Beginner - influenced by William Shatner :-)

[Sound26]

Hi all,

I've been working on breathing, pronunciation, scales etc.

Falsetto is something wanted to have a go at.

This was inspired by the great William Shatner.

I love his "I've no measurable talent but it wont stop me" attitude!!

So here's my version of Rocket Man, warts and all.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10813900/rocket%20man.mp3

I'd appreciate your input.

Are things improving at all?

Where should I be focusing my efforts?

What could I change, do better to get this sounding ok?

I realise that the chorus is pretty bad, I'm really struggling to get the pitch and timing right.

Does anyone have any techniques for this?

I can hit the notes when doing scales, but it doesn't seem to be happening in the song for me.

It's not just this song, it's every song I try to do.

[Keith]

The link does not work

[Sound26]

The link does not work

This one should should work, sorry about that.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10813900/rocket%20man.mp3

[Keith]

One thing I do for parts I can't sing everytime is sing along with the song... Doesn't sound like you need any work on your falsetto to make it sound good, it already does. The only critique I have is that it sounds like you are concentrating too much on the mechaincs of singing and not enough on the feel of the song. I would try another take, and this time don't care about being a perfect singer, and just sing it from your heart, Add some soul. Then compare the two takes. As far as pitch and timing, just practicing the parts yuou are having a hard time with should cure that. You don't seem to have any pitch issues (like being tone deaf). Your tone is great as well. I have similar issues as you. I do not sing songs that are easy for me and post them here... I sing songs that are very difficult for me and post them. This is because I am bound to make mistakes and have issues hitting a certain note that someone here may be able to help me hit. So if you are singing a song that is difficult for you and posting it, welcome to the club :)

[ronws]

Your singing is fine. Your mixing skills, however, like mine, could use some adjustment.

Take the accompaniment, especially the piano part and notch it down about .5 dB at around the 1 kHz area. That is, your singing volume is fine but the accompaniment is drowning you out. This will, believe it or not, even as a hammer and nail approach, keep your voice in the mix and allow it to be heard.

[Sound26]

One thing I do for parts I can't sing everytime is sing along with the song... Doesn't sound like you need any work on your falsetto to make it sound good, it already does. The only critique I have is that it sounds like you are concentrating too much on the mechaincs of singing and not enough on the feel of the song. I would try another take, and this time don't care about being a perfect singer, and just sing it from your heart, Add some soul. Then compare the two takes. As far as pitch and timing, just practicing the parts yuou are having a hard time with should cure that. You don't seem to have any pitch issues (like being tone deaf). Your tone is great as well. I have similar issues as you. I do not sing songs that are easy for me and post them here... I sing songs that are very difficult for me and post them. This is because I am bound to make mistakes and have issues hitting a certain note that someone here may be able to help me hit. So if you are singing a song that is difficult for you and posting it, welcome to the club

Thanks Keith. I deliberately picked something difficult and not comfortable for me as I wanted to get a genuine evaluation of where I'm at.

I've been practising about 4 months now (from being a completely tone deaf 31 year old male, I like a challenge ) and I think things are improving, but there's still a lot of work to do.

I know what you saying about the soul of the song.

I was completely freaking about hitting the high notes, listening back I can actually hear the pitch waver on the lines before the falsetto bits but the falsetto bits themselves weren't actually that bad. I can't understand why the chorus is so difficult. It start's at F which is very comfortable for me, much more so than the rest of the song, but I can't seem to hit it accurately.

As a result of all of this I wasn't considering the meaning of the words or really feeling the song, so it all sounds very dead and almost cabaret.

So practise and getting soulful is the only thing that will improve this? Dang, I was hoping there was an easy fix!!

Actually I'm glad to hear from a good singer that I could get better by practising and letting go a bit.

I've set myself a goal to sing for the first time in front of a few of my friends at a party we're having in late January, so I'm desperately trying to get ready.

Your singing is fine. Your mixing skills, however, like mine, could use some adjustment.

Take the accompaniment, especially the piano part and notch it down about .5 dB at around the 1 kHz area. That is, your singing volume is fine but the accompaniment is drowning you out. This will, believe it or not, even as a hammer and nail approach, keep your voice in the mix and allow it to be heard.

I'll give that a go ronws, thanks for that.

I know now why people send their stuff to someone else for mixing, I cringe when I hear my voice, and naturally try to bury it without consciously thinking about it.

This time I was trying to bring it forward, but not enough obviously.

Your Darkness tune was great btw.

[Keith]

What kinds of warm ups do you do? and for how long?

[Sound26]

What kinds of warm ups do you do? and for how long?

I'm doing about 5 minutes of making noise, lip trills, big yawns etc. to loosen things up, followed by 10-15mins of scales, triplets, octave jumps, skipping thirds, to try and improve my sense of pitch/intonation and get good breathing going, then about 30+ minutes working on actual songs.

I've been trying to do that twice a day, but that doesn't always happen.

For the actual songs, when I've the time, I'll figure out the melody on my keyboard first and work with that so I'm comfortable with the notes, pronunciation, timing etc.

I'll then record a backing track (I play keys, bass, mandolin and guitar) and have go at singing to that.

Is that reasonable, or should I be working harder/better?