Audio of me singing

Whitesnake

Yesterday I did a post here about my problem of speech level singing. Again: I never studied actually SLS, it's just my problem, that when I sing, it's sound like I'm speaking. So people here ask me to do an audio of me singing song with consonants and without them. Well, I just did that. I took a song "I'm sailing away..." by Styx, that Ken took as an example in his video, and did that first line. I found that I don't feel comfortable singing in the key that Ken sung it, and I start to build tension in my throat. So I lowered it one step down. Here's two records: with the consonants and without them.

And later I thought that it will be cool to give you guys an example how I sing an actual song. So I decided to do 1st verse and a chorus in song called "Mad World" by Gary Jules. So here we go.

P.S: English is not my native language so there might be some accent in pronunciation.

- without consonants.
- with the consonants.
- me singing "Mad World".

HuduVudu

@Whitesnake You're definitely over-pronouncing your consonants. When you pronounce a consonant your throat necessarily has to close off. That said what you need to do is "fake" the consonant sound. You did the Styx song like in the video correctly without the consonants. Now try to add the consonant sound back in slowly. Don't worry if it sounds like a word or not. Just focus on how the consonant wants to shut everything down, and find ways of not letting that happen. Try doing this very quietly.

Also work on mimicking the original singer EXACTLY, they had to figure this out, so if you follow them you will have to do what they did. Break the phrase down into maybe one or two words, to help things along. I haven't really worked on this in singing but I do do this in Spanish all the time to get my sentences fluid so, I don't sound like a gringo. I am often repeating words over and over again to get the sounds exactly right. Then phrases etc ...

Good luck

Whitesnake

@HuduVudu thanks for response! I definitely will work on it. So, if I understand you correctly, consonants shouldn't close my throat? Like my throat should stay open regardless if I sing a vowel or a consonant?

HuduVudu

@Whitesnake yes. You just want to make a enough of a consonant sound so that it sounds like the consonant but allows your throat to stay open. This is why singing is NOT like speaking. You don't enunciate your consonants when you sing. You fool your audience into hearing the consonant even though you really didn't sing it. Also sometimes we can skip the consonant sound all together if there is enough contex to give meaning to the word. For example, on that Styx song you can get rid of the "L" altogether on the word sailing. What it ends up sounding like is "saying". You can give a small tongue movement to hint at the "L" but most people could easily understand the word without it.

Whitesnake

@HuduVudu thank you so much! That clears A LOT to me! Hell, I even saved your message on my desktop so I can read it everytime I go to practice singing! Thank you!