Hallelujah

[AchtungBaby]

Okay, here's me singing Hallelujah. It's not supposed to be any form of finished product, just an accurate depiction of my voice. I've never had any form of formal vocal instruction; I'm aware that parts of this are pretty painful to listen too.

Also, if anyone who listens to this is a trustable authority, do you think I have enough inherent ability to benifit from vocal lessons? Thanks.

Sorry for all the eff-ups:

http://www.soundclick.com/player/single_player.cfm?songid=11333662&q=hi

[KillerKu]

I'll get this out of the way first, to be clear, my credibility as a trusted authority is zero percent. So if any authorities are going to be called, it will be on me.

However, I actually hear a lot of potential in this voice, and suspect your qualms with it are more psychological than based on the actual physical reality there on the recording.

You want to know something funny? You are doing a technique that a lot of people have to train to learn to do, yet here you are doing it probably subconsciously. It's kind of a moan, or plaintive sound and helps with higher notes and bridging passaggio. Funny how you have that already with no lessons!

On a technical level and as an extremely simplistic constructive criticism, one thing I'd recommend is to back off the H emphasis when it comes in a word. Generally even in a song like this, people usually barely touch on the consonants and extend the vowels, so it would be (h)aaalleluuuuujah rather than Hhhhhhhallejah. It would be a simple little thing you could do to this performance to make it a bit more polished.

Aside from that, for no lessons, no instruction, and having little confidence, you are actually way better than you seem to think and with the right instruction, hey, even with the right practice and hard work you could probably become as technically skilled as anyone else here.

For some reason your voice gives me feelings of Roger Waters (Pink Floyd), I think it's an emotional honesty and timbre thing. Other times you give me a hint of Anthony Kiedis, that one I haven't placed why. For a lot of people (including myself) we didn't start with great 'tone' per say. Me, I spent at least a year looking for the right tone that represented 'me' and communicated the feelings I wanted to express, but your tone is already speaking to me with emotional resonance and an appealingly blended timbre.

So you can work on, range, control, fluidity, you know, technique stuff, and you will. Lessons will speed you up tremendously and make for safer progress, but all you need to do is 'good enough' to support and communicate the emotion and the tone is already near there. Can you get 'good enough' to get somewhere amazing by combing your natural talent with training of some sort? I have pretty much no doubt that you can, barring an extremely unlikely tragedy (car accident, injury, etc) then yes. So you just have to get to work on polishing and improving what you can do with your voice.

[Keith]

I have the backing track for this song if you'd like it.. It's too early for a critique, so I'll just say refer to Killers I think you would benefit from a backing track thats play in time (and by someone else so you don't have to deal with it).

[gno]

I agree you have a lot of potential. One thing you are doing pretty well without any instructions is singing in the passagio area - E4 - G4. You have a consistent tone in this area. This is a tough part of the voice that gives many of us issues. The other thing is that your voice seems well adducted throughout, and you have good pitch. I'd encourage you to take voice lessons if you're thinking about it.

[AchtungBaby]

This is all pretty encouraging. Keith, I'd appreciate that backing track

Killer, for some reason prolonging the h sound makes it easier for me to bring out the ah that follows it. I was noticing how it sounded funny but it was worth the trade-off.

Guitartrek, F#4-G4 were really tough. I'd like to be able to hit those more effortlessly. I pretty much have to yell them at this point.

[Keith]

Email me at keith_goehner@yahoo.com and I'll send it to you .