KillerKu

You see I can kind of understand a variation of this thinking, but if you obsess about equalizing volumes you'll end up pressing your G2 and hooing or strangling your G4, unless you're like the deepest bass ever or are singing very quietly with G2 as the bassline. Obsessing about volumes just made me paranoid and constrict. Any evidence I've seen from monitoring the tract (CVT, etc) supports the idea that certain ranges support louder notes in certain configurations. And it's not volume that caps the bridge. It's the vowel choice/closure/respiration. People can bridge later with a heavier vowel choice and some of the people here could likely outmatch Simpan24 with decibels per note. You can plug up the bridge quietly. So for me, the answer is not to fear volume. It's finding a coordination that works. Some are louder, some are quieter.

I thought it was a pretty iconic scale. Ah ha, to ah oh. With a defiant, kind of snotty timbre. When you get more skilled sing this:

Don't neglect top down training, imo. Swell a light non breathy sounding falsetto into a bigger voice without straining. If you keep going with the right vowels, closure, twang, and support you can build a stronger head voice. I can kind of take that and inch it into a shout. If you just shout you'll always be using thick folds, firm closure, and trying to thin from there without awareness of the other states of closure was too hard, for me at least. I had to approach voice from both sides and gradually increase and decrease the intensity. Now that I have more than one coordination, I can kind of inch a shout down, but back in the day when I tried to sing lighter/middle/mixed/whatever, I just strangled myself, having no idea what the hell that was. Also, try different vowels. the vowels I intuitively sang with no knowledge of singing voice were 'ah' and 'oh' with a somewhat low larynx. Keeping a very open space. Those can be shouty vowels in the high range. Experiment with narrower vowels like 'a' in apple 'i in sit or 'e' in edible. R vowels might help too. Like arrrr and errr.

I remember your version, Magika. It's great, I showed a family member who grew up in church and she loved it too. She said she'd heard it so many times but it never sounded so good. She grew up in a white church where they sang it 'square' so yours being influenced by jazz, soul, and black gospel really stepped it up for her. I'm not religious, but I have a few friends who grew up in religious environments and were non believers. Many experienced turmoil and conflict, so I did a quick acapella version from the perspective of a non believer trying to convince themselves: https://app.box.com/s/hpywfqy7vw8sppimiiuwhxybd9tyanxr I'll leave it up to others to make the 'traditionally good' non sacrilegious kind.

I'm always struck by how strange it is to hear your voice and kind of dig it. It reminds me of like the rawest, crazy John Lydon/David Bowie kind of thing. It sounds rock and roll. Seriously. It's very quiet, but from what I can hear the pitch isn't even that bad. If you were tone deaf, the pitch would go up and down in all the wrong directions. Most of us just don't have 'uber fine' pitch control in our voices to square in within 4 percent of the note. So yeah, you sound kind of hardcore rock and roll to me, but then I read posts and most everything you say is about how you have nothing to go for, how you aren't born with it, and how discouraged and terrible you are. If anything will hold you back, it won't be your voice, it will be the attitude from which you end up approaching it. I come from a family where everyone has mental illness so finding positives and training for positive goals, hasn't always been easy. I'm not judging you, it can be really hard . But seriously, it is going to be as simple as training for positive goals. What do you want to achieve. Train, work hard, use the knowledge of the teachers here to assist you. If you adopt a negative attitude about yourself, it will increase the likelihood you'll give up and go nowhere man. I know it might be talking to a brick wall, if this is subconscious and maybe you can't help it. But I'm serious, that it is easier to achieve a positive goal through practice and hard work, than tell yourself you are so terrible your goal is impossible. We're all singers here. We all started somewhere, we all ended up somewhere different through some kind of training. So if you can, let it go, be rock and roll through this. I believe in your voice. It'd be really helpful if you could believe in it too.

I really like this. I don't think you sound like a man, but I think once you start exploring more higher resonance frequencies it might sound a bit more clear to people. A quick tweak might be to take a vowel in between on (ah) and apple (a). Try to feel around with that vowel, it should feel kind of bright if you do it right. Try to place the sound forward and high, while not lifting the upper back half of your throat (soft palate) too high or too low (will sound very nasal). You could try twanging a little bit (tip of tongue near bottom row of teeth, arching back up and wide, until it reaches the molars). Cause right now, you're quite heavy on lower resonance, which I've heard is not uncommon for contraltos, but volume and clarity without any push or anything could likely be found with those right away. The longer game is a life time of training your voice, possibly with some amount of educational resources (anatomy, singing theory, teachers, programs, etc). There's good advice on the forums, but it's extremely randomly distributed, where as if you got something like Rob's 4 Pillars it would be organized and feature complete in complete order. Honestly, your pitch was actually pretty good and it already has a pleasant timbre. I'm a huge contralto fan, so I'll really be looking forward to seeing your voice progress. You should really train this, cause you'll be able to get it really big but feminine. A lot of my favorite singers explore all sorts of zones in the voice to express different emotions, but you'll have a bit more room than a lot of women do for the size. It should be cool.

I'm digging it. It's a hard song and you're doing well, but you asked for tonal advice and I think I have this figured out now. I think your soft palate is a key component in your tonal control. It sounds like on the belting parts you raise it high enough that it is possibly creating more effort than might be needed and on the lower sections you lower it down to the point where some people are critiquing the nasality. I think finer tuned control might satisfy the cartoon critics (by raising it just slightly) and make the high end notes slightly less effortful (lowering just a bit). If you look at this picture, you will notice the soft palate is in the area in the upper back part of your mouth, if you were to slide your tongue backwards, you'll feel a gap. Behind that and above is your soft palate. http://headandneckcancerguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/40_1_softpalateCROP.jpg You can learn to control the amount of elevation of this. I did examples with it down too low for my tastes, up too high for my tastes, and in a more neutral position I might use on sections of this song: https://app.box.com/s/c5b8x5tmw8zwq2jwxjsn3i24i08wmbg1 Overall you're doing great, but I think if you get control over this any cartoon critics will be critiquing an artistic choice once you get full control over your soft palate. When you're in control of the amount of the amount, they can deal with whatever you choose. So try to practice the two different types of 'ah' I put in there. The kind of quacky, nasal one, and the super tall one. Feel the difference between the positions and try to find a neutral position that works.

I love it. I want a two part harmony pretty bad though. You might want to say woman instead of girl though to keep the rhyme. You're old enough to let it slide. The pause was charming though. The phrasing and timing could use a little work here and there. Maybe try tapping one hand on the down beat (1 2 3 4), while tapping out the syllables with the other hand and/or your voice. You've got a beautiful voice, you sing with great feeling, and have a great presence. I'm a big fan of push and pull, feel, soul in rhythmic phrasing but but I think it might be sliding just a bit too far. Try subdividing the beat and count out with your voice, tap it out with your hands, vice versa: 1 EE and a 2 EE And A 3 EE and A 4 EE and A And try to figure out where the lyrical stabs are falling. Then push and pull from there. You've got the beginnings of a nice flavor or personality. It's alive and not at all stiff. I feel like a lot of the things you're doing are great, but if they were pulled together a bit tighter it could get the best of both worlds, the feel and the snap of the rhythm. I'm a huge Beatles fan. They are the reason I started singing in the first place and been wanting to sing Beatles material lately and this is just awesome. Thanks for posting it. You could really be going somewhere. Keep training. Your voice already sounds beautiful, only real possible error there is a loss of support in a few places, where notes kind of drifted down, but I like the naturalness of it. Sounded human and relate-able to me. Could be going places. You're already a really good singer and you have time to go wherever you want to go. Your live singing is already better than a lot of live pop performances I've heard prior to auto tune and live processing in the 80s and you're not cosmetically challenged, keep developing your stage presence and maybe even evolve a persona. Sky's the limit, but lots of luck involved.

I was in a phase where I could siren a lot of things I couldn't sing which I think is normal. My advice: make sure you focus on real real singing onsets: every vowel in the language (and more). The siren might help you get an idea of where the placement goes, but each vowel will have it's own characteristics. Your end goal will have to be singing without any helper tricks, right? One other thing I noticed in the clip, is you would do a very small falsetto, and then a pretty full voice. It would be 0 or 100. Regardless of whether this particular song is too difficult for you to nail exactly, I don't think it's too early to work on other percentages. For me, that more than probably anything has prevented me from either slamming or or cracking. It's kind of like a gas pedal. You might be able to drive by slamming 100 and 0 rapidly, it would harder on your vehicle and increase likelihood of an accident, basically a similar concept can occur in voice. If I was really serious about singing Dio style stuff which as of this moment, it's I would definitely train going from the smaller voice as steadily to whatever 100 percent voice you're interested in, and back again. Cause that's what Dio did, imo: He wasn't a gas pedal cranker, imo. He dialed in just the right amount of closure and compression that was not fatiguing and was free enough to control for his voice. Now lots of us have thrown down the pedal and just cranked. I have, you have. More have than not. But if you want to be able to sing like Dio, you should probably learn how to control the throttle here equally well. In that sense, maybe Bob is right. Maybe it's too soon for all of us.

That sounds placed right to me but still a bit clumsy cause the coordination isn't fully dialed in to stability. I'm not the resident Dio guy. My version is kind of like a confused pirate that says something in between 'ahhr and ehhr.' But if you get the placement fairly right it shouldn't tap out, increase in compression when ascending too much, or hit a wall when bridging into headier placement. Mine sucks but doesn't tap out: https://app.box.com/s/ztzkrd3pv4vedad3v665w8mp7jnceb9v I'm pretty sure what I'd need to do if I was going to really work on the Dio would be manage compression levels and do the Messa di voce thing (swell from lightest tone) into it the pirate cause right now mine is even clumsier than yours. I do practice swells every day now with regular voice in all parts from lowest to highest notes (thanks to Dan, who showed it to me and it really stuck), but I never really practice my DIo impression much. But yeah, to me it sounds right, depending on what happens when you ascend.

Oh, by the way, do you think it would be possible to edit song titles into prior month's challenge topics? July RnB - Let's Stay Together (Al Green) Or something. I think it would be cool if people could browse and find a song they were interested in and participate in the challenge even if it wasn't current. As is, a bunch of months with genres will be increasingly tough to capture and maintain an onlookers interest.

I've been thinking since we are kind of a male dominated forum something typically known to be sung by a female would be a good twist, but at the same time participation is important. For gospel, the most familiar song to me is definitely Amazing Grace. I'm agnostic, and that song can really move me. If I were to delve into soul songs that cover gospel topics I could list a lot, but since we went soul last month with Al Green. Soul is in some ways a secularized gospel with a lot of influence coming that direction. For pop, I've been more than a bit stumped. I have some good ideas, but a lot are very soul influenced pop. Trying to think of something that isn't Britney and very unappealing to my ears, and also isn't soul. I'd definitely sing this one:

Ed-Win, I don't know what the official rules are, but I don't think we should close these challenges after the month is over. Maybe pin the current month's challenge to the top to keep things current, but letting people go back to see and try the old challenges, compare notes, and try them seems cool to me. It's a cool way to have us all share songs. I did enjoy your take on this song. I can feel your love and appreciation of this tune. Your accent is pretty thick, which gives it character. You're right that the 'ooh' (you, true, new, etc) vowel slips towards a pretty strong 'oh' vowel (yo, tro, know). While this is neat accent wise, if you were to curve a bit more towards English you might be able to split the difference while keeping some of the charm. There are places that you're going a bit flat, which is understandable as this song isn't exactly Mary had a Little Lamb. Aesthetically, I think you might benefit with experimenting with a slightly more open throat, not enough to lose your twang, but just a bit more resonance, but that's subjective. Overall, this is pretty hard song (imo) and I think you did pretty good. Keep singing, training, and unless someone says otherwise, I think it would be cool if you could join the other challenges late, if it's a song you love and want to be part of. It'd help keep life in this section of the forums as well.

There is a dissonance that sounds kind of arty to me in the vocals. It isn't just on the section you mentioned, but earlier on where there is a double vocal they kind of sit together tensely, but almost consistently so. I wasn't sure if it was intentional. I've heard some artists go for a bit more aggression, darkness, and despair by having vocals more tensely pitched, and it works to my ears, but without the lyrics or intent of the song it's difficult for me to get my ear around it for sure. If you were to do what Rob said and grab a keyboard and stay on every note, it would resolve the tension and have more of a mainstream sound. It's too tense for radio, but in the right circumstances I can identity with it cause for me a lot of times that's just how life feels as a human being trying to fit into a structured or even mechanically tuned environment. Aside from that your voice sounds placed well, has a good timbre, and sounds pretty much in control and in command. I think you fit well into this band and are a good fit for the band's prog style. You didn't want compositional impressions, but I did think the composition had quite a bit of energy. As radio music, it's not designed to give listeners enough 'release.' But as a young band making art music. I think it is cool. Sometimes I wish a track like yours would be released on the radio. To challenge listeners and have the ability to reach alienated ears, but it's not to be, and certainly not right now where everything is pitch corrected all the time so a fair portion of tension that used to exist just doesn't exist in music and it's all release, sugary and so forth and fails to express a fair portion of the human experience which isn't all roses and sometimes has conflict.

Nah, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with influence or training and I'm not taking away anything from the originally of Timotheous's performance. He's not cloning you and he did a good job. Put a camera on me, spin it around I'd probably do worse. It's inevitable, and all of my favorite singers had some kind of influence. I sang a snippet of this song (never sung it before) and see what kind of inflection would happen. https://app.box.com/s/jll7z16i0utu5wiqkcufit2b97mnz6q7 Right at the end there, Personalityeah! Either you're influencing me or, it's just something that we do man. It's pretty common in punk, with no training at all. Whatever is most expressive and functions in a singers voice, makes them believe in the song. That's really interesting to hear that about your Maestro. I think I hear a little of it in Layne Staley. Aside from the stars, you're the only student of his I'm fairly are of. If it is part of you, it's part of you and you can and should take it with you. I could just hear those traces there. It's cool.

This is good. It's a true live performance. Aure it's not it's not spot on perfection. But you sound poised for more polish naturally at this point. You've had great instruction. The only thing I'll say, and this isn't a negative, is you remind me a bit of Rob in some of your vocal mannerisms. Now, I've heard quite a few of his students and this is not a post implying you go to Rob and sound like Rob, as a lot of them sound extremely different, but some of the vowel choices (ee to eh, ihyeah) and inflections remind me of him a bit. Maybe some kinship there. The few parts where pitch isn't dialed in spot on, this is is live and it's training. You aren't going to find many singers who have dialed in perfection every time and you're on more than enough of the time for me to be convinced you're in a position in your training to just keep going and improving at whatever it is you want to achieve. Keep going, good song, good job.

This is just well done. It's very expressive, even in a foreign language I can hear it sounds authentic and heart felt. I don't really have any technical advice. There is a slight looseness in a few sections (not pitchiness, just a little free sliding) which I personally like as it gave more humanity to the performance. I think even if your goal was like robotic perfection, your voice sounds already placed well, you're expressive, and it's more what you want to do with your voice. I think you should just keep doing what you're doing. It's working.

I like the phrasing and it has a great vibe. Rhythm of the guitar really supports this tune. I can't argue there were a couple of pitchy spots, but at the same time, it has a folky sincerity that if you went too far the other direction might be lost. Sounds like you might still be in the habit of pushing just a little chest up top which is cool but might result in some difficulty in controlling. I found when regaining my voice, I trained separately new habits and was gaining range and control, but as soon as I picked up the guitar, old habits would come in. Pretty much Joe Strummer. I think basically what it comes down to, is the guitar takes up enough of your brain, that there is still like auto pilot. So one thing you might want to do is train new habits with the guitar too. And try to get the auto pilot just where you want it to be. Cause for me, it was pushing chest. Overall, I dig this. You could be a cool singer just singing like this, relate-able, and communicative, but I know you have loftier ambitions. So when you get stabilized keep that stuff in mind.

I wasn't familiar with the original, so I checked out both. I thought it had character, and I like that you have a french accent. There was a fair amount of pitch awareness going on for this song straddling the line between singing and talk singing. I feel like you could have a little more confidence and projection in the voice even if you wanted to remain in kind of folky talky style. There's a bit of searching and the timbre is a bit muffled. From what I've heard being a little muffled and having mushy diction is not unusual for a French accent. Anyway, the first thing you should be doing, is continuing to sing. It takes time for the voice to develop agility and become accustomed to the act. Some stuff that you might work with technique wise: 1. Breathing. I find a great exercise is to inhale as if through a straw (real or invisible) and slowly exhale hissing an S like a snake sssss. This can help train your support. You should feel it below your ribcage and above your stomach. 2. Timbre, you might want to try something opposite of what you're doing to see if helps with control. An English 'ahhhhhh' sound might be helpful for exploring brighter sounds. 3. Placement. I think toying with twang, (tip of tongue near bottom row of teeth, having the tongue arch upward, wide, and backward) could be interesting. It is very helpful for singers to get clarity, comfortable range, etc. 4. Pitching to a piano or something. Just to get the voice more agile and precise. Breathing and support should be universally useful. But I like the idea of you keeping a bit of the French identity longer and expanding and exploring from there. I like the sound of, but I feel like it could get a bit more punch and confidence which is likely to occur over time and experimenting with technique a little, but on the other hand, I'm not sure you should do those thing all the way and erase the accent. I think it adds intrigue and texture.

Well, I'm super late to this challenge, but I finally took the time to get to it. I'm still halfway between two houses, due to a protracted moving situation, luckily I have my microphone and an an electric guitar. Al Green is one of my favorite singers of all time and has been a huge influence already on my singing. I always wanted to try my best at this song.

I was groovin. Love this song. Love your timbre on this song. Lots of good moments. Technique wise, there are a few places where it sounds a bit stuffy to me and the 'Bono' timbre I'm familiar with either scrunches or goes a bit slack. It's like a hypo nasal plugged nose kind of sound. If you raised your soft palate just a bit more and got a bit more 'height' in the back of your throat. Talller vowels like ahh (operation), or a in apple it might help project the falsetto bits, and ease a little bit of strain around the very top of the bridge. At least this is something I've found with my voice. If you do this gradually as you ascend it doesn't have to be a super noticeable transition. Overall, I think this is a great song for you to sing. working in and out of the falsetto right in the bridge and your vocal characteristics and the song fit well. I'm gonna take a swing at it with a backing of some kind, next chance I get. I've only ever sung it acapella and would like to throw something better together.

I think it might be because there's already a Silent Lucidity thread from yesteryear a few entries below. The more variety in song selection, the more choices we'll have. Probably a similar but more extreme situation with All of Me being re-suggested in the RnB section. I voted for Purple Rain as stylistically I suspect it would be the most challenging for me as I've never really sung a Prince style song which is almost a genre in itself. As for My Hero, I used to listen to the Color and the Shape as a young teen, but I can still remember the melodies and some of the guitar hooks in my head so that's a catchy song. Should be something people can latch onto. A custom guitar lead bed track might be easier to create than something with orchestral elements as well for a simpler song.

This was great. You managed to keep your smooth crying timbre, without squishing it on the high notes, which I believe is good progress. I wouldn't be able to sing this song as smoothly, imo and would need more twang, brightness, and harshness in some of the upper regions. You've really expanded your core timbre since coming here. Overall, it's just a great performance. I kind of like the occasionally odd vowel due to your native language. I'd personally get frustrated if everyone sounded the same on every vowel. I hope you keep a bit of it, for flavor as a singer. Maybe split the difference. It's part of what makes you refreshing to hear. You sound great, but not like a nameless, faceless American Idol contestant and little quirks are part of it.

Nice work. The latest version of I Can't Make You Love Me is definitely an improvement, imo. It's tightened down on a technical level (phrasing, pitching, etc), but your performance sits more naturally with the style of song to my ears without losing your identity as a singer. The vowel choices are a bit closer to speech, which works well with the style of song, but there's still enough deviation to sound like you. The timbre is lightened a bit in weight which works more intuitively to my ears in a ballad format for me. Plus, you've been singing a lot more lately, right? Actually having time for personal training makes a bit difference. Yeah, nice job, and I do agree with Adolph, that you should take on any style you'd like. People like to box each other into categories and I suppose commercially if you're trying to hit it big in Hollywood, being easily categorized can be a plus, but you're singing for you so you don't need to be known as the 'metal guy, or whatever guy.' You can be "Rob the passionate singer, he sings meaningful songs."

Speaking of backing tracks, I wanted one myself, but I couldn't find any that didn't sound like 10 dollar Casio stuff and don't have the equipment to make my own right now. I did find this track though: I sang to it and liked the results. If anyone finds this track for sale on a karaoke site or otherwise, I'd like to buy it so I can post it here.