KillerKu

My ears are telling me this is well done  A couple of the higher runs had a tiny bit of wobble. Studio engineers might doctor them to make everything pitch perfect.    Another take might have removed any wobble, but basically it was good perfomance. If you were put in a pro studio, given a pro EQ, pro reverb, pro compression, and had your vocal massaged as much as the original subtly auto tuned guy, I think they could work radio magic on it.   Until One Republic Guy sends me raw, undoctored tracks, that's what I assume. I guess the question is where to go from there? Songwriting? Mixing? I think a studio would do more to convince listeners than vocal improvement at this point, but obviously you can still train your voice. There may be a bit more left to be achieved in stabilzing a run here and there if it's what you're looking for, but this style of pop music is really processed.   It's tough to be some guy who records into a mic, and sticks a raw sound into a highly processed track. It can sound a little strange. So if you're interested in the slicked back prodution style music, maybe you should experiment with slicked back production vocals, right?

No critique. If I go to Idaho can I sing that polished? It ain't 'that' far. Something in the air.   Seriously though, you have a fully developed style, your performance is technically solid while still vulnerable. It would take a dumber man than I to suggest changing it.   I might have heard a microphone overload one time. I'll take that as my cue that you aren't already a professional singer pulling our legs.

I wrote you a post that got removed in the transition from the old forum. Basically, I showed your self penned tune to a known Nick Drake fan and she was feeling it. I think you're closer than you think to capturing a kind of vibe that his fans would appreciate.   The issue basically is: Nick Drake was a very subtle guy, and subtlety was a really hard art form to be heard in those days. Nick Drake wasn't heard too much until after he died, so it was hard back then, and even harder now. In the modern age people are always moving, with a constant stream of 'stimulation' from the internet, from their phones, from work life, driving, there's constant movement, constant stimulation.   To catch people's attention, it usually takes a spectacle. Neon lights, loud bangs, naked people, meat dresses, frog suits, cosmetic butt surgeries. To sum up the difference to me, it feels like we live in the kind of world that is no longer fascinated by Mona Lisa's smile, but is genuinely confused why she isn't naked.   My thing is I hear you, and if you're content to be a subtle artist, it's cool stuff man. It sounds fulfilling and like a deeply personal journey for you. On the other hand, I hear something else in you, that maybe with a bit more hook might capture more attention. I mentioned in another thread, if Radiohead never wrote Creep, it's very possible few people or even no one would have heard Kid A, or liked it if it was released. they basically gained 'license' to do material that required a bit more effort to digest, by first gaining a fan base.   One way would be to try to write hookier songs at some point. Supposedly even Drake made sacrifices to try to achieve that goal, as even the folk listeners found his stuff too subtle, without major choruses, and practically booed him off the stage. I'm just wondering if there is a way you can make a bit of a bang or spectacle to catch attention in this life. It could be musical, it could be visual (dunno if Gaga has done a lizard dress yet, ).  It'd just be cool if you could capture some of Drake's inspiration and reach more audience than he could in his life. I know my friend has listened a lot to Pink Moon. She digs subte, vulnerable sounding artists.   But it's about what you want as an artist. You're pretty good at what you do. Either way, I'd recommend you keep writing your own tunes as well as covering  Drake and being inspired by him. You him well, but he had enough trouble himself getting heard. At least with your own tunes, maybe people will discover you at a later date.

We'd have to hear ya and probably know a bit more about your voice and possibly styles you'd be interested in singing.   Well I could give you a whole bunch of random advice and song choices and it would be amusing, if probably useless. I'm not worried about you wasting time, but if we aren't careful someone might shout out a song by Ronnie James Dio and trick us into singing it. Probably a train wreck for both of us.   So yeah, come back, more info. It's all good.

Thanks for posting a native language piece in a different style. I don't have enough exposure to the language, style, or technical knowledge to give a proper critique as to how to improve it in any way (if it's possible), but it's a breath of fresh air and beautiful to hear. Maybe some more worldly members would have better skills there.   I wanted you to know it was listened to twice and I could feel it. It sounds passionate and it sounds good. This world wide forum could be an incredibly beautiful and informative experience. Thank you for contributing very much. People like me need to hear your the passions that inspire you whether we understand your language or not.

It's really good man. It feels really human to me, I love the little vibrato, and subtle movements. It sounds really organic, but not falling off key even with all of the subtle inflections. You're a great singer and you conduct ballads real well, without sounding smarmy.   The only thing I've got, is did you cut out the breath sounds through comping, editing, mixing, or is it quiet under the track? The sound of this track is 'close' and intimate, I just personally felt like hearing the sound of your breathing would have brought you closer.   Other than that, I wouldn't change a thing. Maybe people with more technical minds would have better ideas in how to 'improve' it, but I'm thinking mostly just leave that sucker alone.   

You've got a good voice. I like improvization and dig singers who are 'on the spot' jazzing things up. That you'll go there in the first place is cool, it takes bravery to just 'go there' without guide rails.   If those notes are pretty comfortable for you to hit regularly on a reasonable schedule (6 days a week on a cruise is pretty intense, I don't know if it's a fair judge of how strenuous), your technique is already good enough, imo. I get a little Jackie Wilson vibe to the inflection a little Stevie Wonder ish stuff. There's just a little more 'uh' vowel from time to time, which gives you a kind of deeper/heavier curbing/mix/cry/whatever (don't care about the term) kind of timbre.    I'd love to hear you take a shot at a song like this:     As for vocal masturbation, heh, I can give my 2 cents both as a singer and instrumentalilst. A lot of times when I'm improvizing on an instrument, my first instinct has always been to 'change notes' frequently? This note, that note, up/down, giant leaps, big constant changes. It's like every single time I go into a guitar shop, there is always some guy that hits every single note on the fretboard, but a lot of times it doesn't gel as very musical. I've done that, and some finger exercise are literally that.   Something that helped  (and still helps me to be honest) is to pick say 4 or 5 notes, and milk those notes for everything they've got. Not just the notes, but the space 'in between' the notes. Even 3 notes with varied phrasing can have huge possibilities when you repeat them, hold them out for varying lengths, move back and forth, and fill and create 'space' in various ways. I found once I committed myself to 'less is more' I could provide more 'movement' in the melody lines.    Anyway, I'm not a rules kind of guy. If someone makes a rule, I'll find some way to break it, so i'm not saying this is the right way. But to my ears, I think you could fit most of the vocal range you displayed in this piece without being too excessive. It's a really jazzy piece, but maybe milking smaller intervals (2nds, 3rds, 4ths, 5ths) more frequently to 'ground' the sections and making dramatic leaps a bit more sparsely.    If it feels authentic to you, I'd say go for it, but if it does feel a bit wankish, that's been how I've tried to tone my own down, on all of my instruments, including voice. It may or may not help you.   Cool voice, cool clip. I admire you being out there and going for it.

  Yeah that's exactly what I noticed too. Stylistically this is actually a really successful technique. Lots of pop acts like John Mayer add loads of breath and there is a certain audience of listeners that love it. That guy breaths his way to the bank.   I would recommend taking Gorehax up on his lesson though. Cause even if you choose to use this effect, gaining more control over your voice is wise both for you as an artist, but also breathy voice is one of the more tiring types of phonation and if you ever were experiencing vocal fatigue you'd be able to nip it in the bud before it got out of control.   Overall, I get a pretty poppy vibe from these songs Rokas, presentation. It's not fully polished off yet and I feel like you still could gain a bit more mastery, but you're heading in a direction that could be successful and you're young enough to really make the younger ladies swoon.

The wilderness can work as long as you are prepared and take precautions. If your school does subsidize lessons, by all means take them, but you can always check in somewhere like this now and then.   It's very observant of you about  'singing a bit around the melody.' It seems maybe the most accurate description. Nothing you can't tackle. I get loose with melodies sometimes too.   When finances and life circumstances work out, definitely don't abandon the private lessons idea. Teachers come in all colors from completely incompetent and delusional, to extremely educated professionals that know how to teach. Just know most of the teachers on this forum have something to show for it and don't stick their heads in the sand about much of anything.   For professionals to be willing to engage the public on a relatively open forum like these folks, they got little to hide. Takes a lot of bravery, and pretty much at the end of the day you have to be competent to just back it up.

I think Rob is right. I can hear loads of potential in there, but it sounds like you haven't had a lot of musical training or singing training, which you yourself pretty much admit. So when you sing without a backing track, you have difficulty visualizing the pitches. Everything you want, can be trained. I can hear pitches moving up and down accordingly, they're just hazy, I can hear a relatively relaxed voice which for a beginner is better than straining. You can hear the beginnings of what could become a really polished timbre.    Taking lessons with Rob or one of the other vocal experts would accelerate growth into these aspects. Without lessons, you can still learn, but you'll have to be really diligent with your musicianship and and voice both. You mentioned 8 months in being good enough to sing for ensemble? If you have a time limit imposed on reaching a certain standard of quality, I'd definitely recommend the lessons.   Self discovery is a beautiful journey, but without a professional who knows exactly how to guide you it's definitely slower. Things you could do right now, imo would be to find an instrument. And if you can't find an instrument, download a free trial of maybe fruity loops and try the piano roll. Try to reproduce Frank's melodies, with the instrument, then match your voice to an instrument.   With your voice, you can work on breath support exercises to more engage the diaphragm. My favorite is to inhale through a real or invisible straw, and then hiss an ssss for as long as you can. It should be pretty relaxing and make you light headed at first, but if you do it right you'll feel the area above the stomach and below the chest 'engage.' That's an area when singing that often has engagement.    The problem you've got basically, is self discovery is slow. No one will be there with a highly trained ear to help you each step of the way. The best analogy I have, is wandering in the wilderness, vs having a trained 'travel guide' through the forest. Both journeys are valuable, but if you feel like you want to get there faster, and be guaranteed to reach your destination (some people become lost in the wilderness!) having a highly educated guide will help you most.   And even if you were to take someone like me, who 'can sing some,' someone like me might be able to throw you enough bones to get somewhere, someday. 8 months to sing in a group? It's possible, but most groups would like to hear some unison and harmony of pitches. Groups are often more more demanding, cause if you're doing something a litlte off key the whole group can suffer. That said there are groups that are more interested in training for humanitarian reasons. I have one near me. They don't sound like the most highly polished choirs because they take folks from all walks of life, any age, any experience, any ethnicity, any economic status, don't judge, and go on the singing journey together and 'help' along the way. It's like a hippie choir!   I feel like if it's an urgent destination, and it's at all affordable for you to get qualified experts with proven success as teachers, who can train you into your goals it's your best bet.  I'm all about self discovery and think it's a really valuable artistic journey, but you take a walk in that wilderness, there's no guarantee you'll even get out, much less in 8 months.

I've been thinking a lot since this thread. There was a time before my health problems where I had potential to become a reliable live performer. I'd have liked to have polished my guitar/drums/bass/piano playing, voice and songwriting, and find an engineer to make more 'accessable' sounding music. Not with the aims of being commercial necessarily, but of having the music heard.   I've come to the realization now, that I think I want to make artistic statements that are flawed and broken like me. It doesn't seem to be my goal for anyone to hear them, much less like them. So I guess I changed.   My current goals aren't very useful for technical critique however. To explain how, I can use an analogy. With a painting, I can draw a broken vase. The vase obviously doesn't function properly, water would leak out. It's 'cracked.' It wont' work as intended. The viewer understands this scene and may feel emotions like loss, emptiness, sorrow, futility, inevitability, or so forth.   Yet if I were to make a similar artistic statement with music, and were to put a 'crack in the music, a section where it doesn't work right anymore, the question is inevitably 'why is there a crack in that song? The music sounds broken.' The meaning is lost in translation.   I understand the scientific reasons why putting a crack in a song (pitch, rhythm, volume, etc) repels listeners while putting a crack in a painting does not. Pitch, rhythm, volume can repel ears in ways mere color does not repel the eye. But as an artist, I still want the cracks there, even if they repel listeners.   So yeah, it's not really useful for technical critique. I think I can try to help others try to achieve their goals to some small degree, but I might be on my own with mine. There isn't much of a market for broken vases and fixing them kind of defeats the purpose. I guess at this point in my life, I'll never be the fully functional one, so the authentic one left to make is the broken one.   In light of that, I probably won't be posting much for critique, there's nothing much that can be done. But I'll pop in and help you guys out if I can.

Yeah, Ronws, sometimes people sing out of tune, unintentionally, and it still happens to me, personally, so don't feel bad if it's happening to you. Gaining more control over pitch is a goal that can be worked on, right?   But at the same time, there's no reason to not appreciate artists where they are now or bludgeon them for not being robotically on pitch all the time. And I'm glad not everyone sings perfectly in tune. It adds an element of chaos, unpredictability, and excitement to my ears when pitch isn't a thing I'm able to predict. As an artist, I still aim for trying to figure out the 'exact right amount of improper ' I can slip into a piece of art, without alienating everyone on the planet, 100 percent of the time, right?   I think accidents are a really big part of what makes art relateable and human, but if you're slipping past Reed in pitch, its gonna be a struggle getting an audience. And to be realistic, a bunch of trained singers aren't going to be Reed's biggest fans on average. To use a comparison: I'm a guitar player and if I go to a guitar forum, there's a really good chance a huge portion of people are trying to play 900 notes per second, and sitting around bashing Cobain for his 'crappy guitar technique. So few notes per second. So little accuracy! Terrible guitar player!' I've seen this hundreds and hundreds of times.   But those notes sold millions more album than Satriani ever will, and to my ears Satriani sounds relatively 'tasteful' compared other shredders. So it's probably a bit of both, when you get guitar players gathered, they talk about moving fingers fingers fast and very accurately! When you gather vocalists they talk about moving vocal tracts high and fast with extreme accurately! Yet the average listener just 'hears' sound. Before he died, Reed gave a  pretty famous review, he said, he just 'hears a sound, it's either moving or it's not"   http://thetalkhouse.com/music/talks/lou-reed-of-the-velvet-underground-talks-kanye-wests-yeezus/   It's always been a personal goal of mine to retain as much purity of hearing 'sound' as innocently as I can. As a guitar player, I don't hear fingers. As a vocalist I don't hear vocal tracts contracting, air exhaling, and vocal folds vibrating to manipulate to a defined sound frequency. As someone who has done mixing, I don't listen to to sound spectrums. First thing I do is just listen for sound. As much like an untrained person with as little knowledge as possible. And it either moves me or it doesn't, right?   After that happens, I can try to intellectually backtrack to see if some of my intellect could steer either myself or someone else towards a sound they are looking for. I've got a pretty good idea of what sounds are in my preference palette, but other people's palettes are distinct and interesting as well, so my tastes aren't what is most useful to other artists.

I like a lot of your thoughts on these subjects. For me, whenever I critique things, I personally don't think there is a true definitive standard 'good or bad' or 'right or wrong.' People have different opinions, but to me those are 'subjective standards' placed on art. I think it's destructive to art to make a value judgment in this way. I'm a staunch non conformist when it comes to 'socially enforced' standards of 'proper' artforms. It's Stalinist. I'm a rebel to the bone.    I think it's fair to say some sounds are more commercial or popular. It's fair to say some sounds resonate with me more emotionally. It's fair to say whether someone is using a known techniques skillfully. It's fair to say if a note sounds more less out of tune. It's fair to say if it is too much or too little for you.   But there is a point in critique where something transcends feedback, to becoming a 'value judgment.' And for American Idol, this value judgment aspect has a little more credibility, mainly because they have to finance you, market you, and record your stuff.   I listen to Lou Reed every week. I'm a fan of some of the Velvet stuff, self titled, Berlin, Transformer, Coney Island Baby, He's of my favorites and a big part is because he doesn't sing with perfect turning. But on the flip side, I've never listened to a single American Idol CD. It doesn't connect with me at all. It's how I hear things.   Something I wanted point out that is strange, is Bono chimed here, and a lot of times I'm more for like dirtier, grungier, looser, rawer, artistic stuff. And  you took my tastes, a lot of times it leans heavily into the artistic side of commercial music. He was pretty polished, honestly. He's more skilled than I am, imo. A little accent here and there. Maybe American Idol would be xenophobic, but Argentinan Idol, would at least accept his first audition. Range, power, on key, emoting. But at the same time, I was the guy that responded to him. I guess he kind of slipped into obscurity, maybe randomly. I got a listen to the guy, and he had some 80s drums going on maybe, it wasn't an 80s night.   So it's not really 'silence means you're half a step off key all the time, and would be laughed off stage, stop sucking or go home!'   As an artist and a listener, I don't care about rules. If I was going to put a million dollars into marketing a singer, nationally and risk losing it, I might care more about rules too. So to me, critique has more to do with what an artist wants, how I hear it, how these might be different, but for others maybe it's Idol or nothin. It's an interesting topic, Ronws, and I agree being able to take constructive feedback is good, even if you simply discard it and form the new Velvet Underground.   I'm in a pretty good place at the moment to be able to hear it. Awhile back, I had health problems and literally couldn't speak much, much less sing so at the time it was too heart breaking and I just left. But I got those health problems partially addressed enough, I can at least sing. There are still barriers here and there.   So if I want to cover Lou Reed, no one responds, or is like 'get out here out tune guy!!' I can take it dude. I'll probably still cover my Lou Reed tunes. I just took a little Walk on the wild side recently, personally. If they were to criticize my health, I'll try to let it roll off, but it hurts. Stick with the singing, right? That's what I'm trying to do.

  I had made an observation that you seemd a bit more comfortable at the piano when singing and you had told me as a pianist you were taught only classical and could not play by ear nor improvise, which saddened you.   So we all stepped in to teach you how to step outside of classical music into both improvisation and playing by ear: I'll recap as much as I can for when you get back:   For improvising, the easiest thing for a beginner to do is take a common scale (major, minor, blues are quite common ) and experiment with trying different note combinations both separately with different phrasings (melody) and combined in different patterns (harmony). If you play classical piano, you probably know key signatures. If you think of those less as 'note patterns on a paper' and more 'distances between between notes you can utilize in general' they become a very different tool to use harmonically and melodically.   Improvising within a scale can produce cool results, and it's personally how I started improvising many years ago.   So like in a F Major scale: you'd have   F (root note/tonic, the key signature, right?) G (major 2nd interval, count 2 notes up or 10 down) A (major 3rd interval, count 4 notes up or 8 down) A#(4th interval, count 5 notes up or 7 down) C (5th interval, count 7 notes up or 5 down) D (major 6th interval, count 9 notes up, or 3 down, E (Major 7th interval, count 11 notes up, or 3 down)   Any of these notes could be combined into various melodies, harmonies (chords) and various patterns simply by exploring them freely, finding the sounds that resonate meaningfully with you as an artist.   Now scales are a great approach to improvisation, and can produce good results, but personally I hit a wall with this approach (some call it noodling) and for me personally to make progress I had to do a lot of training for my ears.    What this means, is you really start to 'listen' for notes in your head. You listen to the distances between notes (intervals) and you try to 'play' what you 'hear.' One great exercise for training your ears is simply learning melodies or chords of songs 'by ear' as best as you can. A really good exercise for a beginner, is to sing a note with your voice, and refuse to let change the note no matter what you do with your instrument. In the meantime, search your instrument as many incorrect notes as is necessary until you this exact note. Even if every single note you play is wrong, eventually you 'will' find the right note. Over time you will grow faster and faster at finding the right note and your mind will grow 'more and more ' in tune with your instrument, until you can 'hear' the next note you would be playing more and more. Or hear a harmony you might want to add?   You can also listen for common chord changes in songs and start to hear them more and more quickly. Really common ones are heard in songs like Stand By Me (Ben E King), or Let it Be (Beatles). Some genres are more inventive than others (blues is often very predictable, while jazz and classical are often comparatively more complex).   Anyway, most people eventually reach a limit of what they can hear in a piece of music, depending on its complexity and speed. I can pick out most melodies that aren't extremely fast, and a degree of harmony and translate it to an instrument, but once you reach like an orchestra with hundreds of instruments often with different parts, it's likely even a really great musician will have too much going on in the piece to fully dissect everything. That's part of why written notation is so important, is to preserve pieces that are simply too complex or reproduce by ear.    The good news is you only have 10 fingers, total. So for the most part, on a piano, you can really try to train yourself as best as you can to be 'in tune' with your instrument and play from in your mind.   My advice in get started, don't feel bad having fun with your fingers. Let them roam. Fingers are often much faster than musician's ears (mine still are to this day), unless the musician has absolute pitch (often obtained at about 5 years old).  Explore your scales, chords, in different orders, different rhythms, different combinations. Don't censor yourself. You'll have to get over your fear of being 'trapped' as a classically taught pianist who can only read from a sheet. As you progress train your ears more and more until more sounds are coming from your 'mind' and less from your fingers. Most musicians aren't perfect at this skill, even great ones.   This part of music music is a really beautiful and rewarding journey, and there is no reason to feel sad or trapped into being a 'classical' pianist. To me that's like feeling sad about never haven't been to Paris, when you have tickets on your desk. You'd surprise yourself with what you can do. You'll be able to combine these skills with your voice as well. For compositions, songwriting, arrangements, and accompaniments. Don't give up on this, I believe in you thoroughly. You're still fairly young too. You have so much time to become fantastic. If you have any desire at all, chase it. Don't let anyone tell you there is a category of musician that can't do these things. It's not true and you can do it. 

Even with horrific cell phone sound quality, you still sound great. Hadn't heard you in a long time. Favorite part is that little 'uh' or 'huh' in the middle. Like in the middle of singing such an intense song, something powerfully random distracted you and you were like 'whaaaa???'   I picture like an elephant or roller skates, something profoundly distracting, that could take you out for that split second in such an intense performance.   It's a great performance, but the liveliness sealed the deal. Nice hearing you again.

Works for me. Sometimes I take a ride down that road. It isn't that often for me, cause I'm a sucker for a catchy melody, but I can hear the appeal. It's like a foreign, twisted world where you're searching for beauty, and beauty can and is found, but it's surrounded by menace and the beauty feels so fragile in that soundscape.   I like horror movies and atonality is frequently used to make 'tense' sections and put people on edge. I've often wondered if pop songs that included something with that kind of 'tense' section during crucially tense moments in the song, could make it if the record execs didn't veto it. Most people don't want to be tense for an hour, or even 2 minutes, but 10 seconds before beautiful release? I might actually turn on pop radio if people were doing this.

I find the cut can occur in the frequencies between about 2k and 6k. 2K s the frequency which is boosted for phones, as it is kind of the 'center' of bringing out some clarity in some voices, but in the singing voice, there is something called a 'formant' at 3k which is quite dominant.    The overall metallic tone occurs in the brighter frequencies in general, think 2k and above. There is a lot of shimmer in 10K areas and above. Cutting some of the lower frequencies can 'narrow' or clarify a voice.    Do you have any recording equipment? There are things called parametric equalizers. They are Eqs that you can take a squiggly line, and make 'spikes or lump) of various widths and run through the frequency spectrum. I'm not a master at this yet, partly cause I have an affinity for 'less processed voices.' Most of the music I listen to is maybe from the 60s-mid 70s before extreme processing was all that common.   This video talks a bit about frequency spectrums.   It's for fruity loops. Depending on the software you have, audacity is free and frequently used, there might be tools or plugins. I have a version of Sonar/Cakewalk/whatever which I use so I wouldn't have the best advice on how to best utilize any other software.   Anyway, you can look up various tutorials:   http://www.dnbscene.com/article/88-thinking-inside-the-box-a-complete-eq-tutorial   Nearly all studio recordings are EQed very heavily processed today, but there was always a 'little' magic at least since the micropone was invented. It's part of why I go back and listen to some of those muffled tones from the 50s and 60s as a lot of the singers really were a bit muffled. But this sound, this bright, cutting sound, it's part technique (twanging head voice helps a lot) and part mixing. I like it in moderation.   And I'm glad you have a teacher. I personally feel like I would hit a wall with this technique, and wouldn't be able to take it all the way into a fruition without 'some' kind of intellectual, outside help.   My perspective is as a species I suspect we evolved from apes and we generally find it more intuitive to make the noises you might imagine a caveman making, (lower mid rangey things). Sounding more like a crow making more of a bright ringing, cutting, though still thick kind of 'caw' sound is possible with training, education, and knowledge, but is rare without. It takes all types of voices, and all walks of life to make singing what it is. So follow your passions and keep safe.   Part of why I put on my terrible Tate impression, is he sounds more 'cawish' to me. I don't know how much was training or intuitive, but I know he got some help along the way at some point (and in my opinion he could use help again now, sorry Geoff, seen some live performances).   But back in the day, he was on the ball:     You could probably send him to someone who is really knowledgeable like Rob to help him get back to the center of his voice where he was back in the day. His voice doesn't sound 'destroyed' it just sounds like he lost the center of where he was back then and can't hit the same notes. My experiences have convinced me it's an extraordinarily difficult configuration to maintain and it's not that Geoff can't sing 'at all' today, he just can't maintain that tough coordination to hit those tough high notes like he used to. Following his intuition alone, he probably lost  the technique. It's understandable as most people would never find it in the first place.

I had a lot of trouble dissecting this one. Normally I am good at getting around a technical issue to hear the core of the performance, but the cell phone ish device recorded the performance in a strange way that almost sounded off key at first.    I'm pretty sure you did well, but some of the notes on the lower spectrum in the intro sounded a little strange and I couldn't tell if the recording device itself was adding strange frequencies. When you raise pitch it sounds on key, articulate, emotional, and just yeah, it's cool. It's good, overall, it just sounded strange on the lower frequencies, especially during the beginning.   As I re-listened a few times, lean more and more towards a weird 'overload' on some of the lower frequencies of the recording device itself. If you can sometime, record a performance a bit more into a regular mic. Obviously, crowd loved it, it was good, but it was hard without being there in the crowd, right?

I agree it sounds like he is less falsetto than when listening to the album track. That's really interesting.   At the same time, it sounds like there is a LOT of EQ to me (which can boost the areas around the singer's formant, cut a lot of the muddier sounds, and add a bright sheen to sounds) for more 'poke.' It doesn't sound like a natural tone to me, but heavily studio-fied. So I'm not sure if you took a totally flat track of him, what he would sound like. Probably more cut than I pictured, but less cut than that track would indicate.      You definitely want some of that cut so keep looking for it. Robert Lunte (forum founder) is very good and familiar with some of these techniques. He'd be able to help you more than I as it's not a style I ever pursued. Very few of my inspirations as singers sang this way and often have a 'murkier' depth of low mid frequency, 90 percent switched to falsetto at a point somewhat close to where I do. My personal experience is you can kind of have a balance between the two, but when you add a lot of the cut, it starts dominating into a more 'metallic' frequency which can overpower some of those lower frequencies (some would call it a slightly hootier frequency).   As for distortion, if it feels wrong, it pretty much is. I've never had my current style of distortion affect my voice, but there were a few times before I had dialed it in, where I'd do something just 'strenuous' in an affecting way. It wasn't enough to send me hoarse, but I could tell it was wrong and 'too full.' I think if I persisted it might have sent me hoarse. It wasn't good. Pay attention to your body as best as you can when singing anything, it's not just rasp, its literally anything. Whenever something doesn't feel right, I simply change it. While you're looking for sounds, that's probably the most dangerous part, cause you might find something destructive and overdo it, but the best thing you can do is just stop when it feels wrong, and rethink things.   I really think lessons for some of these advanced head voice techniques you're looking for would be very helpfull. Part of the reason why most of my favorite singers didn't sing this way, was because they couldn't find it in an intuitive way. Few people would just 'find' this kind of thing without guidance. You have guidance here, obviously, but this is tricky stuff.

I sing this song from time to time, love the song. On one hand I think you could mainstream the tone a bit more if you were recording a single, but at the same time I get more satisfaction from your completely unique take on a very commonly performed song.   I personally preferred the opening and closing sections as it felt like you were more on a tight rope and putting every ounce of weight you could on those high notes. They are really tough notes and if I were to try to sing them as fully as you did, I'd probably do worse. So it isn't wrong, and if that is the most meaningful way for you to sing it, it does create a mood, but the identity shift from the relaxed quirk to the high notes was a bit larger than my tastes.   To me, quirkiness can sometimes be misinterpreted as 'creepy,' merely by violating social norms, even if there are no 'creepy' intentions. I thought the unusual side of it really certified 'outsider' status which is what the song seems to be about, and the hulking notes felt more 'mainstream' maybe? Maybe it could represent the struggle between the two? It will intend heavily on your artistic intent. I can only offer you subjective feedback as 'outsider' songs are the way they are for a reason. It's your interpretation of what it feels like.

You're going to need tuning before people can give you a very good critique. It does give me vibes of atonal music, which is an outskirt of artistic music. Art music is music that is made for purely artistic reasons, with no intent of commercial appeal.   Know that there is nothing wrong with exploring such sounds, but in a commercial context it's unlikely you'll find much of an audience who will accept your music. The further away you go from the major scale, the less commercial it gets, but the twelve tone scale is pretty much standard in all of western music.   When people deviate from the familiar 12 tones, it creates a very unique vibe:       In my view there is no 'wrong' kind of art, so you did nothing incorrectly. There are just more palette able and less palette able sounds to the average human ear. People here can help steer you in those directions, but if you take an interest in atonality, microtonality, or chromaticism, follow your heart. 12 tuned notes, often constructed in a Major Scale will sell records, however.

Rob is the expert on this one. He will get you there. I think it was still a good effort and better than I could do in this style. I do want to praise some of the phrasing and 'swing' in your version from an artistic standpoint.    I felt like you had a push/pull dynamic in your phrasing, how you placed the words in the meter, that really 'propelled' the song and gave it an energy I don't feel from the original song. The original song was sung technically with a style you're probably looking for, but rhythmically the original felt a bit 'stock' or 'square' to me so it never caught my ears as someone who listens more to soul/jazz/funkier stuff more than this style of music.   So yeah, I feel like here is something special in the way you approached the song and this style pretty much demands that you learn a really efficient technique (unless you're a woman) to preserve your voice. So take Rob's advice, but know there is also something uniquely 'you' in this recording that I personally prefer.

I like this song better when you sing it. There's something about John Legend's presentation in his studio version that is too slick, too controlled, and too perfect for me. Everything is placed so meticulously it sounds like a manipulative and calculated ploy to win over the listener, like how a clever sociopath might write a love song knowing all of the right buttons to press to win over an audience. That's nothing against John Legend specifically, just this specific song's production and the way it came together in the studio.   But your version sounds really honest. Yeah your pitch is good, timbre is unique, but just 'honest' and I'm really happy to hear it. Anyone in particular you were singing too? Not saying you should say who, but to me it sounded like John Legend was singing more to his bank account or a groupie he was luring to bed, and you are singing to a real person either already there, or of your dreams. Cool, thanks for redeeming it for me.    I don't feel particularly critical of the piece. The only thing I could say is you could commercialize it more so by making the pronunciations more "American' or whatever, but I'm from America and not a huge fan of cultural imperialism. We just happen to have largest portion of the world's ear, probably cause we are rich enough to market our apple pie around the globe. It doesn't mean other accents are at all inferior.

MIR, Something that helps me with rasp is to try to place the sound 'higher.' It's not a very good hint. But when I got my voice back, and rediscovered my rasp, it was really like Tom Waits ish and felt like it was rumbling my larynx. It felt too 'deep' like my throat was rumbling.   Something that helped me get more control was to sit down with Ray Charles. I tried to 'lift' it up and out of the throat. It wasn't entirely different from the Tom Waits thing, but it felt 'lightened,' less destructive, and was more the sound I was going for all at the same time. It only took me a couple of days messing around from the Tom waits starting point, but I'm sure it's different for everyone.    Sorry for the horrific pseudo science, but for me now I just let rasp come and go depending on when an emotion summons it. It hasn't sent me hoarse yet, and I can always go right back to a clean tone. You can probably learn rasp in the lower range, just go easy on the Tom Waitish stuff. If it feels too 'full' it probably is.

To my ears Brad Delp rides the exact line between what I'd think of as like a 'metal' type head voice and the kind of falsetto I more typically listen to and more frequently sing (Eddie Kendricks).   You've done a pretty good job here, though it sounds like you're still searching on either side of the spectrum. Sometimes you'll get a metallic cut, other times you'll get less cut and body than Eddie Kendricks, as I can hear the exploration.   I can almost guarantee you'll find what you want (by that I mean what resonates most with you as an artist) on either side of it, but it's just gonna take time.   Don't feel bad for exploring for the sound and not having it dialed in yet. My best friend asked me if I could sing metal.... I was like nope. But she was like, but what happens if you try?' So I put on my best Geoff Tate impression as I'm a fan of the Operation Mindcrime album and there are an abundance of metal singers here and heard my share. Even though I'm a fan of this song, to me it sounds like I joke when I was exploring for this sound:   https://soundcloud.com/killerku/attemptsmetalvoice   Personally, I never found it. It's not just the technique. There isn't an ounce of me in there. It was like I was doing a terrible Geoff Tate impression that I quickly abandoned. But it doesn't sound like a joke when you're looking for your sound, man, on either side of the spectrum, even when you mess up and aren't dialed into the ideal sound you're looking for. That's the key thing. That's why you're going to get it, why I never did, and why and it will be good when you do, because it's an authentic pursuit, imo.