Please judge my vocal performance

[Witti007]

I'm a songwriter and a novice producer. Often, when I record a song, I don't have a good singer available. In such cases I then do it myself, even though I can't sing. It then sounds like in this example. This is a song called "Why" that I wrote to go with lyrics I found in a forum. What do you think about my vocals? Are they good enough for simple demos or are they so bad that they have a negative impact on the demo?

All the best

Robert

[Keith]

Email me the piano track and the lyrics and I will sing it for you if you like .

[Witti007]

Hi Keith,

oh...I understand. My singing is that bad.

Ok, I'll try to send you the track this weekend. Thanks for the offer.

All the best

Robert

[ronws]

I think you might need to clarify, Witti.

Is your desire to sing better? Or, to have a good demo that you can promote, regardless of who is singing?

Multiple award-winning songwriter James Blume can barely hum a note. He can plunk just a few notes on a piano, can't play guitar well enough to save his life. But he can write songs. He keeps a digital recorder with him and hums bits of tunes, speaks bits of lyrics.

Later, he gets with a guy that can play any instrument there is and comes up with an arrangement and transcribes the melody idea therein. Then, they hire a studio singer to sing the demo. And that gets promoted to the various labels and also gets listed with songwriter orgs.

See what I mean? Hit songs written by a guy who finds singing "Happy Birthday" a challenge and can't play an instrument can write a song.

If, on the other hand, you want to sing better, that's another direction entirely. Depends on how much time you have. Blume never made the time for singing lessons. He spent his time writing songs and making money.

Good luck and lots of success for you, whatever you do.

[BrunoFortes]

I think you might need to clarify, Witti.

Is your desire to sing better? Or, to have a good demo that you can promote, regardless of who is singing?

Multiple award-winning songwriter James Blume can barely hum a note. He can plunk just a few notes on a piano, can't play guitar well enough to save his life. But he can write songs. He keeps a digital recorder with him and hums bits of tunes, speaks bits of lyrics.

Later, he gets with a guy that can play any instrument there is and comes up with an arrangement and transcribes the melody idea therein. Then, they hire a studio singer to sing the demo. And that gets promoted to the various labels and also gets listed with songwriter orgs.

See what I mean? Hit songs written by a guy who finds singing "Happy Birthday" a challenge and can't play an instrument can write a song.

If, on the other hand, you want to sing better, that's another direction entirely. Depends on how much time you have. Blume never made the time for singing lessons. He spent his time writing songs and making money.

Good luck and lots of success for you, whatever you do.

Well said, ronws.

[Witti007]

Hi Ronws,

I've taken singing lessons but I still can't sing very well. I've given up trying. I can't read sheet music and I can't play an instrument very well either. I prefer to concentrate on what I do best which is songwriting. So I guess I'm pretty much like James Blume. I used to hire musicians, producers and singers to create demos of my songs. That's expensive, especially if you write 4-5 songs per month. I just couldn't afford it. So I started to learn how DAW software works and started producing on my own demos. On this track here I played all the instruments and sang all the vocals myself. My target is to create demos that I can send to publishers and labels. The better the demo is, the bigger your chances are to get the song signed. My question is whether or not my vocal performance is so bad that it leaves a sour taste when you listen to the song. You know, I've had a few people say to me "the song is good but the vocalist is terrible". I wanted to hear what you guys here think. Thanks!

All the best

Robert

[ronws]

Well, I'm not a record producer or a manager for an artist. But your singing is on pitch and that's good. Basic singing for a song to allow for the arrangement of other parts of music is called a scratch track. Like what you have done here.

An artist might have vision and hear your song and visualize how they would do it. It's a good song with a memorable melody. Nice, harmonic structure, a singer's song. As for level of production, I have read different things. For hip hop and dance music are beat heavy and so, the demo is often finished to pro quality and is often used for the release. As opposed to songs like this, which are melody heavy and require the right arrangement and a vocal line that will be different for each singer. In that case, the more generic the arrangement, and yours is fairly basic, the better, because it's not so stylized that someone can't hear it in a different genre. This song could be a show tune or a country song, or even an indie alt-rock. It has that flexibility because you did not push the style too much in any one direction. With some syncopation and some jazz drumming, it could actually be hip-hop or r & b, which means altering the vocal line from where you have it. It's not that your voice is horrendous, it's just not got that "lead singer" thing in it. Which is fine, this is more about the song than you as a singer, nicht wahr?

I play guitar, sing, can read sheet music and have written sheet music. And you might just be more of a songwriting success than I have been or will be. Who knows?

Even though a number of people here fancy themselves judges of production values, I'm not sure we are the most accurate source when it comes to judging the fitness of a recording for demo purposes to record companies. I mean, we might get it right. Even a blind hog finds an acorn, once in a while.

Just like if I went to a recording forum for review of my singing. It wouldn't matter much because the recording guys are going to do stuff to the track no matter how well I sing or how much I liked my own dynamics in the track. That is why there is usually a love/hate relationship between artist and recording engineer.

Also, some artists may want to change some of the lyrics (not necessarily on this song.) Too much of that and they are angling for songwriting credit and royalties. Totally your call on that. Sometimes, partial percentage of something is better than 100 percent of nothing. You strike a deal with the Devil every day.

The singing didn't leave me so scarred. If I were a label guy, I could buy this song for Train, punch up the drums and a fuzzy bass. Something along the lines of "Drops of Jupiter." It could also be a cross-over to be recorded by some country singer. In your range, that might be Trace Adkins. 1/2 an octave higher and more bounce, it might be Clint Black.

6 one way, half a dozen the other. Too much style and no one can see it as something else. Not enough oomph and they can't get interested and think of it for themselves. It's psychological. Like painting a house to sell it. It gets sold and the first thing the new owners do is re-paint over your fresh paint.

[SkyKnight]

I think your song writing skills are excellent. I would love to apply vocals for this. If you want a demo of what kind of music I do, I like ballads.

please send me this track and lyrics. I would love to see what my version would sound like compared to keith's. If you have it in .wav format would be preferred.

I really really would like to do this song for you. Great song.

As for the singing though. It feels to me that you are constantly in a state of singing behind the nose in the middle of your head. You still have a good ear for proper pitch so don't worry about that. But with a more open less nasaly technique it would sound great.

But again I would love to try this for you.

*Edit**

sorry forgot to include demo of me doing hallelujah

https://soundcloud.com/#skyknight-1/hallelujah-m

sor that you can judge for yourself if you like my styling.