General Music Chat

Hi there. Just wanted to let you know I re-recorded the song that I have on my profile. I've been studying with an Speech Level Singing teacher for about 3 months. I feel I've improved, let me know what you think. I know I have more work to do, but it's a slow process.

Tracy

P.S. I just got a new pre-amp and I am using my Peavy mic with my computer. I'm just learning how to use it, so the sound quality may not be all that in places.

Hi Tracey, Rich here.

Look, I dunno how honest other folks are here, but for what it's worth(.02) I personally think that if you're wanting to put something out there that shows how good you are, you ought to scrap the tune, and perhaps find a demo that is in a range that will allow you to sing more forcefully, maybe in your head voice or something because maybe it's me, but all I'm hearing is a total lack of 'ownership'.

Meaning: in the realm of you owning that song, and making it work for YOU, it sounds to me like you're really nervous or something..

I hear a potentially good voice, that is very tentative.

No offense meant at all, just shooting from the hip , before I have a chance to ease off on the feedback & soften it..

I'll let others chime in.

Cheers,
Rich

Celtic, I appreciate your honesty. I'm basically starting out with my training. I've been singing practically my whole life, but not good training. I'm studying with an awesome teacher now and she really knows what she's doing. I've only been with her about three months and I've improved alot in these past few weeks. You should of heard how I sounded this time last year, terrible! LOL I'm posting files on my profile to get feedback as to how I'm progressing. I know I'm not "there" yet. I just would like to have honest feedback. I'll get it, I'm not giving up until I do.

I have to agree, I hear potential but it needs work. It lacks power, force...sounds like a white girl humming along with the radio riding to work.

I hope I'm not too harsh, just giving you an honest opinion. Listen close to Janis Joplin, Nancy Wilson, Sheryl Crow. You'll hear powerful, from-the-pit-of-the-stomach vocals. That's where it comes from. When I sing my stomach is tight as a drum, I get red-faced, the veins in my neck pop out, it's basically a tightly controlled scream. Your pitch control is decent but short of the mark. That's a matter of practice. The main thing though, is that it sounds weak, wimpy...put some steam behind it, belt it out.

I've seen lots of people who make this mistake, what your inner ear hears IS NOT what actually comes out. To me, my voice does not sound good, I don't really even like it much, but I have good pitch control, a loud, clear, lots of power voice and most of the time I get good compliments on my vocals, even on a bad night.

Again, you have potential, your voice basically sounds good, but weak. I don't know how to put it in a way you might not be offended, sorry if that happens, this is intended to be constructive criticism, not a public bashing. I read a while back that Stevie Ray Vaughn played and sat in with BB King one night at a blues festival. He played every hot lick he could dig up and BB blew him right off stage with his very first note. One note...Vaughn asked him how. He told SRV to always put everything you've got into every note. That's when Vaughn started to become a really GOOD guitar player. Unfortunately he died before long, but the last album he recorded had some playing in it that got my attention, something he had never done before, up till then he was just another guitar player. Another guitar player said you don't really play the blues till you live the blues. Same basic idea, you pour your soul into every note.

The same goes for singing, you have to put every drop of your soul into every single note. SING, don't hum, belt it out. I'd bet your vocal instructor is telling you to use your diaphragm. That's a set of muscles in your abdomen that help force air out through the lungs. Once you learn to use them you'll start to lose that weak voice and start sounding more like you MEAN IT...right now you're humming on the way to work.

I wouldn't bother wasting my time typing all this if I didn't think there was some potential there, so please take this as attempting to point you in a positive direction. I'll repeat myself, I'm NOT trying to bash your ability. Just trying to bring your attention to your greatest obstacle. Now lemme hear some guts behind that voice.

tlnelson,
How loud was the music playing when you recorded that?
- cause, I hear something in addition to what the other guys, mentioned.
I hear someone singing to a song being played at 'household volume.'
If I were in a group-practice, and tried singing at this volume, I wouldn't be able to hear my own voice over the music.
And playing out is almost always louder than practice.
.
If you can hear your voice at the volume you're singing, it kind of sounds like the music was too soft, and you just sang softly so you could hear the music.
Like singing in a car . . .
Maybe you could try this?
Think of standing on stage, and singing without any microphone, and singing loud enough for the people in the back rows to be able to hear you.
And, maybe even loud enough so that the people outside of the double doors leading into the seating area can hear singing through the doors.
Controlling a singing voice at that volume is completely different than controlling a singing voice at soft volumes.
Like night & day.
I guess what I'm suggesting is this:
Practice at the volume you will have to use during performances.
Best wishes.

Thank you BRFJ, you came up with a much more tactful way to put it than I did, and this:

Think of standing on stage, and singing without any michrophone, and singing loud enough for the people in the back rows to be able to hear you.

is something I should have thought of, it's exactly what I was trying to come up with a way to get across.

Nice job...nowhere near as blunt and harsh as my comments were...I just hope she wasn't offended or insulted by my remarks. But I said what I thought.

She seems like 'good people,' huh?

The same goes for singing, you have to put every drop of your soul into every single note. SING, don't hum, belt it out. I'd bet your vocal instructor is telling you to use your diaphragm. That's a set of muscles in your abdomen that help force air out through the lungs. Once you learn to use them you'll start to lose that weak voice and start sounding more like you MEAN IT...right now you're humming on the way to work.

That's good advice. From the diaphragm? How about from the toes? I think of karate, in which the power of the punch originates from the ground through the rear-foot heel. You see it in the studio, too. Engineers tend to set mics subtlely high, to encourage vocalists to use their bodies to reach the notes. Slouching singers are often out of tune.

Incidentally, smiling helps intonation. Whether physiological or psychological, I'm not certain.

I was once rehearsing a duo, in which we alternately sang parts. When I came in with mine, the guy laughed. What's tickled his funnybone, I asked.

He said, "Here I am trying to sing sweet and sensitive and all, and you come in with all this attitude!"

He liked it. But I do have to know how to play the mic so I don't overwhelm wimpier singers in the mix.

Another thing about belting it out: even if you sound bad, audiences deem from your attitude that you meant it to be that way, and must be a genius of dissonance.

Another thing about belting it out: even if you sound bad, audiences deem from your attitude that you meant it to be that way, and must be a genius of dissonance.

How true.
I've seen that happen so many times...Bad night, I'm just a tad off all the way around, no matter what I do, fumbling notes in leads I should hit with my eyes closed, voice crackling now and then or those unintentional "growlies" coming out, stutter a word or two, hit a third below the note my head wanted to sing because my voice is shot and people can't wait to come tell me how great it sounded. Even musicians I've played with have thought certain mistakes were intentional. A lot of the time I'll repeat a mistake, and make it intentional. I've stumbled on riffs that really work that way.

And made myself look like a complete idiot at times too.

Hey guys, I'm not offended by any of your comments, they make me want to work harder. Like I said in my earlier posts, I just recently got my pre-amp and I'm trying to learn how to use it and get the levels adjusted correctly and things. I recorded my sound file from my computer, like you would in a regular studio. I had my head phones on.

I hear what you are saying about singing louder, I'm really trying. But it's not all about singing from your diaphram. It's about placement too. The vocal technique that I'm learning, Speech Level Singing, alot of training is on developing your chest, mix, and head voice. My biggest problem is I'm not getting into my chest voice enough and that's why I sound the way I do. I'm not getting that "deep tone" and edgyness that I need. But I'm working hard on developing it.

Give me a couple more months and you'll see a new me. I'm going to get this right or bust a gut doing it! LOL

Tracy

P.S. Dave, my vocal teacher doesn't teach me to belt out anything. Too much air will blow out your vocal chords. An even balance of air control is what I'm learning to do. To learn more about the technique I'm working on, go to http://singingsuccess.com and it explains what it's all about. It's an awesome techique and tons of grammer winners have/are using it.

Tracy, I've had opportunity to only glance at that site as yet. But nothing I sing is ever painful, as the site says some people experience.

I had a vocal teacher who had been a professional opera tenor for decades. Then he had five operations for cancer in his mouth. They said he'd never speak again, let alone sing.

He got therapy from a guy who uses singing as speech therapy. The guy sang again -- with a great bass-baritone! He had been singing in a perfect falsetto all those years, and nobody realized it.

The techniques center around singing like a baby learns to speak -- "Ma", where the throat is open, getting resonance from the chest. A lot of people treat singing as something entirely different, and somewhat unnatural.

I'll scope out that site when I have a chance, and give you more feedback.

P.S. Dave, my vocal teacher doesn't teach me to belt out anything. Too much air will blow out your vocal chords.

I think we're not after you to get more air, per se, but more power in your voice. The only time I've "blown out" my vocal chords is when I got the flu and kept singing right up to new year's eve, instead of backing off and taking it easy on my voice. The show must go on and all that...New Year's day I couldn't talk, much less sing and 3 months later I barely had a decent voice back, never did get the top 3 or 4 notes of my range back.

But that was from trying to sing when I was sick, not from trying to push more air through. I was onstage with a fever the last 2 nights, my head felt the size of San Antonio, very hoarse from singing 5 nights a week while sick, toward the end even my guitar playing suffered too, just from being worn down by all this.

Keep at it, learn to put some power behind your voice and you should do fine. More air is fine sometimes, but a stronger sounding voice is what we're getting at.

I know what you are saying Paleopete, that's why I said I needed to get more into my chest voice, that is what's going to give me the power I need. Right now I'm suffering from a cold and I haven't sung all week. I'm going to be missing my vocal lesson tomorrow because of it.

Give me a couple more months and I'll record something new. Hopefully I can master my chest voice by then. It's hard when all the training you've received is choral crap where they wanted you to sing in your head voice all the time!

Thanks for the comments and advice, I really appreciate them.

Peace, Tracy