KillerKu

I love hearing artists at various stages. Rob, something I thought was cool was the phrasing had a unique mannerism different from Tate's in the verses. The melodies were changed a bit in the chorus.    It adds a different dimension to the track, like if the song was a play, the character actor would be unique. When you redo it with it modern version, I'd like if you keep some original character in it. I think this is the first time I could picture how your voice differs from mine, on the lower notes there. Larynx was obviously lowered (they were super low) but you had a lot of weight in there, more than me for sure.   I like MrLoud's live version. You had cool rocker look. It's live so it isn't studio perfection, but is was a good performance, man.    Ronws is totally unique. Never heard him you dip that low before. I actually like your low range quite a bit, but this one is dipping a bit too far into the fry. Couple notes up would probably capture the richness a bit more. I agree with rob that if we could get you some reverb and a little mixing it would really help you blend into that mix. Have you looked into that reverb plug in I was linking to for audacity? I keep meaning to get around to it.   Maybe I'll cover this song one day. Starting to feel left out of the forum standard.

As a musician, the harmonic landscape of Revenge is more tickling my ears and the depth, progression, and 'size' of the composition moves me more emotionally. I'm listening to it more than once and it's a grower.   If I were to judge radio catchiness, I think Down The Line is a lot more immediate in its chorus/verse structure. I think this is useful to point out as my tastes are probably opposite of mainstream audiences that might prefer a simpler song with some simple power chords and a good hook where as me as a musician have spent most of my life acquainted with denser harmonic sounds I might find it easier to connect with these sounds.    I like your voice, especially on Revenge. My favorite part of it is how it covers so much ground, not just range wise, but emotionally. The subdued, almost tears in your throat sound in the opening section, escalating into effortful highs really communicate a lot of emotion to me.  I like how the highest note is a bit rough and has the sound of effort into it. Not like unhealhty straining, but just like you had to 'channel' a powerful passionate emotion that maybe couldn't be expressed with 'restraint.'   One of my favorite things about it, is your voice which is not robotically perfect, but close enough it wouldn't offend most listeners. My emotions never feel 'calculated or perfect' to me. Emotionallly I feel more rough, ragged, a little out of control, and your voice has enough of these qualities to speak to me a lot.   I think your technique is good enough to communicat this style, but if you were going for modern pop radio, you might have to sacrifice a bit of the soul for auto tune. Not because you can't sing and I want it to change. It's just the current market realities. If you could prove this wrong, I'd be incredibly happy.   Anyway, a radio hit might be structured a bit more like Down the Line given current listening habits, but Revenge is enough to make me listen to it like 4 times.

    There is this warbling metallic sound that occurs when a note is subtly tuned. The voice will normally bend in a more 'organic' way which includes a slight vibrato but no real alteration of timbre. The phonation and airflow will have a logical sound to it. When a note gets tuned, it will often bend inorganically in a more digital warble that doesn't reflect the phonation, alters the timbre, and then 'tries to lock onto' the next pitch with varying strengths.   People have various sensitivities in being able to detect it. When it is done correctly only those sensitive to the warble will hear it. Whatever was done to this track was very subtle. This song was posted in another thread and the original poster admits to not being able to hear the auto tune:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUozJJTgXbM   Where to me it is painfully, in my face obvious, her timbre even mashes into a robotic sheen. It's for this reason that auto tune will likely exist indefinitely from this point on in every recording setup moving forward in the pop industry. People hate the idea of auto tune, but the average listener can't hear it unless it's really obvious, so they have 'nothing to rebel against.' It was easy to rebel against prog rockers. It was easy to rebel against hair metal, but if they can't hear it, they can't rebel.   That article I linked had a great example of how guys might hate the idea of 'fake tits' but in practice, they just like tits, fake or not.   It's pretty common for people to shake their fists at the T Pains of the world and go back to listening to their auto tuned records thinking, 'thank god these people aren't fakes like T Pain.' He's one of the most honest artists on the radio. I listen almost exclusively to recordings before 2000 and am an organic singing affectionado so I'm abnormally sensitive. When I turn on the radio, it's just a bunch of robots tugging ptiches to me. All songs pretty much use it.   It's almost less about authenticity to me and more so I just genuinely don't like the sound of tuned vocals. I like the organic pitching sound better. I like the way voices naturally phonate without a computer tugging on their pitches and timbres even if they are less in tune.

Some Let it Be progression in there.  I,   V.   VI.   IV.   Now that's a popular progression   You don't sound too bad as you've brought things up, but you sound a bit deflated or timid when approaching the upper notes? How is your support up there? It doesn't sound like it should be 'too' far into a bridgish area yet. It sounds a bit like you might be kind of deflating and 'talking higher' rather than letting the voice take a little more intensity in those areas.   If you vocalize a siren in this range. What happens? I think it might really be a need to support just a bit more to bring this area more comfortable. It is ok if it gets louder. Anyway for support, inhale through a real or invisible straw, feel your ribs expand and engagement in the area between your stomach and chest. Try not to raise your shoulders too much (during the exercise), then hiss out an ssssss sound, while trying to keep the expansion and feeling of 'engagement.'   If you can learn to apply that more so, this area of the voice can probably be commanded without anything too fancy. If you get it right, it should still feel pretty comfortable. Most of the super fancy stuff occurs into the bridge and beyond. For your style, allowing your chest voice to boom a bit, would probably work quite well. It's what blues and country singers do most commonly.   Anyway, lightening the voice is a good approach to a lot of things and it's cool that you can do this to stay conversational as a lot of people can't, but you can keep some of the weight here if you'd like to. It could sound cool and give you some extra dynamics.

It pretty much just rocks. It completely succeeds at southern rocking. I especially liked the bridge at 2:31, things got a little blue and super passionate sounding, it added a great contrast to the rest of the song. Your slide solo rocks to the end.   I think you're kind of just above technical criticism if this is what you can do. You've gotta keep rocking. I'm pretty sure where you're at right now with voice, you have to ask yourself more what singing means to you and how it fits into your life? Whatever else you want to achieve with your voice is likely optional. This works and it works well. Congratulations on getting there, man.

Oh bonus Tip. If you're using head phones, try taking one ear off? I have noise isolating headphones and can't hear my voice very well, and I tend to go flat or sharp when I can't hear my true voice.

You're in danger of falling a bit into the trap that can kill a singer before they can blossom. The question, "Can I sing?" is misleading and useless. You already are singing. Of course you can. If singing makes you happy you should sing regardless of audience.   The other side of the question that might be more relevant, is how much would your singing currently connect with an average audience? What, if anything would you like to do to change this? Nobody is born a singer, Mariah Carey's mother was an opera teacher, so she learned to sing in ways that connect with audiences at the same time in her life as she learned to speak (under 5 years old). Nobody can even speak at birth, much less sing in a way that people want to listen to.    I think right now, Ronws is right to my ears. Currently on this one there is consistent flatness (what that means is the voice is below the intended pitch) which isn't unusual for an untrained or new singer. Hell, it happens to pros from time to time too. It could be technical, it could be technique (maybe your voicei sn't loose and free enough for you to comfortably get there), but training can likely help a lot, both in singing and with the musical training. There are good voice exercises, good voice teachers and there are also good pitch exercises with your voice you can do accompanying an instrument or you can mess around with music composition programs like Fruity loops or Anvil or whatever.   You'll probably have to get a bit closer to garner an audience. It's probably too consistent to get an audience. A lot of singers I like will get sharp or flat on occasion. To me it sounds emotional when something is below or above. Music is language, and singing is language. If Mariah Carey was asked the same question the beginning of her journey, can I sing? Thankfully 3 year old are pretty resilient and thoughts like that don't cross their minds until an adult shames them. You sound terrible, just stop!   For some reason there is this cult of singer that gets built up in adulthood. Maybe it reflects adult insecurities. "People don't like my voice, so it must be impossible to train a singing voice to connect more with others! Everyone should given up like I did!' It's toxic, useless, and inaccurate. If these goals are important to you, pretty much you can likely achieve them. I don't know if you'll sing like Mariah, if you didn't start when you were three years old. It's a lot like with other instruments. A huge amount of higher tier concert pianists started very young. And they trained like no one's business. Does that stop someone else from using a piano? Paul Mccartney wrote Let it Be on that piano, sold millions of records. People still like it when Paul plays piano, even if he isn't a virtuoso. It can be the same with voice.   Keep your chin up, keep singing, train the things you aren't happy with to reach goals. Don't let the toxic cult of the 'born singer' keep you down. Non musicians like to live in a fantasy world. It takes work man.

  All is well and I look forward to it. You're good, if you sang really out of tune there would likely be more 'digital tug' in the sound anyway. There's this inflection that would have to tug a voice further to get it into pitch that I didn't hear.   It will be a privilege to hear you raw in case you hit the big time. If it isn't 'perfect' your secret is safe with us. It's part of why I love this place, the singers here just don't know the tricks and sing from the heart. I listen to you guys more than the radio. It really connects with why I began singing in the first place.

It should sound good. It's pretty much perfect and nearly ready for radio. There are still a few aspects of the mix that didn't hit a 100 percent (he said it was a home studio recording), but the foundations in that track are nearly there.    I was never a huge REO fan, but my intent wasn't to compare them to the Clash. It was to say even the roughest and rawest of what we've known of pop music is auto tuned now. REO was already pretty polished and would have been prime candidates for a glossy sheen back then. This approach works now and he doesn't have to feel bad about whatever went down in tweaking a pop song.   Regardless, come back with more stuff. It can be from a home studio like this or whatever you record yourself. I wasn't intending to demean or make him feel like a phony. If a sound engineer gets sound, they will engineer it. “I’ll massage a note every once in a while, and often I won’t even tell the artist,” says Eric Drew Feldman, a San Francisco-based musician and producer who’s worked with The Polyphonic Spree and Frank Black.   http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/27/3964406/seduced-by-perfect-pitch-how-auto-tune-conquered-pop-music   If you want to get on modern pop radio, someone will tune you. And if you are an old timer like Bob Dylan who is holding your ground, after you die you might be fair game to get gussied up. There may be a shift at some point where a backlash occurs, kind of like prog to punk, or hair metal to grunge, but it's not that likely. So if you're aiming for the commercial industry, it'd be a huge uphill battle to keep your integrity as a young artist. DIY is pretty much the last bastion of certainty.

I have most of the Radiohead albums on actual CD somewhere and I think I've got this bonus disc, but it's a really obscure pick which is cool.   It's well done and I can feel it. It's sombre and downtrodden. Syncopating piano with vocals is really, really hard so that was well done. The only real thoughts I have is I think you are good enough you can be a bit more of a rock star yourself and step out from Yorke's shadow a bit. Maybe push and pull with the phrasing and dynamics a bit more?   The best way I could describe it would be like to put your mind into the lyric of the song like it's a movie set, witness and experience the song as a piece of art while you're creating it, and act out emotionally what you witness? Hang onto the words like they might be the last words you'd say. It's really really hard with a piano already, two hands there already takes up too much of my brain so I don't think I could do this with a piano yet, as I can't syncopate that many things.   It's already good, but it's kind of a mood piece for me as is. I don't know how to improve it as a mood piece that expresses a subtle downtrodden feeling. I only know how to make it different. So you can think of different ways to interpret it, but ultimately it's your journey, you're painting the scene, and how you respond to the scene is up to you as an artist.   The tech stuff, like pitch, phrasing, and stuff it seemed pretty solid for a live performance so I think it's more about art.

  I can learn Levon sometime and see what's different, I'm familiar with Amoreena, Yellow Brick Road, Your Song, but Acapallla Levon draws a blank. Elton sings quite a few styles, my favorite is Tumbleweed Connection, where he sounds like a confused British guy wandering into a Civil War and singing so passionately about what he sees. It's thrilling, I love it. Such a unique singer.   He might be heavier on Levon, but it could be lighter than you think. We think like 'huge huge' passion, but a lot of times that holds me down. Everyone is different and has to find their own ways of doing it, right? Elton before the surgery was never a super, super high voice type (heavier than Stevie Wonder for sure), but maybe a little lighter than I am? Hard to say. I'd never heard him get as heavy as I do conversionally, but that lightness/heaviness thing isn't on/off. It's kind of like a percentage. I had to explore the white to get to the gray shades.   You could probably use more weight than what I did there, but likely less than what you're doing. It's like a zone. If you're a quiet type (I am, in spite of thee Billy Idol roars), If you want to make really loud exciting exclamations, just say 'yay' really really loud (don't make it too breathy). Modifying towards the vowel can keep some of the chesty excitement, but it can get too much for pop a lot of times. It's a pretty exciteable loud sound like James Hetfield if you do it right. Frankly it gets too loud and harasses my neighbors so yeah. That's a sometimes voice.

This has a lot more energy. Something to be thinking about is maybe a version where it would be transposed up at some point in the song. It would give me probably the desolate emotion of the first, which was barren, but almost so lonesome as to not even exist. It felt genuinely lonesome, and it was so lonely and isolated, that practically no one responded. It was that genuine.   But the transposed version, could be like a lonesome person beginning to shout out at humanity a bit more. Almost no one can be totally satisfied lonely, and that bit of anguish/tension that might appear when you elevate the pitch could be really powerful emotionally.   I've been a loner a lot of my life and it would probably really connect. There's a part of introversion that is very happy being detached and existing peacefully in our own worlds, but there is another  part that feels anguish and wants to shout out and exist. When MDEW talks about the higher note, that is what it would likely convey to me is that quality of even if they live in a desolate town, are poor with a 10 dollar suit, and lead a lonely downtrodden life, there's a part of them that wants to call out to other human beings, no matter how pained.   So yeah, experiment with the pitching, and pay attention to the different emotions. I'm primarily an emotional listener like that, where each song will have a 'journey' or a story to tell, but it might help some to be intellectual as to why a pitch might make us feel a certain way when the pitch ascends and volume increases. Yeah, it sounds more energetic and more social, but it's a lonely song, so both sides would possibly be the most convincing to me.

Yeah, MDEW, I'm not an expert by any means on this but I made a quick example of how I approach singing Elton John when he's young:   https://soundcloud.com/killerku/how-i-sing-young-elton-john   I first showed what happens if I take a chesty voice and simply twang it. It kind of goes from like a Billy Idol progressively into a dying nasally cat. I don't know Levon well by memory so I did Goodbye Yellow Brick Road acappella, with dying nasally cat (not lightening), with the here kitty voice (very lightened to the extreme) and the final one that feels in between to me.   I'm willing to sound silly for you guys if it can help at all. So don't be afraid of that light one in between? If I didn't experiment with it, I couldn't get to the last one which is closer to what I'm looking for.   For the record, you don't need to be afraid of the dying cat one either. It's pretty funny, I might use it somewhere. It's got character.

  Nah, don't feel bad man. I figured if it was used it would happen like that. You're a good singer, engineers are sneaky. Most of us won't know if it if happens. If you want to be 100 percent confident in something, you can record something outside of a studio yourself. Seriously, it's crazy these days. To my ears, they snuck it on Joe Strummer (my punk rock singing god) posthumously when he couldn't tell them to piss off.     Don't feel like a fraud it's all good. I was a straight tone singer almost completely for quite a few years. It's a great style of singing. One of my favorite singers of all time (John Lennon) tends to sing almost entirely straight tone and it's fantastic. He was rough around the edges and was pitched less perfect than you. I don't have great advice in how to get a super controlled like operatic vibrato, but i do have a bit of advice in getting vibrato in general. The easiest advice I have is to listen to Elvis. Open a little wider, yawn ever so slightly. For me it's a slight yawnish thing that turns it on. Subconsciously for me it's really similar, where I still just 'do the lennon' for the straight tone and for vibrato, it's not always Elvis, I copped some Bowie and Nina Simone who have some faster styles, (Nina can sound sometimes goatish, almost like a tremelo).   Nah, I think you're a great singer. But just pick up a mic, grab audacity or a free program, sing raw, to hear yourself. Even home studios, they got it now. I never touch any kind of tuning. Listen to Mick Jones on the Clash's biggest hit:     I've got to let you knooowwwwwwww. That's not even a note, Mick! I love it. The cool thing, is if you're a turbo accurate straight tone guy, you'll be able to use precision and blues it up if you want. Pop radio of the lst decade or more? They'll butcher to high hell. It's the modern radio effect, it ain't you.

This is well done like pitch perfect and produced pretty well. The main thing that stands out to me is how just how straight tone it is. There is almost no vibrato like in the entire thing. If you hit a straight tone with that much precision that's really impressive.   A loss of vibrato and tendency towards straight tone sound is something that happens with auto tune. ~~~~~~ becomes --------- as the computer pulls the pitch towards the desired pitch (vibrato included), although some kinds of auto tune try to disguise that with artificial wavering. The voice tends to get 'sucked' into a note at transition points which creates like a bit of warble.    Anyway, I'm not saying that as an accusation and legit or tuned it's all good. I'm glad you posted it. I don't have any good critique as to how to go about improving it given my preferences are for more movement in the pitch (vibrato and blues), but you have a little room to breath in this song's song's pitching if you're interested in that. Regardless, one way or another, it's pretty polished so it's not very important for your career as a singer and modern pop producers would probably tune you anyway.   If your straight tone is that good, it would be a huge waste in this era of technology. Would be cool if you were born like 40 years ago as you'd stand out.

  Well there is good news. I really like your timbre. Is English your first language english, or 2nd? (or 3rd, etc) I say this as your accent is actually quite good, but there is still something really intriguing or ear catching about the timbre. It might have bit to do with cultural stuff. It's really cool, makes your voice stand out.    Yeah that tone is closer to the real tone, but still not a great mic sound. It's still a bit telephonish. I can hear some mic overload or 'cracking up' when you make a breathy loud high note, if you could reduce mic sensitvitiy a bit in some setting somewhere it might work.    I'm gonna put some research into audacity for you folks. I use Cakewalk, but if I can find you a good reverb plugin it would do everyone here without pro equipment a great service. What you like is the reverb and maybe a tiny bit of compression on the other version but it would really help to have more 'control' so you aren't stuck in karaoke night and get more of an authentic sound.   I'm kind of in another project at the moment, but for now, there are plugins for audacity that can get cool effects. I'm gonna research it for the less technical folks, to try help in a bit but this would be a good starting point:   http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=GVerb   Don't worry about being nervous. You sing from the heart. You sound emotional to me. It touches my ears.  It's just gonna take some time to train. You'll gain the mastery. Missing notes is part the journey. A lot of the singers I listen to still miss note now and then. But you'll improve. If someone gets on your case, I'll whack them with a newspaper. That's a longer term goal. You got to time to grow. You're gonna get there.   People crawl, the walk, they fall down, eventually yeah, they run. Some people start the journey when they are like 3 years old. Some are starting a bit later. Pitch is a good goal. Do your best, but isn't going to help you sing better if you're afraid or feeling bad. It really wasn't too bad, anyway. Rihanna is auto tuned all the time. She can sing well without it, but no one is a robot. So you can't compare yourself to Rihanna on record either. She'd have to be in the room with you singing. You can look into the oldies before auto tune was invented to get a better idea.   I loved hearing it, and we'll work on stuff. If worst comes to we'll auto tune you, but I love your natural voice.

Some good news, some of the runs have made some progress since Daniel. Elton is a really, really quirky with runs. They often jumble up into quick little sections at the end of a line.   I don't think I've ever sung with your style, so it's tough for me to picture exactly what it is like, but especially in the higher range there is increasing amounts of nasality that might be more than you're aiming for? I think to a lesser extent, the soft palate raising advice that was given in this thread, might help you a bit:   '&do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>   The only other advice I have is to maybe try an alternate version (don't have to upload here if you're not comfortable with it) and try practicing your voice a bit childish or girly. Young Elton John sings really high and I can't sing him unless I lighten my timbre. I get too much weight (like old Elton John), I get scrunched up. So don't be afraid to practice some more lighter sounds. I've helped a friend find these modes, by having her imagine she is a child speaking to a kitty. "Here kitty." It wouldn't be super breathy like falsetto, but it can sound like a light timbre.   That's not a final sound you'd necessarily choose, but I've found shading that direction can help especially with pop, as a lot of times the heavier configurations just don't work right for me. I did enjoy it, but I know it's a tough one and there's still progress to be made. I'll help in any way I know how.

  When training voice, everyone will stumble across tension here and there. The goal will be doing your best while keeping it to a minimum, while still exploring your voice. Some styles would have more muscular activation than others, but the keys are to try to never go hoarse or feel pain, if it feels really sore or wrong, you want to change your approach. Sounds like you're already trying some of this.   You've got a really good point on the software settings over the mic. Can you download the Mac version of this program:   http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/   And simply record yourself speaking or singing a little into the mic? Nothing fancy, no reverb, none of that stuff. I don't use Garageband so I can't help with settings there, but there is pretty much a 'record' button in Audacity if it knows which mic you're using. That would give the clearest picture of what is the mic and what is the recording program settings. It could be that live performance mode turns on some serious cheesy karaoke effects.   You'd sound best with a little reverb, a little touch up but the super effects sound like a 10 dollar karaoke machine. If it ends up being the mic, we can look into cheap, but good possibilities at a later date. 

You could likely safely dial back some of the nasality without losing distinct identity. Owen Korzec gave really good advice. I've never sung with this much nasal placement, I used to over lift my soft palate maybe too high. A really quick fix for me at least is to go between an uh like 'duh' (tends to dip larynx slightly) and ah (like open up and say ahhhhhh at the doctor). Training it more specifically for singing could be a lot trickier.   I think the best thing you could do is experiment with the advice, and compare the results yourself. Your style of singing here is extremely nasal, but it's also from the heart. There are some styles of singing that are a lot more nasal than others. It's heavily influenced by cultural upbringing, so if you were born in traditional Chinese culture people might react differently:     For western pop radio you should maybe keep your eye on Serj Takian. Western audiences already find his sound 'weird' or strange or 'exotic', but there are audiences for him:     I'm not a huge fan of System of a Down, but I like his voice for its distinctive qualities. I like yours too, but especially in the heady area it's extremely nasal. It's a bit much for my tastes here too. Anyway, the way it works, is each culture will have a normative average of sound preference at any given time and highly nasal sounds are not what current culture is looking for generally. Generic culturally appealing sounds tend to be 'safe' and can be mass marketed over a wide audience, but can also be bland. Unique sounds divide audiences, but can also hook audiences in deeper to the artist. You'd have to figure out what you are as an artist and what is important to you.

I think both Ronws and Sexy Beast have some good points here. Something about this mic is amplifying some really crazy mid rangy frequencies which take a lot of body out from the bottom and top relatively and give an inaccurate picture of your voice one way or another.   At the same time with more training, lessons and/or self study you'll likely get more control over your voice. You already sound more in control in this tune, than the prior tune on your sound cloud if this is your most recent. I actually like your current timbre (what I can make out from the distortion) which is really distinct and feel like it's a style worth pursuing, but if if you're having issues with strain it could help to get some lessons or rethink other areas of your voice.   Does 'this' tone feel strained? Is it comfortable and can you move it about pretty freely? If so, it's fair game. Each area of your voice you explore, try to find a free place for it. You can still keep this area, while exploring others.   Anyway, yeah, I'm not familiar with the tune (don't listen to Rihanna) but there is something interesting here that I'd like to hear more of. I did enjoy listening to it, but I hope you can clear up the mic issues a little at some point, cause it's not really representing you very well.

This one slipped all the way off the page, eh? It's really low key. I like it but it's like background kind of chill performance, like you're on a back porch singing to yourself which has a certain context. The guitar has good pacing, a gallop or trot.   What kind of mic is being used in the recording? Is there some kind of noise gate? It kind of cuts out some of the sound, fading in and out. I've had a noise gate cut in and out like this before. Sometimes if you compress a voice and guitar, really weird they can 'fight' each other.   Yeah, it's one of the more low key performances I've ever heard. It might work in like a scene of a movie where you're the camera is panning out on a rural area, things are desolate and a bit empty. Maybe even almost a straight up desert. So it captures something, but I can how it would slip. You might want to try something a little more up beat to catch people's ears. But the back porch of a desolate scene is pretty cool too.    On technique, in my throat the E vowel on 'feet' might have felt a bit tight if I tried it? I find saying 'yee' helped me get my E in a more comfortable place as a base line (opened some resonators and made a bit more room so it wasn't as tight), and then going a bit yih (like in yippy) or yay from there can help if a note needs to be 'bigger.' But my throat is not the best barometer for E vowels, yours is and your style is more of a nasal twangy tone than I use which is a lot more country where a sound like that would be more commonly used.

  That's fair enough. It's interesting and your thoughts should be useful from that perspective. So all is well.

  I sing pretty comfortably in the E4 to G4 range with various styles (creaking rasp, chesty shouting, super twangy and witchy, falsetto, extremely heady, crying stuff (guess it's closer to a mix voice). So I've hit G4s in like maybe 20 different ways now.   If an approach works for a singer, it works. I'm the type of person that separates efficiency from 'good or bad' technique. I don't believe there is a 'correct' way to sing anything. Correct for opera, folk, jazz, punk, roots rock, pop, soul, smooth RnB, modern pop, country, and metal, are all already different in the public's mind, so correct for each singer who may not even be singing one of these genres is a pretty huge stretch.   Some singing schools have a 'sound ideal' and some don't. SLS works for you so you should use it. But have you looked into some other vocal study programs intellectually as a curiosity?  Even the one that seemed the least emphasized on sound ideals (Complete Vocal Technique) has had to revise things, cause they were too limited in the amount of vocal modes the voice could produce and had to create subdivisions in modes between their origin concepts. The voice could do too much.   Rob is constantly working on his TVS stuff from the sounds of it. Puts huge work into staying up to date for singers. It's a really broad instrument. Just because you or I might not know how to make a sound comfortably ourselves, doesn't mean someone else doesn't have a technique that can create this sound comfortably or healthily. Sometimes we simply can't do it cause we ourselves didn't learn the technique, other times it really is uncomfortable and feels like crap in their body.

  I don't really understand either/or situations with voice. A lot of my singers don't really modify vowels much at all.   Most support fairly well, but not all do. Neil Young might do a good version of this song with a wavering falsetto.  Bruce Springsteen probably might do a good one with a pulled chest sound. A young Bowie might use a very slightly strained nasal sound during the Ziggy era. Old Bowie might use a lower larynx, kind of woofy sound with mad vibrato and wail up to it.   I do believe I understand the suggestion, but 'necessity' is a pretty strong concept. Not really sure what Bono wants. He's a cool guy, with a cool voice. I don't know if he wants things to be one way or another so if it's a detail like how he hits a note, I'd figure he knows more than I do. It probably could be done more efficiently with less effort the way you're describing though.

It's great. Extremely Elvis. Yeah the recording quality could be assisted. I have don't have much technical advice on the singing as it sounded spot on Elvis to me.   Something to consider, as an artist you should consider if you may or may not want to distance yourself slightly from Elvis. When something is spot on, it can sound more like Elvis to people than you, which is good if it's the intended effect, but you may want something different.   I'd love if you come back with a better mic and we could hear you more clearly, but if you were aiming for Elvis, you definitely succeeded.