Ed M

Thanks, Ron! :0 ) I'm glad you liked it and I definitely appreciate the Nightwish compliment as well as the compliment on my range!:cool: Much obliged for the very encouraging words!:cool: Were you referring to when I sang the first lines of the song when you said my voice was shaky? That was actually my least favorite part of my vocals.:| Ed

Thanks for the nice compliments and the good advice, Ron! I very much appreciate your advice! : ) I'm glad you feel that way about the riff, now I feel even better about choosing this song to work on out of the numerous choices that Andy gave me. and I'm sure Andy will love seeing your remarks! The next time I record something, I will definitely keep the ee to eh thing in mind, and you're right, when I sing high, I do like that ee sound! When I'm singing more with my mid register, I love the Oh sound! Ed

I would have put more time into polishing this up but unfortunately this very talented composer was quite non responsive and took over 3 months to contact me and thank me for the effort and unfortunately he didn't seem to appreciate my vision of his composition. In fact, I don't even think he commented on the lyric. But anyway, it was a lot of fun to work on! And I'd appreciate a critique, and I will admit right away that I didn't put any effect on the vocals. Thank you for your time. Alas, it looks like they removed my version of this song from the kompoz site. If you're still interested in hearing it, here's a fresh link for you. BTW...Wish I could give proper credit to this extremely talented composer, I think he went by the name ILLE or something like that, I think that's close anyway.:| Thanks for listening. :cool::cool: https://copy.com/OSrhTGSuoacP Hope it's alright if I post the lyric here. I could post a link to another site that has the lyric but I doubt if that's allowed so here's the lyric... Title: Crimson Moon © All Rights Reserved, 2012 Edward B. Millican III Crimson Moon 1st Verse: You don’t want to go out the night when the Crimson Moon howls. You may scoff at the wolfs’ bite, and heed not the cry of the owl. Chorus: But they hear your heart beating with fright They smell your fear, keep away from the children of the night. 2nd Verse: SPOKEN: If you see them, run! But it’ll do you little good. You must not have understood. Pre-Chorus: Your only chance to avoid the Reapers’ dance, heed my advice; when the time comes, lock your doors and hide! Chorus: For they taste the air; your sent in the pale moon light. They will take you unaware! Stay away from the children of the night. Bridge: I see the world through carnivore eyes. Tearin’ at my flesh when the Blood Moon’s high. No idea where I’ll wake up, when comes the morning light! Chorus: We hear your heart beating with fright We shall spread the terror! Beware, we are the children of the night. Outro: SPOKEN: Heed my warning. The wolf suffers no fools. Take it from one who knows. On the night of the Crimson Moon, no matter what you do, stay in doors. Ed

Cool! Thanks for the lesson.:D

Oh. Sorry about that, I'm still learing. I thought that when you could hear a little bit of soft clicking in the voice when it's really low, that that was vocal fry. I appreciate the heads up on that. In that case, that's ASTOUNDING! Is accessing your Whistle register uncomfortable? Because when I hit that B5 with what I thought was my falsetto, it was extremely uncomfortable.:rolleyes:

Wow! That was really cool!:cool: But wouldn't most of that recording be classified as vocal fry? I have recorded myself singing in a very weak falsetto, just barely squeaking out a B5 but I have no idea how to access my whistle register.:| Well I can definitely get to the lower 2nd octave regularly so I guess that would make me a baritone.:)

I thought you had forgotten about that one. At the time, it didn't seem like you were really into the lyric or even the subject, but yeah, I've come up with a few more lines for that lyric and a fairly decent melody to go with your music. However, I have no idea when I'll be able to really get into that.:/ But you never can tell when inspiration will strike! Ed

Wow! Adon, that's a really impressive range!:cool: But how do you really know where your placement is if you can sing as a low baritone or a tenor or in your case, even approaching counter tenor? I guess I'm most comfortable singing as basically any kind of baritone unless that requires hitting an Eb5!. I've recorded myself singing as high as a Db5 only once. Actually that was kind of a weird experience because I had tried to hit that Db5 for a composition I was working on and I fell flat and hit the C5 dead on. So I thought maybe I'll aim for a D5 and hit my Db5 target. Well I accidentally over shot it by a mile and hit an F5 but the problem was my voice cracked so part of it was like falsetto and part of it was my upper register and it was tough for me to distinguish at what point did I go back into my upper register. I actually thought I might have hit the D5 with my upper register but I was almost certain that I hit my target(Db5) with my upper register.) It might be really cool to get your take on that. If you were even slightly interested, I'd be happy to send you the sound file. Anyway, as I've said before I've recorded my voice as low as a B1 but that's if I sing with actual words and aim for the note. However, when I just record vowel sounds, and instead of aiming for the note, I just hit whatever note I'm comfortable with, hold it and slide down as low as I can go, I've recorded myself singing as low as an A1. So to be honest, I have no idea what I am! Like, I said...My ability to sing as a low bass seems to disappear as I warm up my voice. Seems like as soon as I can hit that B4 fairly comfortably, I can only go as low as a D2. I think one time, I tried it and was able to barely hit a Db2. Thanks for the tip on making my timing better. I've been trying to get more acquainted with using a metronome because most of the lyrics I've written over the past 20 years have some pretty cool melodies to go a long with them. Most of them popped into my head as I was writing the lyrics, kind of like someone all of a sudden singing a song in my head that doesn't exist yet! However, when I try to record these songs, my biggest problem is not pitch, but instead, keeping an even tempo. So I've been told if I can get used to using the metronome, that will make my tempo much more even. I've also been told the same thing about snapping your fingers or tappping you foot while you sing, but sometimes that seems even more difficult than using the metronome. Ed

Thanks, I'll definitely experiment more with compression. And yes, where ever there's extremely tall trees blocking you from having fast internet, there's dial up! Yes, I agree with you. I've been singing for around 11 years now and it seems like the higher my range gets, the less nasally and screechy my voice is, probably because then I'm no longer singing at the top of my range because my range has moved up. I'm pretty happy with it though, I can comfortably sing from a D2 to a B4 once I'm warmed up. And the strange thing is if I record right after I get up in the morning, I'm even capable of singing as low as a B1.:cool: As far as my age goes, I'd say that I'm ANCIENT. OK, well...I'm actually 42 years old and I got a late start at singing. Still wondering about the timing on that song though. For a long time, I'd say timing has been my Achilles' heel. Probably because I spent a lot of time doing Karaoke before I got into bands, where timing is really not that necessary if it the company that produced the song did a good job on the timing in regards to when the letters of the lyric change colors. If it's a poor CDG, then it's best not to even look at the screen, and just hope you can count on your memory of the song and your timing. I think my timing has gotten much better over the years, but sometimes I'd listen to this Demo and think I heard places where I might have been a little bit behind and other times it sounded OK to me, so any help with that would be much appreciated whether you wanted to post it or PM me about it. I do have at least 2 other projects that I will definitely post here in order to get some insight. It's really wonderful to have a site like this. Thanks again for your advice and thank you, Andy for bringing this site to my attention! Ed

Thank you very much for the critique! Yes, I do agree with you about everything you said. I'm afraid the nasally parts were never intentional. That's just pretty much the way my voice sounds when I sing close to the top of my range, which would probably be a B4. I can hit a C5 but I can't hold it as long as I can hold a B4. I usually tell people my voice is somewhere in between Ozzy, Axl, and a Cat that got it's tail caught in a slamming door. However, you might have also been referring to one of the parts where I was off pitch so I used Vvocal to fix it and sometimes that makes a synthetic sound. That high part at the end where I hold the B4 while I'm singing the word, Tears, was really close to being right on pitch so if that's one of the parts you're referring to, then yeah, that's just my voice. When you say my rhythm was off in parts, I'm assuming you're talking about timing. If you told me which parts I was off on, I could probably fix that. I really appreciate the offer, and I wouldn't mind sending you my vocal track except that it would have to be a high quality Mp3 like 320 kbps rather than a wave file cause unfortunately I'm still stuck on a dial up connection, Max 50K and uploading a wave file of my Vox would almost be an impossible task. If we had a really good HQ version of the background music, then I might take the risk of uploading for what would probably be 8 or 9 hours and just pray my connection doesn't get cut off like it so often does. I also want it known that I'm very open minded to the idea of someone else doing the vocals as long as the song fits there voice better than mine and they stick with my lyric and stick fairly close to my top line and of course, as long as Andy agrees. So if any male singer out there likes the top line, lyrics and music, and wants to try singing the 1st verse, lift and chorus, I say Go For It! Basically, I'll take any help I can get on this project. I realized that Andy's recording of it was at a low bit rate, but I saw promise in the bare bones of the tune that he came up with. especially the part for the chorus that reminded me a little bit of DON'T FEAR THE REAPER, my favorite Blue Oyster Cult song! and when I first came up with the lyrics and melody to mix with his chorus, I was hooked. I hope other people will enjoy it too. BTW...I did put a little bit of reverb in it as well as chorus but I was afraid that people wouldn't be able to understand what I was singing if I put too much effect on it so I guess I under did it. Didn't even think of using compression, so I appreciate the tip. In fact, I very much appreciate everything you said. Thank you for your time! Ed

OK, Thanks for the intro, Andy! I'm on board now, and I'm bracing for it! Let her rip! Ed