Gneetapp

Gneetapp, 
Ya, a fun and lovely song to sing...
Ah, you chose to try it an octave higher then I did. I tried it like this as well, just felt I had more control and mojo at the lower octave.. but your voice is pretty... I like the color.
- Be careful not to sing the diphthongs ... "... you can't make m-ee...". Always better to sing through on the open vowel that is presented to you, and let the diphthong be a diphthong. NOT to sustain the "ee".
- 2:00 - 2:08 - tastey.
- I like the little sob/weep onsets your putting into this... well done and very appropriate.
- 3:01 "ma-eek"... theres that diphthong that is being sustained again... careful.
- The rhythmic cues could stand to be tightened up it seems... or maybe you wanted to interpret it loose like this?  There are some onsets and offsets and timing points that are a bit squirrely... tighten up the cues.
- Nice work... Again, I really like the "weepy"/sob vibe you are getting and the color of your voice on that higher octave is really pretty, very tenor'esque.
Glad that my effort inspired you to give it a go... its fun to sing.

Thanks man, I'll try to work at that when I sing from now on.

Thank you so much for your kind words, review and tips Ronws. I always learn something from your tips. You are right about the 2nd half being stronger than the 1st. I just don't know what happened, but I had work really hard to make the levels more similar. At first I thought it was just the mic distance or the way I placed my voice, but it could have been the narrowing of the vowels. I also listened several pitchy spots I can fix, but am more concerned with the overall timbre, as I wasn't sure how I was going to approach the song. I'm glad you liked man. I'll keep working on it on my schedule. Thanks again

I finally had the time to practice and recorded this lovely song. The effects were compressor, EQ, Delay and Reverb. I would like to thank Rob Lunte for inspiring me to work in this song. I know it is still rough in several patches but I hope with time and work it will become a worthy cover. 

First off, you have a really good sounding voice. A nice tone.
As for the look, I think the "rocker chick" definitely works for you. Kind of like Brittany Spears and Lita Ford had a love-child born with the heart of a lion.
Of the two songs, "Sweet Child of Mine" works better in your tone than "Smells Like Teen Spirit." But I applaud you having the desire and heart to tackle that song.
I can tell from your pronunciation that English is not your first language so kudos to you for singing in what is a foreign language to you.
Simplify vowel sounds. For the word "ounce" in the lyric "see an ounce of pain" you sang ah -oh-oo-nz. It should be ah-nz.
Places here and there where pitch was off. It was more forgivable in the Teen Spirit because Kurt Cobain was pitchy. Kind of like, I could not complain of someone being pitchy on a Lou Reed song when Lou Reed is pitchy. 
You can also expand your range but it is going to take the effort of controlling how much volume you put out in the lower end of your voice. It is too much now, making the transition to the higher notes a more obvious flip to falsetto. If you hold back a little in the low end, then the high end sounds more balanced with it.
When you sing, think of the voice as a musical instrument. Don't try to sing the same way that you speak. Again, keep simple and single vowel sounds, ah, ee, oh, oo, eh. Doing that will, oddly enough, make you sound more american.
Performance wise, pretty good. I would suggest that when singing a line, don't move the hair out of your face, let it go. Between lyric sections you can do that. During singing, it is distracting.
Also, timing. Your timing is off because you were getting excited and losing your place in the song. I have also done that. I did a cover of "All of Me" totally botched one passage in the middle because of timing. Get the pulse of the music in your blood. Forget the camera is there.
And I can't wait to hear you on a real mic. I assuming you are singing into the inline mic in your phone headset. The squealing distortion from that is a give-away.
You definitely have a good voice and a great look and even a natural self-confidence that can take you places. Just need to tune up and align your instrument, which is your voice. 
And your pitch is good in some places, so I know you can hear and match pitch. That's way better than 90 percent of humans on the planet.

And I really like how your voice sounds on this song, too. Again, you need to keep this in your "ready to sing" set list.

I think the timbre totally works. Just use one vowel instead of two in a long note. That makes it more consistent.

I think the pitch wobbles can be fixed by simpler vowels. For example, you sang "toon -a eet" and that was the correct thing to do. And remember, you have a mic and a DAW, so don't push the voice, let it get to where it needs to. And I like what you did. I think this song was made for you and vice versa. Definitely keep this one in your set of "songs I can do and get applause." It is right in your wheel house. You sounded strong and centered all the way through.
Are you recording your own instruments? I have not heard this arrangement. If so, awesome and well done.

I like the rough edge to your voice, If I could suggest, however, keep the vowels simple. Earlier, with "eyes", you sang ah-ees and that dipthong made a wobble. Later with "fight," you held the ah and that is what gave that line such mobility and you could take it wherever you wanted. When singing, you cannot pronounce the same way as when you speak. Later in the song, you simplified your vowels and it was the stronger section. If you do the first half like the second half, it will be consistent.
And that's just a suggestion, because I like what you did with this, including singing in or near the original key.

Hi Buddy. Your voice seems to come a long way from when you started posting(2 years ago if I am correct).  There is way more structural integrity around your singing and less abrupt tonal changes. Your tone now has a professional quality which is a very good thing.  So congrats and keep singing.  
With my limited knowledge.  I see two areas of improvements based on what I have gone through
1.  For a single take, you are mostly on pitch. But in my experience, pitch accuracy is less to do with physiology of singing but it is a mental adjustment that comes with pitch training.  Just spend half an hour a day just listening to notes and try to memorize the aural distances by singing along with the piano(solfege helps).  It is best done with a keyboard.  check out the links below.  See what happens is that with interval training our inner ears become more and more adept with the notes and if you do it regularly with your singing voice, then you will find it more easy to sing on pitch.  Our ears visualize the notes to come and help us shape our vocal chords to sing correctly on pitch.  
https://www.iwasdoingallright.com/tools/ear_training/online/
 
2.  The second area you have to focus on is your descent.  You seem to be quite comfortable in your heady mix, but when you descend, there are places where there are tonal loss and pitch issues.  For e.g. at 1:15 where you sing "even heroes have". Your onset for "Even" seems to be wrong which is why your heroes have sounds off.  You need to keep the compression/configuration that you use for the rest of the song here also.  And when you descend, you have to sing low parts high with support, if that makes sense.  We tend to focus too much on the high notes, but sometimes the descend causes all kind of issues in notes that are quite comfortable.  With little practice and awareness you can easily overcome this issue.  
 

I liked it man! And now that I know you had to sing soft/light because it was late, I'm more convinced that you should pursue this song and work on it a bit more. Cheers

Dan would be a good one to ask for Stevie Wonder.  I skyped him.
As far as technique goes, he is using mask (more forward placement) with a little touch of nasality....NOT singing nasal...but a higher placement with a higher (but not high) larygeal positioning. He's also splitting his resonance at times and employing twang for bite and cut. Notice how he never lets the sound go back or drop down into the throat. The "ng" exercise is what helps you find the spot to place your voice for this kind of singing.
Then you still need to see how you can sound when you get this placement, because if you get too nasal, it deteriorates.

You are welcome... but wait a minute, TIME OUT!
If you are posting content on YouTube that is being seen by thousands of people around the world, and you , presumably... want people to get the impression that you are tracking that thing in real-time, a one-time purchase of a useful application and an extra 10 minutes in your editing is worth it. If I were you, I would sign up for their newsletter or even send a personal message to the company and just ask them if you can get it at a discount, they likely will give you a code.

It seems like when you lean towards curbing people seem to respond favorably. My habits are to lean towards that too, but I find if I hold onto it too high it tend to want to plug up. 
But for the highest parts of the chorus you might want to lean back into more forward vowels letting twang give more of the body. When I listened to the original though,the placement is quite close and it's more production that sets you apart.
Increasing some of the brighter side of the EQ spectrum and light auto tune would place you closer to the original more so than the placement adjustment.
Overall, I think it's a good direction for your voice, as you have a bright/light voice and working with it seems like a good idea.

Hi Aravind, first of all congrats for trying something so out of your comfort zone, and doing it so well. I have to agree with Ronws about the perfect match between your voice and the song. I liked the way you did both the verses and chorus. I think that with more practice you will feel more comfortable with the song and it will sound even better, especially in the chorus. Also, for my taste, I would like the chorus even more if you increased the "aduction of the folds / twang" (sorry I'm not sure which one). Cheers and keep them coming. 

Technically your entire vocal range is a mix of resonances at all times. This is what confuses people about the term "mix voice". Most people refer to it as just that area between their speaking vocal range and head resonance. And there lies the issue. Segmenting the voice into parts is what gets 99% of singers into trouble. They create false areas of transition, false registers, false modes. The voice is a constant mix of three resonances - throat, mouth and sinus. The lower you sing, the more throat resonance is heard, the "higher" you sing, the more sinus resonance is heard in the sound.

Mixing is a way to blend your voice seamlessly between these three main resonance shifts. I heard some chest pulling on a few notes here and there, but when you did the improvised "ow" you're closer to a better upper mix sound than when you're singing the song.

You're in the ballpark through of mixing/blending your resonance in the right proportions to get the result you want.

Hi Aravind, first of all congrats for trying something so out of your comfort zone, and doing it so well. I have to agree with Ronws about the perfect match between your voice and the song. I liked the way you did both the verses and chorus. I think that with more practice you will feel more comfortable with the song and it will sound even better, especially in the chorus. Also, for my taste, I would like the chorus even more if you increased the "aduction of the folds / twang" (sorry I'm not sure which one). Cheers and keep them coming. 

No you dony have a crappy voice, sounds good. But i would guess you should work abit on your confidence, why? cause there wioll always be people who dislike your voice regardless of how good you get! Heck i i sometimes get to hear i dont sound good and im bloody amazing  so chill and have fun

I think we are all going to sound different live in a room than we do on any mic. In a room, you and others are hearing you in a room of reflections. Singing into a mic is a close proximity thing. Also, mics act as filters, of a sort. A dynamic mic, while able to handle high spl (sound pressure level, loud sounds) it does tend to filter off the highs. In fact, Shure mics like the 57 and 58 have kind of a box of full response in the mid and lose a lot on the low end, really fast, some in the high end.
Also, you will sound different if you use a large diaphragm condenser mic. It is more sensitive to subtle variations and has a broader response curve than a dynamic. When you mix and adjust eq, use a parametric form, narrow the Q and sweep back and forth. It can be better than just setting values some other guy has mentioned. You always have to mix by ear, not numbers. And it is totally okay to reduce a lot through EQ. For example, especially with your voice, do a high pass filter at about 80 Hz. This will roll of that and get rid of some room sound that you don't need because you are not producing sound down there. You can bring back room presence with reverb plug-ins.
And yes, it helps to remember that the average backing track is basically a pre-master stem. That is, while it is not run through a compressor or limiter, all the sounds have already been mixed by someone else who does not know your voice at all. I am so glad, really, that Robert linked in the backing track site that allows you to order the track WITHOUT backing vocals because they are often odd sounding, to me, and usually auto-tuned. You can do a few different things. You can notch the backing track with EQ by making a dip with a medium wide Q at about 2.5 kHz.
The other thing is to auto-duck. Put a compressor on the backing track and have it controlled by the signal from the vocal track. That is how I did "Highway Star." When the vocal is present, the compressor slightly reduces the backing track.
I think, in general, yes, the horizontal embouchre reveals brightness more than other formations. But I also think you have a bright voice, to begin with. You can achieve darkness buy what vowels you choose, even as a general shape, regardless of lyrics. You can also change mics. For example, I sound kind of bright with my Fame CM-1. But my MXL V67G darkens it a little bit. It was designed to mimick vintage tube mics, which would roll of the highs a little and create a "warmer" sound. And it is now my preferred mic for vocals. 
I still have my Sennheiser e835 dynamic and I have used it on vocals in the past but I would now use it mostly for mic'ing my Fender 85 Combo amp.
So, generally, unless you are just screaming bloody murder, a condenser mic is better for vocals. And some compression, and some eq.

resonance. Falsetto as a rule, is lacking in ringing resonance or "ping."

Thank you. I don't consider myself an artist, in the least, but I believe in artistry. You should insert some of yourself in each song.
Who's this Dio guy? He's mentioned in like 75% of the threads.

I am in the process of re-vamping my Reaper thread to not just be about that software, of which I am a fanboy, but recording and mixing in general, so that you can apply concepts, whether that software, or Garageband, or Logic Pro, or Cubase. Ideas about why you mix something a certain way. Why just about any vocal needs a compressor and yes, plug-in compressors are perfectly fine to do this.
That way, even if someone busy a recording bundle in the gear store, here, there is still some help and guidance on how to do it. As I want to come from the viewpoint of someone who is NOT a recording whiz because we all start somewhere.
Something that Robert, my brother Scott, and others have said, we really do ourselves better by making better recordings.

Hi Elise.... I love your videos... your adorable...
Always decent if not really good.... you have a future as a singer... keep going!!
1). I like that you are now experimenting with vocal processing... YES, use some reverb, however, this is a little too much. Turn it down a little bit, but just a bit. Never sing with a "flat" signal and no special sauce... Also, if you can, get some compression on your voice. You can get compression on a TC-Helicon pedal like the new Performance-V (see my review of this cool singer effects system in the vocal gear > processing forum), or one of their pedals. Some PA boards/heads have compression as well.
2). You might try improving your intonation by paying attention to not onsetting low and then scooping up. Singers do this ALL THE TIME... so be aware of it!  No "poop scoops" into the notes or out of the notes... straight in and straight out as much as possible. There are some blue note exceptions to that, but generally speaking, 90% of the time, no scooping!!!
I really don't have a lot of critiques on this performance Elise because it was pretty solid. For me, it almost comes down to production at this point on this song. How to get a better audio, a better video, etc. for your presentation. If you were my student, we would be working learning how to make recordings now... not live recordings like this.. which are fine, but you really need to begin making real recordings... singing into a microphone, into a DAW (digital audio workstation)... or software for recording, learning how to get levels, learning about compression and effects and then... learning how to take your audio and synch it to video so it looks real. Especially if you are presenting on YouTube.
Below is a new song I recently completed... Im not posting this to steal your thunder, but to show you the level of production I think you need to begin striving for. It will make you look more pro.
SECRET... This video looks like Im singing it live right there... it is an illusion. Now to be sure, I am NOT lip synching... I am actually singing the song and it did actually sound about 90% the save as the audio you are hearing, but the audio you are hearing was done before the video. Audio is produced first... made to sound as amazing as you can... then synced to video for the final presentation. The Audio is actually the hard part. Getting a good performance and mixing, etc... the video is the easy part. You just look pretty and 'act' in front of a camera.
This is how the pros do it... very rarely are you going to get this quality of recording, live... and that is the point... if you up your game in the quality of your audio... which you need to do at this point... you may as well synch it to a nice video since you are 90% there.
I can teach you how to do this btw... I can give you audio and video production lessons.
So I really think that is great advise... you need to learn how ... and get experience recording and start capturing all these songs your doing, at a higher level of production. Your ability to sing, has out grow the quality of your productions.
 
Ha! You thought I was just a rocker didn't ya... 
If you can take your singing... and turn them into productions like this... you will have the complete package and really start sounding and looking professional. And I think you are probably ready for it. The art of recording Elise, is 40% of the art of singing. It is part of the overall art form... you really need to learn how.
A great place to start is if on garageband... if you have a mac book or iPad, you get garageband automatically and it is a great way to cut your teeth on recording and you can make a good recording with garageband... don't let anyone tell you otherwise. When you are ready to get more powerful DAW, you should move up to Macs LogicProX... that is what I use... it is the pro version of garageband... or something like Reaper for PCs... Ron actually knows a lot about Reaper.

Hey Aravind, Congrats for taking on such hard song. I thought you sounded really good on the chorus man! What are you trying to change in this song? I think you just need to keep on singing it to make it your own. Very good! 

I wanted to add one more post here to respond to these other great comments, especially from Youcansinganything and MDEW, and so that I don't bury your inboxes.
I'm an amateur singer who works very hard at it now and dreams of having an amazing voice within a couple years. I still make lots of mistakes across the board. That's why I came here and paid to share and receive feedback. If I were already awesome, I wouldn't be here!
25 years ago I studied SLS in L.A. weekly for 18 months and barely improved. I worked insanely hard at it. I grew discouraged and stopped studying, though always sang at home for the next 25 years while building a different profession. A few years ago I recommitted to vocal studies and began to find all kinds of great things that worked on my voice the way I needed it to. So I stopped everything in life and immersed myself into it. It's been miraculous. I'm literally better each day than the day before. And instead of my rate of improvement slowing over time, it's now accelerating because of how I've customized my own training practice.
My mission in life now is to create an amazing training program as if I could send it back in time to my younger self so he could fulfill his dream much sooner in life. Since I can't do that, I'm targeting young people, beginners, 13-25 years old, who want to sing strong-voiced pop/rock/theater, with an emphasis on developing their own, unique signature sound and expression. I'm more than happy to, as Youcansinganything wrote above, refer them to great private instruction when the situation calls for it. I'm already planning to refer any Seattle students to Robert, for example.
And though I'm still horribly insecure about my singing voice, I'm not the slightest bit concerned about my ability to teach vocal training. I'm good at it and getting better quickly.
And in reading Robert's list of criteria to be considered an "expert coach", I realized that this is impossible to achieve, without first being a non-expert coach, right? It's logical. I'm a non-expert coach. I can almost already check off items 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 (jury is out on 7!). And to get to #1 and #6, you have to start somewhere, right? And I don't think you need thousands of students, maybe hundreds would suffice, and I'm not sure if I'll ever do private lessons or performance coaching. I'd love to hold workshops one day, but I learned from my executive coaching experience that I don't like to have a lot of appointments blocked out in my weekly schedule. An "all day Saturday" thing twice a month would suit me best. We'll see.
And, finally, I'm here to make new friends with people who love to sing and to teach others how to train their voices. All of you have been great. Thanks again.