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cpach
Feb 28, 2005
This sounds fundamentally good to me, Mystery Date. I like what you've done with the guitar part, by the way. Aside from the pitch problems, the delivery, and particularly the dynamics, lack variation. Try using a fortepiano articulation on some of the longer notes, where you accent the start of the note, back off, and crescendo. In general I think it'd sound better if you imagined that you were really trying to sell the song to an audience.

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cpach
Feb 28, 2005

Manky posted:

D isn't a particularly low note for me, I've always been able to go down to that low B, even before I had any training. I'm a bit frustrated because a few months ago I know I had been able to hit a middle C, and in a few weeks of not practicing I feel like I lost at least four months of progress. The guy who stands next to me said to try to sing in my throat so much, but when I'm pushing so close to my falsetto, I physically feel like there's nothing else I can do. I know it sounds like crap, but between the G and B below middle C is the overlap between my head voice and my falsetto.

I know the answer is practice and finding a real teacher, but I am frustrated. My ear has genuinely improved, but I'm hitting this wall every chorus practice that's really disheartening.

I know it must be frustrating for you to have difficulty singing your parts in your choir, but don't feel too bad. I agree with Not Paul Layton that it is very unlikely that you cannot sing beyond middle C in your modal voice, but it does sound like you're a legit bass, which is kind of lucky. Actual, real basses are something of a rare thing and are somewhat coveted in choirs which often have a lot of bass-baritones and baritones singing the bass line. I am, for example, something of a light baritone and really loose a lot of control when singing the lower parts of bass choral writing, and am pretty much frying at an E2, which made it frustrating when my part had me chanting on D2 and the pitch started to drift down as I pretty much just started mouthing along.

Singing in the upper part of your voice requires practice and technique. The ideal solution really is to find a good teacher. Not only should this improve your voice in general, but as you have noticed being able to sing up to E4 is pretty much standard in the choral bass (and indeed solo bass) repretoire, with occasional F and F#s in some writing. The sound of a bass/bass section in this part of the voice is really powerful, and has a lot of musical impact.

Edit: Alternately learn to sing even lower and join an Russian Orthodox choir because that poo poo sounds badass. Check out some of this music if you want to feel better about having a low voice.

cpach fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Feb 10, 2012

cpach
Feb 28, 2005
You have a pleasant sounding voice, with some work I'm sure you can sound pretty good. You have a good falsetto, and when you allow yourself to open up into your higher modal voice in the second song it sounds good.

Hawkgirl is right. I wasn't familiar with the song so I looked it up, and you're mostly accurate when you're singing in your falsetto (which sounds pretty good, by the way). On the first verse before you flip into your falsetto you're singing below the part--not just flat. The first three pitches of the song ("I'm bolted from within") are E, F#, and G. You sing some pitchy thing that sort of starts on a B, I think, and then doesn't go above an F. You repeat these pitches pretty exactly on "from long conniving heights" so I think this may be an ear problem and not a voice problem? In contrast the falsetto section following this is mostly on the right notes-you're a little sharp or flat here and there, but not generally on outright wrong notes. On "my devil..." you're way above the lower of the two parts, and a little above the falsetto part taken down the octave.

I think you'll see a lot of improvement with a little ear training and a little more attention to what the pitches of the original recording are. Try singing along with the original recording one phrase at a time making sure you're matching the original line. I don't think you're tone deaf or anything--you match some parts accurately, you just need to spend some time learning the parts.

As for your voice itself, the simplest advice that will get you results right now is probably to practice singing out more. Imagine you're trying to sing to a group of people acoustically instead of your microphone in front of your computer. The added volume will probably result in your supporting your voice a little more, which will make it more consistently on pitch and probably richer sounding.

Cool song, by the way.

cpach
Feb 28, 2005

Hammer Floyd posted:

I just started to sing. Is fun :)

I've got a bit of an awkward range. I'm 2 Fs below middle C up to the D above middle C. I'm pleased I've got something resembling a range, but the trick now is figuring out how to use it.

For what it's worth this is about dead normal for an average male baritone without vocal training. It's likely you can't sing very well much lower, but with training most guys can at least sing at least an F above what you can, and very likely more. You also probably have a fair amount of additional range in your falsetto. That said range is not at all the most important element in singing, so don't try to push it. Focus on general vocal technique and musicianship instead, and range should come in time.

A lot of rock/pop emphasizes higher vocal range, either for tenors or baritones singing very high in their voices. Don't let that get you down. There's lots of great music in your range.

cpach
Feb 28, 2005

Gianthogweed posted:

I know some will disagree with me on this, but I like to think of the Head voice as the higher range of falsetto.

For example, you know it's falsetto if you can sing those same notes in chest voice
(though it usually sounds quite strained in chest voice at the top of your range). But once you reach the very top of your chest voice and are forced to go into falsetto, you're actually going into head voice register.

Head voice has a different tone than falsetto because you're zipping up your vocal chords and it can actually be sung much louder than falsetto. Falsetto is very breathy and it's very difficult to sing loudly. But head voice is more piercing and more nasal. You know it's head voice if your nose vibrates. It's similar to chest voice in that as you reach the higher notes near the top of your range, you're kind of forced to belt them out and it's very difficult to sing quietly.

What people often confuse with head voice, is actually the mixed voice. The mixed voice is a combination of falsetto and chest voice. When you can train your voice to combine these two registers where they overlap, you get a much better tone. It doesn't sound as strained as when you try to belt out those high notes in pure chest voice, and there is more of a smooth transition between registers rather than the sudden break between chest and head voice. You're kind of using the same technique of zipping up your vocal chords and you feel the vibration in your nose as you do with head voice, so a lot of people call mixed voice head voice. I like to differentiate the two though, because it makes it easier for me to understand.

For what it's worth I think your definitions are wrong, but people misuse terminology regarding voice registration so much that it almost doesn't matter.

Speech pathology makes a distinction between the modal voice and the falsetto voice as a matter of vocal chord function. From the reasonably good Wikipedia falsetto article:

Wikipedia posted:

The modal voice, or modal register, and falsetto register differ primarily in the action of the vocal cords. Production of the normal voice involves vibration of the entire vocal folds, with the glottis opening first at the bottom and then at the top. Production of falsetto, on the other hand, vibrates only the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds while leaving each fold's body relatively relaxed.[11] Transition from modal voice to falsetto occurs when each vocal cord's main body, or vocalis muscle, relaxes, enabling the cricothyroid muscles to stretch the vocal ligaments.

"For example, you know it's falsetto if you can sing those same notes in chest voice " is wrong. For example, I'm a mediocre light baritone with a few years of classical training who likes sometimes to sing countertenor material in my falsetto in a roughly alto range, and the overlap between my modal voice and falsetto is at least an octave. Lots of men don't experiment very much with the ability to sing in the lower range of their falsetto, but this is currently standard practice among current operatic countertenors (like Andreas Scholl or David Daniels), who tend to extend their falsetto really low (lots of falsetto A3s) with occasional light modal notes they carefully transition to. Really awesome falsettists like the above mentioned singers have fuller glottal closure in their falsetto resulting in more volume and rich tone than the whispery, light tone that people often think of with the term, but it's physiologically essentially the same mechanism, just reinforced and strengthened.

I think the more correct use of the terms chest and head voice are really just in reference to perceived changes in resonance in the modal voice rather than a change in vocal chord function. Your definition of head voice sounds like the perceived registration feel of the upper falsetto.

Wikipedia has decent articles on vocal chord function and registration.

It sounds like you've been going off of Manning's stuff? His videos on youtube make him seem like a hack.

Faltese Malkin posted:

Last night I was singing over some stuff I had recorded and was singing as loud and harder then I had before, certainly by myself. After about 30 minutes my vocal chords started feeling strained (like when you have a cold and your throat is sore) and this morning my voice is a touch hoarse, with my throat still under the weather.

I was taught how to sing with proper technique (in a choral setting) but I don't know if I had been following that as I should've been. I assume I can attribute that to my vocal chord problem? Or is it just 'natural' strain from singing harder than I had before?
You shouldn't feel that tired after singing for 30 minutes. Several hours? Maybe even a two hour rehearsal singing out strongly? Sure, maybe a little bit. You're new to singing and it's unlikely you have perfect technique, so yes, better technique is pretty much the answer.

If you feel your voice is being strained, take it easy, pay closer attention to technique, don't sing out so much, and maybe sing the upper notes in falsetto if that's easier for you (this is what I do a lot singing choral tenor parts being an actual baritone), at least in rehearsal.

cpach
Feb 28, 2005
For what it's worth a ton of classical instructors also are bad about terminology, and major historical schools of singing that predate a scientific understanding of vocal production are still a big deal. When dealing with anything historical it's a total cluster: in the earliest usage of the term (like in the 14th century etc) head voice probably did mean falsetto, for example. I've had choral directors tell the tenor section to not strain for high notes by telling us to sing "pure head voice" or "pure head tone" when they very clearly meant for us to sing a passage falsetto. My old vocal coach used the same terminology (and was remarkably unhelpful about any specific training in my falsetto or in transitioning between my modal and falsetto voices). I maintain that poo poo is such a clusterfuck that terminology about registration is almost useless without a known context or some careful definition.

Ari's attempt at understanding the head/falsetto terminology used by some commercial singing instructors is about as good as anything. It's probably really just a distinction between "falsetto production I think sounds horrible" and "falsetto that I think sounds good".

For what it's worth I think the "mixed voice' you're talking about is basically equivalent to good technique in what would be more properly called the head resonance, particularly among tenors, using vocal cover and vowel modification above approx. F4 for most tenors. It could also possibly refer to a relatively clean dovetailing between falsetto and modal voice.

Aso gandlethorpe: your takes on Isn't She Lovely aren't bad or anything, but it's healthy to remind oneself that someone like Stevie Wonder (or Michael Jackson) doesn't just have a high voice, they have an EXTREMELY uncommonly high voice and trying to sound like them at the same pitch isn't realistic unless you're also a one of thousands genetic wunderkid. Isn't She Lovely isn't actually insane (verse I think goes to A4, chorus B4) so a good real tenor could sing it without falsetto, but even then Stevie just sounds like he's singing in the most ordinary, comfortable part of his voice on the track and that's not very common. There is similar genre music where dudes are pretty much just singing falsetto in this range (which is what you're doing). It's really easy to get distracted in a search for range but it's not always the best thing for the actual development of vocal technique. A lot (most?) good vocal coaches mostly start students in the solidly comfortable part of their range so to focus on basic technique for this reason (while running exercises over a wider range, typically).

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cpach
Feb 28, 2005

Nova88 posted:

I've noticed that when holding a note at any reasonable volume, it becomes vibrato without me meaning it to. This works alright in some songs but it's not the strongest vibrato and there's also a lot of songs that it sounds weird with. Is there any trick I can apply to my technique to keep the note stable? Or is it just a property of my voice that doesn't need fixing?

Here's a short example:
https://soundcloud.com/novaro/vibrato-test/s-ItChU

That doesn't sound like a desirable vibrato--it's a distracting wobble. Vibrato is a point of contention for many singers, but I think that a good, open, healthy production will by default produce a slight, narrow vibrato, which by intentional modification may be made to be a straight tone or a more dramatic vibrato. To be blunt, you are achieving none of those outcomes.

To be honest, there's room for improvement in most of aspects of your singing, and I don't think focusing on your wobble should be a priority. Likely a healthier production--more supported breath, a more relaxed tongue and larynx, better posture, etc, will resolve the wobble naturally. This will also improve the pitchyness of your singing. The simplest advice I'd start with is to try to only practice when you can sing out--try to project, as if to the back of a concert hall. What will improve your performance most will be eartraining and musicianship--you're singing mostly out of time, and not a particularly close facsimile of the original melody, with often very bad pitch.

I don't intend to be discouraging--I think you have an essentially pleasant vocal timbre, and these are common problems that can be resolved with some more.

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