KillerKu

You can also try soundcloud or box as storage places. I haven't seen anyone share with google drive here. Not sure if that is an issue.

Neither played for me on the browser. I downloaded it and it said 'mp2' which is not the most common format. The second file played in itunes but you're probably going to need something with better compatibility, mp3 is your best bet for that. As for the cover. I like the emoting, but the pitch could be tweaked on some. The high in the chorus is flat in a very steady and consistent way. I noticed the pitch is a bit more accurate on the lower sections so I'm not sure if this range is a bit unfamiliar. It's not a tone deafness kind of thing, because the up ad down motion of the pitch is intact. A few things that would help, would be to grab an instrument and try to find the notes of the song and match them over time and delve deeper in ear training so you can hear the distance between notes a bit more clearly. Drone notes are really useful (play a note, and intentionally bend your voice up and down over the note to hear the various intervals). You can also use a program like this to learn to hear relationships between notes better: https://www.musictheory.net/exercises/ear-interval If you are having difficulty with range, lessons to find a vocal placement that makes it more comfortable and free would help as well. I'm convinced you'll be able to get it but it's going to take a fair amount of training and diligence. On a final note, the throat clearing is a bit aggressive. It can be a bit irritating for the vocal folds to clear the throat aggressively. Sometimes humming through mucous can be a nice way to clear it with less irritation.

It's pretty much awesome. Great timbre, explosive. I always like your eyes cause I can always tell you're feeling it. I think the one thing is the phrasing could use a bit of refinement in the verses. This song is a bit rappy and has some pretty fast phrasing. Sometimes you're lagging enough to lose momentum and have to cluster the syllables. The most extreme example is 1:30. Phrasing is a really tricky thing. And almost impossible to explain in words. Maybe listen to some rap just a bit even if you're not a fan otherwise. But think of each syllable. They can be rushed microseconds but it's kind of a give and take thing. If you rush one syllable you'll have to lag later and vice versa and the gist of it will usually fit approximately within subdivisions of 2 or 3 in the beat. My idea would be to tap one hand in 4/4 time. And try to rap this song without a sustained melody, or tap it out every syllable. Hone in completely on the rhythm and notice what rhythms seem to drag or propulsive it and what rhythms seem to run out of space or which ones seem to end prematurely. A lot of it is subjective. So there isn't really a clear right or wrong answer. But I have a feeling if you really get into the rhythm, focus on it and listen to how the rhythm is making you feel. You'll get closer to your right answer. As you said, improvement never ends. What you improve into is up to you. I think the more you explore it, the more certain patterns will resonate with you over time. And it will be a stylistic thing. So tap it, rap it, and really listen with awareness, lock it into the groove that feels most right for you. It won't be mine or anyone else, but I think it will be refined.

This is great. I love the harmonies and the guitar melodies throughout. The lead vocal is probably your best yet. The accent is still there, but sounds less limiting on the voice.

I liked the melody, some of the hi hat/snare interplay on the drum, and the piano hook next to the chorus. I like your vocals have a kind of quirky crying/yelping quality to them. Kind of reminds me of a cross between David Byrne and Matt Bellamy. The highest portion broke immersion just a tiny bit on first listen. I liked it more on second listen so it might be an ear catching thing which could be good or bad. The diction is a bit unclear, but I can understand most of it. I think it's overall good.

That's a good suggestion, Felipe. I've noticed I prefer the sound of my acoustic guitar with 2 mics. The offset trick is basically a delay. You can use a delay effect with panning for something similar, but two mics gives it a cool texture. I think it would fill up the mix real fast for more layered compositions though. I've noticed the acoustic has a real wide spectrum as is and can fight with drums/electrics/bass/piano/vocal harmonies/anything. So be sure to cut some of the frequencies (often lower mid to bass) when mixing an acoustic with more instruments.

I like it. I think the irony is that it complements your distinctive timbre. Keep exploring. Find what is you.

I liked that, Felipe. I recorded that one the day after he passed. Might do a bit of a remaster at some point for more fidelity. I liked Ronws singing Space Oddity too. Actually I've liked everything everyone has done so far. This thread has some of the highest batting average of our challenges.

I'm digging both of these. Gsoul sounds great with the Prince tune. I think with an improved mic you'd sit right in that track. MDEW, I love that. Your voice sounds like you, but more more confident, firm, and supported. It sounds like the best direction you could go. I had time to be as loud as I want today without disturbing anyway, so I took rough stab at Life on Mars. It has so many chords and is difficult for me to play and sing at the same time. I wanted to make sure something was posted before the challenge was over, but I'm hoping to get a better version once I get the chords and guitar playing more memorized.

Awesome. I missed your voice. It's so distinct and that song is a great fit. I've got a weird situation at home now, so I don't know if I'll have enough personal time to record loud noises right now. Otherwise I'd be all over this.

I thought that was awesome. It sounds pleasing, is very expressive and in the moment. Stage presence is good, you're in motion, engaged, but it looks natural and too theatrical or stagey. The only thing I'd wonder, is it's a great timbre, but if I tried to imitate I picture myself tiring out with too many songs like that in live singing. When I sing breathy I often aim to find a brighter resonance a little twang, and use just the minimal hiss to get the breathy sound. If I get too breathy without resonance I get a bit huffy and fatigued and it's easy to want to to either blow air or pinch notes. It's probably just that I can't do what you can do, though. This is good. You should keep doing it, I missed hearing you, and glad to see you back. I see a lot of potential both artistically as a performer, commercial viability as well.

Music composition is not usually 'EZ.' There's no program that can make it easy. It's always a lifetime commitment of hard work and devotion to music. There isn't really replacing that in any field. Even rock bands with relatively lower skill levels usually have members who have spent many years at their craft. Electronic rock composers like Trent Reznor spent many years at their craft as well. It's never as simple as drag and drop. Quality is not easy. Going down that route can easily sell yourself short. There are professional electronic composers as well. They didn't grab the EZ and drag and drop. It was a lot of work and expecting instant quality can be unrealistic, resulting in extreme frustration and delusions. If people realize there is no easy way, it can set them up for a lifetime of development through the rough patches and the good patches when preparing to put the work into whatever composition they're interested in.

A lot of times demos of songs will not have percussion. It is not uncommon at all for demos to sound like this: If you want to get a pro drummer and form a whole band like Bruce that's great. If you want to get good at drums that's great too, but anticipate years of practice in the meantime. As a multi instrumentalist I'm still not as good as some exclusive drummers. Jack of all trades, master of none and so forth. If you want to be a songwriter, you need a strong song. As a songwriter, the embryo is really important. You can still add drums, as someone did here (Not Simon and Garfunkel): But if the song is strong, it's strong. If it's good enough, people will have interested in covering, arranging, etc. That's the primary goal of a songwriter.

That's a clear improvement to my ears. The phrasing is much tighter. The original's phrasing was primarily behind the beat which conveyed a downtrodden, on the losing side of things. This one has some 'push and pull' in the phrasing, which gives it energy and a bit more hope. I also feel like the call and response in the chorus was tightened a bit. The strings were minimal and good, imo. As for the drums, I touched on it before, but it would be a risk to add to an already strong song. There's composition of the drums. Drum composition is a skill that usually has to be developed over time, as Ronws implies, unless you go for a stock beat. And with electronics there is often either a rigid element or manual editing/antiquating to give more of a human feel. I've done a lot of drum programming for my video game's music as it there will be percussion elements not available to me that might be more suitable for the theme and not distract as much as having some rock drummer wander into a random composition. This is an entirely electronic composition here: https://app.box.com/s/vloq945t0auc1x5sd5bvbfbbx105ni5u Drums are definitely worth developing. My brother can compose electronic drums fairly well as a non drummer as he's been a composer for some time. He's probably not as instinctive as me cause he can't really drum. I get him on there, and there is the lopsided disco beat, and the desperately confused rock beat. But his ears for timing are good. Basically the rule of thumb here, is you don't necessarily want to spoil something good by rushing everything and the kitchen sink into it. If you're not ready to compose drums but you're ready to sing and play guitar, while it's good experiment and learn and practice, you wrote a good song. It's like making a good meal. Maybe a meal might taste better with a measured amount of mustard, maybe not. But if you don't know how to open the bottle, aren't overly familiar with how mustard tastes, and the mustard sprays everywhere randomly over the meal cause every meal needs mustard, right? Learn how to open the bottle, get a taste for it, and pour it on a cheap burger. If you're more experienced later, you put it on the gourmet dish. I don't think this is a disposable song you wrote here and putting things in because that's 'the thing to be doing' could tarnish it.

It's partly how the mic reacts to plosives. Get real close to a mic and just say like B or P real hard and it wil pop the mic. There are mic shields, but a real good one can get through. There are a few other factors. When you sing a vowel there would be less compression than some of these plosives that block off the airflow. So if you have a higher compression and then kind of 'explode' the voice it can be more fatiguing. Beyond that, it can be stylistic. But sometimes a hard consonant is great for effect. Think of them as percussive elements of the voice. If the rhythm makes sense, sometimes it can form a bit of snare/kick/hi hat drum effect. But if it doesn't make sense, sometimes it sounds like there is a guy pounding on the snare drum completely randomly, because unless the words are written very carefully it might not sync very well to the music. As a general rule it usually sounds better to go easy on them if in doubt.

This is a good song and way above average for a first attempt. I'm not sure about percussion. I use Superior Drummer 2 currently with an E drum kit and it still has a 'fake' sound and some latency issues. So if you don't have real drums and the proper micing setup it can create a nightmare setup and if you do it electronic it can get pretty dance pop. On the other hand there are plenty of acoustic performers and if you are a songwriter, and wanted to get your song licensed, and covered. Having a busier setup for the song could make things more difficult. I really do like the vocal performance itself a lot. The contrast between the lighter and heavier sections and emotive performance was good. Composition wise if you want it poppier you might want to increase repetition more frequently and keep rhythms a bit snappier. When thinking catchy, I always think of nursery rhymes and tapping fingers. Some rhythms are infectious and a lot of modern pop music is almost like schoolyard chants. If you think of a full Bach piece, how complex and difficult to remember. That's on the opposite side. Yours is more accessible. This song already has a 'flow' to it though, and isn't necessarily a pop song. So a lot of where you go would depend on where you want to go. I'm pretty sure if you put this song up for the public certain people would definitely feel it. You've got a better voice than Elliot Smith technically. And he's acoustic only. He's not as popular as Adele with those catchy pop songs. But he still connected with people. I'm a songwriter too, but very rarely post things publicly here. I'd like to get an album format and copyright all the tracks at once, but I can preview this song here. It has the word story in the chorus so you reminded me of it. https://app.box.com/s/0mj2zwf14xyytpemmrk4wpa6fwugetp2 That kind of song there. It's likely too musically complex to be a single. I'd prefer real drums rather than the headache I had. But otherwise I'm mostly satisfied with the artistic vision. So some songs are more about expression of emotion and art. Others might lend well to being like a really accessible pop hit. Others might straddle the line. For you I'd probably just keep writing more songs at this point. Figure out what is important to you as you go. I like catchy melodies, but I also like harmonic complexity, eccentricity, dissonance, and human elements. Not every song needs to be everything to everyone.

That can cause a bit of pressing on the vocals folds, depending on the nature of it. But if you aren't going hoarse. Just do your thing. Keep training. Chase the meaningful sound in your head, try to get there. Dial things where you want them over time.

You'd know your own strain better than I would. So I'd trust yourself. And to be honest, straining a little here and there isn't something to be that worried about. Everyone I know here has strained and lived to tell the tale. There is a shift in timbre up there so unless it's artistic choice it may not be optimized for you yet. It's practice man. I wouldn't be surprised to see you more technically skilled than a lot of folks here one day. If you've got the passion, you've got the drive, and are moving forward. There are certain coordination that will be more flexible and easier to use to navigate certain pitches. So there's like talk singers. I can love that. I'm the big Lou Reed fan here. But most everyone else had to have an open mind at some point and likely either consciously or subconsciously had to make adjustments.

There are a few technical issues. It's kind of droney and drifts flat. The droney thing has a lot to do with phrasing. You can try to treat each syllable as something special. Like you're tossing out syllables to the listener at different speeds and intensities. For the flat thing, if you have an instrument like a keyboard, play the melody on there and sing along. Try sweeping abovee and below the notes and right on the dot. It's more of a feeling and an inner ear thing that gets developed over time. At the end the high note sounded a bit strained, it sounds like the speaking voice is getting squeezed. Bridging into a lighter phonation or supporting the note with a clearer vowel would both work, but it's not an easy fix there. Toy with vowels and with sliding a falsetto around at different volumes. Don't be afraid to try different things than the speaking voice. The more recent clip is going to be more difficult for people to hear pitch without a reference (backing). But I think the pitch is overall less flat at least compared to itself, and the phrasing has more emphasis and variety. The high notes are still going into a strained territory and sound flat due to tension. If you keep training, and especially training smart you'll be able to address all of these things. It will take a lot of time and diligence. Targeted lessons could address these things faster, but at the same time, a willingness to experiment can go a long way. Things to toy with would be try making sobbing sounds, yawning sounds, operatic sounds (think an open throat), quacking sounds (twang, middle back of tongue arched upward), hootie sounds (falsetto like an owl), piercing sounds (lean into bright resonance), quiet sounds (murmuring), and loud sounds with open vowels. But try to make any given sound with the least strain. A big part of it is coordination and flexibility. Right now it sounds like speaking voice is getting slammed upward and hitting limits. Your coordination will likely need to be a little different up there. Most of us are the same. Whether we were taught with lessons, trial an error, or books or whatever. When dealing with pitch range we've all had to be flexible to some degree.

I know the lead never went there. The backing harmonies did in a few places so if you want to do them it could be useful. I was just showing the coordination is flexible, the more open posture can go from the lowest notes to falsetto and to whistle. You've had the higher larynx thing for quite some time. I noticed with my mother as well. She grew up in the south. She was doing the high larynx kind of like a closed EE sound and she couldn't bridge into the falsetto. I got her to open up by starting with an open vowel. Kind of sob at it. If you lift primarily the tongue the larynx can stay more stable and the pharynx can be a bit more open. Once that feeling of stability is there, you can creep back up to a point that is more 'you.' But yeah, let the larynx stay neutral or down, the throat stay somewhat open, and use the tongue for as much as you can. Once the larynx starts jamming and the pharynx starts collapsing, bridging smoothly first starts getting difficult for me and then impossible where it's like a full on jam. Come to think of it I think this would have also been useful for Jeremy. He was getting a cut off point on his bridge for awhile there with his larynx shooting up. A way to think of it is twang with the tongue but not the larynx.

I find the Everly Brothers are the most deceptive I've found for using a very light sound and sounding higher than they really are. I was singing along with a girl, and we were trying harmonies. And there was like an A2 or something in there somewhere, but it sounded so light, we were both wondering why she couldn't sing the note. One thing that helps is to try notes at every volume and size. Cause once I swelled the note it was obvious. I already gave some feedback in the challenge thread. But yeah that's the trick for me, as far as light but low, or high but heavy. Sing the note, swell it from quiet to loud, big and small.

I really like that song for your voice, MDEW. It gives it an earthy dimension and made me appreciate it more. I've been thinking about it though, and I think there might be something you could work on to make it easier in the bridge. When I tried to imitate it. It felt a bit closed. I remember you mentioned you had difficulty with connecting falsetto smoothly, and one of the only ways I know to reproduce that is to close my throat into a kind of tight EE. So if you were to experiment, what helps me is to start with of an oh/aww/uh, and then lift the back of my tongue until it becomes an EE. That puts me into a posture that is much easier to bridge where I can still navigate closed vowels without scrunching/tensing. This is an example: https://app.box.com/s/aufbggekxexardnd260krg84m86h6c7c I also sang the song using more of that coordination: https://app.box.com/s/igrdk6mfzfvqbnv6361j1x5wf3ugi2op But I'd like to hear your finished version, cause I feel like you have something really different to offer this song. If you could keep the personality and character, you have the distinct timbre/accent, but maybe lean towards an easier position. I think there could be a best of both worlds in there. It might help to exaggerate a cartoon position. But then lean back into your accent to find the spot that is easiest and distinct.

I like Jeremy's version cause it has just a hint of escalating intensity as the pitch ascends while being emotive and palatable You've made progress, man. It's not an not an ugly sound nor overly pretty either so it has some edge with a song that might sound a bit sappy. Me, I wanted to do a spontaneous one take thing singing and playing guitar cause those are the skills I've been wanting to work on lately. https://app.box.com/s/n6u41ddi8na8ovbtwvq8lntst132kxz6 It was only afterward I realized I hadn't checked the mic sensitivity properly so I clipped in a few loud parts. Sad. But hopefully I learned my lesson. If you're determined to do one take, it's even more important to check mic levels.

I remember Jewel's breakout single. In my opinion I've never heard her top the Kermit factor: Disappointing to say the least. I love Kermit singers, it's got lots of character. Jackie is the King. I've toyed with the Kermit tone, and while it's true it tends to arise with a mechanism where the larynx and tongue are doing somewhat opposite actions, you can get some of the kermit tone with less tension by sending the tongue backwards. I'm not a master like the prior mentioned singers. The key seems to be primarily tongue placement, but finding the exact shading where it doesn't produce unnecessary tensions is pretty tough and some singers seem to slip into it.

I liked this. I hadn't gotten to hear your voice much yet. It's a great timbre, good song, and good rendition. The only thing, and I'm not sure if it's production, but I'd have preferred just a bit more dynamics. Like a bit more contrast between say a wispier timbre and a full throated bass/baritone thing. It might depend on how far away you are from the mic. It's just preference, but when I hear Cash, he has a relatively limited pitch range, but the volumes are quite varied per pitch, so there's kind of a rhythmic syncopation to the volumes. I think it helps a lot on songs with limited pitch range. Close micing can help bring out those differences.