aravindmadis

Sometimes it's okay to realize what your voice is. Once I realized and accepted that I would never be baritone, let alone bass,I could accept being a tenor and work with my voice that way to free it up.
I'll never be able to do Caiaphas from JC Superstar, but I can still admire those who can.
"Ah gentlemen, you know why we are here. We've not much time and quite a problem here ...."
 

Thanks Daniel, Aravind! I am not of Italian origin and I have never studied Italian. Just tried to pay attention to the pronunciation and phrasing in Italian music for a few months now.

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 Folks.. Trying to do something different this time.. 
Please give a listen and let me know what you think, specifically on the tonality of the head voice.. 
 
 

Thanks Rob.  Your feedback means a lot to me.  I will check out the app you have recommended.  I am just too lazy to bother about my production, but I guess it won't hurt me to improve my production   

Hi Folks.. Trying to do something different this time.. 
Please give a listen and let me know what you think, specifically on the tonality of the head voice.. 
 
 

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. 

sounds great your voice is very similar to  Adam Levin. If you lowered it a bit you might feel more comfortable in a slightly lower key. keep up the good work

You are already quite dark on the higher notes. I don't think you can make the sound darker than that without making it sound weird. The only possibility imo would be to modify to more classical vowels (UH -> OH, EH -> IH for example), but I think it would not really fit the song. You already sing darker than the original.
Your embouchure is very good imo, don't mess around with that. Nice delivery overall, btw.
As for the sound: I'm not an expert on mixing, but there are two things that of course have an effect on this:
1. reverb/EQ: acoustically in a room you usually have a bigger/different reverb and more low frequencies in the voice. Felipe once had two videos on his channel showing the "room vocals" and the "mixed vocals" of the same song (but I'm afraid he deleted the room vocal one). That was actually a very nice example. The problem is, if you leave a lot of "room acoustics" on your vocals it will sound very dull in the mix. Especially the low frequencies are often completely kicked out because of that (as Ron already described).
2. compression: The compression of the higher and louder notes in combination with the removal of the lower frequency room acoustics causes your voice to easily sound "thinner" and "more quiet" than it actually is in a room. If compression is too high it can lose "emotion" due to the perceived lower volume.
Those two together make "mixed vocals" often sound quite different compared to acoustic live vocals. Unfortunately you cannot completely prevent this as vocals without these two adjustments will sound "wrong" in a mix.

your voice suites this song really well

Awesome. Perfect, absolutely perfect match of voice and song. I did not realize how similar you and Adam Levine sound. Your whole voice works for this song and vice versa. I don't know if every Maroon 5 song will work out for you like this but you could also work this genre quite well.

i thought it sounded great !!
maybe use a little more reverb in the chorus and and double up your voice in the chorus for some more power.

@aaravin this is what I mean:
https://app.box.com/s/8k1pvrn1h544eggheypvlzi8orxc09n3
First more on the direction of what you did on the song, then how I would try to go if I was trying to emulate Bruce and how I believe will help you (get the quality of the low range on All the Young dudes and dont hold back the energy), and then how I normally sing it which sounds best in my voice in my opinion.
The higher area of the chorus you have to round, but, it sounds really cool if you open on "run" and it will make the phrasing easier too. First sample of the chorus is all rounded, second sample opens on run and rounds on the rest. To get that narrow sound Bruce does I would aim the sound directly up (its what I do normally), to go for a more centered approach just lift the placement a little bit but keep it forward, will sound different but more natural.
 
Hope it helps!
 
This needs a strong support to work well though, or else you will end up flipping when you enter head voice which does not sound so nice on these songs.

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.

I think Felipe has a good point here. I think I know what he is talking about with the 'roundness' of the timbre. He's more skilled than I am at demonstrating this, but if you're having trouble understanding the generalized sound, I displayed extreme vowels and sung centered on them in the chorus and then attempted somewhere in between:
https://app.box.com/s/c0vuvtgent151tgbyhxachmwgfpmlpzd
The first is like an 'a' vowel, kind of like apple, or cat. It's twangy, catty, kind of high larynx and more nasal. It's a bit closer to what you're doing and is much closer to the voice you started with, but you might be opening up your soft palate a bit more.
The second is kind of a round sounding vowel. We don't really have a way to type it in English. It's kind of an ooh, kind of an oh, and kind of an uh. For me I picture an invisible L with my tongue. If you do the extreme in falsetto I've been told it sounds like a woman. If you do it lower pitched and with more volume and support in the lower register it might sound more like a cartoon opera voice. 
So those are two extremes. Neither are something I'd sing with, the cartoon opera thing was kind of forced and the cattier thing was very harsh and nasally. The last attempt was to find somewhere in between the extreme sounds.
What you could do is explore the cartoon opera thing, find the placement, try to get it so it's not straining and pushing and then move back more towards the cattier, quackier, nasally position. See if there is a spot in between that you like best for your voice.

Hi Gneetapp.  I am trying to get the chorus to sound more meaty.  I realize as I get better with mixing, some of the really awesome sounding vocals have a lot to do with how they are mixed and whether they are double tracked.. So whether I can improve on my weight in the range, I am not sure !

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! 

Thanks Ron, for always being the sane voice in this forum.  You have a way of putting things that make total sense.. Maybe there needs to be more weight in the chorus I don't know.. I don't need to sound like Bruce(nobody can), but I was hoping something along the lines of you are using Edge, Bruce uses overdrive(do not mean literally, but you get the idea).  I want to know what I could do with my physiology to create a similar sound.  If it is not possible, I can live with it... 
Maybe I will indeed attempt "Fear of the dark"!   
 

I am not sure how to change your tonality. The problem with covering this song or anything else by Bruce and the boys is that he is so iconic a singer that people are powerless to stop from comparing. Even me. I could sing anything in the IM catalog but I do not sound like Bruce and don't care if I don't But I don't cover and present because many, including myself, will compare. And it is not a matter of being lazy or that I don't "want to put in the work" to sound like Bruce. I love his voice, his singing, his style of bravado and confidence. I just don't need to sound like him, for whatever reason.
So, your pitch was good and the timing did not seem like an issue to me. Sometimes, you are better off totally changing the song. Fellow member Jonathon took IM's "Wasted Years" and changed it to one acoustical guitar and a slow, melancholy ballad that was very much how Chris Cornell might do it. This was especially helped by the fact that Jonathon already naturally sounds like Cornell in whatever he does.
I like what you did here but I cannot fix your unique tone. I go through this thing, myself. I can cover some songs by someone else and do quite well, but not the entire catalog. For example, people liked my cover of Judas Priest's cover of "Diamonds and Rust" but that doesn't mean they will like me singing a bunch of other JP songs, nor am I interested in doing so.
And I think that is the way it is with a lot of people. For example, you might fair better in applause if you covered IM's "Fear of the Dark." Not because it is lower in the range and I think you are most definitely tenor. But because I think that song and your voice would be a closer match for what your tone does.

i enjoyed listening to it, i liked the mix sounds in your voice keep up the good work

I quite liked it. I think you have the right mix of clean and grit in this and the emotion is conveyed to us.
Bravo, Aravind.

Really really good Aravind! Nice timbre and heartfelt performance. I think I told you once that you usually kick some serious arse in this Metal genre. I thought there were only a couple of spots a bit off pitch (steel), but not the highest ones. Maybe it is just my ears or the fact that I don't know the song. But overall it was really good to listen to your cover. Congrats!

I am now beginning to gain the confidence to start taking on tough songs.  I wish I could get more chord closure on the F#5 in this recording(would love for it to sound more full).  It is also a very tough vowel for me("E" vowel).  
This kind of singing is out of my comfort zone. Always tough to get the right emotion when one has to sing on themes like war, death, evil etc  
Thanks to folks who listen and drop in a sentence or two. 
https://app.box.com/s/mjn82h7cjr2pyd09nyjcs2nmee72elo7 

A quick attempt at the scream from dream on. I have always had trouble with this but within the last week or 2 it has become very easy!!