KillerKu

I listened to this because Ronws truly loves this song and since his love for this song is true I can listen to it.   You can do this, Ronws. Learn the melody on the guitar, sing along to it very slowly to a metronome, vowel by vowel, sustain and milk every single vowel. You can possibly even record the melody on guitar and sing to this.   Since this song hit a problem area for you, it's the perfect opporunity to work even harder, not give up. Of the white guys here, I'm probably more suited than many in singing the R & B thing, but you don't need to sound like a black guy to pull this off.   You sounded heartfelt and I will prefer your version over many. Don't give up.

Well this is very frustrating. I a bit of time to sing yesterday and had a set of exercises that might help you recorded, but either they didn't get saved or got deleted. I haven't forgotten about this thread.   I did see what would happen if I took a shot at this song:   https://app.box.com/s/nugmg07eskx1sfeos0p6eundqx8s1efp   You can hear me accidentally push on the line "but I've come through" which is corrected on "but I'll never lose" (same vowel, same melody)   There were a few wobbles, but this song is within comfortable my range now and I could get it if I don't push. So if I get time to record again today, I will once again record the exercises for you that I warmed up with, so you can hear them.   Basically it's starting more from almost falsetto (not disconnected but light), and building up the resonances and closure into a lighter configuration that requires less 'push.'

  Not at the moment, but I'll add it to the to do list when I get some loud time. People have been home a lot which is why I haven't been singing much.

I'm really starting to love the nuances of timbre you've developed in your upper middle range. It really shines during the intro, and I love the variations in breath flow.   I do dig it, but I pretty much agree with the others, that those high notes are killers in this song.   Jugulator has some good advice in trying a lower key where you're more comfortable.   My advice would be to approach it from top down first. Get into a headier position and maybe try to hum or buzz into it with the least compression that starts forming body. Try to break the melody down and start light, and add body. You can try an ng or mum.   I'm a fan of the brute force method as a sound, given my tastes, but this song is just too high to do this on. In the long run, it will be better to sound a bit wimpy than force this stuff above a certain point.

I'm stoked you two are back. Our very own folk duo. You sound good as per last time. I do love the blend of your voices. I don't have much advice for how to improve as I think you're kind of on a good path as is and 'more' is maybe the best thing you can do.    It's funny someone noticed you two were camera shy. I had noticed you two felt a bit polite last time, like feeling a bit insecure and not wanting to offend us, but you have nothing to be polite about.   For the camera thing, you might try skyping to get a bit more used to the camera, or wearing funny hats next time just to put yourself into a playful mood. You've got each other for support, so before the video shoots, you can look at each other and directly in the eye, and proclaim the other to be a badass. I'm a very high anxiety person, for many reasons, but I've found more than anything a playful attitude helps me through a lot of things.    Bono1982 has a playful wink, that sealed his first video performance as a classic. So maybe you two just need 'the move.' The fist bump, the karate chop, the furrowing of eyebrows, the move could be anything and synchronized for extra entertainment.   Seriously though, keep singing and posting. I'm excited to see where this journey takes you two as 2 part duo harmony is such a unique dynamic.

  Glad you got a kick out of it, Bzean. I've been thinking we might collaborate some time too. You've got a super unique voice too.       I think it's like 80/20. I turned up the backing harmonies and found a flub here and there on my part. It's tough to sing harmonies, cause you can't sing them full volume, as you'll get too many overtones, but when you're quiet you can't hear yourself in the context of the music very well so there were a few scoops and wobbles, but not during the majority.     Glad you liked it, Bono!       Yeah, I managed to mix him a little bit too. I read a bit of advice, on how it's cool to 'round out singers' timbre. So I tried to keep a lot of the unique vibe but cut a few harsher frequencies.     I tried numerous way of singing, this was the only way I could sing it with emotion. I actually threw a Geoff Tate impression in there and used it as a harmony on the final version. It was the best compromise I could get. It sounded better and felt more authentic with some fragility.     Cool!     Yeah, funny thing is we both know this song on guitar too. The original idea was to possibly have Ronws play some of the guitar too, but it probably would have gotten muddied up unnecessarily.     Glad you enjoyed it, Gno. It was a good time, and I learned a fair amount about mixing. Will need to try more projects like this to try to get my skills improved. I'd like them to be up to snuff that if I put out an album,, I can be relatively pleased with it and not regretting it or wanting to remake it all the time.

Oh, Chapman, I forgot to say. One more thing to study are nursery rhymes. Many of them are ear worms, just by the rhythm, melody, or both.   Even young children can learn them fairly easy cause they 'stick in the ear.' Modern pop music to my ears has progressed increasingly into nursery rhyme territory. It used to be Mickey, Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine  you blow my mind, hey Mickey!!!! Was an extreme rarity. But if you listen to like Nikki Minaj or countless others, they've really honed in on the playground 'chanting.'   When I was a big fan of more mainstream pop music (pre 00s with a few golden eras), it was balanced more so with melodic and harmonic substance. Maybe it wasn't quite as catchy as a nursery rhyme, but it was less annoying. Nevertheless in order to try to comprehend the catchiest sounds, sometimes, it's good to go right to the source. 

Hadn't heard you much since way back. I've listened to the first 2 songs so far, but I can already tell you've climbed the mountain. Your accent is less thick too.   Imo, you've made it, dude. You're good enough at this style go to pro and are above my ability to critique. I'll listen to the rest, but I have a feeling I'll have the same opinion.

I like the brightness of this song. It does have a more open, sunnier feel. The phrasing is still in your style, which often has an abstract painting feel to my ears, but it's definitely one of your more accessible songs.   If you ever wanted to write a poppier song, you could push the phrasing a bit forward (don't jump in super early on a phrase), try extending the phrasing outward to last a bit longer and sustain notes a bit longer. Nick Drake was said to have a guitar technique of cluster chords, you sometimes have a sound I'm going to coin as clusterphrasing.   It's difficult to articulate in text, but if you listen to say a Beatles song or typical pop song, use one hand to tap the time signature, and use another to tap each syllable, precisely where it falls into the beat. The phrasing tends to syncopate in a different way. Things tend to be on an on beat or an off beat with only occassional ones leading or dragged, sometimes triplets are used.    I really like your style as a songwriter. Gives you identity. I can't write like you at all. So it's a very unique, but if you want to experiment with the catchiest side of music, a lot of it is in the phrasing. The upside of a catchy phrasing is immediacy, the downisides can be predictability and a lack of nuance or even an annoyingly catchy earworm. The upsides of your style of phrasing is it has depth, nuance, intricacy, and is something a listener could delve deeper and deeper into to try to understand and absorb. Different spectrums of art have various difficulty (effort on part of the witness) to find meaning. Certain sounds are almost like candy, kids will eat it til they get sick, but sometimes it can be too much. A lot of pop radio falls into this spectrum and it's why so much of the music is disposable.   This has been a concept I've been trying to work with in writing less disposable songs. Your music is definitely not on the disposable candy side. So you would have room to sprinkle infectious melodies and catchy phrasings (that people would be humming after listening ot the song) into the big picture like M&Ms.   You have another song where you say "My Mind Disagrees." You draw it out, you milk it, the phrasing, the melody, the delivery, stuck with me. It was like an M&M in a more elaborate meal.

  Wow is that neat and precise advise, Jugulator. I'm going to remember this description for helping people.   Aravindmadis. I am enjoying this cover and it's probably better than I could do. Most of it sounds pretty good to me, but when you sing 'Run to the hills' It sounds like something is collapsing on the Hills, like it might be the 'short i' vowel somewhere in your range there is tripping you up. It's a narrow vowel which doesn't necesarrily sound that heavy metal.   You might take some time extra time and do some sirens with the short i vowel to try to get it open up a bit. You could even do scales on the hills over that point.   But overall, probably better than I could do. I'm not skilled at singing this style here and it's a very challenging one to sing.

So I'm trying to put on my singer's hat and it's tough cause your voice on this song rocks. I just want to ride along with the emotion of the song and not think about anything else. You have a great swagger out of pure ballads and sound great on rock songs.   Alright, another listen, gonna try again. Ok, the share and care rhyme were very emotional and the note was breaking up.   I can't do it, dude, pick a song you rock less on. I hear glimpses of little things that could be polished but I don't want them to be. It's rock n roll.

It rocks. I'll give a more in depth listen when I get a bit more time, but was this the plan all along? To be our very own Bono, build up to your U2 cover and change it?   You're so Bono already. You sound good on U2 songs. (And no I don't know how to change it, lol, probably would have to ask admin).

  Try to break them up in order, one at a time, slowly, and then speed them up. There's that slide occuring.

  Interesting. I had one take of Ronws vocals to work with and I recall at least one harmony sounding iffy when I swapped our leads due to slight variation (think he was a tad sharp, and I was a tad flat) so you may be right.   I recalled Ronws mentioning he liked quieter vocal harmonies, so I tried to keep them somewhat subdued. It may not be pitch as much as mixing as well. There can be frequency battle between multiple voices occupying the same space with formants stepping upon each ohter. I tried to EQ the voices so they would not do this by giving them 'space', but I'm not an expert at this yet, which is part of why I'm working on projects like this that will challenge me.

For the choruses, they do sound a bit wailed and bent around. An exercise that might help gain some control in this area would be to do it staccatto first (short bursts) for each syllable.   And   I   Don't   Want The  World     To   See  Me Cause I Don't Think That They'd Un Der Stand   Try to get each part of the chorus really solid in onset, get the pitch locked in without wailing from one to the other. I've found this exercise helps me a lot when working with a bridger section that makes want to shout and pull weight. I personally find it difficult to do really sudden repetitive shouts. It focuses you on trying to get the onset into the note clean.   If you have a guitar, or piano, or any other instrument, like the virtual piano I recommended for someone else:   http://virtualpiano.net/   You can find the specific notes and sing along staccatto. It sounds like this one is in D Major, so it would be all white keys, except replacing F with F#. This song sounds doable for you, but I'd work on it, cause it sounds like a great practice song with that high A there.

  Perfection is in the ears of there listener. Remember to keep that in mind. It's already helping you to remember the cultural thoughts about perceived nasality (E.G. Chinese Opera).   Anyway, I was objective and said a few notes sounded a bit sharp, and then pretty much immediately listened to this:     And I describe 'that' as perfect to my ears. It is so passionate. Perfectly describes an emotion I've lived through when a doctor decided to cut me off cold turkey from a medication and is one of my favorite songs in recent memory.   So I'll try to be objective with you guys cause it can possibly help you achieve a goal, but how close the pitch is to the center point is arbitrary in that it doesn't always represent how artistic, emotional, or valuable a piece of music is. Sometimes it's the imperfections that communicate the emotion. Emotion isn't perfect and human vulnerability is inevitably fragile.     PS...   All western music is out of tune (and auto tune actually moves away from perfect tuning to equal temperament).     So modern singers when accompanying music are constantly training to sing out of tune. Barbershop quartets tend towards mathematical harmony.   In this link, you can see the mathematical ratios are simply off:   http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/scales.html   Particularly on the 3rds and 6ths. You can hear the difference if you pay extra attention.

  We traded off throughout a lot of the leads even in some high sections. If you're interested the lead structure goes like this:   Killer   Ronws   Hey Lady   Got the love I need   Or   Maybe   More than enough Oh Darlin Darlin Darlin   Walk awhile with me   Oh you got so much Aaahhh Aaahhhh Aahhhhhh   Many Have I loved Many Times Been Bitten Many Times I've gazed along the open road   Many Times I've Lied Many Times I've Listened You see that... (mic hand off)   Many Times I've Wondered How Much there is to know   Many Dreams come true And Some have sliver Linings you see that... (mic hand off)   I live for my dreams And a Pocket full of Gold   Gold Of gold A pocket full of gold Pocket full of gold   Mellow is the man who knows what he's been missing Guessing bout a thing, Really ought to know You know you should be knowing   I had backing vocals in many sections and used a few of Ronws vocals as backing in a few sections too.

The vocals sound fine to me. You kind of vocal fried maybe a bit on the low sections like 'no one cares' but it doesn't sound bad and has a kind of sinister dark character that suits the song. Which is cool.   Is there anything about he vocal that was concerning you? It's kind of a clustered, claustrophobic and dark song.

So I started this cover awhile back. Got the guitar track laid down, started singing and was taking it into a kind of wistful direction.   I had kind of an idea of where I wanted it to go but it felt like something was missing. Maybe my voice just doesn't sound as rad on D5s as Robert Plant, but I knew I wanted something different.   So I hit up Ronws and asked if he wanted to sing some lead on this thing. From that point I really started liking this track and ultimately we ended up trading off leads. I added backing vocals, bass, drums, dual harmonizing guitar solos, and a new bridge. Went to town on this one.   What do you guys think?  

It's pretty good. You're emoting well. It sounds a little 'heavy' and I think you're ever so slightly flat, which might be because you're carrying a bit too much weight. So yeah, I'd advise shedding a bit more weight and shading a bit more towards a head voice.   Your falsetto in this sounds good, by the way. But it might not be the best way to connect it as it sounds a bit piercing. If you try imitating this sound here, it might help you find a lighter connected voice you can build off of here:     It helps to do kind of a yawn.

  If you're already straining, I think the goal should be to stop the strain, and rethink, temporarily. Sore throats aren't necessary in singing unless you're sick or have a disease.   A little advice from me, on the 'mix' or in between or 'whatever' voice. When I first experimented with a voice like that, I tried to make my chest voice quieter and just strangled myself. In order to get to that place, work on your head voice too.   It's like a bridge kind of. Imagine if you were trying to build a bridge from like China.... To "X." But you don't know what X is. It's not defined. So rather than trying to strangle your chest voice and add more 'bottom, if you work on your head voice and give it good time to develop and 'bridge' in between one way or another, you can learn to lighten and let go.   And even proper belting as I understand it, still involves 'some' lightening.     Where as this is 'the chest drag' where he pretty much just stops at G4.     So yeah, a few things to think of. Mix/in between/whatever you want ot call it isn't 'strangling chest,' it feels 'lighter.' And even for a good belt, you still don't want to push bottom all the way 'all' the time. Our very own Robert Lunte, recommends specifically to start from the top, then build the bottom.  

  This is much more polished, you're scooping and pushing less. Writing your own song is very difficult, particularly without an instrument to accompany you as you have to try to visualize melodies, you made with nothing concrete to imitate.   I agree, singing with authentic emotion is very valuable and in the right context, the right track, those things could work, but I think we'd have to work on getting you some instrumentation backing and if you have any instrument at all, or don't have one you can use a virtual piano like this:   http://virtualpiano.net/   Or download a free trial of fruity loops and use the piano roll:   http://www.image-line.com/flstudio/   So you can use an instrument train your new melodies with. To be honest, your voice sounds pretty good. I am a songwriter, so I know it is extremely difficult to write a song in the first place and to sing it from scratch is tough.   So yeah, I'd really advise you try to find an external pitch source for your original songs to get the pitch memory in your head.   You should keep singing. If there's anything you're interested in improving with your singing, or are looking for help. Most things are possible with training, the right resources (the training programs are very good here) and the right attitude, which is basically, focusing on improvement and not on sucking.

Robert is right that there is no quick advice to hit the high notes. I can hear a very nice timbre in there and I like the phrasing and passionate delivery and I already do like a lot of things about your voice.   If you want a tip into hitting high notes, I think for me it is probably bridging in general. You would improve much, much, much quicker with a vocal coach and professional program, but I would not neglect your falsetto/head voice and find ways of making this connect so you can take some weight off.   This thread has useful information where we tried to help another poster in finding his bridge:   '&do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>   However, even though I think his native language is English, he was having serious difficulty applying this. Even if we tried to help you with text, it could only go so far and would take an immense amount of time on our parts and yours.   The voice is very, very complicated, it helps a great deal to have face to face contact, and/or a really organized program. I have a very close friend who I have been helping learn sing, as while I'm not a top tier expert, I can hold my own with singing, but even with her, she's my friend so I spend a lot of face to face time, there are no miracles. It takes a huge amount of work.   So when Robert says not to expect miracles, you should believe him, it's not just a sales pitch. That said, you can improve on your own, but it's going to be an uphill battle and you'd likely never reach the level of a trained pro.

Neither the voice or the song are bad, but they don't sound particularly polished either. There are a lot of things going on that I can comment on, some of which may be technical problems, others may be stylistic and or a result of emotion.   The first thing, is you tend to onset a lot of notes with almost like a 'hummph.' It's difficult to articulate this in text, it sounds like you dig into each note really hard at the onset at times. This makes the beginning of some phrases sound abrupt and a bit forceful, and tends to result in a sound of scooping notes. Which is when you undershoot a pitch and the 'pull up into it.' In the right context, it can make sense, but since you wrote this song, I don't know if it is intentional, but it sounds like you might be pushing chest voice   I can hear the pitch matching some kind of diatonic scale, but since it is acapella how well you can match to a backing track is more difficult to say.   You have a sobbing sound, which can be the result of emotional connection with a song. And likewise your voice breaks down, and starts cracking up at one section, which when someone is very emotional (about to cry) is a realistic thing to actually happen. It's possible to make something like that work in a song, but acapella it's a bit more difficult for me to hear the musical context as the melody of the song isn't conveying it the changes.   I think it's more useful for you to ask yourself where you're headed and what you're looking for than whether it sucks or not. We're not going to be able to put it on the radio as is and have a million seller, but there are good things about it. Your timbre is emotional, you have a musical ear. There are definitely a bunch of singing technique things you could likely work on to make it sound more typical of mainstream singing, but what is it you want? Do you want to improve your voice? If you've been singing for your whole life, you obviously like singing. Would you like feedback on songwriting?   "Sucks or not" can't really help anyone achieve any goal. It either sucks or doesn't, and either way, someone isn't that much better off. The more productive question is how might you improve and are you interested in making any changes or is this what you want to express?

Simba has this one nailed. You sound pretty comfortable on the lower end, but the upper end does sound squeezed and the pitch was wandering more. If it wasn't sending your voice sore, it's ok to 'sound' a certain way, but if you are getting sore/hoarse it's good to rethink things.   You do have a nice timbre shining through these technical troubles and you do sound passionate and into this song. Your voice sounds pretty cool. My suggestion might be to investigate a lighter, more top down approach (bringing head voice down) until you can handle a heavier bottom up approach, if that is your final goal.   For me the antidote for pushing was to sing Eddie Kendricks, Brian Wilson, Smokey Robinson, and a few others and learn what it felt like to 'release' and let go at various points in the bridge. My instincgt was to 'push' with raw power and it has limitations.