Livin' on a Prayer / Dangerzone / Power of Love / Maniac

philmaher

Been a couple months since I've posted anything on here, been working on my new 80's function bands EP. This isn't a shameless plug, just looking for feedback on my vocals and if you should happen to want to book us then that'd be great haha. Also all engineered and mixed by myself, (also available for hire..)

You can listen to the tracks here;

https://soundcloud.com/popgunmusic

Thanks!

Phil

rcrosier

I enjoyed them all.  Really hard to find much at all in the "constructive criticism" area... LOL...  but if I HAD to, I'd say that your voice isn't quite as "smokey" or "scratchy" as Huey Lewis's (but not many voices are)... and you MAY sound TOO much like the original bands... (said tongue-in-cheek, as I saw on your page that your goal is to sound just like them!)

I thought your pitch was great.  Mix was good.  If you sound close to like that live, that's awesome!

Really, anyone hiring you will certainly get their money's worth, especially if you interact with the crowd in those situations where it's warranted, IMO.

If I were having a 30th wedding anniversary party this month, and was in the UK, I'd hire you!  Haha.

highmtn

@philmaher

Phil,

This sounds so good, I just had to crank my headphones up several dB just for more of the pure enjoyment of listening!  I did NOT want it to end!

You're a good mix engineer, and not too shabby of a singer, either!

I like the mix you're getting in your upper mid voice.  Nice and clean with just a little bit of bite!  Nice!  Your voice sounds good up in the mix, and you're not trying to hide it down in there.  I like that. 

I like the vocals (and the drums, naturally followed by everything else) to be a little bit like a MONSTER IN YOUR FACE!!!  You seem to be doing that, and quite well.

My feedback on your vocals is don't stop doing what you're doing.  Just keep doing exactly what you're doing, only more so, and don't stop, no matter what anybody says!

Awesome, Dude!

 

Bob

philmaher

@rcrosier Thanks! Huey Lewis' voice is ridiculous amounts of rasp and grit haha! I recorded Power of Love vocals on 3 separate occasions before I was happy to leave it (not 100% happy with it still but sometimes you gotta just call it). Out of the 4, considering its the least 80s rock of them all, that chorus is really hard to sing clean, let alone with any dirt. Yea it is a tribute band so the goal was to nail it like the record, and was also fun of me as a mix engineer to try and recreate the instrument tones of 4 of the most well known 80's songs in my little project studio. 

Vocally as much as id love to, i know i don't have any of these singers voices and i can't use a kenny loggins amp or a bon jovi plugin to make me sound like them (like i can on the instruments haha) so I tried to reference them vocally in each song but as a singer i think you've got to sing with your own voice otherwise its just not going to be convincing.

Pitch wise, it is (like any modern record) pitch corrected, however, I can assure you the original takes are not far off. Theres a quote I was told a fair few years ago that was "If the performance is there, don't worry about the pitch because we can correct that later" Which as much as i hate to agree, nowadays is true to a degree, However, i think they go hand in hand, if its out of tune, then its not a good take, luckily because was tracking myself, once i've sung something i can analyse it, change what i need to and go straight back in for another take, a luxury you don't really have if you're against the clock in a studio.

@highmtn Thanks Bob! That is the effect I was going for! 

This was good fun to do vocally, I'm still playing with more dirty tones, and am trying to use cleaner and more husky tones to suit the part I'm singing. I actually pulled back a lot of the time to perhaps appeal more to a wedding clientele, not to sing too gritty and with a more commercial tone.

One thing I did find was that, that solo'd my voice wasn't clean, it had a nice rasp to it, but as soon as you mix it in with music that rasp gets lost in the mix and it just sounds clean again, so the raspy tones are actually really raspy. Which I guess is something to take into account when your listening to a record, its great that Ken normally puts the solo'd vocal on after his youtube videos.

 Im still on volume 2 so am still yet to cover hyper glottal etc, still a long way to go.

I shall carry on! back to the monthly youtube videos now, so hopefully can keep some more regular stuff coming! 

Thanks again guys,

Semi

@philmaher,

sounds great man! Now I realized how much energy was there in 80`s stuff. You have powerful mid voice. I would like to hear more.

Sam