New Here - A YouTube cover!

[DavidAMIs]

Just looking for some constructive criticism on a video I recorded a few weeks ago. I've been trying to fine tune my vocals but I find vocal exercises to be boring and hard to commit too. Some days are very good vocal days for me, others not so much. I'd like to be more consistent overall in my approach to singing. Grew up with two sisters listening to a lot of pop and boy bands before finding my own way. I delved into a little metal back in the day but nowadays I'm doing more acoustic stuff. I lost some of my higher range when I went to acoustic so I'd like to get that back. I talked to a professional opera singer once who told me to not try so hard and just let it happen. Great advice, but it's hard when I do a lot of covers because I feel like sometimes it's not my own voice. I'm 22 now and took some chorus classes my senior year of high school. Since graduating I've used the SingingSuccess program very infrequently. Any tips/tricks and/or constructive criticism would be awesome! The forums at SingingSuccess kind of blow.

Thanks so much! And this song is "Yellow Belly" by a band called Thrice. I have a show coming up in January playing a few acoustic tracks and I'd like to be prepared. I'm highly critical of my skill and performance, so anything to alleviate any doubts would be great appreciated.

[doomhead]

Dude.. that was a great performance. Love the acoustic style (its my fav as well).

Theres not much to critique on this. What I can hear that you are doing well is: twanging.. compression.. breath control.. on pitch.. phrasing.. all good/great. Perhaps you arent aware that your doing this, but to my ears you are doing a decent job on those things.

The only complaint and its not a fault to you in any way.. is that the song itself doesnt go very high, from my ears it seems to top out at a D#4. So we cannot hear your bridging into headvoice and how you navigate the upper ranges. But like I said its the song.

[Keith]

Sounds great man.. I do know all tech stuff, I just sing.. You have a great tone!

[DavidAMIs]

Hey, thanks for the critique and kind words. I generally do all my covers in a comfortable key. I'm really not consistent in my upper registers. I don't seem to have the coordination to keep my larynx down and to stop from straining. I think I realize however that if I want to get better in those ranges I should probably sing in them more. It's just a matter of not wanting to sound bad, I guess.

[ronws]

You can sing higher notes, if you want to. And it will take time. You will have to accept that you will make some "odd" or "funny" sounding notes, at first. And no, you don't want to debut those sounds in front of an audience. And truthfully, they would rather hear a well-sung song, regardless of range, than the highest note. If it was all about high notes, James Hetfield would not have a career. But it is about pitch accuracy and tone, both of which you have by the truckload. Just be aware that your highest notes are going to have a tonal shift simply because at such high pitches, the resonating spaces required (quite small) to resonate the F1 will not have enough space to also resonate the harmonics for differing sounds (which is why vowels sound similar at the top of the range.) This is compensated for by such things as overlay distortion. As well as in recording, I read of one mixing engineer that puts distortion on all vocals as a matter of course. It makes the mix sound better, to him.

But I would say this song is a money-maker, live. And is likely to encourage the audience to sing along. It is in a key that even untrained singers can manage. I would keep this in your live set, just for the audience participation factor.

As for opening your upper range by January, well, you could probably do things today to get higher but you might not have it comfortably consistent. But a year from now? Certainly. It's more of a matter of coordination than strength training, really.