ronws

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.