Owen Korzec

Great performance. I've noticed your vibrato has gotten faster and more natural sounding since last time I heard it, good work. I was actually not a fan of how it was recorded - a better mic would have definitely made it way better IMO. Eerie effects or mixing is cool but it needs a solid foundation of being recorded in high quality first, in order to sound professional. Watch out for your timing - sometimes your voice came in a tad later than the backing vocal track which sounded odd. But other than that little issue I think you did a great job overall.

Nah man you're very in tune. You were spot on like 98% of the time. I just figured that must be not good enough for you or else you wouldn't be asking for critique. :lol:

I think you have a nice baseline for a signature sound but it really needs refinement. I would recommend learning vocal technique and working on creating the same sound in a more technically correct manner, which will ultimately give you the benefit of better pitch, resonance, and projection. You may want to separate your technique practice and your singing at first - so you do everything correctly in your exercises with no stylistic element or signature sound and then when you go to sing you just drop all that. But if you do enough of both, eventually you'll figure out a way to combine them so you can still get this cool tone and distortion you've got going here (if you like that sound), but augmented by the added power, resonance, and pitch control that proper vocal technique will give you.

Sounds great. Definitely captured the original vibe. In a unique way. It's not identical to the original but very close. Brian seems to use less weight and support and more pharyngeal resonance and you kinda muscled it out more with more full voice aesthetic and darker vowels but I like your spin on it just as much if not more. This is total nitpicking, but the last "all night long" on the word "ALL" you were a bit flat. Also on the word "long" before the guitar solo you were a bit sharp (and I missed that on the first listen). That's the only criticism I've got lol. Above all it totally kicked ass, keep it up.

i'm familiar with exit music so i'll comment on that Great job with technique, pitch, vibrato and whatnot. I would just suggest trying to get an even softer, lighter, gentler dynamic on all the parts that are supposed to be softer, like the verses and outro. That song thrives on dynamic contrast. It has many different stages of softness and loudness to it, really study the original and try to pick up on that, I think it will really help. Also your recording quality needs work. Seems like on the vocals you're a bit too close to the mic, over eq'ing the top end, setting the compression to activate too aggressively, you might need a pop filter, your gain might be too loud too...stuff like that - try to make sure you're doing things correctly on the recording front and very much backing off and trying to get the natural raw sound to come through more with less artifacts - I think it will really help the sound quality.

Enander what leads you to believe that this intermediate variant has to have more power and less illusion? What does it sound like if you take your approach of adding grit to the clean version and just dial back the amount of grit until it's barely there? Are you able to sing clean with the same amount of power as this clip? There are just examples of questions I think you should ask yourself - ones that will probably guide you toward answers

Sounds good actually. A bit of training and more singing experience and you could sound like a pro. Your strengths right now are your pitch and tone, which are two of the most important qualities of great singing, so you're off to a good start. Some areas for improvement to focus on if you chose to train would be breath support and overall confidence. Both of which I think you'll find you can sort out within a few months.

The second recording is miles better. Still have some work to do but it is a much better foundation. I agree fully with Slow Start's points on your technique. Great example of how just reading about vocal technique can get you in trouble - you can misinterpret things and that's kind of what you were doing MDEW, you thought you needed more twang/high larynx/high tongue/brightness since that's so commonly emphasized as "healthy", but for YOU you already had that and actually needed to work on something different for your individual voice to bring it back into the right balance. It's all about balance. Nothing is ever extreme with vocal technique. Good job on the G4 this time, sounded a lot better, you thinned out the sound nicely and sang it right on pitch. So here are some next steps I'd suggest: 1. Working on fine-tuning your pitch with this new approach. The pitch here was much better than the previous version as well but there are still some moments, a notable lyric to watch out for is "alone" from the "sleep alone tonight" phrase, you were sharp on both versions. Also on "stand" for "stand by me" you are slightly flat on that and also a bit nasal - if you modify that to "stEHnd" it should fix the problem. 2. Work on your legato and holding notes - in the higher range you're kind of dancing around them for lack of better word, which is just more work on yourself. It is easier and more elegant sounding to just sing a note, hold it, then go to the next note. Instead of scooping down or up for notes, both at the onset or offset. For this style you want to be onsetting and offsetting notes with no pitch change. Particularly in the choruses which are mostly all the same note - for instance with "they say that the road ain't no place to start a family" it's all the exact same pitch from "they" all the way to "start" - so it should all feel like it's placed in the same spot in the throat and the sound should sound like it's all coming out the exact same pitch and that instead of sounding like you're articulating however many words you're sound like you're singing a long and smooth phrase/sentence. This is kind of a basic taste of what "legato" and "not singing like you speak" is all about. On this version you were still scooping up to some notes and putting some gaps in the phrasing. But the ultimate goal is to get through those phrases with no interruption, like you're holding one long note (or whatever the notes are in the phrase) and just shaping it with words. Rather than letting the words shape the notes. You could try practicing that chorus melody completely legato on an open vowel to get an idea of the right sensation, then adding in the lyrics while thinking about that sensation of continuity. 3. One last thing, you are dropping your placement a bit more than you need to for the low notes - essentially reaching down for them. This isn't necessarily problematic and certainly doesn't sound bad, it's just less efficient. Experiment with the sensation of making your low notes feel more similar to your middle range - that the pitch lowers but the sensation is not physically lower. If this is confusing you and making you pitchy though, just forget about it. For performance, being on pitch is more important than adjusting pitch as easily as possible - your audience won't pick up on the latter, it would only be to your benefit. The placement and tone of your middle and high range seems pretty dead on for the right balance for your voice though, so continue right on that path for the notes above G3.

It actually sounds great to me and is miles better than I could do. And i dont hear the three different voices. I just notice that you're starting the phrases a bit heavier than you end them which could suggest a support issue and its fairly gritty which probably suggests youre simply spending too much time practicing gritty stuff to the point where its creeping in when you want a cleaner sound

haha now everybody wants me critiquing everything? Sorry MDEW for my hyperbole. I didn't mean literally every cover. Just all the ones I looked at which was really only a few, I'm aware. Thing is I'm actually not very active in this part of the forum. I tend to pick and choose and only critique songs I know because then I have a reference of what the song is kinda supposed to sound like. But Bzean because you requested I will do my best to critique your first one whether I know the song or not. Good job working on Rob's onsets but for right now MDEW I think you should stay away from quack and release because you are already twanging hard. The wind and release and dampen release will help balance you out though. In addition to that, be sure to work on legato open vowel scales without consonants. The purpose of the specialized onsets is to fix balance issues via compensation, and the legato stuff is there to reinforce the correct balance once you've gotten close to it. I'm not a fan of CVT and Estill advocating the larynx and tongue raising and throat closing because they make it sound like you have to intentionally take those actions. But I think most singers and certainly yourself included, do make these adjustments naturally but actually overdo it to where it causes constriction. So often you have to mentally go against what the science may recommend in order to find a better balance. To be clear yes the larynx and tongue do need to rise it's just not as much as a lot of beginners naturally do. If you really look at yourself in the mirror while singing you'll notice the rising is almost unavoidable, but you can tame it so it's less extreme. That's what you should work on. Part of that is also thinking about going from bright tone at the bottom of your range toward darker at the top. And whoever above recommended working on bridging, that's another thing that will definitely help you as I've yet to hear you smoothly bridge into head voice at least in the covers I've heard, and once you learn to your versatility and range will improved. But I need to make clear that flipping over and over again until you get it right is a ridiculously incorrect way of training bridging - I made that mistake for years and all it does is reinforce the flipping habit. The fastest way to build bridging coordination is get it down smoothly at a light level, bridging early without much compression, then adding weight and compression and chest musculature (shifting the bridging point higher) gradually as the coordination improves - that is how you train bridging. Lastly, look at all those excuses in your first reply! You might want to free your mind of those excuses and start accepting that the non-singing-related obstacles you perceive in front of you aren't the reason you sang poorly. If you get used to the idea that you have to be able to sing acceptably anywhere any time that will go a long way toward how seriously you take your vocal development. You need to be good at your worst not just great at your best. That's not to say you shouldn't warm up and hydrate and prepare and what not, of course you should. But just consider the lack of excuses any professional singer would operate under - they don't say things like "the room was too small for me to sing well in" which is kind of what I think you were saying in that post. If you want to become as good as them you have to take on this mentality of preparing long term to do your absolute best, putting it out publicly, and not trying to defend your mistakes by blaming the environment, but accepting them as real areas for improvement.

It's nasal throughout and off pitch at many points. You were flat on the G4 (due to technique problems you've still yet to fix because you're not seeing a teacher who can show you how) and on a lot of the middle notes around C4 you were sharp. I tell you this every single cover you do, you need a darker tone. The way you are getting your brightness is inefficient, not elegant sounding, and is directly causing your range ceiling. Try finding more relaxation by singing darker at first (find a fairly dark sounding singer you like and imitate them in your comfortable range) and thinking of an open throat. However, when you go for this darker tone, do not let the sound drop into the throat. The higher placement you're using now is correct, it's just the way you're shaping the components of the vocal tract around it is interfering and forcing the brightness in an ugly way. Specifically some sources of tension I hear in you are you're not dropping your jaw enough and in a relaxed enough way, and you're closing off the back of the throat by letting the soft palate drop more and tongue raise more the higher you go which is also causing the nasal sound. And that itself is happening as a result of the larynx shooting up too high. It's all interconnected, your whole vocal tract needs to be in a different setup where all the components are further from each other, leaving more space for a darker tone. I know this because I used to have the same problems as you, this forced bright tone and throat closing causing a ceiling in the upper range. And still do to an smaller extent. It's an ongoing process to fix it, but the big key principles at least from what I've learned are 1. keeping the jaw dropped all the way as much as possible 2. not letting the tongue raise as high as you go higher 3. getting the soft palate to raise as you go higher (instead of lowering) 4. not letting the larynx raise as high as you go higher 5. maintaing an open "ah" sensation at the back of the throat at all times 6. using a more tall vertical embouchure instead of splatting out horizontally 7. keeping the placement high 8. keeping the head posture correct. no jutting jaw forward, no tilting your head back or forward, no jutting it forward, no turning to the side, etc. etc. etc. at the same time dont make it stiff. ultimately you want to be able to sing while swinging your head left to right like you're saying "no" and hear no change in sound or feel no discomfort. That's a great test to check for neck tension And like I said it's all interconnected. in you particular I think you need to focus most on #1-4 though. And #7 you already have figured out I think, just make sure you don't throw it off as you adjust everything else. When you get all that down then you can start working in the brightness and it will happen properly. The end goal is actually to train very bright, similar to what you're doing - just without all the tension and nasality. Also for you, you definitely actually need LESS compression if you want to stop hitting that ceiling at the G4. Let a tad of air through the sound, key word "let". Do not PUSH air through, just visualize opening the vocal folds and throat a bit more so that the throat stays open instead of closing up on you. Try practicing lightly at first, bridging early, so that these problems are less severe and you can sort them out on a small scale first. Then add the weight once the light practice becomes comfortable. I'd advise you to spend A LOT of time practicing scales with your face right in front of a mirror, monitoring everything. Follow the checklist above or better yet consult a real coach to teach you this stuff with some credibility (I'm only speaking from what I know as an intermediate student still working through these issues, and partly parroting what my coaches have taught me, so it may not be 100% accurate) and be your own coach, catch your own bad habits and try to fix them. Good luck. It's all technique stuff, as you're practicing get your technique down first before you worry about telling a story or any of that stuff. You need to work your left brain here in order to improve. Obviously don't keep it on when you perform but when you practice go super unemotional/analytical/technical/clinical and it will go a long way to help you improve your technique and direct your focus heavily on improving that, where most of your issues lie.

hey Phil singing really low is fun too though Rarely useful though. The only applications I've found are -the maybe 1 out of every 10 songs that naturally call for a melody to be written very low (if the range is available to you). Still usually never lower than the middle of the 2nd octave. Any lower gets muddy and a becomes a bit of a "wow what a low note" gimmick -group a capella stuff that requires bass notes...for this you sometimes want notes a lot lower, at least the lower 2nd octave. That's literally it. The latter is definitely harder and something I would actually like to work on personally if possible but I don't know any coaches who teach extending the low range. The former I already have down, it's very easy. Work on two or three songs in that range and you'll get it, but I think beating that kind of repertoire to death just because of the range rather than because they are songs you actually want to sing, is a dumb excuse for not gaining more range.

Adoney it's cool that you are not afraid of imitating singers but it's a good idea to develop a sound that's a combination of multiple top favorite influences and embracing your natural strengths - to form into this kind of default voice that works for most music you want to sing. Then from there you find a balance of imitation per-song and that default voice, never going too far in one direction or the other. At least that's what I try to do.

Boy one word can really change the meaning of a comment completely, edited my earlier post. Hope you didn't record the new version yet Try the verses sounding more like you, LESS cornell-ish. That's what I meant to write.

WHOOPS I MEANT LESS CORNELLISH sorry

Sounds really cool. I enjoy listening to it. On the words "burning that" you have a very professional sounding tone which is very cool. On the highest note you sometimes have a lot more scream in the sound than the actual note which is also very cool and unique sound. The only suggestion I could make from my own knowledge is you could try sounding less Cornell-ish on the verses and lower/softer notes. I'm hearing your uniqueness in the screamier stuff but at other times I can hear you're trying to imitate Cornell whereas you could try a slightly different tone that is more true to your voice and stems from a broader plethora of influences I can't really comment on technique, there may or may not be issues with it, I'll let someone else more knowledgeable about intense singing comment, but stylistically it is great.

Good idea, a vowel mod could help there, "ah" is one option. You could also try "aw" or "uh" which are a bit closer in tonality to "oh". Or any mixture of those vowel shades. I know Ron objects to the "uh" vowel but it's because of the way his dialect speaks it. There is a singer-friendly way to sing uh which I will not attempt to explain in text. Just experiment with those options and pick what sounds and feels best to you.

Following up Xamedhi's point - I don't think it was too thin, but I did notice the resonance was more on the nasal/masky side. It didn't bug me, but if you want a more mouthy belty sound you can get it. Just make sure it doesn't interfere with the nice economical weight you have going - good job maintaining that medium intensity.

Good job! You sound like your technique is coming along on the right track. There were some minor issues with stability and pitch but I think it was just a symptom of trying to manage a new technique. You should be able to work those out in a couple months as you get more confident with the technique you're building - it will be much easier to find and maintain the exact pitches. The only point I'd say you should take conscious note of is at the end of the chorus on the lyric "alone" - on "lone" make sure you are hitting the right pitch, you were consistently about a half step flat on that note. It's a bit of a hard note to hear because it's not diatonic to the key but if you listen to the original and sing over it and also play it and sing it back, I'm sure you'll get it.

Cool! All the notes are there and they all in a nice strong full voice. Good work on that! If I were you the one thing id do differently is a lot less heavy articulation/pronunciation and a lot more singing on the vowels with an open sensation in the back of the throat at all times. I'm not sure how physically demanding this felt for you, but that alone would decrease the effort a LOT to help you save stamina. However if it feels fine to you and you prefer that heavily enunciated sound go for it. Personally I would have preferred a more legato aesthetic anyways, stylistically, but do whatever sounds best to you if technique is not an issue. One more thing, also more of a stylistic preference of mine - you tend to riff down to lower notes after holding a high note and to me that spoils the effect. I think holding the high notes and ending them cleanly will make them sound more impressive. But again if you like this effect, continue it. I don't know if you just repeated what Rob did with this, but waiting till the second half of the bridge to start the screams was my favorite moment. That big space you left built up so much anticipation and then you came in full voice and it was an amazing effect.

It's such an overlooked practice, it's a shame. I'm surprised that females don't seem to be making the opposite effort of the lower voices and training to extend their own ranges downward. It seems like all singers, regardless of voice type, are focused more on the high extension. The SS coaches do seem to be putting in the biggest contribution regarding teaching extending the low range, but I find their demonstrations of it a bit disappointing, leaving more to be desired. It doesn't sound "convincing". But what they do definitely involves gradually incorporating more fry quality and TA activity into the low range instead of losing adduction and letting it blow apart. It's almost a pressed voice down there...

Love the instrumentation! I thought at the beginning it might have been too heavy over your quieter vocal dynamic in the low register, but everything under the higher parts fit perfectly and made the song a lot more badass!!! For the lower range, you basically just need to engage more intrinsic musculature so you can get better adduction and engage more body of the vocal folds to add a fuller spectrum of higher harmonics to the sound. And it takes time to train this. Try training it on a very bright AA sound. Onset with a glottal attack or vocal fry or maybe a simultaneous onset. The goal is to hold the notes as long as you can through the correct support and as loud as you can through the correct resonance. And of course start with a comfortable low note and move down by a half step after you get each note down. Go for power and tone first, not range. Just trying to seek the lowest extension of your range right away, you will probably "cheat" and end up getting a weaker airier tubbier sound like what you got in your song, which may be the best you can do in performance now, but it's not the best foundation for training power into the low range. When you train the low range go for bright tone, a feeling of using the full thickness of the vocal folds, and if you can't hit your absolutely lowest note anymore, have no fear, you are probably more on the right track that if you can. Because if you work on the more comfortable low notes in at way where you're not just cheating with extrinsic musculature and you're just seeking an efficient approach to power, you're putting yourself in better circumstances to work the intrinsic musculature which will allow you to lean in more on lower notes. And I'm pretty sure if you continued this over time, the ability to apply that intrinsic musculature would extend to lower and lower pitches. I've only done this a bit but it's helped me a little bit, if anything, to just add more power to my comfortable low notes. It hasn't increased my low range per se but made it more impressive to listen to. The very lowest notes are still tough, but I've yet to train with this approach consistently so I can only speak for a small portion of the process. The power will definitely increase if you train the low range bright and thick and that is key.

A little larynx raising is okay. It should raise a little bit more the higher you sing, just not so much it hurts and chokes off your range. Don't worry about vibrato yet. People will like your voice fine without it and it is a bit of a distraction from the fundamental techniques you should be working on - building range and control over dynamics and registers. I don't hear any resonance problems either. Once you go into the higher range they will become more apparent and you'll have to work them out, but now it sounds like you are in a pretty comfortable range so shifting resonance is fine. You sound pretty good actually, I just think in order to get past "mediocre" you need to increase your versatility - both of your examples are in the same range and a similar intensity (the rock one didn't sound that much louder). Challenge yourself more to sing some stuff that is a bit harder for you, and try to figure out how to get through it - you will probably need a coach eventually for this, but it won't hurt to start now, just be smart about it, take it gradually. Building versatility in your voice will make you stand out as a skilled singer and that will make a lot of people appreciate your voice more. Your tone could use some work too, and that is the other main thing that tends to determine if someone likes a singer's voice. To be clear, your tone now isn't bad, it's pretty, but it is not as resonant as it could be, and doesn't have much of a signature "color" to it. Try imitating a variety of your favorite singers and combining those tones you like into your own unique voice. But your tone will also improve naturally as you work on range and power and your voice gets stronger and more flexible.

Yes you are doing it wrong if you are feeling those sensations. You need to focus on thinning out to get higher pitches (i think in SS they say zipping up but in MM they say thinning out which helps some people more) instead of pushing or squeezing for them. Exercise at a light volume (slightly below speaking volume) at first and try to GRADUALLY release "weight" and let the sound thin out as you go higher in order to keep the volume the same without straining or flipping. If you do it right you will find you've smoothly bridged into a falsetto/head voice and now have a bunch of new range available. Then after you can connect the voice lightly, you gradually add more power to that over time. Don't add any more power or volume than you can smoothly manage through the break. But as you exercise lightly it will become more comfortable and then over time you'll find you can gradually add a little more power and volume without breaking, and then eventually add even more power and volume without breaking, and so on. This is only a small step toward becoming a great singer and it's too hard to explain fully through text, but it is how you remove range limitations and it will allow you to do the exercises without straining or cracking so you can start progressing.

Yes you can but you won't get there through self teaching, or if you try it will take decades instead of months. Get ready to drop thousands of dollars on weekly or bi-weekly voice lessons, and spending 5-10 hours a week practicing. That's the sacrifice you'll have to make to chase your dream. And if fame is a goal as well, you'll probably also have to invest a lot of money into a music business education. That is what the work to get there entails and even so, luck is always going to be involved and you may still not make it. Sounds harsh but it's the truth. I'd be doing a disservice to sugarcoat how much time and money chasing the dream can entail and how hard it is to approach it from the standpoint of starting from square one with no natural talent and having to work for everything. But in the end you will find that these are worthwhile investments. Even if you don't live your dream you're likely to come close.