Help with "Livin' on a Prayer"

Richiesamborafan

Hi! I'm new to these forums and started watching Ken's videos for the last 6 months on youtube. I've been trying to improve my vocals to sing Livin on a prayer better for my cousins wedding (I've always been a Bon Jovi fan and when I was 7 my aunt told me to go sing it with the band and since then I've "sang" at all family weddings). The first five months I made some progress I was happy with, but the past month or so I feel like I've plateaued on the final chorus. Any help to sound less strained would be appreciated or any other feedback as well! Thanks!

Link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qBq09JJRP9wXbcFKunD1iEDfxB8U1Olz/view?usp=sharing

aware10

Well first of all, your voice sounds really tense and stressed, you don't have to strain at all when you're singing, if a certain note is beyond your present ability than you can adjust it to make it lower and it will sound just as good. Also, your voice is all throat, and it's not airy and it doesn't float like it should. You should try to develop your head voice and chest voice, that will improve your range and make the song easier for you. Finally, it's a tad too loud for the song, Bon Jovi sings just a little bit quieter than that. Hope this helps, good luck to you!

aware10

Here is mine if you would like to critique mine, skip to 1:03 for the singing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CFaBLm30LI

Richiesamborafan

aware10 said:

Well first of all, your voice sounds really tense and stressed, you don't have to strain at all when you're singing, if a certain note is beyond your present ability than you can adjust it to make it lower and it will sound just as good. Also, your voice is all throat, and it's not airy and it doesn't float like it should. You should try to develop your head voice and chest voice, that will improve your range and make the song easier for you. Finally, it's a tad too loud for the song, Bon Jovi sings just a little bit quieter than that. Hope this helps, good luck to you!

Thanks for the feedback. Planning to continue working on developing my chest/head to mix better. I agree with lowering the key is helpful, but unfortunately, I'll have to sing it with a DJ playing the song so I'll have to try to match JBJ's pitch. I'll try using less volume- the early choruses don't give me much trouble and I use significantly less volume,hadn't thought about that. The one issue I sometimes run into when trying to lessen the volume is instead of a chesty mix I flip into a weaker head voice/ reinforced falsetto, which isn't what I'm trying for. Hopefully, if the chest and head improvements work I'll be able to pull it off with less volume. The throatiness is actually intentional- JBJ's isolated vocals sound pretty damn throaty to me; Thanks!

Richiesamborafan

aware10 said:

Here is mine if you would like to critique mine, skip to 1:03 for the singing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CFaBLm30LI

I'm more than happy to give an opinion on it, butI'm pretty new to this stuff, I wouldn't trust myself to give you real critiques on it.

My thoughts:
Maybe add some fry or rasp to give it a more steady or full sound you almost sound "shaky" at times, it's kind of cool though not sure if it's intentional or not. Maybe you'd benefit from only using that sound in certain spots
I really like how it sounded at 3:03, maybe use more of that crisp sounding voice
At the very end of the song personally I didn't love the flip into falsetto at the end, but that just my personal preference, some probably love that technique, it's just not for me. As I said I'm very new to this but when I want to stay in a mix or chest I try to use more support from my diaphragm to push the note out. When the note isn't too high I find it doesn't sound strain but very powerful instead.

Overall a cool cover! Good luck with your channel!

sjonrokz4u

So you should maybe load the song in to something like amazing slow downer. Then you can give your phone to the dj and play a lower version. Your straining and staining hard. It sounds like it hurts and there’s no way that can be healthy for your voice. If you can reach it in head without strain that may be a better choice orrrrrr stick it in a DAW and just edit out the modulated part of your able to do the rest of the song well

Richiesamborafan

sjonrokz4u said:

So you should maybe load the song in to something like amazing slow downer. Then you can give your phone to the dj and play a lower version. Your straining and staining hard. It sounds like it hurts and there’s no way that can be healthy for your voice. If you can reach it in head without strain that may be a better choice orrrrrr stick it in a DAW and just edit out the modulated part of your able to do the rest of the song well

I’ll definitely give that a shot. I do have a while before the wedding, so if I can get a chest mix to Eb5 before then that would be ideal. As for the strain there’s definitely some. I wouldn’t necessarily say it hurts cause some of the throaty sound is intentional, but I’m absolutely exhausted after trying to sing that high. If you have any tips that could possibly increase my mixed range that’d be appreciated! Thanks for the help!!

sjonrokz4u

No magic pill or short cut. Just putting in the time and work it takes to grow to that point I know that’s not much of a tip but that’s pretty much it. Keep working the scales

Richiesamborafan

sjonrokz4u said:

No magic pill or short cut. Just putting in the time and work it takes to grow to that point I know that’s not much of a tip but that’s pretty much it. Keep working the scales

Will do, it’s more helpful than you’d think