Owen Korzec

1:43 and 2:25 somewhere between ah and uh. But neither with as high of a larynx as you were doing. 4:09 funky shade, sounds like a mix of a narrow uh, ih, and ae. You will hear singers go to that shade a lot on high notes.

Interesting, that is not good...perhaps you just need to train it? You see, avoiding uh is not going to get you anywhere, you have to find a way to phonate uh shades in the head voice with good compression, if you want to sound big and boomy. It's not an option IMO, it's a necessity. It may take some experimentation to get used to, but you can do it. I do want to point out that it will be hard, it is not intuitive, you may feel it working a lot more intrinsic musculature in your larynx, and that the uh shade and twang are fairly antagonistic therefore it may take more effort to combine them. It should not hurt though. It may help to allow some twang to release at first, then once you're in the "uh" setup, add it back. Or not. I also think on "uh" there is a sense of the compression shifting from twang/interarytenoids to hold/glottal compression/vocalis. It requires a different kind of compression to keep the folds together. However that is not to say the twang has to disappear, it just needs to be assisted with that darker, bulkier kind of compression. Could you email me a file of you attempting a dark twanged uh in the head voice? Various attempts preferably...it would be helpful to know how your voice is responding to it.

First thing that comes to mind, way too much ah shade. You need to cover a lot more at the top, as well as dampen the larynx, I repeat, a LOT more. Have you been drilling dampen and release onsets? That's step one... As you do, try to really think about holding the larynx down. The sensation could be compared to trying to flatten a huge stack of papers with your hands that just bounces back up if you let go. You can't let the larynx float back up, you have to really hold it down, and you will physically feel this muscular contraction in your throat and that's perfectly fine. It's partly a pressing down and partly a squeezing in at the very center. It's not enough to just lower the larynx, you also have to simultaneously add compression through greater activation of the vocalis muscle. But the two sensations, the squeeze and the pressing down, tend to go together and feel like one. And that combined sensation has a lot to do with getting away from the quacky vowels and falsetto and deeper into the uh spectrum with more belty character. Another thing to keep in mind when doing dampen and release onsets is to really make a hard "b", not a "p". This will help encourage the vocalis muscle to activate stronger. It may also help to get out the lyrics and go with the whole writing out the vowel mods approach. Replace all the ah-ish or aw-ish stuff with uh, and the ae-ish stuff with EH. On the chorus you'd want to do, just for an example: I am Hunting HUHyEHnd Low DUH-eeving from the skUHy above Looking for, more and more, once again I am Hunting HUHyEHnd Low SometUHmes UH-ee may win, sometUHmes UH-'ll lose It's just a game thEHt UH play Also, listening now, you are actually modifying all the other uh's toward ah or aw! Stop it bro! Darken your uh's and darken your ah's toward those dark uh's. In summary: Less ah, more dark uh (listen to Rob's "Rooster" video...dark narrow "uh"s all over the place) More covering Lower larynx Higher soft palate (might help in lowering the larynx) More vocalis activity Which you can really all group into the same sensation, it all works together pretty well. Hope that helps. Quick disclaimer: I have not heard the original version.

That was really cool. Never heard music like that before. Couldn't find anything to critique really it sounded fantastic

Okay, listening. Definitely great for being not naturally good at it. On the whole it's sounding great. Now for the constructive nitpicking: Your vowels are a little too closed for my taste. You can hear it in particular on the G#4's in the beginning. For some reason it sounds much better on the parts with a lot of G#4's. But your narrower vowel shades continue throughout on various pitches in that range, whereas Perry sings the vowel more open and tunes to F1/H2 quite a bit...even in head voice. Once you've lightened the mass you have more vowel flexibility...I'd suggest making use of it and make those head tones sound a little more open. I'd also suggest inching away from the mask/nasal timbre, and tuning more to the vowel formants. This will give you a boomier sound. You like to imitate, and I would suggest, on this one, just imitate Perry a little more. Those high notes at the end floored me. Great job there. Now you are tuning vowel formants there and it sounds great. The middle range is what needs work, and not a lot. It really just comes down to adjusting the resonant strategy. What you did here is a little bit too far in the pinched/narrow/nasal direction, and what I'd suggest is focusing more on really tuning the vowel formants so you get more of a boomy, theatery tone. That doesn't mean dark, it's more about having good resonant energy in the lower mid frequencies. One of the first adjustments you could probably make is to drop the jaw more and lower the tongue more, to bring F1 and F2 closer together. Lowering the larynx just a slight tad may also help. If you combine that with light mass, bam, there's your floaty, free, but expansive and resonant Steve Perry kind of sound. So, to summarize, you are mostly there, all you gotta do is tweak your tone a bit. And of course that is just my humble opinion. Props for your determination in getting the light mass thing down. In terms of maintaining the right mass I think you nailed it on that aspect.

I think I like your cover of "Who Wants to Live Forever" better than the original

Jugulator, Finally got around to this thread. Your Helloween and Queen covers in particular are very awesome, though I haven't had the time to listen to every cover yet. Your low range is great too. Haven't heard anything bad in this thread. You should be performing, if you aren't already. No training? Well I'm sure 23 years can do a lot, with or without training...

Good try. Not bad for a first attempt. First thing that I notice is your timing needs work. I would recommend figuring out the exact timing of each phrase beforehand. I am pretty certain some of the best singers on this forum, namely Felipe and Rob, do just that. They have the timing planned out precisely and aren't just "feeling it". I am the same way, thanks to Rob's coaching. Now I like all the rhythms to be precise. It sounds more professional. There are a few professional singers such as Bjork and Kate Nash who often seem to ignore the timing and get away with it, but the vast majority of singers are singing in exact rhythm. As for the chorus, you are not quite getting the A4 right now. The pitch is consistently flat because you are pulling up a weighty tense configuration to its limit. I'd suggest you invest in some training that teaches healthy belting, and then start working on increasing your chest voice range. When you can belt up to Bb4, which you can probably get up to after a few months of training, you will be ready to sing the A4 and sound great on it. It's important to have that little bit of headroom or else you will sound strained. You could even go the extra mile and take the mixed voice or bridge&connect in the head voice approach. But although that's arguably healthier technique and less fatiguing, it takes longer to master than belting, which is a more primitive coordination. Also on the third line of the chorus you are starting on the high note on the word "when" but you are supposed to do that on the same pitch as the "and I" of the first line. And then go to the high note on "everything". You were adding one more high note than you need. Sing it like the original and make your life easier. I am going to have to disagree with Ron and MDEW and say relaxing won't cut it. You need to do some technical work on this first. Then you can relax. But in my experience, releasing tension does not fix flat notes, it just makes them more flat. Vocal training, combined with practice, for maybe a few months, is what you need. And then you'll be prepared to do a great cover of this, if you'd like. Wait a minute, your head was sideways? Like tilted or turned to the side? That could have been the cause of the flat high notes. I'm not kidding. It's very hard to sing with good technique when your head posture is messed up. It would be better to simply take a step back, away from the mic. I doubt you were overloading the mic itself but had the input level too high. On your interface, lower the input gain. That should solve the problem and get rid of any distortion that was happening when you tried to sing the chorus right into the mic.

Well that cover was years ago, I was maybe 16 years old or something? So I might have not had my full baritonal beef yet. And lately I'm also starting to think maybe I am becoming more of a high baritone. When I'm really warmed up I'm able to belt up to Ab4 or even A4 if necessary. Haven't done it live yet but in the practice room it has happened with decent consistency. On those same days I may try to sing a F#2 for the heck of it and it's extremely weak. Go figure. I think you can really raise your vocal fach with a good warm up. Conveniently the highest note in the NIN version is an A4. If I give a little extra push of effort I hit it and get a little bit of natural distortion in with it. I find singing like Trent quite taxing on my voice but actually not because of that note. It's from the super breathy verses. And maybe I'm squeezing too hard on the chorus. Two extremes, no middle ground. I am currently good at imitating Trent and bad at doing so in a manner that works better for my own voice. Here's a classic case where I have to intentionally un-imitate the original singer a bit, so I don't blow out my voice. I found that to be true with singing Meatloaf songs as well. Both breathy singers. I think my issue is when I sing breathy I do it too heavy. I believe CVT mentions that singing breathy is only healthy in neutral mode, the quietest, lightest vocal mode. That's probably what I should be doing. Combined with not getting too breathy, just the bare minimum. You know MDEW, sometimes, in order to sound whispery, it's best to really kinda whisper. And Ron, you are right about the vibes. The way I'd describe it, I associate the Cash one with sadness and the Trent one with anger. And that's a huge oversimplification. Each one is a mixture of a few emotions, but they are not all the same emotions as each other.

I really did. It actually inspired me to consider performing the NIN version in the future. Back when I put up my cover of Johnny Cash's version of hurt for critique I was told I sounded kinda like Trent. So maybe I'd be better off doing the NIN version. I was playing around with the NIN version the other day after hearing your cover and apparently I can do both the NIN and the Cash versions. So now I just have to decide which one, or do both, or combine the two...

A syllable is like each part of the word. Not each letter but each combination of letters that makes one rhythmic pulse. I can't think of a better way to describe it but I will explain it in the context of the song: "and I don't want the world to see me" - okay on this one each word is one syllable. simple. "when everything's made to be broken" "everything" is three syllables. technically four actually but it's sung as three in this song. like ev-ry-thing. "broken" is two syllables. bro-ken. The rest of the words in that phrase are one syllable. You can't split them up into smaller parts. Does that make sense? So what you were doing on the high note was like "don't WANT THE WORLD" or "ev-RY-THING'S MADE" (the all caps meaning louder). I can tell you already know that. You are getting loud after the first syllable instead of starting loud and staying loud. You could also start at a medium volume like the first syllable and keep that for all of them. As long as you don't change the volume in the middle like you were doing, it will sound better. I hope that helps.

Woah, no replies? We had a thing going recently with a bunch of singers on here doing their own version of "Hurt" (mainly the Johnny Cash version) so I figured they would be equally responsive to this. Huh...well let me help you out. Listening to it right now it sounds fantastic so far. You sing with a lot of emotion which is exactly what this song needs more than anything. Good pitch, timing, and tone too...all the fundamentals are in place. The only critique I have is I would like to hear you try the higher octave in the choruses. You are nailing the soft, intense dynamic Trent is so good at. But then it isn't going anywhere, you are remaining there for the whole song expect maybe the very end. Some more contrast would be nice. Try belting the chorus in the higher octave, maybe replacing that high A on "let" with the F# (same note as "have") instead if you can't sing the A. If the higher octave sort of working but you are not quite getting the notes yet, give it a few weeks of practice, maybe even months of practice, and you will get better. Just because you are struggling with the notes now doesn't mean you can't stretch your range a little higher and develop an ability to sing them in the same octave as the original. Give it time. If that still doesn't work, or you want to record or perform this seriously in the near future and your high range isn't developed yet, you can create the same kind of contrast by staying in the lower octave but singing a lot louder and heavier in the choruses. Sort of like you did in the last chorus but give it even more. Don't be afraid to sing almost as loud as you can at those points. But overall I really liked it and enjoyed listening to it. I can tell by the passion you are putting into it that the song means a lot to you. And that's what singing is about. It's so easy to forget that and just go through the motions of singing lyrics on pitches. But you really put in those emotional subtleties and gave your singing meaning and that's what moves listeners. I would recommend finding some sort of accompaniment and performing this song live, because I think the way you sing it will really hit audiences in a special way.

Good start. The only things I would suggest are to clean up the enunciation even more, and also on the choruses, you are doing this thing where when you get to that high note, the first one is kind of soft and then on the next syllable it gets loud. It would be better to start with that full volume right from the first syllable and retain it. You may have to practice those first syllables "don't" and "ev" in isolation in order to get it. I hope that makes sense and helps a bit.

Sounds really good. Being myself I tend to spit out some kind of constructive criticism. And the best thing I could possibly suggest in this case is, if you plan on performing this, just practice it more. It sounds great already but it could use more overall polish. And that comes through just running it through a hundred times, working out the finer details and solidifying muscle memory. But generally speaking you are doing everything right and the approach you're taking is perfect for your voice and for the song.

Was that "recipe" an example of what does work or what doesn't work?

You're singing it in a different language right? Your tone pitch, timing, etc. is good.

It's pretty powerful already. Only tips I could give are: 1. You need to get some grit/vocal distortion in there. Find out how to do it in a healthy manner (easier said than done...you may have to just experiment a lot, training with a contemporary coach also helps) and you won't blow out your voice with it and it will help add power. It's more about that than just pushing more weight up there. Allowing yourself to sing lighter and adding controlled distortion over that is better for the voice than just pulling up more chesty weight until your voice natural distorts. Which is more like what Dave Grohl is doing but the strength of his voice is kind of freak of nature...the former will still sound close and not take as much toll. 2. Tune your vowels for a more "shouty" aesthetic. Hard to explain but try this vowel modification strategy and then dial in the common overtone and I think your perceived power will really increase, and since this is just a resonance adjustment, it's actually healthy for your voice cause it will give you more volume without adding effort. What you wanna do is print out the lyrics, and any vowel that isn't eh, uh, or oh, modify to the closest vowel out of those three. For instance: Ehs someone gettehn the best of yoh And the specific shade is key. They're not going to be the eh uh and oh that you speak will but a similar singery variant. An exercise you could do is sing a sustained G#4 on each of those three vowels and tweak the vowel shade around until you hear the note start to get naturally really loud and boomy. Then memorize that exact vowel shade and repeat it a few times. Do this on each vowel, the eh uh and oh. Do the same for the E4 and F#4. Then sing your vowel modified lyrics with those vowel shades you tuned in. Now, the end result after this is probably gonna sound like you're shouting random gibberish. You're going to want to maybe scale it back and modify back toward the original vowels SLIGHTLY just to bring some of the intelligibility back. But if you stay close to that shouty overtone throughout it will increase the perceived power without you having to push harder. Hope that makes sense and helps a bit. But you're already singing the song way better than I can lol!!! Like Elwin said, the power is there, or maybe 95% there if we are picky...but essentially, you could sing this live as is and I don't think anyone would say you sounded weak...

The pitch is better that's no longer a problem and the song is supposed to be light, so I think you're good for that song. Try a song with heavier and/or higher singing if you want us to give you some more critique...

No twang may not be the exact reason. But probably a more likely reason than lack of good support. Lack of good support would be more likely the cause for you being off pitch in the previous post. Seems like you have fixed that. Yeah she probably had a little twang in her no-twang example and it's also perfectly possible to sound good with no twang. It's just a nice touch. Barely any twang in the song you posted. The original singer is singing light so now I see why you sang it pretty light. Another example of how you don't NEED twang to sound good.

Yea but it's hard to obtain without actually seeing a teacher who can teach you it one on one... Found this video on youtube, it's a pretty decent explanation. Keep in mind, the sounds she's making in the video are EXERCISES to help strengthen the coordination in isolation...later on you tame it and balance it into a more normal sound, as she demonstrates. She could have done a better job actually, even her less twangy parts were too much twang for my taste. This all applies to lower pitches too. The end result will just be a really full balanced sound with both strong high, low, and middle frequencies, if you work in the right balance of twang. Don't overdo it and sing like a duck or a witch...do that when you're training twang, in order to build the coordination nice and strong, but when you go to sing, you won't need so much twang that it makes you sound like a duck or a witch. Just enough to balance out your tone.

Cool. Thats what i thought you and the others meant.

For the record, that's not constructive criticism in any way shape or form, Onacor...would be cool if you could make some suggestions for the fella. Okay so my take on it: For a month of training that's not bad. Your pitch is much better. Am I the only one who thinks you are not singing too light? You're blending well with the guitar volume, I think it's fine. What I would like to hear is more upper frequencies in your tone. More shimmer/twang/buzz...whatever you wanna call it. And once you get that down I think you will stop being perceived as singing light.

Okay so it sounds rough...probably a combination of what everyone has mentioned. You have the energy but you're struggling so it doesn't really come out in a positive form. I'd suggest, more than anything, learning to bridge into the head voice at a lower pitch. Your high Cs in chest voice on HtH are not consistent enough. You are okay up to maybe A4 but it would also help if the A4 was lighter so you can more easily bridge into head voice above that. Also the higher head voice screams just sound pinched or something... You would definitely benefit from training. Ken Tamplin, Daniel Formica and/or Rob Lunte would be good coaches to help you out with this.

Nope, not that I can hear