The singing thread

PolarityMan

How long did it take you guys to get to the point where you are happy sharing clips? I took about 6 months of lessons and while I've let practice slip a bit I still feel like I'm miles away from putting up anything decent. Although the lessons have given me some great insight on tone that I'm planning to use when capturing my bands singers

Sambostar

I take it your are not referring to me because I just grab a guitar, work out the chords, look up the lyrics and post it up in an effort to improve.  Who said anything about being decent anyway?  You learn more from your own and others faults than from anything decent anyway.

When people say you can't sing, it just means you don't have a full and desirable voice in the optimum range and sweet spots from E4 up.  Sing in an E3, let alone an E2 and already you have lost the immediacy and emotive intonation, even though it is the same note for note.  It's like doing a blues solo on a bass guitar.  Few things work, most things don't, hence why people think people with low registers can't sing.  Unless you are going the whole Mickey Rourke smokey bar thing.

If you can 'Sing' but don't sound good, it means you can hit the notes in the sweet spot but need practice to adjust your tone.

I personally find it annoying and I don't care how good any tenors on here are, I'm not interested, although it's fun to here them, I'm interested in something new, someone who can break out of the convention and take it to the masses.

..So I can emulate them and people think I can sing...lol.

Remember anything below a G2 is undesirable, probably because people cannot easily identify the intonation which, let's face it, equates to emotional content quickly enough, if at all and that has been scientifically proven.

Therefore, the only people who can truly sing are Baritones, Tenors, Countertenors and Sopranos.

You can't play Malmsteen on a bass....I'm thinking of that Napalm Death interview....of course you can.  Ner, I'm just bitter because I am probably a baritone who has knackered his already crappy voice by smoking too much, although I've never been able to sing an E4 to be fair.

So what do you sound like then @PolarityMan?

Drew_TNBD

PolarityMan;919691" said:

How long did it take you guys to get to the point where you are happy sharing clips? I took about 6 months of lessons and while I've let practice slip a bit I still feel like I'm miles away from putting up anything decent. Although the lessons have given me some great insight on tone that I'm planning to use when capturing my bands singers

Depends on whether you think I am just posting up pipe dreams or not, lol.

I guess a year of lessons and I started to look elsewhere for input.

PolarityMan

Sambostar said:

So what do you sound like then @PolarityMan?

Not in tune enough mostly.

PolarityMan

Drew_fx said:

PolarityMan;919691" said:

How long did it take you guys to get to the point where you are happy sharing clips? I took about 6 months of lessons and while I've let practice slip a bit I still feel like I'm miles away from putting up anything decent. Although the lessons have given me some great insight on tone that I'm planning to use when capturing my bands singers

Depends on whether you think I am just posting up pipe dreams or not, lol.

I guess a year of lessons and I started to look elsewhere for input.

I've shared stages with bands that have worse lead singers that's for sure.

Drew_TNBD

Sambostar said:

Also, not being funny, but as a bass/baritone that E4 is the upper side of your range, you won't physically be able to get it to sound as deep, rich and full as a true baritone or tenor would.  Still if you are a baritone, Keidis is too apparently and he struggles, so you could have a chance. 

As a bass myself, E4 is the absolute limit, there is no way I could even hope to get it to sound as rich and controlled as a baritone or as rich and beautiful as Frusciante, much as I'd like to.

Personally I'd concentrate on developing a rich and loud chest voice, so when people say you are mumbling your singing and not cutting through, rather than trying to emulate and sound like a fairy, you let loose with god gave you and make them cower and shit their pants with your earth trembling brown notes.

Fuck em, they are all wankers, most especially the ones inside your head.

Honestly, I don't really believe much of that. You know that song 'Passing' I did on our last album? I hit a G4 in that song, and nowadays I can hit it quite easily too. It's all about support and resonance placement. Typical baritone range is from A2 to A4. I've hit B4 a few times in lessons, but not yet in songs.

Check this out:

Sambostar

Yeah, but you don't smoke 20 a day, I've got something more like the profundo bass curse.  I classified myself, my speaking voice is higher than my singing voice. B1-B3 range.  E4 max and wavy like Grandpa Simpson and I struggle with an A1. I can develop my voice and I reckon get a pretty decent voice, but I will never be a decent baritone.

Sambostar

Well, I experimented with falsetto and chest voice and I got this, afraid I had to record the singing independently as I was concentrating on the falsetto, but I think it's OK all the same.

https://soundcloud.com/user360616451/absolutely-diabolical

WTF man. Some hot chick has liked that already.  That is ridiculous.  Is there spam on Soundcloud in the form of hot chicks or am I just a natural vocal magnet?

Abo

I enjoy singing and harmonies . This is an original of mine that I done a couple of years ago. Excuse the recording I was and still am a noob but it has some harmonies in it. Everything is me but the drums

Sambostar

I think I just hit a G4...more to follow.  Most of this singing lark is psychosomatic I reckon.  My mistake was listening to guitar orientated music for the best part of my life, so I got OK at guitar.  Now I'm listening to male singers I like, it's starting to sink in.

Ner, lost it now, straining, raising the larynx and going all softly again and can't even reach an E4.  Bollocks.

This is the best I could get after hitting it properly initially a few times and I think it's falsetto instead as I'd already forgotten how to sing by then.

@Drew_fx. ; What goes wrong in the second part when I tense up and forget how to sing and go all wavering and soft?  How do you relax this, or it iron it out so you are reliable?  Practice?

https://soundcloud.com/user360616451/a-go-at-high-voice

Drew_TNBD

I don't think that is falsetto guv. That's your head voice. What you're not getting is much cord closure or air pressure, that's why it sounds really light and heady like that. 1:23 ... "through the dark" ... do more of that. Sounded good to me! Reminds me a bit of Frusciante actually.

More exercise recordings from me:

Sambostar

Thanks. Kay-OHN.  Woah.

Drew_TNBD

I wasn't happy with my falsetto last night. Too airy.

Heartfeltdawn

Drew_fx said:

I wasn't happy with my falsetto last night. Too airy.

I'm not happy with mine either. It's too fucking awful. 

I admire people who can sing because there are strains of herpes who can hold a tune better than me. 

Drew_TNBD

Tbh even though I'm not amazing right now, its all I really wanna work on. I look at the guitar as just a tool now.

Heartfeltdawn

Drew_fx said:

Tbh even though I'm not amazing right now, its all I really wanna work on. I look at the guitar as just a tool now.

Many look at me holding a guitar and think "It's just a tool". 

Sambostar

I think the thing that grates me is my head voice is where most people's chest voice is and my falsetto barely covers their head voice and as for their high head voice or falsetto..ha ha.  Which basically translates as I can't put as much power or gruffness into singing as they do at the same pitch as they do.   I'd love to be able to belt out tenor stuff, but it's never gonna happen.  I may get into those notes, but I'II never sound like a tenor.

It's no accident that the middle of a tenor's range falls smack bang on middle C (C4) of the piano.  It's the way our ears are tuned and when a tenor like Eddie Vedder sings, it's usually in C4/D4, although it does sound gruffer and much deeper than it is in reality.

Basically I think that gruffness  around middle C is impossible to achieve for a baritone or bass.

Also, whilst they might complement the general frequencies of the music, no one wants to hear actual stand alone solos on bass strings on a guitar or the piano, which is basically what a bass or baritone voice is.  It's not sweet and soon becomes boring.

The irony is, although they are ten times more manly, obviously because they have deeper vocal chords, obviously because they have more testosterone, obviously, lol, that bass or baritone singers will sounds a lot wimpier and more feminine in the sweet spots around middle C.  That is just the unpleasant truth I reckon.

Still, I think I can vaguely blend falsetto and head voice as the G4 in that definitely was falsetto, so that is a bonus to work on at least I suppose.  Can't blend chest with head voice much at all though and the two are completely different styles and entities.

I would concentrate on just singing well as you do, or sing A Ha songs like me lol, as I'm not sure it's entirely physically possible to be gruff and chesty and powerful at the very top of your range whilst singing in your head voice.  I think it has to come off the chest. 

Although then again, there is Axl Rose and I don't know how he does it.

But like all these guys, they were singing in choir at church and perfecting their muscles since they were 4 or 5.  So the average person who hasn't sung basically have at least another 20 years before they even get average, probably more because they don't sing regularly.

I'II be 60 in 20 years...

..Maybe I'II get a head start if I start with the estrogen injections in my balls.

Or maybe Vedder is a baritone, but I think he fools you.  To my ears he's singing around C4 D4 like in Even Flow for example which is typical Pearl Jam.  Although maybe I've gone mad.  I don't know much about music and this frequency stuff is deceptive.  He sounds like a baritone, but he is singing in the middle of a tenors range so he is a god damn tenor, deluding the public and making the rest us feel even worse about our voices that we can't seem to achieve as we've been fooled by him and the public.

WTF am I going on about.  Ear frequency training estrogen injections

And when I say most people, I mean people I would like to be able to have the ability to sing like.

Basically all popular male singers, despite their varied voices, which might sound deep and gruff or high pitched and squealy or innocent and child like...are tenors.  All of them.

Try it, match guitar notes to their singing.  You get middle C every god damn time.

Why wasn't the piano designed with middle C as C3 or C2?   Face it, this is just science reality.  You have to find a new way if you have a normal male voice.  Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, whatever, they are all tenors.

Sambostar

This is what I mean.  The magical cat dying tone.  It is truly bad.   The best I can do that high is a strained whisper.  This is sung in middle C, as Vedder sings it.  I can't even imagine singing in that range, let alone belt it our with power from my chest as he does.  Best I can manage is C3.  But this is an attempt at middle C, an octave higher, as it is sung.  This is the vocal block you are up against if you have a normal male voice and people labelling tenors as baritones doesn't really help the mix of confusion and expectation.  And no...you can't sing Pearl Jam in Falsetto.

But this is probably the kind of thing most blokes who think they can't sing discover, but it is just a range thing. I think you can't go by sound or how gruff or 'Deep' it is.  You really have to sit down with an instrument and analyse the frequency of it.  Yeah I can vaguely scrap that pure A Ha stuff at an E4 in a purish child like tone, but I can't belt out a C4 or D4.

Drew_TNBD

Basically I think that gruffness  around middle C is impossible to achieve for a baritone or bass.

It's just not true dude. Most vocal teachers I've come across just don't put much stock in voice classification. Because they're not relevant to modern day microphone singing.

The reason you're struggling to hit those notes is because:

- You're lacking proper support

- You're making them too breathy

- You sound a bit scared of being too loud, or making noise. So you're holding back and thus creating tensions in your larynx.

I'm not sure if all the popular male singers are tenors... I need to go away and look at that myself.

Drew_TNBD

Hey @Sambostar - I made this for you... I'm nowhere near good enough to be giving lessons, but a few tips to guide you might be within my abilities. I hope it helps!