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Draven Grey

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Everything posted by Draven Grey

  1. To add to the confusion from the variety of answers: Everyone is right in this thread. Your vocal coach has a particular methodology they are teaching you, so we can't speak to how long it will take using that methodology. But you should be playing and experimenting with your voice and having fun regardless. But if you do play around and experiment with your voice, like Sir suggested, make sure you're staying within the guidelines of a trained professional or you can seriously mess up your voice (either through injury, or simply building bad habits). It is like a workout, for sure, so it can take time. However, everyone is different in the amount of time it takes because we all have slightly different physiology and genetics to work within. It's also very dependent on what exercises you're being given. 3 months with the exercises Robert Lunte or I would give you, and I would expect a certain level of results far beyond what you described. However, I also don't actually know where you started, what exercises you are doing, or what you're doing now in comparison to where you started. So for me to expect you to be further along is a bit presumptuous. Also, you can't learn much about singing from YouTube, beyond some very basics that still aren't personally guiding you, and want to take advice people with no training with a grain of salt (healthy amount of skepticism). Lastly, If you're unhappy with your teacher, keep looking for another one. Alternately, look up videos, like Robert Lunte's or mine, and ask your teacher about the techniques that seem to help you from those videos.
  2. The longer this thread gets, the more I'm reminded of this video, which I think applies well to conspiracy theories in general:
  3. This simply isn't true. A good conspiracy story, but incredibly far from reality. None of what you wrote is true. And the 32nd Degree Masons I know? My Father is one (along with other family members). He and I have a lot of talks about it too. They do a lot of great work in the community, and truly help each other out too, especially when it comes to living with virtue and integrity.
  4. Impossible? Humans can't do this?I have a couple of students who sing clean with two distinct tones at once in certain ranges. Also, the grit he uses IS two separate modulations at once. What do the Freemasons have to do with it? Masons are very open about being Masons. Their "secrets" are not very secret at all. In fact, their teachings are all about becoming a better person and helping the world around you become better as well. Do you know any Masons? I know quite a few, have been invited, and have had a lot of family who were Masons, even up to the 32nd degree. Nothing to see there but a lot of men getting together to try and help each other grow personally. As for LP using masonic symbology, why not? Playing into conspiracies is well known to be a great way to attract more attention and make more sells. Subconsciously or not, you did exactly that when you made this post and on Reddit too. It adds a sense of mystery and grandeur.
  5. Extra air support can cause the Bernoulli Effect (think of the concept of "lift" on airplane wings), creating a vacuum in the vocal tract, therefore causing more narrowing and compression which could allow you to "hit" those notes. You were, essentially, forcing a head voice note with a lot of compression, support, and involuntary TA muscle contraction. It's also a way to "hit" those higher notes that is straining and puts you at risk of pulling, tearing, or otherwise injuring things in your vocal tract. You can train to sing those notes instead of "hit" them. Singing involves learning to relax and coordinate, control, and strengthen the musculature needed to sing in that range with different sound colors. Do you currently train, or are you self-taught?
  6. A man cannot fully engage the chest voice muscles past A4 (secondary bridge) without a lot of strain (usually D5 for women), but you can mix in the chest voice (TA) muscles for a thicker and more chesty sound color while singing in head voice. I've said that in our conversations before too. Head voice is a range, chest voice is also a range, falsetto is a mode, bridging is a way to smoothly sing between chest and head voice without a break by slowly passing off dominance from one muscle group to another (for men, that pass off can happen anywhere between G3 to A4, and the TA muscles can be used for sound color all the way up to an A#5). I also defined what TA musculature is several times in that previous conversation, but I don't mind answering again and more fully. Thyroid Arytnoid (TA) muscles are the main musculature around your vocal cords, also known as your chest voice musculature. When contracted, they thicken the closed quotient of the vocal cords, causing more friction, and a thicker, more chesty sound color. They are also the main musculature used in your chest voice range.
  7. Twangy head voice is not chest voice. Pulling chest won't go nearly that high, and in fact only a few notes above the bridge at best. He's barely even bothering to mix resonance (head voice with the TA muscles contracted a bit for a chesty sound color) on the high notes. He's simply using a lot of vocal twang in head voice on a high pitch. He could add in TA musculature contraction for a weightier and thicker sound, if he wanted. But he's barely doing so, and much more focused on twang compression. Think of those high pitches as twangy head voice, with just a tad of TA muscle contraction, if any. Up to the A4 (e.g. 1:23 "Day"), he's well mixed, using a bit of sob on the higher pitches, bridging and connecting very well.. In the prechorus, "you" and "me" are in reinforced falsetto. In the chorus, he sings in reinforced falsetto (resonant head voice, but light-mass) for the alternate stanzas. And then at the end of the chorus, he sings "I believe in a thing called love" with a lot of vocal twang in head voice, possibly with slight TA engagement. I can sing those notes with a little TA or simply twang and get almost the same sound color. If I were coaching him in it, I would have him lean more into head voice or reinforced falsetto with a lot of twang, so he could be much more relaxed than when having the TA muscle contracted. There's not much need to purposefully contract the TA muscles in that range. Thus it's not a "full voice" either. Nothing was said about him being a natural singer. Let's rephrase what axd218 said: It's physically impossible to have the TA muscles fully engaged that high, and thus he's in no way in "full chest voice" or pulling chest. For a man, the TA musculature has to begin tapering off from the A4 and up. For most men, even G4 is a strain on the TA musculature if fully engaged.
  8. I suffer from the same, but without smoking. It won't hurt you. However, it will sometimes make your vocal folds a bit swollen. Here's what I do:
  9. I deal with pretty bad allegories myself. Besides an anti-hystimine (like Zyrtec, Allegra, etc) that's not too drying, here's what I recommend:
  10. Medical Studies show that taking Testosterone does not noticeably affect the voice after puberty, but there are plenty of horrible negative side effects besides that. Hormonal supplements should only be taken under the advice and monitoring of a medical professional. And taking hormones is rarely the answer for the results you're wanting without there first being a tested and known deficiency. As for you thinking that being a baritone is what's limiting your vocal range, we have told you many times, you need to train. Take lessons with a teacher that knows how to get you where you want to go with your voice. It's completely ridiculous, ignorant, and totally unnecessary for you to continue to be defeatist about a limited voice range, magically caused by being a baritone, and not be doing something about it that has been advised multiple times by singing professionals and many others who have overcome similar limitations.
  11. @zijin_cheng I recommend Reaper over Audacity. You can use their fully capable demo indefinitely, until you're ready to purchase, and even then, they're still relatively inexpensive. Their plugins aren't as visual as other software, but that also make you learn each one better.
  12. Yes, but you don't necessarily want to. What you want to do is process the vocals to sit best in the mix with the music - giving it a more polished sound and somewhat recreating the feel of hearing it live at a concert. At a concert, the spacial harmonics play a big role in what we think we're hearing, which adds a lot of perceived layers, harmonics, lushness, and "sparkle" to the sound. In a recording, where we don't have the same type of social harmonics, we do that through EQ, layering, chorus, compression, reverb, delay, and more. Here's the first video in a great 3-part tutorial on mixing vocals. I encourage you to watch all 3 and start experimenting with it.
  13. That's not what I meant. Dry vocals rarely sound great. Closer to the mic, you'll get a more true sound to the mic you're using. Further away gives you more room sound, which are not controllable in a mix. In most situations, especially when the room isn't treated to have no reflections and absorb bass frequencies, it's better to sing closer to the mic and then EQ, compress, and add reverb to your taste. I personally prefer compressing the EQ and compressor happening before the interface into the computer, but most people don't have that option. Fooled because your ears easily get fatigued and you start hearing things incorrectly, including hearing things that might not even be there because of how acoustics,, harmonics, and human perception work. When mixing, I take a 10 minute break every 15 minutes. Les often than that and I start having to correct things in the mix later that I didn't even know I was doing. These days, I consult on mixes and put my energy into mastering instead. For mastering, I take a 10 minute break every 10 minutes. I also have absolutely incredible studio monitors, where you can hear every little thing with crystal clarity, and yet still have to take those breaks to keep hearing it all correctly. I've been through that course too. Perhaps it's because I had already been through Golden Ears, but I found Sound Gym to be unnecessarily playful, which seemed to slow down the process of learning, and also not as in depth as Golden Ears. Golden Ears, by contrast and perhaps to its detriment, feels like a college-level exam.
  14. @ReiKoko Beautiful song. Good choice. I think your voice would open a quite a lot with training. The issue is that you're currently singing from a speech position, which is keeping your from resonating well. Your pitch is on, but your resonance is not. Speech vowels and singing vowels are in very different locations. Speech vowels and words tend to start in the throat and the add sound colors from there and up (bottom up), where as singing is top down. It's essentially like learning a whole new accent, perhaps even a new language. Knowing how to resonant in the soft palate and out from there will definitely smooth out your voice, and bring out your true singing voice. For instance, the part where you sing... ...Your lower notes are dampening/dropping your larynx and completely changing your sound color. It can't be helped when you're in speech mode. However, place a finger on your bottom lip and sing "up and over" that finger, trying to place your vowel resonance in the front of your soft palate, rather than in your throat. The difference should be apparent immediately. I highly encourage you to check out The Four Pillars of Singing. It's by far the best singing course out there, and an amazing deal too.
  15. For training your voice, you can't beat the course linked to at the bottom of this page, The Four Pillars of Singing. No app is going to give you a solid training course too, beyond the very basics. And no course is going to beat training with a vocal coach who knows how to get you the results you want. And I would add, there's no other course out there that beats The Four Pillars of Singing (I don't get paid to say that, and I have plenty of critique for most of the popular courses out there, most of which I've taken). I recommend checking out that course, and possibly getting an app like Smule's Sing Karaoke app. That app shows you your pitch as you sing, and has a great community behind it. I often recommend it to help my students overcome stage fright. And if you're looking to train in pitch specifically, I highly recommend Holistic Songwriting's 30-day Ear Training course on pitch.
  16. I mentioned one... Golden Ears Audio Eartraining. It teaches your ear to hear EQ, effects, compressions, etc., at an unbelievable level of clarity. On top of Golden Ears Audio Eartraining helping you actually hear what you need to, in order to know what effects and order to use, any YouTube tutorial from a trusted source about the vocal effects chain will do.
  17. Proximity effect changes a lot of things in the sound. Closer to the mic means more bass in the voice. Further away thins it out, but adds more room ambience. Hang up quilted packing blankets to deaden the room when recording. I used to own a mobile recording studio, and that worked wonders for the sound. Also, learn to EQ properly. And remember, you can't EQ what's not there, so the mic definitely matters too. MXL mics are pretty bright and a bit on the cheap sounding side of things, but with some good EQ, the V67G is completely usable. Here's the best cheat sheet I've ever found for EQing. Training, such as Golden Ears Audio Eartraining would do you better, but you can still get quite a bit from using the info in this cheat sheet. Magic Frequencies.pdf
  18. While I don't currently have time to do a full review, I do like your voice. However, I'm really curious as to why you dropped the key? Are you training to be able to sing that high? Because simply not being a high tenor doesn't mean a lot when it comes to training. You can train to be a soprano and beyond if you want. I'm naturally a baritone, and sing with my soprano students all the time. Vocal categorization like that is to help people give you pre-written part for a musical, opera, or choir. When singing contemporary, it's more about range. And upper range can be trained and extended much higher than more people realize. Like I said, I'm a baritone naturally, but normally sing up to C5; up to C6 with a few students; and I'm working on E6 to G6 right now.
  19. You could be. And if you're serious about learning to sing, especially with your stated concerns and limitations, you need guided training. At the very least, check out The Four Pillars of Singing, linked to at the bottom of this forum.
  20. It depends on what you're doing. And even then, it's unusual for you to overuse your voice. With good technique from guided training, it's not something to worry about until you're tired and worn out from touring and performing night after night for months at a time. I teach up to 7 hours a day, and have been for years. Robert teaches 11 hours in a day sometimes, and has for decades. Both of us sing with our students. The top ENT surgeon in Denver seems to think my vocal tract is perfectly healthy. I've also performed professionally for decades, even when I pushed and strained, before learning how to sing with good technique. In other words. Find a teacher who knows how to get you where you want to be, and then train. Then, don't worry about it.
  21. Awesome! That's called bridging early and pulling chest, respectively. When you learn how to properly bridge and connect your voice, you can easily extend your bridging to a large range of notes.
  22. After my last cover being an older R&B style, I thought I would go for a heavier rock this time. At the suggestion of friends, I chose Devy Metal. I'm very comfortable with the style normally, but I'm definitely not used to using so much grit. I usually only use grit as an occasional effect. Also, singing the F4 and G4 with a solid grit can be extremely difficult. Up to E4, no problem. A4 and above, no problem. F and G, ugh. The moment you do it wrong once, it's extremely easy to start pushing and grinding. With my students and friends, that range in grit has it's own name, "F'n G." You can get used to it with practice, but it takes time - and I didn't practice this song for very long. I tried to do a second take of the whole song, and immediately hit my throat when doing grit. Everything went downhill from there. So, what you see in this video is another single take with two camera angles. I did overdub two small parts, but only because I said a couple of words wrong since, apparently, I didn't fully know the lyrics yet. The other guy in the video, Charlie Munro, I found at random when trying to find an instrumental for the song. The only instrumental I found, he had done all the music for and uploaded to SoundCloud. I asked him if I could use it, and the next thing I know, we're doing a video together. Cool guy, great studio engineer and guitarist. All in all, it was a lot of fun, and a cool challenge to take on. I'm working with Robert on a couple of online courses specifically for grit and screaming, so I figured, "why not go all out?" I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about grit and screaming.
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