KillerKu

This is hilarious and I'm getting a huge kick out of it. Your voice is badass but it sounds on the verge of laughing with these random kids joining in. I love the depth of your timbre. Anyway, I can't even think of how to critique your voice cause I keep laughing. So while I'm in a good mood, I'll respond on other subjects:

Aaron Neville is most famous for this song, he has a great falsetto as do you:

My favorite song with a reference to children singing (although the choir may or may not include) is this version of Heaven Help Us All

The most amazingly bad song I've ever heard including children is not yours dude, The Clash actually released it for real on Sandinista covering their own song:

Ok.... Now that the children are out of my system. I'm going to try to listen and critique again.... 

Nope, hahaha, I started laughing again. You're an artist, you got an emotional response from me.

Hey guys, this topic really interests me so I made a sound clip of 3 different octaves with various shading. The lowest octave lightened as much as possible could even confuse me.

https://app.box.com/s/9dqbbh3ipfub8zu891hyvu61tqphvj5o

When in doubt, I sing an octave above and below the pitch in question with various shades. If others would like to illustrate various illusions of pitch, I'd be really interested. I'm wondering how far people can take this concept.

MDEW is right. The first is a lighter phonation of the same notes. I checked with my own voice using a light phonation compared to a heavier one and checked an octave up and down. Jagger doesn't sing an octave up from there or speak an octave down.

This confuses people a lot. I'm pretty familiar with it as I can sound more a baritone or more like a tenor depending on how I phonate. A lot of pop vocalists use lighter configurations. My favorite example is to compare this:

Which is George lightening his voice so he sounds comparable to the lighter tenors who you might hear, but if he phonates more like Stevie Wonder, you'll hear he has way more weight than someone like Stevie:

Really skilled singers can choose between light and heavy on a gradient and sing in areas between. I'm not quite there yet, but have a lot of shades I've been developing so far.

I love your voice. It's dark and powerful but still very feminine. I'm not sure what you're not satisfied with.

If I try to nitpick for something, a couple of the belting sections sound weighty like lots of compression. It sounds good, but also sounds like you're working for it and putting a lot of effort into the performance. I wouldn't have the vocal strength to sing like that.

Audiences (including me) love effort and passion in music, but I dunno if it is too heavy for your voice in the long run to sing like that frequently. Looking into applying lighter variations of belting might be worth looking into in the long run.

I can't really picture having a female voice, but the best I can picture is collapsing under the power and weight of your voice so if it's sustainable it sounds great to me and I really relate to it.

Wow, I really never knew Al Green did stuff like that. I can see more ways regarding how I could make use of something like that now rather than just using it for powerful exclamations.

He's one of my heroes, but I've never gotten quite that kind of timbre in my falsetto. I know it's twangy but never got it dialed in quite with such a nice texture.

On the ACDC clip your placement almost sounds like an extremely quiet Al Green. If you turned up the volume on that thing, letting it swell in size, I'd be curious where it'd go.

This is one of my dream songs to be able to perform it even half as well as Al would really be a thrill:

I've crashed and burned on many times. But I can hear that slight compression on your falsetto there that sounds similar to what he does but quieter and has a really nice texture to it.

Thank you. Actually, believe it or not, I actually had a pretty big speech impediment before I started singing. I had a coach that really stressed diction though. He had a really pleasant speaking voice. He had this really proper way of speaking, and it made you think he was from the south, but he wasn't.

Anyways, I naturally really started to work on pronunciation while singing and it also improved my regular conversational speech. Not sure if I'd say my speaking voice is pleasant though. Jens has heard me talk.

 

I actually just started thinking about making a progress topic. I still have random recordings that I've made over the years since I first started practicing.

That's very interesting. I wasn't referring quite so much to diction so much as there is some kind of timbre or, a resonance that I can imagine being really compelling in almost any circumstance, almost mercurial.

Like you could scoot off into the background and have a perfectly milky blended harmony. Step into the foreground and sing clean, raspy, high, low, falsetto sound great. I could imagine you singing sweet without sounding sappy as there is some kind of underlying substance, sing aggressive without sounding overly harsh as there is a softness or richness. Something there in the overtones.

I'm looking forward to seeing how your voice progresses. I think it would be hard to get rid of that richness and it could really help your versatility. Bono1982 told me awhile back this guy reminded him of my voice:

And you know Daryl Hall is a great singer and it's a compliment, but his timbre isn't top tier to my ears and tastes. There are a lot of singers I'd take above his for timbre preference, and you sound like you have a great foundation.

Your voice is badass, computers vacuuming or not. It sounds effortless as in the timbre is naturally appealing.

You probably have a great speaking voice too.

i don't record a lot, and in college dorms i don't ever get the chance to record

 

https://soundcloud.com/tearoomorchestra/cigarette-demo-18/s-iYgtk

 

ok jeremy told me to post this instead.  its one of my old originals

 

i sang the track for this well over a year ago, it's not finished.  it's a lead vocal with a lower harmony, and then all the big harmonies behind it.  and some awful midi crap.  i've been meaning to remake this track for over 9 months now once i get studio time.

That's cool. I'm also impressed by the backing harmonies. I can never get that many layers of harmony to blend that smoothly in a mix. I've heard it's a combination of panning, EQ, mic distance, and using varying amounts of air in the voice to get frequencies to stop overlapping, but applying this theory has been difficult. 

The lead has a quirky but polished enough sound to have an indie kind of appeal. I like it. I think a potential destination vocal might be necessary to know where you'd want to go from there technique wise. I don't hear anything that sounds strained or damaging, and you are on pitch enough to harmonize. Is there anything you are currently struggling with, if anything? 

As for recording, if you have a cell phone, laptop with a mic or webcam, any kind of portable device, it might be worth looking into for recording away from home at louder volumes to be able to hear that side of your technique, even if not to record here. Booking studio time is expensive.

Killer I tried this and posted a wip version. This is a crazy difficult song. Your version is quite good. If you keep at it you will certainly improve your quality. I think to sing this like Freddie there is a brute strength quality that I fell may require strength building in addition to actual practice. As awe inspiring as Freddie was, he had nodules and I am not sure he could have sustained this.

Thanks. I agree, there is a kind of balls to the wall approach to what Freddie did. I'm glad someone posted the acapella instrumental track. My practice regiment for this song was literally

1. Listen to the song one time to get it in my head

2. Record for 2 to 3 takes

3. Post.

I think a really hard song like this could benefit from some very specific and isolated practice rather than just winging it. I'm the king of winging it, but a really hard song like this could really benefit my technique to train more seriously.

So I'll be joining you in training it. Maybe a couple months down when you're ready, we can compare notes and help each other out.

You should try to get something closer to at your best, man. I don't fully know what to critique. Sometimes it's kind of riding along ok, other times it's falling apart a bit, but you already know that.

You don't need to comp something perfect, but maybe any performance that is at least at your medium best. Showing yourself at your worst means we would critique things you already know how to fix. 

It doesn't have to be perfect. That Queen cover I comped was literally where I listened to the song one time, then gave about 2-3 takes per section.  Maybe 30 to an hour spent learning and singing? Some would say that's incredibly lazy and they might be right, but I have about 3 hours of loud time if I'm lucky each day and I'm not going to spend it all on covering random songs.

But still, I gave my best effort within that time frame, which is more useful for people to hear.

This is good man. I don't have any critique for it. It has a really polished delivery in the timbre and just works.

Those are good ideas. I've been training the opposite lately to reduce unintentional scooping. A clean onset into a note usually more difficult for me than bending between notes so thinking of it like throwing darts at a dartboard is something I've been training. When I first started singing almost everything was a slur.

So the two things I've been training are note teleportation at faster speeds (melissma) and clean onset to exact pitch, for a smoother sounding legato slowing it down and connecting more might help.

I don't have any critique for this. I simply enjoyed it. It took me back to my youth, in California. Sometimes, you just do a good job on a good song. It can happen.

Sometimes people have to pick tunes they rock less on to get any valid critique.

So yeah, pick something that rocks less. We'll dissect it into fine grains of sand.

I'm thinking maybe it's time to make a cover competition of the laughing gnome.

I'd do my part to make sure he never lives that one down and it we'll have to have a lot of range to play the part of the gnome without a pitch shifter.

Yeah, I was pretty sure it was intentional. If you could keep that breathiness but add just a little more edge to your sound it would be perfect IMO.

Yeah, I could quack it just a little. I think I'll take this concept further, and even use this song specifically as a metric for my voice.

It seems to allow me to employ virtually everything I regularly do. I'll hopefully have the timing problem fixed sometime soon and will be able to incorporate both of your advice while making a more artistically viable version.

Edit:

Awesome, I fixed the latency. It says it is only 10 milliseconds round trip now. I tried drumming to a metronome and it actually sounded right for once, so I hopefully won't have anymore major tech problems moving forward. I might even take another shot at this song tomorrow.

Ambitious there, Killer! One day I hope to sing some Queen. Think I'll tackle something a little easier though  :-)

 

Its funny Jeremy wrote what he did, because I think you were a bit breathy at the beginning. You tightened it up when the bass and drums came in and I liked that a whole lot better.

I wanted to include breathiness as well, as that is part of my vocal technique. I tried to apply every bit of my vocal technique to the song. Full voice, breathiness, raspiness, highs, falsettos, all that stuff. I want to see how it changes in application. I have about 20 different techniques I currently apply to convey different things. Seeing how things change in application will be very interesting.

Not too bad man, this is definitely a hard as %#@! song but it definitely seems well within your grasp.  Just keep working through each line slowly and focus on each and every detail of the original recording.  Beyond that I am not really in a place to give any technique tips for where you're singing this at.  The only thing constructive I can say technique wise is to try and keep your lines more legato so you get that nice flow to lyrics.  I think that's the only thing keeping parts like the really heady stuff on the beginning from sounding professional.  

 

Anyway, nice job man keep up good work.  Was a cool listen for sure.  

Legato wasn't going to work very well delay on my vocal feedback. I had to stop singing to even hear the music clearly. I probably shouldn't even had it monitoring at the same time given the feedback but the other choice was no monitoring and headphones, and I always push with that.

I guess it's not quite the best snapshot of technique if you consider timing and phrasing. But it was more the coordinations used for throughout the range are how I currently apply things given my current knowledge. I'm interested in seeing how they change. Like how would I sing an A#4 in the future compared now.

Thank you very much

 

I was thinking I need to add just a little bit of meat into my voice, I just feel it lacks it slightly.

This was a good attempt here you have one of the most suited voices here for tackling this song conventionally but I think you're right.

The timbre is pretty good overall, but I've heard you with a bit more resonance before. This is so quiet and closed it almost sounds hmmm.... Like vocal fryish.

It's like I hear every glottal attack almost with every onset, like 'click' then note. it doens't quite gel with the otherwise smoothness in your vocal delivery. I think it's just because it's so quiet and small that you hear the onset so clearly.

You could try an invisible H, but if I were to try to sing in this style and have body at this volume, I can't imagine picturing it working in my voice. So yeah, I think you should try your idea. It doesn't have to be a push, but just some kind of resonance volume.

My current audio setup has a quarter second delay on the audio loopback, ASIO drivers are misconfigured and I can't be bothered to try fix, so I haven't been recording for weeks, but was thinking about this quote:

Best practice is small amounts of time with perfection, than a long session where it is halfbad/halfdecent.

So I decided to take a song that is a bit out of my league and comp a couple of tries per section. 

https://app.box.com/s/fsrb6rwio0zh6tf5c8z8eperikxgp30t

This is probably a current snapshot of where my technique would be going if I had less error in live performance.

I've been thinking snapshots like this might be useful for singers to see where they are currently headed in training and how this direction might change with experience/education.

This is some good rock n roll. I love the raw groove. I love how you kept it authentic. One is centered panned and there is still the classic left channel over there too as a double track. Your trademark is preserved.

I'll don't have the greatest technical advice cause this is pure rock n roll and a breath of fresh air. Don't feel like meddling with it as it might rock less.

I guess my advice is: use more technique on higher notes and keep using rock n roll from time to time on those low notes. There you go.

You say Hillbilly with kind of a negative conotation. I hear hillbilly and read it as independent culture with defining characteristics and staying true to the way they are raised. Nothing wrong with that. Furthermore i aplaud you for staying true to who you are.

Hell yeah. MDEW should take Hillbilly all the way. Layne Staley and Steven Tyler already existed anyway. He should take this thing to it's limit.

      I was kidding about a ZZTop version but  I can hear someone like Steven Tyler singing this. All of Me could easily be transformed into a Rock Balad.

I could probably come up with a decent Bass line, Guitar track and distorted lead like Joe Perry or Brian May, But it would still suck without the proper drums and a good singer.

     The melody would not need to change that much just a little more rasp and some screaming in place of the falsetto. The tone should be something on the lines of Steve Tyler in "Crying".  It could work.

 

    Paul Stanley and Kiss could rock this out.

I'm potentially nearing a fix for some of my tech problem in recordings. If you get some kind of version to a click track (steady beat per minute) I'd put down some drums. I'm going to be doing some pretty hardcore training on piano and drums if this recording system works out so I'm gonna need some practice.

MDEw

 

Duck Dynasty 'called,' they miss you and want you back! 

 

i did not relisten to the original version, but it seems to me you put a little more intensity to some of the passages this time, which I like. However, I prefer the folky instrumentation. Maybe you can try the more intense vocals over the guitar and see how it sounds. Me and my bright ideas...

I agree with that too. Auto tuned backing harmonies + MDEW tastes more like ice cream and broccoli, than Ice Cream and Mountain Dew.  

There are stilla few pushed and flat notes here and there, but the overall mood I like better than the original. A song celebrating  'perfect imperfections' glossed to an auto tuned finish seems like the most insincere, calculated, and painful of musical experiences for me. 

Hearing some of the same sentiment from a flawed hillbilly is way more authentic and superior in my mind. You can still perfect this version without losing some of the charm. Technique wise, watch try some scales including R (your), some with all (Ls), and another with head (short E vowel) as all of these vowels seemed like they were struggling.

Thanks.. I have been meaning to do a lighter version.. I am pretty sure I can do a version that addresses all criticism(valid ones at that), but the truth is that I love Freddie's raw power in this song  I feel that the song will lose its character a little bit with a lighter tone... The emotion that I feel while singing this song is one of a superhero.(you get the idea!).. 

 

But in the end, we sing for listeners and listeners are the best judge.. So let me work on a different style and repost later!

Somethign to think about is Freddie didn't start off with this kind of song or singing. My favorite Queen Album is Queen 2:

The vast majority of his vocals sound top down to me. He started light, and built the coordination into the heavier belting sound as far as I can tell. So it's not either/or but trying to force the belt above a certain point at least for me has been counterproductive.

So you'll be able to get it and sing it like a super hero, but you might want to train a bit like your hero seemingly did.