ronws

I thought it sounded good. What did  you think about your own singing?

One of my replies got eaten by the system. Oh well, I will consolidate here.

I thought Felipe's cover was perfect. And he hit every point.

and I enjoyed Killer's cover. Different but very Bowie-like and of the singer/artist type people here, I think of Killer as the most like Bowie in temperment and artistic style. And that is one of the biggest compliments I can think of to make.

And Jeremy, you also have the spirit of Bowie. You have that free spirit in your voice, no matter what you do. It is always fun with you.

We are all heroes just for one day. Makes me want to put on my red shoes and dance the blues. First, I need to get some red shoes...

And there are other important artists who have passed this year and years before. But I do not mind the predominance of Bowie songs. I could be prejudiced. One of my favorite Christmas songs is his duet with Bing Crosby that I recycle every Christmas season.

And I always knew, from the first time I heard him sing, that GSoul could do Prince convincingly. You have that funk in your soul.

And MDEW doing justice to Glen Frey. Don would get the lion's share of publicity at times, but Glen had a huge effect on the Eagles, as well as one of my favorites from his solo work, "Smuggler's Blues." Favorite line - "The politics of contraband ...." (it's a CIA thing)

On 5/29/2016 at 2:35 PM, Felipe Carvalho said:

RIP David Bowie:

 

Great idea gsoul, keep em comming folks!

Outstanding, Felipe. Perfect.

At first, I was not going to listen to it because I am human and I can only imagine Gnarls' tone. But Killer's post made me listen. And I liked it, precisely because it is a different approach than the original. You made this a cover instead of an attempt at tribute, and that was a wise move. Singing the song as if you wrote it.

I liked it. Totally the right song for your voice and vice versa. Keep doing that. And have fun.

17 hours ago, MDEW said:

Thanks Killer

 

My Grandmother had Cherokee blood. Maybe it was that Akashic thing. I tried searching through those records....... I cannot read akashic.  Besides, I usually fall asleep before I access them.

Reminds me of a cute line from a young lady I knew who's boyfriend was 100 percent Cherokee, medicine braid and everything.

I think the problem is you are singing against a full track with the original vocals in place. Can you find a karaoke track without the vocals?

I did not hear pitchiness at the last. In fact, pitch was good all the way through and it sounds like you got the vowels behaving just right. I mean, sure, there is still a little accent and this was during the Eagles' "country" phase. And though Glen was from California, Don is from Texas and probably influenced him.

This is your best performance and best recording to date. Excellent job.

^ well, it is very well done.

By the way, Jarom, great song. Are you recording or MIDI programming the instruments or do you have some guys with instruments. Those drums are tight.

8 hours ago, Jarom said:

I just got back from the studio. I am currently recording an ep and this is a bit of a song I'm working on.

Guess who just got back today? Them wild eyed boys who've been away, Haven't changed, had much to say. But, man, I still think them cats are great.

They were asking if you were around. How you was, where you could be found. Told them you were living downtown, driving all the old men crazy!

A big thing I like about Reaper is that you can change the effects chain on the fly, in real time. If  you did eq before compressor and want to try it the other way around, just drag the eq down past the compressor.

Also, Reaper starts up in regular recording mode and you can record however many complete takes and it will be lanes in one track, Later, you can snip and each snipped section is called an item. You can then comp in that one track by highlighting the items in each take that you like and it will only play those. Later, you can, with a click, create new track from selected take items and it will create this track out of the highlighted items you want to keep.

It also has an auto-punch. Highlight in the track where you want to replace. then start the cursor sometime before that so that you can get back in the swing. It will only record on the highlighted section. And it is default non-destructive. Both the original part and the new recorded part are still there.

I personally like the method of Ryan Strain. You record a section of the lyrics once, twice, five times until you have what you like and then click and drag down to a keeper track that is not armed. I did that for "Highway Star." It was the most relaxing recording session for me. Why? I have red light syndrome. That goes away when I can just worry about a section and not the whole thing.

On 6/1/2016 at 11:25 PM, David Mitchell said:

So here I am, back since forever, cause I'm facing the truth. Yes I'm focused on unflattening my voice while singing which has been SUCH a struggle for me, but I also realize that I'm a soprano that wants to be a tenor.  If anyone anyone at all has any tips or anything that could help please tell me.

I have not ever heard of a soprano becoming a tenor. This should be interesting.

One of things I like to do in both Reaper and when I was using Audacity, is get rid of any sound, either by generating silence, or just deleting, any spots between lyrics. This is far better than using a gate. Since we are singing close to the mic, any room will do. Also, it increases the signal to noise ratio by making the floor effectively almost zero. In so doing, using compressor only works on the voice instead of also bringing up room noise.

Some things, I just like to play as an instrument. I can use the Casio LK-165 as a MIDI controller but I usually just use the headphones out with an instrument cord to interface, playing it like I would a direct bass or, when playing drums, treat it like a summed multi-mic mixer that brought it down to one channel.

Then, when mixing, I brazenly steal Graham Cochrane's trick from recording live drums with one mic. Have two extra copies of the track. Eq one to concentrate on the kick. Eq another for the snare and pan slightly right. Cymbals and toms get eq prominence on the third track and pan those left.

On my frankenstein'd version of Van Halen's "Dance the Night Away," I played my Flying V through Roland GS-6 and into the interface. Then, in Reaper, used the Tweed cabinet emulator. Then carved out some eq because the guitar was taking up a lot of space. For bass on that song, I played the Flying V like a bass and used the pitch changer plug-in to drop an octave. I compressed, high-pass filter to take out some low end so that I would have room for the thumping kick drum.

I really liked your voice on this one. And I don't know if the aim was to sound more american than brasilian but you succeeded. I really like accents, even yours. But it is also nice to hear someone shed an accent for whatever reason.

On 5/30/2016 at 3:07 AM, JonJon said:

its kind of like if you have $50 and want to become a millionaire. Whats the best way? Well a good way is to aim to make $10 million...then even if you only get halfway there you easily reached the 1 million lol

 

Reminds me of Steve Martin's bit on how to make a million, tax free.

First, get a million dollars. Second, when the tax man comes around to collect the tax, remember these two words - "I forgot."

Great song choice, MDEW. The best parts were the "fake" part. Though I am going to have to channel Jens a little bit. It was not "fake" unless you entire voice is fake. Why? Because it is a sound that you were able to emit with your voice. What's different, whether you imagine an old man voice or not, is how you resonated and how you did the vowels. Which means you do have control. Which means that creating that sound was not a matter of invasive surgery, it was a matter of disregarding things told to you in the past.

Singing is mental, as mental as is martial arts. One of the few things I have had "official" lessons in is martial arts, assorted combat, armed and unarmed. In 1977, and it sticks with me to this day, my Kenpo Karate instructor (who was also my scoutmaster and a lead person in the church I was attending) pointed out that the kicks, blocks, and punches were ten percent of the art. Mentality was the other 90 percent. He was right, as I would later find from my friend who was a SEAL in Viet Nam. And would see in the Dao of Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee's viewpoint in the subject.

And I think it holds true for singing. Doing the work of training is a thing we can do. Changing our minds to accept the instructions, AND the results, that is the hard part.

Keep faking.

Good stuff, Robert. I have liked everything Croce did. My favorite, I think was "Bad Leroy Brown." But "Operator" was great, too.

I used to use Audacity and it is free. And it will cut out a significant chunk of vocals. But it can also create sound quality issues for the rest of the track, making it sound more scratchy and "under water"-y.

I switched to Reaper and paid the 60 dollars and it has been worth every penny. The plug-ins are great and even Glen Fricker recommends those.

With Reaper, you have real time adjustment of effects. You change signal chain and effects chain on the fly with drag and drop, side-chain effects with drag and drop on the fly. The advantage of the system is that the inventor, Justin Frankel, did not spend decades plugging cables into patch bays. He spent decades making computers do things really fast and easy. But he has always been a fan of music. He invented the music player that became standard option in desktop computers. Sold it to Google and then worked for them for a while. Anyway, so it is a good DAW and worth the money if you can save for it.

Here, at the forum, Robert has a link to a karaoke site that has just about any song you will ever need for 1 to 2 dollars and you can custom order it. With or without background vocals. With or without lead guitar, in case you want to record your noodling on your axe. Available in mp3 and wav.

I have a basic thread on Reaper with some links to vids that make it easy to use. In fact, seeing it can be easier than reading my writing.

Probably I would disagree with your mother. Then, again, I am on the highway to Hell. Keep the lofty goals. Read the tag in my posts. "Winners never quit." Notice that it does NOT say that winners never fail. Winners fail all the time. Probably moreso than quitters. Because they don't quit. They keep trying and failing until they succeed and win.

There is no proof that I know of that singing softly will improve your singing. Gaining control and consistency through training will improve singing, whether it is soft or loud. You may not sound polished and professional now but you will. How many times did Mikael Baryshnikov fall before he could dance on air? There was probably a time in his life when someone thought, "man, that guy moves like four flat tires on a muddy road."

You are making good steps of progress. Your voice is really strong in parts, though slightly off pitch and I think that is because you were singing so loud you could not hear the guitar as a reference. But you are going in the right direction. I would like to hear you do this song full, sometime.

Great jobs from MDEW and G. G, I knew you would sound great on that song and, of course, I was right. 

On 5/21/2016 at 10:09 AM, Bzean123 said:

 

 Got a link to it?

"Space Oddity" by David Bowie

https://app.box.com/s/833kbbutu5ygsbr66sbp

To me, it sounds like a belt, whether you are actually belting or not. It is possible to use head voice and have it sound like a belt. This requires you to let go of physical ideas of what is belt or head voice and instead, go for the strength of sound. And that is mental, which is the hardest thing of all.

video blocked by copyright protection.

RJD is smiting you from the grave.

I did a Bowie song a few years, Space Oddity, though I had mislabeled it Major Tom.