Man he's swinging!

[Robert Lunte]

I used to play finger-style guitar in open tunings... very new agey stuff... but not much anymore... I suck as a guitarist... my talents are singing and teaching... and as for these "idol" shows? I swear to you, I have not watched more then about 15 minutes of any of them. I just dont find it entertaining to watch judges rip on people and the vocals are not edgy enough to keep my interest. Adam Lambert was cool, he was the exception, but again, that is probably the 15 minutes I watched... Im too busy... running TMV, writing, teaching, worrying about my own singing stuff.

I have never been a "fan" of anything or anyone, I get nothing from it. I appreciate good singers and admire great talent, but you will never see me standing in line for hours to go see a queensryche concert or something... if I can just walk up when the show starts and find my seat.. and my lady is paying for the ticket, then fine... otherwise, Id rather be jamming with my band or working on my own stuff.

I guess my point is, who cares? Why are these talent shows so popular? I would think the many of the people we have got to know on this forum would probably enjoy working on their own music, then watch these talent idol shows. I mean, do you guys actually enjoy watching these shows? Im curious... ?

[Kevin Lam@Enthuse]

I played finger-style guitar too, classical guitar....but suck in this field too. Well, for those idol show and singing contest...I don't want to use the word "unfair", but I damn myself for don't know a better word.

Rob, if you go to live concert no more, how can you experience other performaner's live singing ability?

I have the same feeling and I have not been going to any live concert for more than an year.

[ronws]

As for "American Idol," I watched some of the first season and, of course, the phenomenal Kelly Clarkson. A petite young lady from Burleson, Texas with a voice that sounds as if it were twice as tall as she is.

I missed the season where Daughtry was eliminated, though he has gone on to a bigger career than some of the winners.

I managed to catch some of the silly stuff that I like. Like Jack Black's performance.

And I got into the season with Adam Lambert, who got nothing but rave reviews from Cowell, which is tough since Cowell is used to producing european pop singers and Lambert focused primarily on hard rock and heavy metal in the competition. And it was a shock to see the other singer win. Even the winner was shocked and thought Lambert should win. That is a case of where the voting public decided differently than the judges, who though Lambert had a lock on it. In fact, it is a testament to his ability to win the judge's panel. Cowell with euro-pop, a rep from the rap and hip-hop and R& B world, and of course, Abdul, from the dance pop world. And yet Lambert brought them to their feet with KISS, singing higher than Paul Stanley in his best day.

For the most part, the show feels too packaged at times where they are wanting to fit these singers into molds they aren't designed for, or the contestant ends up taking on a song that is not right for them in the interest of trying to bring a wild card into play.

And then there are the auditions. Some are kept and aired expressly for comic relief. Some people who should have been rejected at the first or second stage. That is, by the time you see the contestant being filmed in front of the judge's panel, they've already auditioned a few times for the production crew.

And this also begs the question of what draws a contestant to this show. Is it just the exposure one gets that helps in getting future work? Even if you fail on AI, you were on world wide tv, even for a little bit. And someone will capture it and put it on youtube for posterity.

One could ask why we post here? Sometimes, it is to learn a new thing or improve something we've had a problem with. Other times, it is treated by newbies as a showcase, and I've been just as bad about that. And why? If we can already sing, why aren't we out there doing it? Well, some are and still come here to improve. And what do we, the other members of the forum do? We may be just as guilty as the audience for AI. We know the singers are going to cover some of our favorite songs and we want to see how they do them and compare their performance to the original. And the level of singing education here surely surpasses what the general audience knows and it is the general audience that buys the tickets and cd's. But here, it feels like the judgement of peers. If we can perform to the standards of our peers, here, surely we can rock the house down, for real, right? Not a guarantee. The only way to do that is to get up in front of an audience. Depending on where you are, at least half the audience will be drunk or stoned or both and the other half is working their way to that state of inebriation. And you don't have to be the singer with the highest note to achieve success. Scott Weiland can't sing as high as a number of people here but he commands an audience. Even after all this time, he is accepted back into Stone Temple Pilots and the fans are still there and glad to have him back. I think he was a total mismatch for Velvet Revolver.

Velvet Revolver, comprised of 3 former members of Guns and Roses was reviving, musically, the over-the-top blues, metal, and grind of yesterday. Which is still a good and valid sound. I just think they should have had a high range tenor. Not necessarily someone who sounds just like Axl Rose but someone who can sing that high, preferrably with a different timbre so as to avoid too many comparisons. But I digress.

Interesting thing, there are times when I agree with Cowell's assessment. And he wasn't always so "rude." But, on one particular segment, years back, they had been dealing with this stuff all day for a few days and everyone was cranky and tired. And Cowell just let fly with exasperation. The segment had everyone howling with laughter and they kept it and that brought in viewership. By then, everyone was watching just to see Cowell waste someone. It's the rubberneck syndrome. When there is an accident on one side of the freeway, everyone on the other side slows down to see the wreckage and carnage. It's like watching a train wreck. You know it will be horrible but you can't stop yourself from watching.

Kevin, I don't think Lunte is saying that he never goes to shows anymore. But with his busy schedule of teaching and performing and recording, there's not much time for anything else. And some of the best shows to watch are in little 2,000 to 4,000 square foot bars where there's 200 people or less. There's no big stage production and pyrotechnics, no fancy laser show or film footage. Just some guys on stage playing and singing. Nothing to distract you from the music. And any good band or singer started out as a live performer, in my opinion. That's where you build the actual skills.

It's kind of like golf. You can hammer away at the practice range and feel pretty good. Then you get on a real course with all the hazards and now, every swing counts. It's a different ball of wax, entirely. But the practice range is still important, it's just not everything there is.

And that is part of the value of Lunte's system. It's not just some exercises or scales that teach you a few tricks that sound good when you record something. He puts a hot mic in your hand in what looks like at least a 200 seat theater, first with no audience, later with an audience. Another analogy. It's like riding a motorcycle. You can read about it all you want. At some point, you've got to climb on and bring the bike upright. Pull in the clutch, start the beast, click down to 1st gear and let out the clutch. Lunte's training is not about making, necessarily, people proficient at recording, though there is skill in that, too. It's about getting people on stage and performing. In so many words, you've got to go big.

Well, that takes time. And for many of us, while we enjoy music and favorite performers, we're here because we want to be the one on stage with the mic.

My work schedule and finances keep me from going to a lot of big shows, as well. But I go when I have the chance. But I can't stay out late during the week. I get up at 4:30 am to get ready for work. And I'm an old guy. I can't do the-stay-out-late-and-still-make-it-to-work-the-next-morning thing, like when I was young.

I play guitar pretty well, I think, but there are better players. And, seriously, since 1988, I've preferred singing over playing guitar and have spent more energy and concentration on singing, keeping my guitar skills up enough to accompany myself. As to whether I am a success in either may remain to be seen.

My weakness is in recording. I have been performing live, whether at home or in front of people for so long, that is my comfort zone. Recording has brought in a new skill set for me to learn. Not just in matching vocal beats to the music but in mixing the tracks to create something that vaguely sounds like what I really sound like. Some of that is equipment, or lack thereof. For example, in live performance, it is not uncommon, even for seasoned professionals, to make a mistake. But you just roll through that mistake like it was part of the show. As opposed to recording, where the mistake is carved in stone. And everyone hears it and thinks you suck. So, I've had to learn to be a bit of a perfectionist when recording.

And I'm drifting. I should stop, now.

[Matt]

The guy in the OP isnt doing too well, he's not comfortable on a big stage or something. This guy didnt pick the easiest of songs:

http://www.tv4play.se/noje/idol_2010?title=geir_ronning_-_rosanna&videoid=1092303

[ronws]

Matt, I can't get the video to play, just the ads for laekerol (spelled it old german style as I don't have a font with the umlauts.

[Matt]

[VideoHere]

matt, that's a bitch of a song to sing.

[Matt]

I wouldnt touch it with a barge pole. Or as one of the jurors said, 'Let me explain something to Sweden: only a kamikaze singer with a deathwish picks that song.' Also, the jury were right when they said the band is rocking too, good to see them get a mention for once.

[ronws]

I thought the singer did a pretty good job and what I appreciated about him is that his vocal timbre was darker than the original.

sidenote: I know the language is not german but when I see an umlaut over a vowel, I think in german, which is a language I studied in school. So, o with umlaut is pronounced er, for clueless americans. Is that the same with the name, Ronning. Phonetically, for americans, it would be rerning, though most americans couldn't pronounce that and would say Ron or Roning (phonetically, raw-ning.)

And I echo the judges that the band was rockin', they were tight, especially with that brass instrument break. Right on the freakin' money.

[Matt]

Correct on the Ö. There are 2 more.

Ã… = awe

Ä = air (minus the rrr)

[ronws]

Thanks, Matt. That's how I pick up bits of other language. I run into something that interests me and I try to compare it to previous knowledge and that's when I learn another difference or similarity.

[Matt]

;)

I think umlauts are pronounced the same wherever they're used, allowing for dialectal nuances.

[ronws]

One of the things I liked about German, or Spanish, for that matter, is that the rules of pronunciation never change, at least in the classical form. So, you can pronounce a word that is new to you correctly, even before you know what it means. As opposed to English, where the rules are assembled like a bunch of post-it notes on a bulletin board. English is a hard language to learn, even for people born speaking it. Although, Chinese has difficulties for the average person because it is a tonal language. 3 different words have the same phonetic sound but are different by inflection. For example, the sound 'ma' has 3 different means depending on tone rising, tone descending, tone steady. The symbols are different for each meaning, however.

Hebrew is a challenge because it is written and read right to left.

French mystified my some because you could have a word with 8 letters and you only pronounce 3 or 4 of them.

Cajuns in Lousiana are not much better. There is a cajun food called boudin (pork sausage and rice in a sausage skin). That is how it is spelled. But it is pronounced 'boo-dan' with not too much weight on the 'n' sound. Another cajun sausage is called andouille, pronounced, 'on-doo-wee', accent on the doo.

[joshual]

Lol Ronws, Those cajun words are actulaly french words ;-). Long time ago (before napoleon sell those state to england) this part of america was french ;-).

[Ronron]

A lot of sounds in French are written as a combination of letters. The tricky part is they can take up to 4 or 5 letters, some combinations having the exact same sound, and, on top of that, you have letters which you don't pronounce. The trickier is that some of them are pronounced in a different way despite being written in the exact same manner.

Say, Andouille. It's pronounced 'An - doo - yee', without the 'ee' sound. up to the yee part it's pretty transparent. The yee without 'ee', 'ille', however, is a whole lot of letters for a sound we could have written " y ". However, pronounciation is not the hard part with French... It's more about grammar/writing, homonyms and... Exceptions. There is a reason why we have the French exception

If English is about learning which post-it on the board is the good one for a given word, French is more about determining if the big rule on the big blackboard applies to the word you're looking at.

[ronws]

Lol Ronws, Those cajun words are actulaly french words ;-). Long time ago (before napoleon sell those state to england) this part of america was french ;-).

I know. My brother-in-law and his family live near Baton Rouge. Our youngest neice was attending LSU - Baton Rouge but has since transferred to LSU - New Orleans (nursing degree). But people there call it cajun, partly because they don't pronounce every in a french manner. In fact, I just made a recording as talking about it might seem clearer than reading about.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8750209/cajun.mp3