ronws

Great effort. It sounds like you were able to rip a track and knock down center panned vocals. At first, you were breathy and you had a problem at your passagio and some mixed voice. Sometimes, for grins, I will start as low as I can go and range up in pitch, trying to smoothly adjust where the resonance is to eliminate passagio and voice breaks. But even Johnson's voice breaks and they keep it in the recording because, emotion-wise, it's gold. So, don't be afraid of that. In the second part of the song, you got better and here's why I think I it happened. At the beginning, you are holding back and not fully engaging the diaphragm. So, no matter how well you've zipped up your vocal chords, there's not enough pressure on them to maintain even tone and it causes the breathy, kind of thready sound. Later, you really get into the song, adding some of your own lyrics, making it yours, When you did that, you gave it the gut punch, literally. Your diaphragm exerted more pressure, which fully utilizes the shortened vocal chords. A high note is a small note, resonated properly, but with the required pressure to cause the vibration. So, yeah, you distorted the mic response but who cares, you hit the notes with a solid blast on pitch and with a fuller tone. I find, at that end of the range, there is no choice but hit it full tilt boogie. And that's where you sounded the best. So, I would agree with others. Always start out in head voice to get your pitch. But also, hit it like you are swinging to bat it out of the park. It sounds counter-intuitive but by engaging the diaphragm fully, you are getting full use of the air, which makes you less breathy. Edited to add: I think you improved on the pitch problems, probably by following the advice of staying in head voice to get the right pitch. Now that I think back to your previous recording. Your pitch was better on this second, just go ahead and put your gut in it from start to finish.

No prob. It's mainly due to the equipment I have. A small desktop mic. Yes, I do have a nasal quality at times, depending on my sinuses. As it turns out, while I was recording this one, I was coming down with a cold. I held back on the upper notes on this song because it was mainly sung low, to begin with. Costello's live performances actually use the higher notes more often than the studio recording.

Well, you're at least a light year ahead of me in equipment. But I aim to gear up when I can.

I've been singing a while and I noticed these things in myself. As in, been there, done that. As for the proverb in my sig, that has to do with the history of my favorite breed of dog. My favorite breed is Siberian Husky. My dog is a mix of Siberian Husky and Lab, mostly Siberian. Short history lesson. The chukchi people of far northeastern Siberia have bred for almost 3,000 years a dog known as the chukchi dog. During the end of the 19th century, Russia took over control of those provinces but they had a hard time pronouncing chuckchi words. Instead, they would say huskya (hoosk-yuh). Americans, such as Leonard Seppala (founder of the Seppala line) were part of the later trade routes between the alaskan territory and Siberia, sailing across the Bering Sea. Well, he another americans couldn't pronounce huskya, so they said husky. Since the dog came from Siberia, it became known as the Siberian Husky. The proverb I quote is one of the central beliefs of the chukchi people. If you care well for your dogs then they wait to pull your sled to heaven when you pass away. It's a quaint way of saying "What goes around, comes around. You get as you give."

I can explain the funky vocals. See, I vary volume as well as pitch but this was recorded on the digital camera with a little mic that can be overloaded by a breath. But I am trying to update my stuff with Audacity as best as soon as I can.

Right on about Mutt Lange. And you stated more clearly what I meant about getting his voice framed with the right mixing. In a studio, or even these days of computerized recording, there's an acoustically sensitive sound engineer who can vary the eq on a track as well as its prominence in the track. What most of us have is backing tracks and hopefully a halfway decent mic, except in my case of not even that, just me, a guitar, and a desk mic. Anyway, I can do some mixing with the software but any tack I create is limited by the mic. Not so in a studio. Professional mics that use coils instead of piezoelectric diaphragms. 32 bit to 32 bit recording. My copy of Audacity records and plays back at 32 bits with a sample rate of 41k. That's fairly decent quality. I can playback and think, "well, even I think that was okay." But it exports to a .wav file that is signed 16 bits. Then I have to save as a wmv in moviemaker in order to upload to youtube. So, a little is lost in each conversion, as opposed to being to simply record direct to computer and share that file. Well, modern recording equipment can at least either match the bitmap or at the least, maintain a high sample rate, as close to 41k as possible to catch as much of the data. As for mics. The desk mic I have is a slight bigger version of the mic in my digital camera, the camera that is dwarfed by my hand. It is a condenser mic. it is an electrically charged semiconductor diaphraghm in conjunction with a capacitor (hence, condenser). Because it is physically connected to the circuit, it can't take much of a charge or do much at such a low level of power. In addition, it is physically small, less than 5 mm across, operating similar to a mic in a cell phone. A pro mic will often have a voice coil set up. This is a large rubber, mylar, or paper diaphragm, sometimes up to 2 inches across, which is larger than 5 mm, that moves a magnet. This magnet moves back and forth inside the field effect of a coil of wire that is already carrying the current and voltage it needs to drive an amplifier stage. Bot the diaphragm and the magnet in coil have a larger range of response to both pitch and volume. What that means is that htey are less likely to distort or clip off bits of the input signal, as a condenser mic will. There's a limit to how fast a condenser mic can vibrate and how deep. You get crackles and a flattening of the recorded signal.

I was going to say, and others beat me to it, that you do have something of a Brian Johnson vibe going on. This was a good recording. You sounded breathy at first. But, in the second half of the clip, you zipped up the chords a bit and sounded even stronger. I've noticed that you annunciate more clearly than Johnson. See if you can try it just a little "sloppy." Sometimes, that's the sound that is needed. Dupree, of Quiet Riot, related how their producer on Metal Health wanted them to cover the Slade tune, "Come on, feel the noise." None of the band liked that song nor were they fans or inspired by Slade. So, they said, "we'll do it crappy." The song you hear was done live in studio, no double tracking, in the first take, with Dupree sounding as "dirty" as he could. Instant hit. When I do "Highway to Hell," I can do it clean and get compared to Justin Hawkins. But I can do it sloppy and have a lot of fun with it, too. Anyway, I think you're doing fine. I bet it would be astounding if you had some time in a studio with some decent mixing to shape and frame the voice. You have the range and timbre to do this style.

Hey, Kalapoka. I thought you sounded just fine. You hit all the right notes that I could and you had some problematic acoustics to deal with in that hall or luncheon room or whatever it was. And yet, you were still on key, with a free and easy voice with a clean, pure tone. I didn't really notice a problem with your accent. Nor is having some accent a detriment. Klause Meine of Scorpions not only sings with a german accent but some of the lyrics are structered with german syntax. Their hit song, "I want to belong for you" is phrased exactly how you say it in german, which is "Ich wuensche fur dich belongen" (yes, I studied german at one time, per part of my heritage.) What I hear is that you speak english correctly, which is often the case. Many singers sing without accent. You have great stage presence. You may have been nervous but I didn't see it. Well done. Maybe, sometime, you can return me the favor and see what you think of my submissions.

This song was originally written by Nick Lowe as a slow, soft hippie kind of ballad, in the folk song tradition. It was even sung low, in the key of G. Then a young british upstart by the ubiquitous name of Elvis Costello took the song, put in a punk rock beat, rockabilly guitar, and a new wave vocal style and it became a monstrous hit. I transposed it to the key of A for myself by using the capo at the second fret on my guitar. The style is rough but like Costello, I like belting this one out.

Thanks Qdog. And, as an aside, you forever have my respect for your service to our country. I was raised around the military and the only reason I couldn't serve is because I was a 4-F (medical disqualification). Asthma, believe it or not. In the 70's and early 80's, you couldn't enlist if you had asthma, at the time. Anyway, one of my other postings in this section is "Brandy" and dedicated to important people to me that were in the Navy. But I also give it to you.

In another thread in performance coaching, Q Dog was talking about trading lyric and songwriting ideas. I mentioned a song I wrote, original copyright 1990. I recorded the beginning of it some months ago on my little digital camera. Here it is. For some reason, I've got a Lonnie Van Zandt (Lynrd Skynrd) sound going on in it. Is it because I live in the south? I was born in California but have lived in Texas since 1974.

If your pic in the song links is any indication, I'm probably old enough to be your father and have probably been singing longer than you have been alive and I am still learning. And so will you, always. But you've got a heck of a foundation, at least in my opinion as a member of the buying public that buys music.

I know how criticism feels. So, like I do with crews that I am in charge of, I prefer to reinforce the good stuff when I see it. Your best sound on a first listen was "Inside Out" by Eve 6. Especially the first half of the song. I think you got to excited and went off pitch later because you were so into it and missed the tonal cues of the backing track. It's happened to me a few times. Usually, I go sharp when I can't hear the music and I'm caught up in the lyric and melody.

Dude, were you channelling Kurt Cobain on "Mudshovel"? You had his tone and emotion on that one. Like, what if Kurt sang for Staind? On "For You", you were a smidge flat, which I have found to be from lack of confidence. That is, most people who are unsure of where they are go flat, trying to hear the music. As opposed to people who are confident but can't hear the music and go sharp. But once you found the groove, you were in the groove. You were totally solid on "Bodies." What a scream. I can't say anything more. Anyone who doesn't want you are stone cold idiots and the world is full of them. I listened to that one all the way through. "Through the Glass" is the song that's going to get you more attention from the ladies than you can handle. When I was a young lad and first learning guitar, all the young ladies wanted to know if you could play "Stairway to Heaven." "Through the Glass" is the song for your generation. Keep this one.

I know this thread is a little older and I may appear to make a newbie mistake of digging up old threads while I get used to the place but I thought you did fine on "Wasted Years." And I appreciate that you did it in your own voice, rather than trying to sound like Bruce Dickinson. I had a friend that used to have a band and a lot of his music sounded like RUSH. He even sounded like Geddy Lee when he sang. And people thought, "pretty good Rush take-off." Which can be the kiss of death. I still haven't figured out who I sound like, though I have been compared to everything from David Byron of Uriah Heep to a wounded animal.

I've recorded this song several times. This one and another one on my digital camera are probably the best I can manage with such puny equipment. This one I did with Audacity software. I tried different eq presets, like an inverted Columbia LP, a modified acoustic eq. I tried compression. Nothing sounded right. But, on this song, I run into the limitations of the equipment I have. The mic is a standard desk mic for computer. It is a tiny condenser mic made for speaking voices at normal volume in the mid to upper baritone range. It doesn't even capture my low notes, properly. When I do the bass part of this song, I am hitting the basement and you can barely hear it. So, both tracks are straight ahead just as the mic picked them up. I could explain in scientific detail the reasons for the limitation of a condenser mic and I would give someone's right arm to have a pro Shure 58 mic with the voice coil in it and I know the scientific reason that that is a better mic. However, I like doing this song. My current wife assures me it sounds fine, live. I have submitted this song to a Guns and Roses fan site I go to and not only are they harsh critics, they, more than anyone, are comparing it to the original and I have gotten good reviews from them. Still, I don't like the sound quality and it's not capturing the true sound that I make. When I sing at high pitch and volume, the condenser mic flattens in its response to pitch an volume, creating crackles, distortion, at times making me sound like falsetto when I can assure you I am not singing falsetto. In this arrangement, which I came up with a week and a half a go, there's only two places I use falsetto. On the one "Oooh ooh ooh ooh" and at the end with the last "of mine" where I change from full mixed voice to falsetto. Some of the timing may be off. I am used to singing this song live while playing it on guitar and many of my lyric cues are based physically on what I am doing with the guitar. So, I've had to learn to hear the cues, rather than feel them. For me, most of this song is mixed voiced with only the highest parts being head voice. One reason the high parts sound louder is because of the solid resonance I have in head voice, as opposed to mixed voice, where I can "waste" some air, here and there. Enough justifications. I am here to learn. "Sweet Child of Mine" By Guns and Roses. Covered by me on a cheapie acoustic guitar I bought at the flea market in Kleburg, Texas for 40 dollars. I've got better guitars but this one was handy. I could post, upon request, the other one that used the digital camera. But both seem on par with trying to capture a sound with a cell phone.

Colin Hayes plays this song these days as a single guitar acoustic arrangement and it inspired me to do my own. You even get to hear me overload the mic, even though I've pulled it away. But it's another good sing-along song, as well. It reminds me of when I was attending the University of Texas in 1982.

I'm going to just jump right in with my lo-tech. This song is a favorite of mine and great for parties. It's really a spoken piece and because of that, necessarily, in the baritone range. It allows others to sing along. I dedicate this song to my first step-father, Gerald, boiler tech 2c USS Ogden (circa 1974) and to my friend, Lee, US Navy SEAL 1964-69, Da Nang, Viet Nam. This song was the only hit for the band, Looking Glass, in 1972. Brandy (You're a fine girl)

My first impression of you was from reading your critiques of others. But I found this thread so that I could hear you. Decent rendition of "Turbo Lover" and "Cowboys from Hell." Both of those you sang in lower registers and I thought maybe you were a baritone who could do a vocal fry in high pitch. I wasn't sure you could do tenor. Then I watched the live video of "It's My Life." The sound quality of that live recording is, of course, crappy compared to the song links but it was the better performance, in my opinion. More importantly, I can tell that you don't sound like Jon bon Giovanni, which is good. You sounded similar at times but not a match. That is your strength, a distinctive sound. While I agree that singing a song your own way is the way to go, many of us started seriously working on our singing because we admired an already popular singer. I know how that goes. In 1987, I got married to my first wife and "Appetite for Destruction" came out. "Welcome to the Jungle" was getting some limited airplay. "Sweet Child of Mine" blew up like a hydrogen bomb and it inspired me to want to become a better singer. Even though I do not sound like Axl Rose. In fact, when I sing the song, I re-arrange some parts to fit my voice better, while I still sing it in the original range. My greatest mistakes have come from trying to sound like Axl. But you have to start somewhere. You also have better equipment. For most of my time of uploading music, I had just a little digital camera that is dwarfed by my own hand and it has been the equivalent of singing into a soup can with a string. Second thought, the soup can has better range and volume response. My goal is to have my own sound with the range of Rob Halford and the humility and grace of Ronnie James Dio (RIP 1942 - 2010).

Falsetto is a tone, not a range or register. And the singer here is was not singing falsetto.

You've got the range and resonance for AC/DC. You were out of breath and all I could think was that you wouldn't have strained if you zipped up your vocal chords just a little more, like you did on the really high part at the end. Right there, you hit full volume and tone, and probably relaxed a bit, too, I bet. Get that vocal zip in the lower part of the register. The performance was fine but your voice will sound fuller by the abduction. I catch myself making similar mistakes. I get too excited to "get it right" instead of just having fun.

I love the tone. Pitch problems can be fixed with time. One of the best times I had was when I recorded "Highway to Hell" and specifically tried to not sound like Bon Scott or Brian Johnson. Instead, I concentrated on pure tones and someone said it sounded like Justin Hawkins from the Darkness.

I totally get that. I've hit a Halford note easier than mid-tenor part of "Stairway to Heaven." I finally got through that by not trying to sing like Robert Plant but sing it like I sing. Great tone and I'm glad that, especially as you hit the high end, you did not try to sound like either Bon Scott or Brian Johnson. Your purity of note makes for a better effect, in my opinion.