Thought the dramatic title may help
The usual feedback I get when I play anywhere or share recordings with people is that I'm boring and the songs are dour. When I did a few recordings and sent them to my dad, proud as anything, he took two months (bearing in mind I see him weekly...) to get around to saying "thought you were going through one of your depressive phases again so didn't want to say anything".
And to be honest, I understand why people say I'm boring - my voice isn't very exciting and a bit nasally, and my guitar playing isn't amazing, or when I play piano and sing instead, I do bore myself a bit. But other people seem to have nasal and introverted voices, or aren't that good at guitar, and they manage to be interesting, with a bit of excitement or edge to what they are doing, a bit more engaging.
So, anybody got any tips on what I might need to do to get there? I'd like to get into doing open mic nights where it would just be me and a guitar or keyboard, so tips related to that kind of set up would be great! It's the same whether it's covers or originals, so I know it's not necessarily the songs as the covers I've done have been generally accepted good songs.
Some of it is probably because I can't fully seem to let go as I don't have the control to do so, and because I don't 100% believe in the music I have to do because of my vocal constraints, ie I can't do the White Stripes, Strokes or Yeah Yeah Yeah songs I like to listen to and play because my voice doesn't work in those scenarios. So it could just be a conviction thing, I dunno.
Also, if the only way to improve is with confidence, then I may have to accept (aka give up) that I can't do it. Also playing with anybody else is out of the question due to time and personality constraints unfortunately.
Here's a couple of songs to illustrate my point, one original and one cover:
Thank you everyone
Comments
If I was to offer any critique it'd be to maybe open up the range a bit, I presume you're not confident in going full belt and going into higher notes? Also some backing vocals (harmonies) would help (not sure if there are any on there) but it'd be hard to replicate live if you're performing alone.
The other thing would be varying the phrases rhythmically, so starting on different parts of the bar and trying different rhythms.
Open mics are also good for learning from watching other people.There are good performers out there, and there are also bad ones, who might not realise it. You can learn from all of them.
I have one tip for your singing.......listening to music is an emotional experience, so the emotional content is important. As a songwriter you can write emotion into your lyrics, but as a singer you can’t necessarily depend on the lyrics to convey that emotion, you need to try to convey the emotional stuff in your singing. Performing live will help you to develop that.
I have been practising the technique of the vocals recently, especially breathing (as that's what causes the wobble) but also extending my range a bit - I can now reach a Bb above middle C whilst breathing in and out as I've been learning a song to push that up. I'm not always happy with the tone of my high notes but hopefully as you guys have said, some proper guidance might help with that. Agree that the two examples above show my lack of control, which in turn makes me sound a bit wobbly and therefore potentially unsure, which does not then convey the conviction in what I'm doing.
Bit wary of changing things too much though as I don't mind the basic tone of my voice (albeit it doesn't suit the music I like), and I've found in the past instrumental lessons have only ever achieved changing my playing to somebody else's style.
I did a lot of classical piano when I was younger and played mostly the grand romantic era type stuff (Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninov), and learnt how to channel the emotion and expression in that quite well. But sadly that does not translate very well to modern music! Unless anybody knows of any crossovers which work. Not to mention my lack of competence compared to my piano days when I was fairly decent.
One suggestion I'd been given was to go all out and embrace the "depressive" music (I suppose downbeat is the diplomatic word!) and try to do something completely out there. I'm quite into Radiohead and Jeff Buckley at the moment and feel I could find some common ground there maybe, and at least get that out of my system? I'm never going to be able to make happy music because I'm a miserable sod but maybe getting a full on dirge out of my system might help me find some interest elsewhere.
Time is against me admittedly as the only free time I get to practise is before the Mrs comes home, when really I should be cooking the dinner lol. That's why the singing has improved as I can do that at any time whilst doing other stuff, nothing to plug in and connect up etc.
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I've been singing for years and recently I had a couple of sessions with a vocal coach, which has helped in unexpected ways. You can save a lot of time by having someone point you in the right direction I think
edit: my parents have never liked any of my music, even the song that was played on radio 1
Beyond that I think what makes the difference in elevating a song is arrangement - I mean this in a broad sense of song structure, dynamics, musical arrangements. A song can have very simple elements and simple musicianship, limited vocals but the right arrangement lifts it. In many ways that's the history of pop music. If a Katy Perry song is the same 4 chords over and over that's not what you ear picks up on - the intro sounds different to the verse sounds different to the chorus, there is use of dynamics, the structure is simple enough to follow but not so simple it's just repetition. Very hard to get a song like that to work strummed on an acoustic guitar, at which point you'd need to think about extending the harmony, being more vocally dynamic,etc.
Technique ( vocally or an instrument) is one aspect of making something interesting but there are a lot of others.
soundcloud.com/thecolourbox-1
youtube.com/@TheColourboxMusic
And there is NOTHING on this earth worse than playing something you wrote to your own family.
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soundcloud.com/thecolourbox-1
youtube.com/@TheColourboxMusic
You're far from boring, I'd be pleased if I made that track and ecstatic if I wrote that song.
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