Micheal McDonald,. Who have inspired you?
JonasFinnLarsson
Pro Posts: 200
I've been listening abit to Michael McDonald. . It's cool that he has that dark sound. I wanna find my own style and there is some singers I listen to that I wanna learn from.
I like Geoff Tate, Peter Murphy, Matt from The 1975, Micheal McDonald and also EDEN.
First I like good cord closure and brightness with a smile but I also like the mouthy dark resonance aswell. It sounds good when you blend them a little.
Fading out and in to the notes sounds good too but it's harder
.
I also like the having a bit of vocal break/yodel for a small effect not too much.
Who I wanna learn more from is Rnb singer Brian Mcknight. He really fades in and is being very deliberate with what he is doing. Soft and Loud. Very nice articulation.
What is your style?
I like Geoff Tate, Peter Murphy, Matt from The 1975, Micheal McDonald and also EDEN.
First I like good cord closure and brightness with a smile but I also like the mouthy dark resonance aswell. It sounds good when you blend them a little.
Fading out and in to the notes sounds good too but it's harder
.I also like the having a bit of vocal break/yodel for a small effect not too much.
Who I wanna learn more from is Rnb singer Brian Mcknight. He really fades in and is being very deliberate with what he is doing. Soft and Loud. Very nice articulation.
What is your style?
Comments
He sings with a very soulful sound, and goes from a very deep, round sound up to some incredible chesty B4's and up. He goes from dark down low to really bright up top. It's astonishing, because he is a master at dropping the weight, yet even up high, you can hear that he's in chest voice. He only goes into head here and there, and he's so good at getting into and out of head voice quickly that you don't see it coming and he's out before you realize he was there. His low end is really full.
I like a lot of vocalists and different styles, but I just like Michael McDonald's voice because it seems genuine (even though when people imitate him is sounds SO contrived).
You can look up some early demo recordings of Michael on YouTube, before he was famous. You hear the spark in there, but somewhere in-between he made some real breakthroughs with his vocal style. He sounds more like an ordinary country singer with a decent range, way back then, and then, by the late 70's when Steely Dan hired him as a background vocalist, they bought him because he could sing those high notes in full voice. Everybody else they had used was trying to use falsetto. Michael could just belt it out in chest.
I actually have tickets to see him next weekend, and the tickets just happen to be on the front row. I'm looking forward to that. When I saw him before, I was like 50 rows or more back. This should be a little better.
The main thing that I wasn't ready for was that he kept his lips kind of pooched together (like a kiss) a lot. In other words, he's singing most of the time with a covered style. That's what makes his low notes so "rounded" sounding. Even when he went up high, he held on to that covered sound.
He said he was fighting off a cold. He dodged a lot of the super-high notes that he does on his records. Took a lot of shortcuts to kind of shorten some of his signature riffs, and did a lot of altered melodies so that he didn't have to do so many of those B4's and C5's. Still, he's Michael McDonald, and he has a great, soulful sound that is all his own (borrowed, in large part, from some of the Motown greats of the past).
It was a four-piece band (including Michael). The drummer didn't sing, so the background vocals were done by the bass player and the guitarist. They did a pretty good job. They MAY have been using a stompbox harmony-generator, but if they were, it wasn't obvious. They rocked as a 4-piece.
If you go on a binge (like I sometimes do) of watching as many YouTube Videos as you can of Michael McDonald singing live, you will see that even going back to the Doobie Brothers' live gigs, Michael dodged a lot of his signature high-note riffs even then. His recorded vocals are too high, even for Michael McDonald to pull off. Maybe he can on a fresh voice, but when he's on the road for months at a time, it's probably just too risky for him to go for it, all-out. If he kills himself for one audience, then everybody after that will get a hoarse version of Michael.
His voice was a bit gravelly compared to his recordings, but again, he said he was fighting a cold. It sounded like the years have taken a toll, as well. It's still a thrill to see and hear him perform. I'm still a big fan. I'm glad I got to see him again. I'll go again if I get the chance.
Bob