Bzean123

Im not much of a fan of theater songs, but this one has a very beautiful melody line and points that call for a bit more of punch (and that I can just let go and sing all out) very fun study!
https://app.box.com/s/0l8idxrzlyh9kb3q09igptoz5ztbglot
Let me know how it sounds peeps

Another challenge that people wanted to do, The Nationals Challenge! In this challenge, we will sing songs about our countries and songs about the places within. It's great for people to sing their national anthems but lets challenge ourselves and not just select short songs.

Just agreeing with G. And yeah, the only challenge, as it were, is with yourself and not to put pressure on yourself. And also, remember, go back and listen to some of your earlier sound files so that you can also hear how you have improved. Which gives the inspiration and confirmation that you will improve more. It may not always be fast or overnight, but progress does happen. Then, one day, you look back and go, wow, I had this voice? Who knew?
Well, you always had the voice, you just learned how to unleash it.

Great going, Muffin! You should come join us and take on the challenges in the Challenge forum. 

Gotten some good improvement since the last post. 
My coordination up to G#4 is pretty decent. I can now use G#4 in most songs (with practice of course)
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0yF3rTW4Qal
I can get up to A#4 in exercises, but the coordination is not ingrained yet; its application in songs right now is very unreliable 
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0qCWHqeJKtS
Here's a section of "Rooster" by AIC. I omitted a more difficult line with a B4 for obvious reasons
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1Z07dCU4EHZ

Thanks a lot  Right now I'm focusing nearly 100% on power for high notes, not on dynamics or agility, which I'm pretty lacking in at this point, and which, as you mentioned, aren't so important for much of the music I want to sing. I really want to be able to produce phonations like these 
as always, very happy to hear I'm going in the right direction. 

- Good bridge.
But...
- Slow it down! This is too fast. You are cheating your body/voice from the opportunity of gaining more motor skills and strength. "sloppy" sirens equal, a weak voice and continuation of confusion and frustration about singing and your voice.
- At :50, you need to lift the soft palate and tune in more /a/ (cat) to find the resonance.
- The phonation needs to have narrowing to it. The embouchure and vowel are too splatty and wide on top... use the mid-narrowed TVS curbing vowel, "ou" (would) to narrow the vocal track and anchor the TA muscle more. No narrowing = In ability to articulate / sing in the head voice.
- At 1:01, your voice broke... why would you ignore that and then race forward to the next scale without working on that transition? You can't afford to have the voice break and then ignore it. That is your "cue" to pay attention and slow down and work on that movement!
- Good intuitive use of the onsets!  I hear T&R, A&R, W&R onsets in here and they are all used in a smart, intuitive way. GOOD JOB!!!!  That's the way to do the TVS Onsets... you notice how intuitive they become after a while.
 
Overall, I'll give you a B+... I can see you are practicing. Great work!
Coach
 

You might want to consider a name change to Mr. Wonderful

There! Used some distortion towards the end. A little different for me, but gave it a shot. That's the point of the challenge, right? Guitars to the sky for The Purple One! 
 

Great song that has been on my to-do list for a while, hope you like it, let me know how it sounds if you can.
https://app.box.com/s/63y1ea0bnv3gtxrlicvdbyitu2u56pua
Thanks in advance!!
Felipe

True to the original, not taking many liberties.  Double tracked vocals and distinct nasality.  
Dedicated to an elusive lady in my own life.   
http://picosong.com/Dwtx/
 

More tricks and hacks in our production thread. For this, I need to use Felipe as an example, at least of end product, regardless of what he may be actually doing. When he does a recording, he treats the whole recording.
Here is what I mean by that. Say you are buying a karaoke track from the link supplied here. Don't assume that you cannot do stuff to that backing track, Go ahead and do stuff. And run a compressor on your master track to glue everything together. Treat the result of your singing with the backing track as a whole new product. Really be the producer.
Use auto-ducking compression to lower track volume of the music when your singing appears.
Put some EQ plug-in on the backing track and notch down a decibel or two around 2 kHz. The human voice sits in that area and you can give it prominence that way while having it sound like it is in the mix, as a whole.
You can also do a high-pass filter at a low point. Because if  you dip the backing track at 2 kHz, you may make it bottom-heavy unless you take off some bottom end.
And if you are like me and like to record stuff, even covers, playing your own instruments, realize some things that can make mixing easier. An output from a keyboard, or outboard guitar modeler, like the Line 6 Pod or my Roland GS-6, is already providing some compression. The quietest and loudest notes are not that far apart. So, don't apply extra compression on that track.
You can fatten rhythm guitar with layers. Either double track playing the guitar part again, or duplicate the one that you have and give it different eq, effects, pan, etcetera.
Lead Guitar should not be doubled but you can  fatten it with chorus and delay, either with your effects unit before input or with plug-ins on the track.
Bass guitar should be direct inject and you can mutilate the stuffing out of it, later, if you want.
Unless you are an awesome drummer in an awesome room with a plethora of mics and a tuned set, stick with either MIDI or keyboard drums. Worst case scenario, it may sound "programmed" but at least the timing is correct. (Thinking of Glen Fricker's t-shirt "1 2 3 4 this shirt is already smarter than your drummer.")
 

To me, the verbal delivery says country, but something about the tempo and the subtle guitar playing paired with those short pockets of silence, says folk.

Getting used to singing this song. Decided to upload a first short take. Don't have the backing track just yet, so acapella. 
 
 

"Not an easy song". Sounds like the perfect analysis of a challenge song
 
I like what you did here. Almost sounds folky. Interesting take.

Thanks, Bzean. considering I was overloading the mic, singing so loud. It is also my favorite part of the song. The rest of the song, I feel like I am holding back but during that part, the G-F-C progression, I can let go and get it out.
"Talk, Talk
I felt the coldness of my winter.
I never thought you would ever go.
I felt the gloom that set upon us, upon us
But I know that I love you so ..."

Working on it. I can almost play this one Isley Brothers song all the way through. Could already sing it without completely decimating it, lol.
 
I don't know. Something about the guitar always attracted me. I think everybody at one point heard at least one song that made them go "Wow! I want to play that!" and decide to pick it up for the first time.
I never really listened to music that had that instrument in it, but once I started to, I knew I wanted to play. Something about those sounds it can make. 
 
 
Reminded me of Bowie at a couple parts.
 
 
 
 

The recording and mix stinks but the playing was much easier when I scaled back the guitar part to just guitar.
"Rain Song" # 2 by Led Zeppelin

http://www.box.com/s/09def48d0af59a258e5b

 

Yup, I did. Trying to start singing over things with the guitar and it's moving along.
 
The stuff you and Ron have been saying is also stuff that's interested me. I had seen and read a few things since I started playing again. Doing more on a guitar than just playing a song, like making changes in a way such that you're compensating for only playing one guitar is amazing.

Well, a perfect example of what I am talking about in simplifying is in playing and singing the "Rain Song" by Led Zeppelin. Having heard the song, I learned to play it from manuscript, which is a full arrangement, not just the guitar part. And the full arrangement is guitar, bass, melatron, drums, strings. I was tying my hands in notes trying to get chord voicings that accounted for everything.
However, another song, "Dust in the Wind," really is played with two guitars (a duet of Rich Williams and Kerry Livgren) but I had figured out how to play it on one and tend to keep it that way.
By all means, keep the rhythm and meter of the song in mind. In fact, I have re-arranged chord shapes around what the vocals need to do.
Another thing, change how you play a chord to fit the song. For "Highway to Hell," I play the A chord with just the middle finger across the strings at the second fret. this sets up my had to play the first inversion D chord that follows and alternate F# and G for what is essentially a harmonic bass line, though it is not the bass guitar playing this. In fact, the bass guitar only comes in at the choruses.
Normally, I might play A the way that I learned it from Mel Bay's Book of Chords, which was first finger on A, middle finger on F# just below, and ring finger on C# just above.
"Land Down Under," I start with Bm chord and use the pinky for the floating melody and move to A with the first finger across the second fret and the pinkie finger on the 5th fret and kind of arpeggiate the chord, just a smidge.
"Travelling in a fried out combie. On a hippie trail, head full of zombie."
(combie is australian slang for an RV or caravan type of vehicle and zombie was a slang for funny cigarettes.)

I first got a guitar 8 years ago. During that time, I had 2 teachers and attempted to self-teach myself several times. My first teacher was good, but took too much time off. We'd have a lesson, he'd go out of town the next week. We'd have another lesson, he'd go out of town for the next week. We'd have another lesson, he'd go out of town for 2 weeks. Second teacher, which was one of my last attempts, was actually my piano teacher who had given me lessons for 2 years, but school got too busy, so I had to make the decision to drop the guitar for the moment. That piano experience, by the way, is why I'm much more confident that I'll be able to stick with it this time. Between all that, I attempted to teach myself and never really learned more than around 20 songs and a bunch of chords. I had no direction when I was on my own. Now I know much more about what I'm doing and why.

Something else I learned in guitar playing. Simplify, don't try to play a whole band arrangement on one guitar. Especially if you are singing along with the guitar in a live situation.
Another thing I have found through harsh experience and study of others, keep simplifying parts when recording. Otherwise, you can wind up with a shredded mash that is too busy. A song is not about how many parts you can put in it but about how the story gets told.

Well, believe it or not, I'm doing that as well (on about the 9th attempt to learn the guitar). About 3 weeks in. Turns out I never really knew what I really wanted to do, or how to go about it, when I decided I wanted to "learn" it, until I had already tried to learn it 7 times.
 
The more I thought about it, the cooler I thought it was to be able to make music with what's inside your mouth and what's in your hands. Singing alone is incredible, but being able to do it while accompanying yourself? It's much more complete. You're a one-man show. And now, beyond that, being able to create whatever comes to mind with an instrument other than your voice? Very powerful stuff.
 

Thanks, man. I learn some things the hard way but I do have the capacity to learn. Eventually.

Not a problem. The two briskets I still have in the chest freezer are over 14 lbs. Even after I trim off some of the fat, it is still around 14 pounds. You could feed a regular squad or a SEAL team in training.
I thaw them in a fridge, like you would a turkey. Basic formula is 5 hours for each pound. So, I count backwards from the day I plan to smoke and add a day because I like to put the seasoning rub on the meat the night before and let it sit in the fridge overnight. That way, the following morning, I can wake up about 6, start a fire, throw the meat on, just that easy. I smoke it no less than 12 hours, starting with high heat to sear the outer layer of the meat, which keeps the juices in.
You know, as a singer, I am a pretty good barbecue chef .....