"Silent Lucidity", "Simple Man", "Ghost of Days Gone By", "Crawling Back to You"

KaiEllis

One of the virtues of spending 6 days a week working out for an hour, and then another hour after working on songs line by line... You get a lot of work done!

Been working on these songs the last couple of weeks. They're all uniquely challenging and require me to get a handle on some specific skills. All of them are naked vocals.

Queensryche, "Silent Lucidity"
There's a LOT of range in this song, so I've got to remind myself to treat the lows with the same strength as the highs, and I've got to get smarter about my support or I juuuuuuuust miss the ascending scales on the high notes (like I do in this take, at 2:38, "master of illusion can you realize...")



Shinedown, "Simple Man"
This song is actually frustrating the spoons out of me. I'm CONSISTENTLY losing support on the chorus for this one, and by the time I get to the final line of the chorus, I sound like a goat braying for its mother HELP!



Alter Bridge, "Ghost of Days Gone By"
This song takes me to the tip top of my chest voice right now - A#4 - and I really have to focus on every fundamental to get the chorus out without sounding like a broken kazoo. Also the octave change from the verse to the chorus makes me focus on keeping from oversinging the bottom or I'll NEVER make it to the top. You ever sing this one, @streeter ?



Daughtry, "Crawling Back to You"

Like the Alter Bridge tune, this one takes me to the tip top of my chest voice. Still got a couple of sticking points in this song, mostly navigating the consonants and vowels in the chorus, especially the line "out of my head can't wait any longer..." I'm learning to remove the H in "head" altogether and just sing "outta my ED", but man, bad habits die hard.

streeter

@KaiEllis

nah man, sorry.

Only know 'Simple Man', out of these songs.

For 'Simple Man' it sounds like you are over compressing everything and grinding on the cords a little. The Daughtry tune is about where you want to be with regards to compression... Just watch your melodies man, there are some fairly sharp unexpected turns in there and a lot of scooping up to the note. It almost sounds like you've added a vocoder effect or fed your voice through an App that sounds something like T Pain would use.

The verses sound like they would be in a real comfortable spot for you, So work on those and try to free them up a little. Try and match the guy pitch for pitch, note intensity for note intensity, timbre for timbre etc... get real pedantic about it. sing along with the original, record yourself singing along with the original, see if you match up, if you do, take the recording away and see how close you can record it without him.

highmtn

These demos need a little bit of the backing track in them. Without that, there is no context for the pitches you are singing.

KaiEllis

@streeter Oh no! A vocoder! I promise it's just me singing into my phone's microphone o_O

Maybe I can turn this "how to create an autotune sound without using autotune" thing into a singing course... nah that's a terrible idea lol

Agree with you about the scooping. Been working on that feeling of sitting on top of the note versus scooping up to it. I'll keep working on it and try to lighten up on the compression. Thank you for your feedback!

@highmtn ah, I didn't realize! I'll do that next time i post. I was under the impression that naked vocals were the easiest to analyze. Thank you for your help!

KaiEllis

All right, took a little figuring, but grabbed a take from today of "Ghost of Days Gone By" and put the original track behind it (but mixed it WAAAAAY down so my vox are far out in front).

Working on landing on top of the A#4 instead of scooping to it. Made progress today! ... but still not where it needs to be Thanks you guys for your help! Your feedback alone has been worth the purchase price of KTVA.

highmtn

Thanks for adding that music track. It gives greater context to the demo. Also can help to give you cues as to when you are or are not in-pitch with the song. You can do this next time, by simply singing alongside to a karaoke track playing on speakers, and adjusting placement of yourself and the speakers, relative to the mic on your cell phone. Eventually, you'll have a balanced "mix" if you experiment with it a few times prior to recording your demo.

At 1:03 you're a bit sharp. So you can come down a little lower for your landing on that note. Keep practicing and you'll find that perfect, centered spot for every note.

Bob

KaiEllis

That's excellent advice on getting a demo with the music for reference. Thank you!

I'll work on coming a little lower on that note. Thank you for your feedback, Bob!