JonJon

2 minutes ago, Javastorm said:

I use Audacity. I want to upgrade at some point to something that's more powerful but I'm still satisfied with what I can do with this one for what it's worth

Reaper all the way

I understand audacity gives u the ability to remove vocals from tracks etc   http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tutorial_vocal_removal_and_isolation.html

8 minutes ago, Javastorm said:

Thank you haha. That's a good point for songwriting, I'll keep that in mind as I write stuff. At 2:52 yeah, it peaked. I can fix that. Not sure about the "just" after that.

 

This is a karaoke track- The only backing tracks I know how to make so far are with my own instruments (keyboard/guitar/cello/acapella)

What software do u use?

is that karaoke or did u make the backing track too?

3 hours ago, Javastorm said:

I don't usually sing torch-y rock stuff like this but I love listening to it and heavier stuff within the genre. Wanted to try something new. Any and all feedback is welcome.

https://app.box.com/s/88yuem4987gdtg3ip3vx47bnyx2z3vfn

u got a great voice brother. wanna trade voices for a week? (no dont, u might not get yours back hehe)

your voice is tailor made for those emotional songs etc.

just from an arrangement/songwriting point of view, this song showed a certain pattern or formula that works well with a voice like yours. Simmer along with all the normal emotional cry/sob sort of stuff and then at peak moments hit a nice clear high note

So for long term development keep in mind to hone the ability to hit a good clear powerful high note. Since most of your style seems to be rich and warm, if you are able to hit good clear high (deep lol) notes, it just gives you a natural songwriting tool

The only nitpicky negative things that stood out to me were at 2:52 on "all"..did the microphone distort?

and for some reason the "just" at 2:55 sounds a little funky

3 hours ago, MDEW said:

 

 You sound pretty friggin' polished as it is.

   

haha, if I let that comment stand it would be like I agreed with it. I give some of those examples maybe a 5 or 6 outta 10. Nothing "polished" in sight though hehe. On most of them I am barely making it lol. I just dont quite yet have the strength. But thats my personality, im always reaching for something I cant quite get as opposed to doing something I can easily manage.

The badlands phrase I think I can handle but the whole headphone/volume setup wasnt quite right and the way I had the sample setup to sing against, I didnt leave myself enough lead in time and I kept coming in wrong lol

3 hours ago, MDEW said:

     Already sounds pretty good to me. Why not go ahead and put together some kind of cover just to see how it sounds. It would not have to be anything super hard to sing. Sure people get stuck on stupid things like "You do not sound like DIO, or Perry or whatever" The point is whether it sound good with your voice the way it is, and does it feel good to sing this way.

    And as for the other subject that always comes up. You sound pretty friggin' polished as it is. It is NOT this way for most singers, especially the ones who end up here.

    And for people stopping in here to give you tips and pointers or props......... Have you even listened to one of my songs that I posted here? If you have you did not comment. Good or Bad. I look for feedback also.

haha. well I DID do that Scorpions cover, thinking it would be an easy thing to knock off...it wasnt and it makes me cringe a tiny bit. id give it about a 5 out of 10. next time ill at least cover someone who has English as a first language hehe

I think its all about time and energy. doing a whole actual cover...shoot...you probably looking at at least 10 hours or whatever. If/when I do find the motivation and energy, I just tend to try to write an original

as I get better I may do a few more covers as it will be a faster process

I listened to some of your stuff a while back. I probably felt I was too new to comment. It was b4 the BeeGees practice one. Just from memory it sounded to me like you were barely breathing lol. Almost like you were speaking as opposed to singing. I was thinking to myself "what good is all the talk about this or that coordination if you dont even have any wind flowing?" lol. Like I say though I forget what song it was. Yes, im very helpful lol

44 minutes ago, Xamedhi said:

Can you sustain the notes cleanly for some seconds?  I ask because as i understand you are doing this as training. If you have some bad habits singing clean, it will be more difficult to drop them while singing with distortion. So check that out  other that that, good job, ill justo work on going through the phrases slowly and sustaining every vowel for 3-4 seconds.

Well, not to be TOO obvious, but essentially I was trying to sing them as I heard them on the MP3s lol

for instance that first phrase "I surrender". When I first sang it I just sustained it out etc. Then I listened back to it against the original and I saw that the original didnt just sustain out indefinitely....it had a definite end on a certain beat etc

So if the song sustains a note for several seconds then that is what I do...and if I cant I try another song lol.

Some quicky vocals from tonight's training session...working on A4 and B4

I just sang against the actual song so it was a little hard to hear the rhythm track etc etc

Phrases from Rainbow "I surrender", Deep Purple "Mistreated", Badlands "Seasons", Soundgarden "Rusty Cage"

Its mostly A4 stuff except the Badlands is B4. That Badlands phrase "I know its too late" is the phrase I found my headvoice on about 6-8 weeks ago

enjoy, comment if u want to. Essentially I have about 4 decent days of training behind me now lol. Even that slight amount seems to be helping..so hopefully things well trend better for quite some time now

Dry vocal https://clyp.it/xzn2jbpi

Some light processing https://clyp.it/hiia2oqg

13 minutes ago, SophiaGrayce said:

JonJon, thanks for the feedback. Sometimes I guess I just get into the song and don't think about the points you make, which are really good ones. I'll keep them in mind in the future. ~Sophia Grayce~

keep in mind I said it was a NITPICK. That means a tiny point lol. I glanced at some of your other vids and I see thats just your basic style. Again, nothing wrong with it at all. Its just a stylistic tendency that makes up your "style". But if we are more aware of our tendencies we can sometimes choose to step outside of them if we want to go for a certain effect etc.

Im only aware of it because my guitar playing (and probably singing) has always tended to be "behind the beat" a little. That means I can groove and flow really easily but I totally suck at any type of "driving" type playing lol

Peace, JJ

I guess ill start tracking some of my notes etc.

4-24-16 c5 o, love https://clyp.it/4opbmxzu

5-22-16 some C5s https://clyp.it/qo1hlxcg

5-26-16 A4 B4, Rainbow, D Purple, Badlands, Sndgarden. Wet https://clyp.it/hiia2oqg Dry https://clyp.it/xzn2jbpi 

and some phrases I want to work on and/or eventually hit. (a reminder for my training)...or phrases that I can hit but want to use to work higher

F#4

AIC, I Stay Away " I STAY away" https://clyp.it/lwex0u3o

G#4

Fleetwood Mac, Hold Me "There's NoBOOODY in the future"

A4

Rainbow "I SURRENDER" opening verse line

Foghat, Slow Ride "Slow DOWN, go DOWN"

Deep Purple, Mistreated, "I been MISTREAted"

Soundgarden, Rusty Cage, "break my rusty CAAAAGE"

Soundgarden, Outshined, "SHOW me the power child"

A#4

Rainbow, I surrender.  "DOOONTTTT take away, this feeling inside"

Aerosmith, Angel, "the crying that I do is for YOOOOOOOOOOOU"

B4

Rainbow "IIIIIIIIII.......Cant let you go" chorus

Whitesnake, Love Aint no Stranger "love aint no stranger, III aint no stranGER"    "broken HEARTed people staring at me"  "I feel the emptiness of LOVE I know so well" "when I read between the LINES"

STP, Sex Type Thing "IIII know you want whats on my mind"

Badlands, Seasons "III know its too laATE"  "time alOOONE"

C5

Aerosmith, Dude, "DUDE LOOK LIKE a LAdy"

Aerosmith, Nobodys fault, "LORD I must be DREAMING"

D#5

Foghat, Slow Ride "Hold me, ROLLL me"

Badlands, Seasons, "all the DREAMS we thought"  "these dreams will save our LONely times"

E5

Heart, Barracuda "no right no wrong, selling a song...a NA-AAAAAAME"  NA is F#5, AAAME is sustained E5

Heart, Barracuda "if the REEEAL thing dont do the trick"...slides up to E5

Heart, White Lightning and Wine, "never will forget I CAAAME" "guess you better hitchike HOOOOOME"

just going to post these here to document where I am at the moment. This is still without any focused training. I am trying to get myself to lock down some focused training so hopefully I can come back and compare in a month and blow these feeble efforts away.

C5  5-22-16  https://clyp.it/qo1hlxcg

different vowel, about a month ago https://clyp.it/4opbmxzu

Done very hastily with one foot out the door. The last vowel was supposed to be "aww" but I probably cant hit that at c5 yet...so it just went into whatever other vowel that is. It actually sounds like a weaker version of the "love" that I hit a month ago lol.

Like I said, these 4 vowels were done very hastily as I was walking out the door. The "who" and "we" were one take. The other 2 took several takes and still werent THAT great.

This is the edge of my capabilities. Im barely getting those notes and cant hit vibrato on them. The last vowel cracked a few tiimes etc. The "who" wasnt that hard. Again, since this was done hastily, I wasnt thinking of technique so I probably did this and that wrong since I havent trained enough for it to be automatic. So maybe I can be 5 percent better with a good warmup etc but this is pretty much where my c5 is right now.

nice singing and very attractive girl.

Obviously there is nothing "wrong" with the singing so if I am to offer any constructive criticism at all I have to nitpick.

The only nitpick I can come up with is that at times it seemed a tiny bit TOO far "behind the beat." Obviously its not a fast, driving tune, but even so I thought a few of the phrases were a bit too drawn out. In other words if u synched up your track to the Eagles track, there would be times where they either started or ended the phrases a little quicker than u did.

A great deal of the feel of a song is determined by how things fit together in the "pocket". Obviously a sort of behind-the-beat feel is emotional etc but it can also get sort of draggy and depressing if overdone.

Again, there is nothing "right" or "wrong" in it per se but just keep that in mind in the future. Just for overall growths sake try to experiment on other songs with "pushing" the beat....starting your phrases a little earlier or a little before the bar actually starts etc.

One thing you can try to build variety and interest into a song is to vary the approach WITHIN the song. for instance do the slow laid back feel for most of the song but when you hit the bridge (or pre chorus, or chorus, or whatever) go to a more pushy, agitated feel. On this song it could have been experimented with on the bridge "dont your feet get cold" etc

Good job though, good luck. I wish id started when I was your age lol

peace, JJ

I gotta put this here so I dont have to keep looking it up lol.

Jens. Ridiculously inspirational

Jens said--->

0:00- 0:50 Vocalfry and M1 

0:50- 1:23 M2 tops out at around soprano C6#

1:23 to end is whistle it's very very obvious when your in whistle, you wont get the power guys like Ian have in the C5-C6 range using this coordination it would be really really thin and frail.

44 minutes ago, KillerKu said:

If you want to get a pro drummer and form a whole band like Bruce that's great. If you want to get good at drums that's great too, but anticipate years of practice in the meantime. As a multi instrumentalist I'm still not as good as some exclusive drummers. Jack of all trades, master of none and so forth.

My last post in this thread.

What part of "Drag and Drop" is so hard to understand? The whole point of software like EZ Drummer is that you DONT have to hire a pro drummer NOR do you need years of practice on drums yourself

I write rock music and am proud to do so. Pretty much everything I do will have drums on it. To each his own

Peace out

4 hours ago, ronws said:

And not everyone is going to have the same ease with this stuff that you do. And I know because I have dragged and dropped and it takes a while. That's why it is easier to play the casio because at least that is like drumming on a desk top with my fingers.

I guarantee if he had come up with even a basic 4 on the floor boom-chuck, others would have pooped on that for not being expressive enough.

Nor do people have to be multi-instrumentalists to be good musicians. There were and are other good musicians besides Prince in the world. Just to trust me on that, I have been around just a little longer.

Last, maybe he really did feel that this song is best without percussion. And now, all I see is  talk about is how it needs percussion. I thought we were going to be supportive of songwriting. Or is this because not enough people give kudos to good songwriting, so it is easier to pick apart the one thing the song does not have?

For example, one favorite song of my wife and mine is "Leader of the Band" by Dan Fogelberg. Not a drum or anything but guitar in there. Even live, the rest of the band actually will leave the stage for a potty break while Dan would do that one.

I really do promise, it is okay to do an acoustical guitar song without drums on it, really and truly.

Isnt a review supposed to present someones opinion of what they think? I expressed what I thought.

Im a pretty supportive guy when it comes to writing originals....since ive posted about 10 originals and had every one of them crapped on.

My review was about as plain vanilla as it gets.

for every song u name with no percussion i'll name 50 with...you'll run out before I do. Thats regardless of the genre.

Whining about "omg, not everyone can program drums".  Yes, that true. Not everyone can sing. Not everyone can be a musician.

Ive never had ANY "ease" in anything ive done...as you have seen explicitly in my brief time on this forum. Evry single thing I do is a massive struggle. If I can continue learning at 48, I find it hard to think people half my age cant learn

When I started posting stuff online people said it sounded weird without drums. So I went thru the hassle of buying EZ Drummer 2 and trying to learn how to use them (and produce and mix them). Then when I posted my jams people said "it sounds weird without words"...so I tried to get others to sing and that lasted like 5 minutes and I just started singing myself.

In the meantime ive had to continually work on mixing and sound quality etc etc etc.

In the end we have 3 options:

1) learn how to do everything yourself

2) get help

3) have a sucky product

If dude wants to put out songs with no percussion....more power to him.

49 minutes ago, ronws said:

As for programming drums, it is one thing to have ez drummer or something like it, it is another thing to know how to use it well. If someone, like Killer, already actually knows how to play drums, then it is not so bad. But I would not expect a singer here just picking up the guitar to play as well or as easy as I do since I have played guitar since 1974.

I can play drums with my Casio LK-165 by hand, on the keys. And guess what? It sounds like someone who doesn't normally play drums is trying to play drums.

ez drummer is drag and drop though...there is NO actual "playing" involved. There are no pads to hit or whatever. The only skill might be picking the right patterns to go along with a song if u have already written the song. That and arranging etc. I mean, yeah, there is a certain amount of knowledge needed as far as drum conventions like how the drums might build from closed hi hat to open hi hat to ride etc

I sort of get around some of that by STARTING with the Ez drum patterns. I just program a logical pattern like intro/v/c/v/c/bridge/c out or whatever. I load that onto reaper and I start building a song.

Without EZ Drummer id probably be purely spinning my wheels (or spinning them  even MORE than I am now lol)

9 minutes ago, Javastorm said:

Thanks for listening! This is really just a rapid-fire demo of getting the song out and tangible - I was planning on going back and fixing a lot of performance and production/timing things later. I agree about adding variation to the delivery for the future. I didn't actually imagine this with drums when I was working on it and I've never used drum programming software but thanks for the reference!

theres not THAT many songs out there with no drums or percussion lol

here is an example of what I mean. I dont even necessarily LOVE the song BUT that chorus hooks you really strong. Notice how the vocal delivery on the chorus is totally different than the verse

just some random thoughts:

1) Its pretty cool

2) I know its just a rough demo, but it obviously needs drums. U got any drum software? I use EZ Drummer 2...which has its own ups and downs.

Just thinking out loud here. As for the particular song itself AND for future reference, id try to develop a little variety in the vocal delivery. That sort of emotionally heavy cry/sob things is really cool and expressive BUT it wuld probably get old after several songs of just that. Do you sing in other styles? for instance if you had that cry thing going but then you also had a brighter more edgy delivery, those 2 would really complement each other nicely.

Thats the way i try to think sometimes as far as building a song. What can I do to build variety and interest as I go. for instance start off really quiet and close right up on the mic and then for the prechorus or chorus move back a bit and really open up the voice. Of course when you are doing that you are also building variety into the instrumentation etc etc

overall its pretty good though. nice voice etc

before I even listen to it I will tell you this. if its an original, be prepared to be slaughtered by those who never have, nor ever will write an original lol.

Also remember, for example, that producer Quincy Jones didnt like the song "Billie Jean" and didnt want it to go on the Michael Jackson "Thriller" album....yet it became arguably Michael's most recognizable song

Just a heads up

1 hour ago, ronws said:

Reminded me a smidge of the vocal bridge in "Whole Lotta Love."

 

well...obviously lol.  Except none of it was really SINGING lol. I didnt even stand up, I sat in a chair and just laid down some of this and that and then did a lot of chopping/editing/reversing etc etc

good fun though

some of this stuff I post is just to give others some ideas of certain possibilities

just throwing this out for everyone's amusement and edification lol. Something I threw together hastily last night over a guys drum track

Basically its a long 16 bar verse going into a chorus then there is a bridge section. I laid some really basic guitar down then had some fun filling up the bridge section with random vx stuff.

No need for any heavy reviews....after all, how do u review madness?  Just enjoy it lol

very deep lyrics include,,,,,,,"you know your daddy loves you baby" and "somebody help the boy"

http://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-72453.php

lol. thanks guys.

Im listening back today and im cringing a little. lol.

The parts that are ok are ok....some other parts need work....but that was part of the idea. (to identify weak spots)

Some of the parts were one easy take....some parts were like 20 takes and still not quite there.

6 minutes ago, ronws said:

I liked it and I thought I would have a challenge hearing it because I am so used to Klaus' voice. But I like how your voice sounds on this.

 

thanks, part of it was leaning towards a Roger Waters vocal sound

Klaus would be REALLY hard to duplicate lol

of course, now that im just walking around the apartment singing, I can hit all the high notes lol