Draven Grey

We've been telling him that since his first post. I think he simply wants validation for not being able to sing well. I know that sounds harsh, but you can only give the same answer to someone so many times before realizing they're not actually wanting to hear a real answer.

Go for the lite version on Udemy for much cheaper. Here's a link from the footer of this forum: https://www.udemy.com/become-a-great-singer-your-complete-vocal-training-system/?couponCode=TMV_WORLD_DEAL

If you don't get the vowels out of your throat and into your soft palate, you will constantly struggle with pitch, constriction, and yelling instead of singing. Again, are you training with a teacher or program like Four Pillars of Singing?

I can tell you were trying to use cry vocal mode with good resonance support! Still too much push and constriction, but it can take a while to get used to singing from the soft palate rather than the throatiness we experience in speech. One big issue is your diphthongs. Anything time a word changes between two vowel sounds, it throws your placement off, causing a very unique accent and a lot of singing from your throat rather than your soft palate. For example, words like "dark" were sang as /d/ah/oo/r/k/, when it would be better sang as /d/ah/k/, with perhaps 5% of an /oo/r/ if you absolutely need it. The idea is keeping the resonance in the soft palate and then out from there, only out from there. However, that's only one of a host of issues you're dealing with. Are you currently training with a teacher or program like The Four Pillars of Singing?

Since I'm already here for giving paid reviews, I thought I would go ahead and take a moment to review yours as well. Great character and stylization! One great thing about getting over a cold is that, if you have a voice, it forces you to sing more correctly. The lower/neutral larynx position you're using will hold you back once you get into higher pitches. It gives you a great sound color for this song though. I highly suggest a bit more breath support and volume (just a bit), and then try learning to sing more from a cry vocal mode - the same feeling you get in the soft palate when you cry or are really excited to see someone. Cry will soften and round out your voice to where you can get a similar sound color to what you're using the neutral larynx for, but also have a lot more control and flexibility because of being able to utilize much more breath support. It also neurologically places your body into a position it associates with extreme emotion, which can cause a much more emotional performance. Additionally, it adds very specific sounds colors to your voice that other people associate with extreme emotion. It can take some getting used to, but once you learn it, you'll hear just about every pro singer using it.

You're too twangy with vocals compression here, when you need a bit more mass in the vocal folds. Go back to my other Journey song review and practice the /w/ onset I talked about there. Another possibility is that you're relying on twangy compression because you don't have the musculature built up for good mass. Sometimes that can happen from E4 to A4. Resistance onsets can help you build that musculature. Dampen & Release, Attack & Release, and Contract & Release (in moderation), will all help build a bit more bulk in your voice. Are you training The Four Pillars of Singing or with TVS material?

A lot of what I mentioned in the Journey review applies here as well. However, I want to specifically address your distortion in this song. What you're doing sounds throaty and compressed. On higher pitches, that type of distortion can be very harsh both in sound and wear and tear on the vocal tract. If you're in The Four Pillars of Singing, I suggest you work more with the lesson on decompressed overlay distortion. Otherwise, or perhaps in addition to, instead of squeezing that distortion out, try to bleed the glottis. That means allowing more air through without all the extra hyper vocal twang compression. One way to help develop that is, while still trying to keep the voice lifted to the soft palate, and still utilizing cry vocal mode as described in my Journey review for you, try alternating between a spoken smoker's voice and singing clean at pitch above your bridge. At some point, while alternating back and forth, you'll feel like you can combined the two. Then, instead of squeezing for distortion and getting a throaty sound, it will feel like you're simply using more air than you need to and thereby activating the false cords for distortion. If it hits your throat, you need to lift more, and move towards /ae/ sound colors. Again, this is similar to what I described in the Journey song review. If the distortion still feels like it's hitting your throat, rather than above the throat, spend more time trying to raise pulse/fry up in pitch, where it sits on top of the throat, rather than in it. That area is a good placement for distortion, especially if a lot of the vibration is then transferred to the soft palate.

Your pitch is good when you're relaxed. The higher in pitch you went, the more tense you got, to the point of almost yelling, rather than singing. Your vowels are too narrow in your upper range to resonate well. There are two main things I recommend for this. First, try to get into cry mode. It's the same feeling in the soft palate as if you're crying or really excited to see someone. Whimper there a bit, to get a solid feel for it. Them try to isolate your upper pitches with that cry. It will also soften your your voice a bit in your lower range. Since higher pitches want to pull deeper into the soft palate, cry will help thin out the glottis better and help pull the voice into a deeper placement, so less pressure is required to sing those pitches. Also, once into higher pitches, you may need to add a bit more /ae/ (he vowel sound color of words like ash, cat, hat, etc) in order to keep a consistent sound color across your range. Second, place much more emphasis on everything supporting good resonance. One great way to do this is using a /w/ as your onset. If you're using good horizontal embouchure (smile/sneer), it will help lift your voice to the soft palate. If you sing from that lifted placement with a /w/ + /oh/, it gives you both good support and a defined feeling for good resonance. Once you feel that resonant energy on the front of your soft palate, towards the hard palate, or towards your nasal cavities, try to place all of your vowels and consonants in a way that supports that resonance. Singing is all about supporting that resonance, and the sound only moving outward from there.

With everything turned all the way up in my studio, I can t still only barely hear it, as if I have everything turned all the way down. Can you upload a new one that is louder?

You can exhale with much the same muscle structure, it just takes time to build the coordination. For building whistle register on an exhale, it can help to take a full breath, then hold that breath in and "float." Once there, slowly release the air, as if you're trying to hold back as much as you can. This will initially result in vocal fry, but controlled well, can turn into squeaking out pitches. Over time, that squeaking can be brought under control and turned into specific pitches. You need to be focused on building light and very relaxed closed quotient. Remember, you are whistling from your glottis, not pushing it out. The moment you feel a lot of squeezing, you are trying too hard. One onset that can help you train into this type of compression, besides controlled pulse/fry, is what's described in The Four Pillars of Singing as Quack & Release. If you're not part of a TVS course that describes it, then here's one version of it:

I don't mean muscle memory when talking about getting the pitch in your head. Singing in pitch is first an aural skill, not even a hearing skill as much as a listening skill. However, when I mention muscle memory at the end of what I wrote, I'm talking about the particular interval jump mentioned, G to E. You can train the muscle position of specific pitches with a generalized/neutral sound color as well. In my post, I was talking about both, first learning to hear the dissonance of the interval, and after getting that stuck in your head, practicing that part of the song over and over to learn the feeling of it as an automatic response. As for the jump. Moving across one of the bridges, I would agree that the muscle positions change quite a bit for a jump like that. I would add that I've also seen the same issue much lower in the chest register, where the muscle changes aren't nearly as extreme. I would also add that, while I used to think difficulty on a 6th had to do with a quick muscle position change, that idea hasn't held true for a 5th or 7th. Only the 6th seems to be the difficult interval time and time again.

I agree with MDEW that you need to be practicing with something playing back that interval to get it stuck in your head. I would add, as a teacher, I've seen with 8 out of 10 students that a 6th interval is incredibly difficult to sing. I don't know exactly why. At first, I thought it had to do with bridging properly, which is something you want to check, since usually using a 6th in a melody involves crossing your passaggio. However, since it doesn't always do that, and yet still seems to be a problem interval for most students, it's possible that it simply has to do with the dissonance of it at such a large jump in pitch. If that is the case, and this is what has helped my students, then you need the repetition to get the muscle memory and get the interval stuck in your head.

Untrained and comfortable for most men? I would keep the high note under middle-C. Most men's bridge into head voice is around E4, so it can help to stay below that by a couple of notes. However, most men will adjust their voice an octave lower automatically, if your singing too high for them when leading them in song. And since you're asking about women too, know that A woman's bridge is around and A4. Speaking from experience: I led people in song for many many years, and everyone seemed comfortable when I primarily kept my melody range from G3 to G4.

Every vocal group "live performance" televised during that time period was pre-recorded and then lip-synced when they didn't have close mics, and even many times when they did. It was common practice, especially the shows the 5th Dimension were on, like Soul Train. It may not be the original/album performance. Most record-label artists record multiple versions of each song to use for different purposes. That said, if she were singing live, which she's not in that video, the mouth position you're seeing is called embouchure. Horizontal embouchure helps lift the voice to the soft palate better. Vertical embouchure can be narrowed for holding more curbing resonance and expanded for more edging resonance and/or projection (e.g. creating a megaphone like projection effect with the mouth shape). In this video, she over-exaggerates her vertical embouchure. Since it's not creating the horrible super-edging acoustics, splatted vowels, and/or extreme pushing and tension that doing such a thing creates when singing with her particular resonant placement, that alone is enough for me to believe it's not live. Being a recording and sound engineer for decades, and knowing exactly how they filmed "live performances" like this one in the mid 70's, gives me plenty of other reasons too.

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