Greetings From Toronto
Guitarlad
Pro Posts: 4
Hello Everyone, I’m Gerard, a 53 year old amateur guitar player from Toronto. I have substantial hearing loss with fluctuating tinnitus, and distortion. Although I use hearing aids, they don’t solve all the issues. I treat guitar playing as a hobby, and a therapy.
My philosophy is that if I can speak I can sing, and I’m never too old to learn something new. I’ve actually recorded a couple of tunes with vocals and put them on SoundCloud. Those recordings were responses to challenges posted on a guitar forum I’m a member of.
The recordings made me realize that the lack of singing skills had an impact on my guitar playing as well, and the overall result wasn’t satisfactory for me at all. I began to look for a singing course. I started with an introductory vocal course from TrueFire, but I quickly came to a conclusion that I wanted more than that. After a long deliberation I decided on KTVA.
I don’t intend to be more than a home entertainer, and perhaps do better recordings, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t learn from the best resources available. That’s why I’m here. And yes, I do like the way Ken sings. I’ve just downloaded the course and had a chance to see the first few video sections. I like Ken’s teaching method already. I’m sure most questions are answered in the course and/or the forum, so I’ll be mostly lurking in the background.
One thing I’d like to mention is “Sing & See” - singing software for real-time visual feedback of the voice in vocal training. I wonder if anybody’s using it?
Comments
Hello, Gerald, and Welcome to the KTVA Forums!
It's great that you are here to learn and improve your singing skills. You may also find interesting some of the bonus materials that will come with your PRO package that you may or may not already know about.
Ken includes some great information on playing guitar, chords, and singing and playing together at the same time.
Also, with your hearing issues, you may want to take some extra time and go through the Basic Pitch - Part One program that Ken has put together. It's a way to do a self-assessment of your ability to hear and/or discern pitch matching skills. Doing those exercises may help you to focus in on your singing in ways you may never have approached. You can access Basic Pitch - Part One here in the forums under the Category of "Better Tone and Pitch".
You have purchased the best vocal resources money can buy, and you are among friends.
I have sing and see. It is limited somewhat in its usefulness, but it can quickly identify notes and what octave they are in. As to intonation, I don't like it much, because it seems to show the futility of trying to sing on correct pitch. What sounds pretty good in real life looks pretty bad on sing and see. That's because nothing is truly on perfect pitch. If you have the deluxe version, for fifty bucks more, it can show you spectrographs of harmonics in your voice. Once you have seen one spectrograph, you will be able to hear with your ears when those same harmonics are happening, and you really don't ever need that feature again. You could download a trial version and decide if you want to pay for that added feature. Read the fine print at the bottom of the trial/guarantee portion of their sales page.
Bob
Thank you for the welcome, link from Joseph, and tip from Bob. Sorry to have made my initial post in tiny font. I did it in my word processor and pasted it. I assumed it would default to some regular font size. I don’t see the option to edit the previous post, but I’ll try to match the font size this time. Thanks again.