JonJon

Hey JonJon, this is only the 2nd original song I listened from you, and I got to tell you that I really dig your songs man! I could get the Jagger feel you mentioned, but I don't think it sounded as an imitation, more like a little influence. Well done. Regarding the sung melody, I had a feeling that you were singing a mix of lead and harmony vocals. Maybe because my brain was tricked to expect higher pitched vocals when you started to go higher. But then you went back down. I understand that you just recently managed to bridge registers, and it was probably the reason why you didn't stay higher. If I may humbly suggest (or request) you to play around with higher harmonies, at least as backing vocals. Nevertheless, it sounds really good already. You just got another fan...

Hi JonJon, I really liked your song man! The INTRO, the guitar work, the VERSES with the low energy vibe and nice guitar arpeggios. Considering it took you one whole day to do it, I would say it is AWESOME. However, now that you had a great start you can improve it, take it to the next level. I agree with MDEW regarding the PRE-CHORUS sounding a bit out of key, BTW good job on setting the mood for the CHORUS by increasing the energy level. It could be the apparent complexity of this section that it is making us project a different melody, or just wanting a different melody. Now, in my opinion, after you done an excellent job with the dynamics of the PRE-CHORUS when you get to the most important part, the CHORUS, it lacks energy. Maybe I'm missing a stronger bass, or vocals sung a bit different, I don't know. I thought the lyrics were suitable for this style of music. Great job overall.
Regarding the Coverdale sound, if I may suggest, you could try to add a bit of cry, especially in the higher parts. You already started adding the creaking/vocal fry. You just need the cry, and some lows too. Keep rocking!

as a 22 yr old who looks 12, critiquing the work of a 48 yr old, u r fighting an uphill battle lol. (you'll understand that when you r twice as old as u r now)
that being said, any and all feedback is what it is...one should take it for what it's worth. Even if its framed in a douchey way, there may still be some truth to it lol
 
Im sort of at the point in my singing and songwriting where I like about 30% of what I am putting out. In other words I have a lonnnngggg way to go before I really impress MYSELF. So I am not too surprised that others arent too impressed either.
If u take it that I like the singing of Lenny Wolf, Robert Plant, C Cornell, L Staley then u can see I have a ways to go.
And musically I love stuff like old vanHalen, Blue Murder, BulletBoys....yet my vibe so far isnt even in that universe....so I have a ways to go to get nearer the sound that I am after.
Just struggling to find the right drum track is like an endless thing. That in itself determines like 80% of the vibe
 
lastly, production is a HUGE subject...a lot of bland stuff can be made to sound epic and a lot of good songs can sound sucky all due to production. So in addition to singing, writing, and playing the instruments, when you hear one of my originals you are also hearing the production. It's a long uphill slog lol
So a song like this one, conceived, written, recorded, produced all in one day...it aint gonna be perfect lol

as a 22 yr old who looks 12, critiquing the work of a 48 yr old, u r fighting an uphill battle lol. (you'll understand that when you r twice as old as u r now)
that being said, any and all feedback is what it is...one should take it for what it's worth. Even if its framed in a douchey way, there may still be some truth to it lol
 
Im sort of at the point in my singing and songwriting where I like about 30% of what I am putting out. In other words I have a lonnnngggg way to go before I really impress MYSELF. So I am not too surprised that others arent too impressed either.
If u take it that I like the singing of Lenny Wolf, Robert Plant, C Cornell, L Staley then u can see I have a ways to go.
And musically I love stuff like old vanHalen, Blue Murder, BulletBoys....yet my vibe so far isnt even in that universe....so I have a ways to go to get nearer the sound that I am after.
Just struggling to find the right drum track is like an endless thing. That in itself determines like 80% of the vibe
 
lastly, production is a HUGE subject...a lot of bland stuff can be made to sound epic and a lot of good songs can sound sucky all due to production. So in addition to singing, writing, and playing the instruments, when you hear one of my originals you are also hearing the production. It's a long uphill slog lol
So a song like this one, conceived, written, recorded, produced all in one day...it aint gonna be perfect lol

btw, on the verse was going for Coverdale again lol...hard to get his style down. I did learn some stuff on this one though about being close or farther from the mic. Getting right up on the mic helped on some parts

I like it. You have a pretty good start. I would not worry about the lyrics being bland, my wife listens to a song where the ONLY lyrics are "Go on and Holler" "Let me here you Holler" "Holler" "Holler" " "Let me hear you Holler".   I hate that song.
    On those parts where you are starting to get higher in the song, you may be loosing the key center. Use your guitar and play the melody over the chords and see if you need to maybe sing a higher or lower note here and there to stay in key with the background music.
     I have to do this sometimes to help find the correct singing note.
     Love the guitar work.

Im all about dat bass, bout dat bass, no treble.
 
yeah, im just not up to that level yet

Another 1 day wonder.
not 100% finished...needs bass gtr and some ad libs such as in the intro chorus
 
fun stuff    https://clyp.it/ccf4wf40

that was back when albums had that certain quality....lets see, what was it called? Been so long I cant remember....uhmm...oh yeah! HUMAN!

that was back when albums had that certain quality....lets see, what was it called? Been so long I cant remember....uhmm...oh yeah! HUMAN!

The thing is, I don't even know what do you understand by edginess. An edgy voice to me could be Daniel Heimann, Jens, Rob Halford, Geoff Tate... they all have some really cool, powerful, metallic high range when they choose to. The metal bite and attitude \m/ hahah

I think quack or twang is caused by the air flow "spitting" through the folds. The harmonics it produces still have to be guided to your resonance centres to be amplified, and the more relaxed you vocal tract, the more it can shape as a wave guide.
Yep. Finding where the resonance feedback is will help you tune your vocal tract to best guide the sound.
And these Eureka moments are the best! They really bring out the researcher in me. Your vocal instrument is like a whole laboratory that you carry around with you, with the keys at you fingertips....yes.. the keys...

for me its the opposite. What I am feeling as "quack" (really mega duck sounding) is related more to a choking/squeezing feeling where I was using twang to try to squeeze out a note higher and higher but it just gets too tight and thats that. Its the feeling I get when near the top of my headvoice.
 
Today at work I had a pretty solid breakthrough related to hitting higher notes and connecting better etc to do with feeling the connection and resonance more in the soft palate as opposed to just trying to squeeze harder and harder. I got a great feeling of squeezing the gut and having a good hard connection of air pressure all the way from the diaphragm up to the soft palate....and was picturing the sound coming off and bouncing forward off of the soft palate. That really helped me to avoid squeezing/choking when trying to get higher notes.
All in all in the last 3 days or so my whole level of singing technique has taken huge steps. Its pretty exciting. Now I need to do some study to be able to identify exactly WHAT I am doing lol

Im going to keep this here. A list of high notes in songs.
 
C5
Rainbow L.A. Connection (verse notes)
Queen Play the game
ACDC Kicked in the Teeth, Riff Raff
Boston Party
Cult American Horse, (a couple brief c5 notes, mostly chorus is G4,A4)
CCR have you seen the rain
B4
Journey Don't Stop Believing
Nillson Without You
U2 Pride
Soundgarden Rusty Cage
Rainbow Cant let you go
Led Zep Lemon Song
Soundgarden Gasoline
AIC rooster
IronMaiden Trooper
Cult Sweet Soul Asylum, Pheonix, Automatic Blues,
ACDC Shook me all night long
Bb4
Chevelle Face to the Floor
AIC Man in the Box, Love Hate Love
Seal Kiss from a rose
Cult Sweet Soul Sister, Big City,
A4
Pantera Cemetary Gates
Dio Last in Line
AIC Rain when i die
Cult Rain, Fire Woman, Edie,
STP Sex type thing. Piece of Pie, Where the river goes
CCR Spell on you, Travelin' Band
ZZ Top  Need you tonight
G#4
Layne Staley Junkhead demo, confusion, I stay away, sunshine
Cult White
G4
STP Dead and Bloated, Plush,Sin,
 

for me its the opposite. What I am feeling as "quack" (really mega duck sounding) is related more to a choking/squeezing feeling where I was using twang to try to squeeze out a note higher and higher but it just gets too tight and thats that. Its the feeling I get when near the top of my headvoice.
 
Today at work I had a pretty solid breakthrough related to hitting higher notes and connecting better etc to do with feeling the connection and resonance more in the soft palate as opposed to just trying to squeeze harder and harder. I got a great feeling of squeezing the gut and having a good hard connection of air pressure all the way from the diaphragm up to the soft palate....and was picturing the sound coming off and bouncing forward off of the soft palate. That really helped me to avoid squeezing/choking when trying to get higher notes.
All in all in the last 3 days or so my whole level of singing technique has taken huge steps. Its pretty exciting. Now I need to do some study to be able to identify exactly WHAT I am doing lol

Jon, to really do a song right, you have to get a sheet of lyrics and pick each word apart and see the vowel(s) in each word like I had shown in "Ready for love."
You sing on the vowels, because vowels enable breath flow, where consonants inhibit breath flow and or close down the throat.
The notes you admire are tuned vowels ......
The vowel changes with the pitch.  The higher the notes, the more you have to be concerned with vowel choices.
Pronunciation and intelligibility erodes as you sing higher...

Sirens? Sub-Glottal Pressure? Good training ethics... Hmm, you must have a good training program. 
Hope all is going well for you Jon... don't be a stranger, feel free to reach out if you like.
Coach

Well, the inner producer in me could go a little mad playing with these sirens lol
https://clyp.it/0zauxbs0

This is hugely important, because our voices and bodies are all very different. I learnt from an early age ( 15-16 yo ) to hold back the air from my "inhalation muscles". I used to breath low and keep the breath inside with an open glottis, just by the vacuum of the lungs and idk what specific muscles, really, lol, so my body got used to decrease sub-glottal pressure.
I didn't have much air pressure when talking or singing, and due to bad understanding of vocal instruction I started relaxing and releasing too much on my vocal muscles. So those two factors made my voice lose a lot of strength over the years. I sang very airy and soft.
That was until the second half of 2013 when I started reading stuff here and figured out I needed pressure to sing. Soon I found my high range, and also learnt how to engage the chest voice more.

I figured out that, as my body naturally builds little pressure on my torso and respiratory tract, I need to actively think of expelling air and actually using a good deal of energy to build pressure and sing louder. Some people my not need that. Some might need to hold back on the exhalation for the pressure to be balanced.
 

Yes, you were bridging, and fairly well and it was great, the second link where you do descending sirens for two octaves, except for the last, which was three octaves, even cooler. (more cool? cool-ier? pesky English, and I was born in America.)
And certainly those make for good transitions and provide some coordination. In my humble opinion, what should be important to notice is the sense of support or of holding  back. Granted, when some singers talk about not needing this or understanding it, it is because they had it naturally all along. Others have to learn it or, more specifically, unlearn something they picked up in learning language and dialect where they live. And that includes americans, having several distinct accents and accents within accents. For example, a southern accent depends on what part of the South someone is from. Someone from Georgia sounds different than someone from Texas. Telling either person to sing "ah" without understanding the local accent could result in a longer training session or one that is not as  productive.
Another thing to do is work on a song that is in the middle of that range, around the transition or bridging point. I don't know if you are ready or what your teacher says, I only know what I do. Part of the reason I can sing any song by Boston when I want to is not just having a high centered voice but it is because I practice singing songs by Boston with the idea in my mind that it should sound free and easy, just like Brad Delp did it. ("Cause in my mind, deep in my mind, I can't forget about you, no ...good times, places that remind me, yeah...got to keep on chasing my dreams or I may never find them, I never look behind me....Taking my time I'm just moving along. You'll forget about me after I've been gone. I take what I find, I don't want no more. It's just outside of your front door. I said hell yeah, It's been such a long time, It's been such a long time."
That involves learning to not push the folds to hard so that they last longer in a day or a singing session. And, for me, that involved learning to manage the breath to take the strain off the folds. Others may not have needed to learn that but I did. We are all individuals.
And you don't have to pick a song quite that high. The end part of "Stairway to Heaven" ends on an A4. Plant was more concerned with tone than the highest note ever emitted by a human and he has sang higher than that song.
So, I am not wanting to interrupt whatever work flow you have. Just that, at some point, the training exercises should somehow translate into singing a song. With relative ease and repeatability.

Also, pay attention to what Xam is doing. He is not pushing the folds. He is controlling the exhalation so that the folds can do the work more easily and any volume he is getting (no mic in close proximity) is from resonance.

I see!  Well, what helps me sing lighter in the high range and keep the voice more nimble and agile in that range is, first, back off the volume ( I've gotten used to use full volume because that's how I've been training, for strength ), but keep the pressure feeling on my throat, and think of a more cartoonish voice. A loose, released cartoonish voice, like Disney characters.

An interesting feeling to play with is like when you hold the air to take a dive, BUT did you know you can go up in pitch in that configuration?  It's like sirening up silently. You feel the larynx tilt when the folds stretch and everything. Then from there make a sound.
To me it's hard to keep the closure as I go up in note, my glottis kind of "relaxes" and I have to concentrate a lot on keeping the feeling of pressure. Then playing around for a couple of minutes like that, making connected headvoice is a lot easier.
From there, try to add a bit more volume, and more volume until the configuration feels stable enough and loud enough to sing whatever you want.
 

That's cool then, because when you try that better warmed up youll find a lot more ease and stability.

As an experiment, try to think of falsetto when doing the B4+ range, even more so on the C5-D5, but keep the intensity of the "yell" coordination at G4-A4. It may help you release a bit of weight and let the voice release more. Your chestvoice is very strong, so it will keep the stability of the coordination anyway.

Also, by the way you are connected in B4-C5, when you are actually well warmed up, you will most likely be able to just slide up to D5-E5 using the same coordination you are using at C5, actually it's not that difficult, because the connection is already there.
Also I feel a second "lightening of mass" around A#4-B4, so I feel the C5 a bit lighter than those two notes, and also a change in resonance ( it feels more deep on the back of my throat and pharyngeal ), but if I keep the energy going it just works itself out. Walk through there very slowly so you get to know what is happening and what is moving, and memorize the motions.

You seem to have a lot stronger chestvoice than me, so that may be why your second bridge point is clearer and higher, but there definitely is another "transit zone" to skill the way through so don't panic haha
Now even it that area is shaky, you should still be able to go up and up if you release more weight. I personally feel like it's just like the back of my throat/folds doing the job when doing lighter phonation stuff, and also the resonance feels a lot more pharyngeal.

 
This is the sound difference in my voice, btw, of the lighter approach on the high range versus the more intense one:

Light and "easy"( less energy required ):
 
 




And the same range but with more intensity, trying to carry more weight up ( more demanding energy-wise ) :

In here the thing I do from 1:14 and then at 1:41
 



And here you can listen how the quality of my D#5 is more pharyngeal or "higher in placement" than my A#4 or even the brief C#5's. 
 


So, try to pay attention to how the feeling of the "air pillow" inside your throat changes depending on which note you are and in which intensity, because as you probably can notice, this "placement" changes depending on the intensity and TA activity involved in the phonation.

 I suggest working at least for a week or two, only on medium intensity as it will be easier to pass through the transitions. Your voice is already quite strong, more than mine, lol, so strength is not the issue here, at all. Focus on the coordinations for now, memorize the motions and the formant shifting.

Another point is that ( also relevant to the warm up thread ), I have a hypothesis that if you haven't warmed up all the muscular groups that work on low, mid and high range in the voice, in different intensities and vowels, then most likely one group will limit your voice capacity. Meaning that probably your TA won't be able to handle the pressure on the higher range, or the CT wont have the strength to stretch the folds and handle the tension the TA is doing, so to me personally warming up is very relevant when singing in the higher range, and in my voice, I dare say... mandatory. lol