Attempting Journey's Don't Stop Believing. No formal vocal training.

nickjames

Hey Guys. I am thinking of getting Ken's course because I have been asked to join a pop/punk/hardcore band, but I am struggling with some of the high range vocals needed for the songs. This is me doing my best at a cover of Journey. Just looking for some feedback. I feel like I am limited in my ability because I have no formal training. What say you?

https://clyp.it/kaf5dk5q

Thanks!

highmtn

This is a pretty tough song to tackle, @nickjames. It just so happens that several of the students here are tackling the same song in a Student's-only area of the forums. You have to be fairly far along in your vocal journey to take on a Steve Perry song without stepping into dangerous territory.

You are going into distortion on a lot of your high notes, and that distortion doesn't sound very healthy. This is a song that should be practiced with a clean sound, and then if you want to graduate to a safe distortion later, well, you could decide to do that, but it's not the way the song is typically performed.

There are a lot of modified vowels in the song, and one way to approach the song as a whole is to begin in a lower key, and then step it up a half-step at at time, until you are working it out a couple of half-steps higher than the original version. That will get you more comfortable with the original key.

You will need to use massive breath support to reduce the amount of pressure you put on your cords during those high notes. That involves pushing down on the diaphragm to keep it from overblowing your cords.

You have a pretty good range for no training. You need to train so that you can build a better range and so that you can sing more safely. That will allow you to keep your voice in good shape for the rest of your life. If you keep abusing your cords, you can hurt your voice.

I don't know if you've been in bands before, but there is a lot of temptation to oversing in live performance situations. You will need some good pro techniques to rely upon.

Ken's course gives you a ton of vocal techniques that will give you the foundation you can rely upon to build and preserve your voice.

All the Best!

Bob