The Greatest Love Of All (George Benson)

[Nicogratouille]

Hi! Today I started working on this song and would appreciate some feedback

https://www.box.com/s/v39tqbm4l23uim2ftqac

It's acapella, by the way.

Nick

[KillerKu]

You sound surprisingly close to me. Range isn't a problem. Pitch is mostly good. Sometimes it sounds like the support is getting a bit weak during the low notes. It sounds like bits of a vibrato are slipping through. I like interesting vibrato, but yours could use a bit less of like a random wobble in the lower chest voice. That used to happen to me too. Somehow listening to baritone singers, like Frank Sinatra, Elvis, I found taking the vowel 'uh' while twanging a bit helps me place a bit darker.

Your placement sounds a bit better to my ears. Trying to think of how to describe it, but it still seems like the vocal placement is like you've got very little resonating and the voice is placed where the soft palate is kind of low and the pharynx isn't very open? It's kind of like if you a pure Ee vowel the throat likes to close down. The 'a' (as in apple) tends to want to go nasal as well. The soft palate tends to close at least in my dialect (United States).

It sounds like you are twanging pretty solidly as well, but the motion of the tongue when twanging, doesn't have to coincide with the rest of your vocal tract kind of 'elevating' with it. I dunno man, take it easy. Take it slow. But my honest opinion is you're really surprisingly close. That what makes it so frustrating. I wish I had the right trick for you. Only thing I can say is think 'uh.' Give that a try.

[Nicogratouille]

What do you mean by "surprisingly close"?

[KillerKu]

Well, you seem to have pretty good emission. You don't overblow. You seem to bridge registers fairly well with a good range. You seem to have pretty good pitch. You support well enough to be able to sustain some pretty powerful notes. You've got some musicality and you've got some mobility. That's a lot of things a lot of singers here don't have. Those are things I didn't start with.

There's just something about vocal placement at least to my ears, where I think you could tweak to a more mainstream sound with the style of songs you're doing by pulling away a bit of the isolated nasal (twangish) and shifting a bit darker.

Have you heard of CVT? Anyway, there is a mode they call 'curbing' in CVT that centers the voice around 'uh' and 'ih' vowels. It's really what Stevie Wonder does. Jonpall is a fan of it. Geno here uses it a lot. I use it some as well.

It sounds like the style of music you're doing is traditionally done using this sound, right? But your sound is kind of 'errrrrrrrrr' in places, and sounds a bit. It's not bad, it just sounds slightly strange, like it's off center from what I'd expect.

Here buddy. I'm on meds today and my voice is behaving 'enough.' This is something that seems to be a consistent thing, where people are kind of going nasal/twang/isolated. So I'm taking a shot at a lesson idea:

http://soundcloud.com/killerku/errrrvoicelessonidea

I'm not making fun of you, you're actually doing pretty good. And I'm exaggerating the nasal for a reason. Trying to show some extremes so maybe you or others could find a middle ground.

[MDEW]

The tone itself sounds great to me. The only suggestion I can give is think about the message while you are singing. It sounds like you are thinking about technique instead of the message of the song.

To me this helps relax the cords and lets them vibrate more freely and do what they need to do.

Your body has a way of expressing what you are thinking. You cannot make a song sound sad if you are smiling. And you cannot make a song sound happy if you are frowning.

In a song like this think about the greatest love that you have experienced. It will come through in the singing.