

With some activities you can reduce or avoid calluses by wearing gloves or other protective equipment, the main idea being to avoid the collisions of tissue with tissue or some other substance.

I don't think one can say that any training system will prevent calluses. But a training system like 4 Pillars goes a long way because it teaches you how to sing properly without damaging yourself, in a healthy way designed to keep you singing strong and loud and expressive for the next thirty or forty years. You can be the next John Bush.

When you are using your body in a proper manner, less damage occurs.

Now, you can go and be a rock star, where the pitfalls and dangers are still there. Being a rock star is a job, like any other job. Only, it's like an intermittent salary job, more like a commissions-only job. The exception being union musicians working in studios. but their pay is hourly and they are guaranteed three-hour blocks. But it is a job with difficult work environments. 

Stages may look glamorous but can be filled with danger. Pieces put together improperly. Smoke machine output obscures steps and obstacles and down you go. That's another thing. What's in the smoke machine? Vegetable oil, like a vaping tool? You will live. CO2? That is going to dry out your voice and make you sleepy.

You know why Van Halen put the m&m thing in their riders? I get this directly from reading Roth's memoirs, "Crazy From the Heat." He liked to do all those acrobatic karate moves. Slight bit of history, he had a weak bone condition as a child and had to wear metal braces from foot to shin bone until he was about 11 years old. Once the braces came off, he started studying kenpo karate, in which he holds a black belt. And also, the japanese sword fighting. In fact, he lives in Japan part of the time.

So, he likes to do the more acrobatic martial arts move as part of his show. And union rules in some cities require the use of local union workers to build stuff. And they would consistently NOT build the stage to his spec, Weak spots that would twist his ankle. Or build it in a venue with a low ceiling and not say anything. One show, David started with the jumping leg split off the drum platform and cracked his noggin on the ceiling.

Well the thing about contracts for tours, if either party fails to complete the contract, penalties are awarded. So, if tour management and locals failed to even exclude the proscribed m&m's, Van Halen did not have to pay them. This has the effect of teaching tour managers and union locals to read the contract carefully and do exactly what it says, including stage construction.

But you are also on the other side of the contract. You have to appear and perform on the assigned show dates and any others that are added as the tour goes on. Failure to appear involves a penalty. Either in the form of not receiving the performance fee from that night or some decided penalty amount from the whole amount of compensation.

So, there you are, 6 months into a 15 month tour, trying to sleep on a tour bus bouncing down the road, stretch in a bunk with the drummer's stinky feet about foot from your nose. You are at the mercy of whatever food you can find at truck stops, when you are usually busy making a bee line for the bathroom because you do not want to drop a deuce on the tour bus because that tank is NOT vented.

You have to get up early to do a radio interview because fans like that and it invites them to spend some hard-earned money to come to your show. The more press you get, usually the better the sales numbers in albums, show tickets, and merch.

In fact, side rant impending: every once in a while, people have to rag on Geoff Tate and say how his voice went to crap. And they usually link in a vid where he was doing a radio show interview and sang a song and was sounding rough. But if you listen carefully to the interview, they came into town the day before and did the show the night before. Left the stage approximately midnight. So, he gets back to the hotel to take a shower, change clothes, pack his stuff and check out for prep to ride to the next town. Get something to eat because it is been more than 8 hours since he had anything to eat. And then show up at the radio station about 5:45 am to prep for the interview. So, he has not been to bed since sometime the previous morning. He has been up and about for about 20 hours or more. And is singing a song because they begged him to do so.

And armchair or computer desk experts point to that as proof.

That could be you. So, training with 4 P is going to give you endurance and a methodology you will need to keep with you in those physically adverse conditions. You are on the right path with the right system and I know so because I hear Robert singing and his heroic sound fills any room. You also have one of those heroic voices and will go far.

Just watch out for low ceilings and brown m&m's.

Man, you are getting a lot of volume up there, which is a good step, I think. And those are the right kind of songs to start with, too. As time goes by and you become more acclimated to that part of your range, your expression will vary. Right now, it's like a long and loud note that changes pitch during the melody. Which I think is okay, for training. Because I can hear you have pretty good vowels and your articulation is nice and easy, allowing the note to go forth.

Right now, you have volume that could crack a mountain and I know that is a delicious feeling. And 30 years from now, when you are still able to do that, it will be delicious, then, too.

Keep up the good work.

I am with you, Bzean. It is also a continuing journey for me. Both from the wisdom of the two dozen or so books I have read and my own adventures, sometimes with great results, sometimes with horrible results. The nice thing about a really big mistake is that you clearly know what NOT to do again. When I get something right, usually by accident, I cannot always replicate that.

Although I must say that my greatest successes were not about equipment but about really knowing the song like it was the back of my hand. And some of my most strongly critiqued recordings were often one-off shots, usually experimenting with something new.

For example, first time I turned on and tried my Zoom H1 portable, I decided to do a song I have never played before. "Everybody Talks" by the Neon Trees. First and only take, me literally sight-reading and singing at the same time, though I had heard the song plenty of times before (one of the secrets of sight-reading.) But, just about everyone gave me pointers on that.

So, I realized, this is not the place to present sight singing and new experimental steps with a new piece of gear. This the place to put forward the best recording you can, as if it was something you would hear on the radio.

But I still had fun.

And while we are on the subject of recordings being anything but an actual live event, something we can do with vocals that pros do all the time. You have one chorus that really shines. Another one, not so much. So, don't use the bad one. Copy and paste the good one where you need it. A recording is all "fake."

Now, if this was a campfire,  I could get away with a sight-read. As long as you have had enough beer, it should sound good ....

Now, have I done that? Pasted a good chorus in place of a not good one? No. I do the Ryan Strain method, sort of. I sing and go. And when I get a section I like, I drag the item down (in Reaper) to a keeper track that is not armed. "Keeper" means I am keeping what is on that track. Point being, I go ahead and sing each chorus, though I may sing it more than once to get what I like. That is what I did with "Highway Star" by Deep Purple.

You can also do this while singing through one time. You are going along and mess up at a certain point. Snip off the screw-up. Drag down the good part. Then start back up just before the mess-up, not at the beginning. And keep going until you mess up again. Maybe you won't. But I find this a very relaxing work flow. It doesn't matter if I screwed up, you won't hear it. I will just keep doing that part until it sounds right. This takes the pressure off of me trying to do the whole thing just perfect. Because you will not sing perfect.

One thing some engineers know, as much or more than some vocal specialists, is that you never sing the same way twice.

edited to add: one cheat I will admit to for "Highway Star." Two instances of the chorus were in the wrong point in time. So, I moved them to line up where they should be. Color me bad, I am on the highway to Hell.

Ecxellent job, Jeremy. You sound uncannily similar to John on this one. Including some of the same mixing values. John Lennon - "I don't care! Put some ketchup on it!"

More tricks and hacks in our production thread. For this, I need to use Felipe as an example, at least of end product, regardless of what he may be actually doing. When he does a recording, he treats the whole recording.

Here is what I mean by that. Say you are buying a karaoke track from the link supplied here. Don't assume that you cannot do stuff to that backing track, Go ahead and do stuff. And run a compressor on your master track to glue everything together. Treat the result of your singing with the backing track as a whole new product. Really be the producer.

Use auto-ducking compression to lower track volume of the music when your singing appears.

Put some EQ plug-in on the backing track and notch down a decibel or two around 2 kHz. The human voice sits in that area and you can give it prominence that way while having it sound like it is in the mix, as a whole.

You can also do a high-pass filter at a low point. Because if  you dip the backing track at 2 kHz, you may make it bottom-heavy unless you take off some bottom end.

And if you are like me and like to record stuff, even covers, playing your own instruments, realize some things that can make mixing easier. An output from a keyboard, or outboard guitar modeler, like the Line 6 Pod or my Roland GS-6, is already providing some compression. The quietest and loudest notes are not that far apart. So, don't apply extra compression on that track.

You can fatten rhythm guitar with layers. Either double track playing the guitar part again, or duplicate the one that you have and give it different eq, effects, pan, etcetera.

Lead Guitar should not be doubled but you can  fatten it with chorus and delay, either with your effects unit before input or with plug-ins on the track.

Bass guitar should be direct inject and you can mutilate the stuffing out of it, later, if you want.

Unless you are an awesome drummer in an awesome room with a plethora of mics and a tuned set, stick with either MIDI or keyboard drums. Worst case scenario, it may sound "programmed" but at least the timing is correct. (Thinking of Glen Fricker's t-shirt "1 2 3 4 this shirt is already smarter than your drummer.")

On 7/25/2016 at 6:28 AM, Gsoul82 said:

 

It was just a little spur of the moment thing. I've been working on toning down the vibrato and focusing on clear voiced singing lately. Trying to make things sound good that way. I have one or two guys I kind of try to take my clear voiced approach from. I wonder if you'd still say I sound like Aaron Neville more than who I'm talking about if you heard them, lol. Going to finish that Do Me Baby by Prince within the next few days and do more with this. Things had been paused for a second because the mic on my headphones, which I use to sing with, stopped functioning. Now I've got a new pair, so I can put a period behind that one. I'll also be looking at what else I can do as far as something else for the Late Legends Challenge goes. Might take aim at Bowie.

I think you could do great with a Bowie song.

True story. At work, we have builder's client who has that last name (no relation.) On the work order I put the first line, full electrical install. Second line, put on your red shoes and dance the blues. Just to see if anyone catches it.

I like this mix better. It sounds cleaner.

So, I gather. Whereas, I learned a few times that it does no good to complain. Like one friend said, "no one listens, anyway."

And I have had great recordings using a cheap mic and Audacity, before. So, I know Reaper and my other mics do just as well or better. But in either case, it boils down to what I do with it.

And I have had a few people tell me I could not do a particular thing. And I would prove them wrong, which can be a delicious feeling, at times.

A co-worker and friend of mine said I would not be able to get a master electrician license because the test is just so hard, blah, blah, and blah. And so, that year, I took the test twice and passed the second time. First time, I use a study guide all summer. Didn't pass. Second time, waiting for the testing date, I did word search puzzles and passed. And let him know I did word search puzzles. So, not only did I get to prove him wrong, but rub it in a little.

The object of a word search puzzle and code book test is the same. The answer is right in front of your eyeballs, literally. You just have to allow yourself to see it.

And, I finished the exam before anyone else. 100 questions, 5 hours, open book. Even after re-checking all of my answers, I was finished at 4 hours and 25 minutes. I made sure my friend knew that, too.

And the next time I got a word search puzzle book, I wrote on the cover, "Ron's Master Electrician Study Guide" and took it to work.

It's how I was raised. My mother had a saying, "May God have mercy on your soul, because I won't."

Which was awfully close to the motto of the Outlaws MC - "God forgives, Brotherhood doesn't."

And I was still his friend but there are things I cannot forget.

So, take the things you feel you cannot accomplish and then prove yourself wrong.

Same here. It was built to look and sound like a vintage tube driven mic and it does just that, warms and darkens. For I also have a bright voice.

I'll ease off now. I will say this, though, if you spend the effort to state why something cannot be done, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.