Peaceful Easy Feeling-Practice

[MDEW]

    This was a contribution to the "Legends Lost" thread.  Glenn Fry passed earlier this year.

I found an old microphone while searching through my things and thought I would try it out. I am not sure how I ended up with it. It turns out that this is an Electrovoice 635A. An interview microphone used by reporters and such. I was using a Shure PE50 super pro(sm57 and sm58 were based on this) and I am not sure if the vocal improvement is from the Microphone or if Lessons are starting to pay off. Anyway I can tell a difference in the sound from this effort and songs recorded a week ago.

  Any comments welcome good or bad......improvement is the goal. I am aware of the harmony being flat in the final verse. It was getting late and time to stop. Still a major improvement from other efforts.

 

[JonJon]

sounds like you are inadvertently setting up a Hemholtz resonator in your laryngopharynx possibly due to excess tension in the superior belly of the omohyoid. I had to quit singing in turtlenecks because of that very issue.

 

hehe. seriously though, it was pretty euphonic

[MDEW]

49 minutes ago, JonJon said:

sounds like you are inadvertently setting up a Hemholtz resonator in your laryngopharynx possibly due to excess tension in the superior belly of the omohyoid. I had to quit singing in turtlenecks because of that very issue.

 

hehe. seriously though, it was pretty euphonic

I am most likely doing that on purpose because these things that are supposed to happen naturally do not happen with my voice. Create a tone or ring or ping whatever...... tune the space of air to the note required. The frequency of the lower chamber of the pharynx to one partial, the Sound created by the friction of the vocal folds(Metal in the voice) to another resonance area.

Too much thought going into it?   You betcha........ The idea of just singing and having everything sound good was destroyed long ago in my youth. And "Having to look for answers" was probably more harm than it ever was good, but it is what it is.

 

[JonJon]

3 hours ago, MDEW said:

I am most likely doing that on purpose because these things that are supposed to happen naturally do not happen with my voice. Create a tone or ring or ping whatever...... tune the space of air to the note required. The frequency of the lower chamber of the pharynx to one partial, the Sound created by the friction of the vocal folds(Metal in the voice) to another resonance area.

Too much thought going into it?   You betcha........ The idea of just singing and having everything sound good was destroyed long ago in my youth. And "Having to look for answers" was probably more harm than it ever was good, but it is what it is.

 

hehe

I hope you knew I was being totally facetious

 

I personally think that if you want to go from a certain sound to a significantly different sound, that it might be good to sort of "overshoot" to start with....just to free up your mind a bit to new perspectives etc. You can get so far painted into a corner that you make a move towards the center of the room and you think youve reeeeaaaaaalllllyyy made a change....yet you really only went a few inches.

 

You ever play golf? Well there is a more or less "ideal" path for the downswing. Some people call it "the plane" or "the slot". Well of course it has a lot to do with perspective. One's perspective gets skewed over time. A better golfer tends to try to stay a bit "inside" the plane coming down. In other words the club and his arms are really hugged close to the body. The weekend hacker on the other hand is almost always "outside" as he swing down towards the ball and he hits weak popups and/or slices.

So I went thru a phase where i was so worried about being "outside" that I had gotten WAY too far inside lol. I went out one day and was playing terrible. My answer of course was to try to get even FURTHER inside lol.  Finally my buddy says "dude, your swing looks weird...the club is about to hit your ankle" lol.    So I figured out that I had gotten too far inside.

So I got to a nice long par 4. I pull out the driver and I say "okay, im not going to get the arms stuck way inside, im going to keep them out a bit more in front of me." So I did a few practice swings and I was so used to being way inside, that the swings felt weird. They felt WAY outside!!! But I went ahead and swung like that. CRACK!!! I hit the most beautiful long draw ive ever hit. Even when I played good I never started the ball out to the right like a lot of pros did. But this shot started out to the right and drew back beautifully into the fairway. So even though my current perspective told me I had shifted the practice swings way outside, the shot itself proved I was actually STILL a tiny bit inside since the ball started off to the right.

 

We got people at work...they talk soooooo quiet. Then they try to read something out in the morning meeting and no one can hear them. So we yell "SPEAK UP!!!". The person clears their throat and THINKS they are really speaking up loud but the 2nd try is no louder than the first lol. They probably think they were yelling.

 

So im not sure what sound you want to get, but sometimes its a matter of perspective. If you feel you are way off to one side or the other, sometimes you have to make a pretty big feeling shift to even get back to neutral.

[ronws]

I did not hear pitchiness at the last. In fact, pitch was good all the way through and it sounds like you got the vowels behaving just right. I mean, sure, there is still a little accent and this was during the Eagles' "country" phase. And though Glen was from California, Don is from Texas and probably influenced him.

This is your best performance and best recording to date. Excellent job.

[MDEW]

1 hour ago, JonJon said:

hehe

I hope you knew I was being totally facetious

 

I was aware of that. Why else would a man who is so against "Terms" and "Technical jargon" say such a thing. There is usually some truth in jest. 

You read things like tune resonances and amplify harmonics, Add bite or twang on and on(I am not knocking it, That stuff helps) It is just that  having so many different frequencies and Types of sounds to follow can get confusing. Part of my problem was thinking that singing should be easy,Free and without effort. Proper breath management was supposed to take care of the fold closure and stuff like that. Roberts Program brought home the "Active" ingredients in singing.

In this song I was manipulating purposely. Very different from how I was before. The resulting sound may not be too different but the act of singing was.

 

[MDEW]

8 minutes ago, ronws said:

I did not hear pitchiness at the last. In fact, pitch was good all the way through and it sounds like you got the vowels behaving just right. I mean, sure, there is still a little accent and this was during the Eagles' "country" phase. And though Glen was from California, Don is from Texas and probably influenced him.

This is your best performance and best recording to date. Excellent job.

Thanks Ronws, I agree that this is the best so far, and why I mentioned the electrovoice Microphone. I tried a new approach to singing also and still not sure which one made the difference in sound the microphone or the actual voice...........But I am Keeping this Mic.

[JonJon]

1 hour ago, MDEW said:

I was aware of that. Why else would a man who is so against "Terms" and "Technical jargon" say such a thing. There is usually some truth in jest. 

 

well, its like my grandma always said.... we all need to be more aware of cross harmonic bleedoff due to unchecked retrograde tension fields forming in the mylohyoid membrane

[KillerKu]

This is great. I love the harmonies and the guitar melodies throughout. The lead vocal is probably your best yet. The accent is still there, but sounds less limiting on the voice.

[MDEW]

13 minutes ago, JonJon said:

well, its like my grandma always said.... we all need to be more aware of cross harmonic bleedoff due to unchecked retrograde tension fields forming in the mylohyoid membrane

Now that I would have questioned. But I was purposely creating a TONE in the pharynx which has similarities to "Blowing across a Bottle". A tone separate from the sound of the folds vibrating against each other.

[JonJon]

11 minutes ago, MDEW said:

Now that I would have questioned. But I was purposely creating a TONE in the pharynx which has similarities to "Blowing across a Bottle". A tone separate from the sound of the folds vibrating against each other.

100% coincidence that I mentioned laryngopharynx....then again I do have native american blood on both sides so it could be a case of unintended clairvoyance, or even a low level diffused spurion from the akashic records. Dunno.

[MDEW]

37 minutes ago, KillerKu said:

This is great. I love the harmonies and the guitar melodies throughout. The lead vocal is probably your best yet. The accent is still there, but sounds less limiting on the voice.

Thanks Killer

 

9 minutes ago, JonJon said:

100% coincidence that I mentioned laryngopharynx....then again I do have native american blood on both sides so it could be a case of unintended clairvoyance, or even a low level diffused spurion from the akashic records. Dunno.

My Grandmother had Cherokee blood. Maybe it was that Akashic thing. I tried searching through those records....... I cannot read akashic.  Besides, I usually fall asleep before I access them.

[JonJon]

24 minutes ago, MDEW said:

Thanks Killer

 

My Grandmother had Cherokee blood. Maybe it was that Akashic thing. I tried searching through those records....... I cannot read akashic.  Besides, I usually fall asleep before I access them.

lol

[Gneetapp]

Nice going MDEW! I think You did such a great job on this song! I don't think it was the new microphone my friend, but your improved technique that made a difference. I also liked the lead guitar doing the melodies. Keep'em coming

[MDEW]

   Thanks Gneetapp,  I still may need to change the Mic back to be sure.

[ronws]

17 hours ago, MDEW said:

Thanks Killer

 

My Grandmother had Cherokee blood. Maybe it was that Akashic thing. I tried searching through those records....... I cannot read akashic.  Besides, I usually fall asleep before I access them.

Reminds me of a cute line from a young lady I knew who's boyfriend was 100 percent Cherokee, medicine braid and everything.