MDEW

Hi Flippa, I have never heard that song before, so I looked it up. I found The Pixies and Placebo singing it. Did you get your version from one of those or another band? I like your singing better than either of those bands. You are actually singing lower than either of those that I mentioned. Part of training the voice is to sing scales to work on matching pitches just like you would play scales to learn the guitar and teach your fingers where to go when playing leads and such.

You are more likely a Tenor like 80% of the males in this world.Most of us think we are Baritones because we are more comfortable singing below F4 and we sound funny above that. But it is the Quality and strength in our voice below C3 That makes a Baritone or Bass. This mirrors what I was saying about Confidence. "Being confident and questioning whether you sound good or not makes a difference in the sound being produced. When confident you naturally take on a stronger more focused full sound and when not confident you end up with a week timid shaky small voice which just makes it harder to control." The weak(yes, I wrote week before. so sue me....) Timid, shaky, small ,voice comes from not wanting people to hear an off pitch so you sing more quiet on those parts and mess yourself up. So, like Kickingtone said, practice somewhere where you can screw up without feeling self-conscious and let loose the singing god within.

To be brutally honest.....all of it. But that is not as bad as it seems. Even those you hear on the radio or on TV shows like the Voice work on their voice constantly. You sound good and can hold a pitch and melody over all. Record your voice, if you sound off pitch you probably are. What we hear in our heads is not the same as what we hear on the recording. When you listen back to your singing after you record, pay attention to what sounds odd to you. Work on those things that sound odd. For the things that sound good pay attention to those also and think about the difference between what you were doing while singing that sounded good and bad. It may even be that you were just more confident on the good parts. Being confident and questioning whether you sound good or not makes a difference in the sound being produced. When confident you naturally take on a stronger more focused full sound and when not confident you end up with a week timid shaky small voice which just makes it harder to control. You also mentioned vowels. They make a difference also. If there is a pitch that you can sing on one song but not in another.....Pay attention to the Words in each song. Try using the Vowels that you COULD sing in place of the Vowels that you could not. Then try to sing the Problem Vowel with a portion of the Good vowel. The most common example is on the word Free in "Star Spangled Banner". People end up singing "Fray" instead of "Free" because the EH vowel is easier to sing than the "i" or EE vowel. But if you think "EH" while singing EE you will get a Hybrid vowel that is a little of both. If that does not work, Think EE while singing EH........ Mostly it is the confidence thing. Singing bolder will help you sound better.

I also gave this one a shot. More of a twist on Bonnie Rait meets John Prine (and they did meet. John Prine and Bonnie recorded "Angel From Montgomery".) Written by John and Made Bonnie Rait famous.

Hey Jarom, What's up? Sounds pretty good to me, but I like happy little tunes. Kind of sounds like something from the early 70's. Like John Sebastian or Randy Newman. Cool.

Wow... Welcome back Aravindmadis. Good to hear that you are still singing and sounding so good.

Hi Austin. Welcome to the forum. First off....you do have a pleasant sounding voice. I want to make that clear to you. Your voice sounds flat and boring because you are not putting energy into it. When we do practice and do exercises, we are supposed to be paying attention to what works for us and what we have to change to make the exercises work and then apply them to our singing. The exercises do not magically change our sound....we do things on purpose. Like if we keep singing flat on certain words we find out why and change how we sing those words so they are not flat anymore.

You may not find a teacher like those to be in the same room with you but Skype lessons are almost as good. I do not know too much about how Ken Tamplin teaches or about his course. The owner of this forum also has a course called "The Four Pillars of Singing". I have this course and I know that it is in depth and has more information about how the voice works and how to train it. His course has videos of how and why you perform certain exercises The types of exercises are basically the same . The difference is how and why you perform the exercise and what it is that you are exercising. You are or should be learning how to control your voice and control the sound while performing these exercises. Singing is easy when you already like the sound of your voice and can match melodies with the intended emotions. But when learning how to shape the sound and get the effect that you want it can get a little complicated. My biggest breakthrough was realizing that if you do not like the sound of your voice, not only are you allowed to change the sound, changing , maintaining and directing the sound is required for good singing. You do this by learning how to shape the vocal tract and adjust breath pressure and amount of vocal fold compression and vocal cord closure. The vocal tract is "shaped" through different positions of the tongue, throat, larynx, mouth cavity, lips, soft palate.......How do you learn how to do this....By exercising on funny sounds and singing repetitive scales and sirens while maintaining the funny sounds. Singing scales on different vowels and mouth positions. All the while you should be paying attention to which sounds "Sound" better, feel better and allow different areas of the voice to get louder, softer, fuller, brighter or stronger. If listen to your voice after making a recording, and you find your voice is dull, lifeless or muffled......add a little of the SHAPE or larynx position that adds brightness....... You can't do that until you Learn the Shape or position that adds brightness.

The sound remains the same because you are singing the same way. Singing Success gives you the idea that doing these exercises are going to help your voice "Passively". Like you do not need to do anything but sing these exercises and you are good, you can sing the way you always did and your voice will magically sound better and do what it is supposed to do. The exercises are active. Your vocal cords and other muscles DO things to make the exercises work. Like lip Bubbles and Squeaky door exercises. Lip Bubbles teach you how to regulate air pressure and how to alter it to help keep the vocal folds vibrating consistently. Part of the "Instructions" are: to keep the Bubbles consistent: If the lips Stop vibrating or you "Flip" into falsetto.....STOP and start over or start a little lower and continue the exercise. There are also instructions about what to do if the sound STOPS or Changes. You are LEARNING how to maintain the airflow....It is active... you do something to have the bubbles continue in difficult areas of your range. The Squeaky door teaches you HOW to keep the cords closed. The sound cannot happen IF the vocal folds are loosing closure. You DO something to keep the cords in contact with each other to maintain the sound. These are things you are learning. They are not just passive exercises which SLS gives the impression of by using the term "Speech Level Singing". The biggest problem I had with teachers and vocal courses is that they seem to be saying the less you "DO" the more you gain. Which is kind of true in a round about way. When a teacher says things like "Keep the tone in the mask". It is easier to track because you can actually feel the vibrations in the face and lip area when you ARE singing in the mask. But there are areas in the vocal tract that "Shift" to maintain that vibration. And guess what...Muscles are moving to make those shifts happen. More or less air with different air pressures needs to blow through the vocal folds. More tension or less tension needs to be applied to the vocal folds. The student needs to "Alter" things when the exercises are failing. Paying attention to what you had to change to make the exercise work is "Part" of the "Learning". It is not just muscle memory but also knowing when things need to change to have your voice do the things you want it to do. Reguarding not liking the TONE of your voice.....That can be changed. We do it all the time. Happy, sad, angry, sarcastic, jovial, timid bold, sexy, dopey, whiney, bratty. soft, stern.....Each of these things put "tensions" or focus in different parts of the vocal tract or different amounts of air pressure and makes the sound change. One way to change the sound of your voice is to learn what it is that makes these tones different and use them in your singing( without over doing it of course).

Instead of singing in the lowest key possible....sing in the key that fits your voice. I like the Beatles feel of this.

The song sounds great and you look and sound awesome. The best advice I can give is tell you not to sign any contracts that take away your rights to your songs and other personal rights. That has a habit of happening in the music business. Other than that God bless and keep on singing......

That is one of the problems, You need to listen closer. Once you start to hear the difference in pitch you will get better quick. Please do not think that I am just being mean. You have the ability and a cool tone when it is in the pocket. Tweaking a few things will give you amazing results.

Thanks Draven. Draven is a real coach, his advice should be taken over mine. He can help guide you to proper coordinations and alleviate tensions. I can only tell you what I have to do to create the sound I am hearing. In this case I am literally closing the throat,keeping it closed and pushing the breath through it to make that sound. With the proper breath control and placement, it is not necessary to use muscular effort in the throat to maintain pitch and tone.

That was much better. I wish the music was quieter compared to your voice. It still sounds as if you are adding a squeeze to your throat or just using too much effort to sing. I would like to hear your speaking voice to see if you also have that squeeze during normal conversation or if it is something you have conditioned yourself to add when you sing. Although there is some modification "Singing" is an extension of "Speaking". There should not be major differences in how you produce the sound.

It is a matter of opinion. From what you said about the comments you received, the general opinion is that it does not sound good. The reason that it does not sound good is because of too much compression and too thick of vibrato. The pitch is good. The delivery is good. The tone is bad because of too much compression. Ease up on the compression and vibrato and the pitch will improve and so will the tone.

I am really bad at speaking into a microphone with no one there to hear me. But I did record something for you. I have seen and read suggestions for people who have trouble finding compression to lift a heavy object while singing. There is a natural protection that is triggered that causes the true and false vocal folds to clamp together. When you speak or sing through this the tone is thicker and there is a tendency for the voice to wobble, giving the effect of vibrato. This is useful to FIND compression but it can be taken too far and the result is a CHOKED sound with too much wobble or Vibrato that is too heavy. I hope this clip will help explain things a little better.

The pitch was much better on that recording, the compression also. I will make an audio recording later on so you can hear what I have been trying to express. Hopefully you will get a better idea of what I am talking about and how to modify your voice. It is not really modifying but relaxing the compression, maybe easing up on the Larynx dampening. I will explain that also.

This is a bit better than Heaven Can Wait. I still think you are a bit heavy on the Compression. The vibrato is a bit too thick also. I am not going to say you suck, because I do not believe that. But I will say that there is a difference between how the Tone of Iron Maiden and the Tone for Meatloaf is made. You are using the tone for Iron Maiden when singing Meatloaf. That tone does not work for "Two out of three ain't bad" and "Heaven can wait". To be honest the Tone is a bit thick for Iron Maiden. I am thinking that you worked hard to get that tone, The tone works great for the Higher parts in Iron Maiden, The lower notes do not need that much compression and the tone suffers for it. That much compression also tends to pull the notes out of pitch. I wonder if you are using that much compression with your normal speaking voice.

You are using way too much compression. If you wonder what I mean from this and how would you learn to control it.......Sing the first few lines of this ALMOST in a whisper. SOFT and LIGHT like you are singing to a sleeping baby. Then sing the way you are in this clip. Notice the different feel in your throat between the two. Soft and breathy is almost NO Compression. Throat almost closed off is too much compression and is what you are doing. Another thing that I believe you are doing to get your tone is the use of the FALSE vocal folds. These are closing along with your vocal folds to help you get that tone. One way to learn to control them is by making a powerful exhale WITH a "HHHHH" sound and WITHOUT sound. An exhale with sound is when the false folds are ENGAGED otherwise known as compression. A powerful EXHALE without sound is the False folds disengaged or Decompressed. Pay attention to how your throat feels while doing both and the difference between the two. Learn how to turn it off and on, and also learn to use a varying amount of this compression. For now you are singing beyond useful compression and into the realm of choking off the sound.

SwedishSinger........relax the compression a little. You have so much compression and "Support" going on that the note you start on shifts pitch. Your singing is kind of opposite to what others start off with. Usually new singers sing too light without enough pressure to move the vocal folds. You are creating so much pressure that the pitch is unstable. You need to relax the compression and let the voice get "Thin" sounding. once your pitch gets better ......Then add "SOME" of that compression to thicken up the sound.

Sounds pretty good Sophia, I had trouble understanding some of the words, but I would not change a thing about it. I love the tone of your voice.

Hi SwedishSinger, Your pitch is off in many places. I think you are concentrating too much on tone instead of the notes you are singing. Perhaps if you ease up on the tone and vibrato you are trying for the pitch will even itself out a little better. You do have the range for this song and it would sound pretty good if get a handle on the melody itself.

Trying very hard, is what trips us up. Relax and beg god for a color TV....... or something else you feel like you deserve and have been working towards while it keeps slipping through your fingers. Right now I can really relate to this song. My car broke down a few months ago....not worth fixing......baught another car cause I had to do it quick and cheap for lack of funds.....Title is screwed up so I cannot get tags and title......used money from someone else to buy the car....... So.....still no car.... no money to get this cars issue resolved......borrowed money from family for a car I cannot do anything with......they are mad......I am Frustrated....... So...... "OH LORD, won't you by me a Mercedes Benz......." "Worked hard all my Life.....No Help from my Friends......." "Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz....."

HI Gill, Welcome to the forum. I love Janis. My favorite is Take a Piece of My Heart. I do not know what is is about that song but it gets to me. Try this song a little less "Singy" and more "Conversational" and almost like pleading. The idea behind the song is "Please lord won't you help a girl out? All my friends are getting something in this life and I am being left behind. I try Hard. Please? "

On most of those songs there was too much processing and not my style to really hear your voice. I was able to listen to Stand by me. That sounded pretty good. It does show that you can keep a pitch and you have a pretty good tone in the lower range. To give you a perspective of other peoples opinion........My wife likes to hear me sing, But most of the songs I like she cannot stand the song itself. It is so frustrating to have someone who likes to hear you sing but constantly telling you to sing something else. So even if you have a good voice there are people who will not like it. It is just something that singers have to deal with. If you have a passion for singing keep doing it. Record your voice WITHOUT processing. Notice the things that you think sound good and those things that you do not like and go from there.