Paradise, Original song

[Jason]

I just recorded a new song. It's songwriter-ish, would love any feedback!

soundcloud.com/jasongorton/paradise

[Pain]

that your voice, is it? Very different from what i imagined it to be, that's for sure.
Yeah, and you kept it simple, verse-chorus-verse-chorus. Not much fancy guitar-work either.I'm quite surprised at that, since I've seen your guitar-playing on YouTube.

Overall, the song is very different from what I expected. Nonetheless, a very relaxing atmosphere. Yeah!

[Jason]

Yeah a lot of people say that about my voice

Thanks man! Yeah no mindlessly shredding off into the distance for this one

[Master]

Wow, your voice it's like totally different from your looks hehe. Still good though. It reminds me of Neon a bit but with different 'aura'. Cool stuff. I think it's great that you play stuff in the song that goes well with it, instead of trying to add shred or overly complicated stuff, it just has what it needs to have. Do you have a vocal coach or something?

[Jason]

Haha a lot of people say that about my voice!

Thanks so much it means a lot, yeah I didn't think a massive solo really suited the piece.

I don't have a vocal coach but I definitely need to find one, so I guess I will do very soon haha

[Master]

Yeah, you sound great as of now so the vocal coach will definitely improve your sound further, specially on higher notes.

[Jason]

Really?! That's really nice to hear seriously, thank you! Yeah I need to learn how to not force the higher notes as you can't get away with it live.

[Master]

Nov 21, 2012 12:48:10 GMT -6 Jason said:

Really?! That's really nice to hear seriously, thank you! Yeah I need to learn how to not force the higher notes as you can't get away with it live.

Indeed my friend, you have a very nice voice, you might aswell take advantage of it.

[Jason]

Thanks so much, it means a lot!

[venreskiller4]

Hi Jace. I'll have to agree with the major consensus about your voice: excellent dude. Very mature sounding, especially considering you are 19. The maturity of your voice reminds me of a local (in my area) country singer named Blaine Larson. He has since moved to Nashville. This guy as a teenager sounded like a big burly 50 year old; lots of depth and soul. You got it too, and I thought you were just a young gifted guitarist. Keep developing all your musician skill.

[Jason]

Thank you so much Ven, sorry for the late reply.

That means an awful lot to me, I'm still not 100% confident with my singing ability, I'm going to get coaching but yeah thank you.

My voice is pretty deep naturally which might make it sound mature I guess? But it's slightly hindering as I want to sing really high notes like Russell Allen or Dio haha.g

[venreskiller4]

Jace, no problem on the reply time.

My humble suggestion to you for increasing your high range is to work on the falsetto. Also work on transitioning from falsetto to full and visa versa. Find a comfortable place for the falsetto/full voice break or transition. If you haven't worked on falsetto extensively, it will seem weird at first since it will more than likely be weaker than the full voice. But keep working; it will get stronger. Then you can try getting different falsetto tones, namely those that are more aggressive. This may sound like bad technique, but I like to kind of like squeeze my vocal cords to get a raspier more forceful sound. I know a lot of classically trained singer would frown down on this, but I'm a rocker. It all depends on you and how you want to use your voice. By the way, I'm not a trained singer and I'm not any kind of expert so take my advice with some caution and protect your vocal cords; they are delicate. Another bit of advice is to never sing all out or at 100% or higher intensity. That would wear your voice out in no time. I'd say sing at about 90% or lower intensity to keep control and keep your endurance.

Lessons sound like a good idea as long as the teacher is teaching you what you need and want to learn.

[Jason]

Ven

Thanks a lot that's some really useful info. My falsetto or head voice is a lot weaker sounding than my full voice, which is actually fine for the acoustic style I'm into but I'd love to be able to sing higher properly.



Is that how most singers reach higher notes? Like at 4:11 of this song it sounds like his full voice.

[Master]

Actually that note sounds strained in my book, it sounds like a throaty belt/mix. It doesn't sound healthy for the vocal chords. But I'm not sure, however that doesn't mean is bad,it's just the guy's way of singing whether it is healthy or not, some people like it.
In classical technique they mostly use belting, on more contemporary singing they use mostly mix, belt is dominated by chest voice while mix can be dominated by either chest, head or pharyngeal. Christina Aguilera and Adele are belters (even though Christina has scratchy belts and technical problems in her voice I still consider her to be one of the best and most impressive singers) , mixers would be Usher or Hayley Williams. Some singers can belt and mix. Here's healthier ways of achieving a raspy sound in your voice like the guy right here. At 4:06

There's also a difference between falsetto and head voice, falsetto is weak and airy while head voice can be powerful and you can go higher, however working on falsetto can help you discover head voice, singers who use head voice masterfully would be Justin Timberlake and Jim Gillette from Nitro.

I know what venreskiller means. I find some classical singers to be very close minded when it comes to contemporary styles of singing, they think their way is the only way. Their methods work alright, but there's other methods and other ways of singing aswell. Of course that the base is the same for everyone. But well...

As far as instruction goes, you should definitely find a vocal coach, there's some singing courses that you can buy on the web, one that it's not expensive and it's great for rock and metal singing like Dio, it's called Raise your voice by Jaime Vendera.
However there's no replacement for vocal coach, a course cannot tell you if you are straining, using nasality unintentionally, pulling the tongue back, etc. etc. However if you cannot get vocal instruction from a coach it's better to have a program to teach you instead of trying to sing stuff you have no idea how to do.
Some of the best vocal coaches for country and pop are on Nashville so no wonder the guy moved there.
There's no replacement for a vocal coach, there's no doubt. I found that some of these programs have helped people who didn't know how to sing a lot though, so you might give it a try if you can't find a coach, it's definitely better than nothing so...

[Master]

In my book you shouldn't try adding raspy sounds to the voice if you don't have a coach because it's a lot harder to do it correctly than it seems.

[venreskiller4]

Master, I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but not exactly everything. I don't think you necessarily need lessons, but instructions can and do help. I don't think you necessarily need instructions either. There have been so many excellent self-taught musicians who had nothing else to go by but their influences and their own inspiration. They tend to have the more unique sound. Sure, education will expand your knowledge, but it could also make you sound like everybody else. I think how you reach your goal is totally up to the individual.

As far as adding rasp to the voice, as long as you know when to take a break, I don't find anything wrong with experimenting. If you find your way of creating this type of timbre, you will probably find that you will have to build up your vocal cords to relax with it and develop endurance.

Another thing about loud live rock singing, in many situations, it is difficult to hear the vocal monitors. The natural tendency is to sing harder in attempts to hear yourself better. This is definitely a mistake. If you sing all out, you will not gain that much more volume, but you will sure wear your voice out faster.

Jace getting back to the falsetto and building range, I agree with Master, but my philosophy might be a little different. I believe in the concept of opposites to pull one to the middle ground while being able to do the extremes. Full voice and falsetto will help you learn more about your voice. Full voice will teach you how to get power out of your falsetto and falsetto will teach you to relax on the higher range of your full voice. When I practice quietly and put my full/falsetto break at a lower range, I practice relaxing on higher notes. When I go back to singing in loud full voice, I almost automatically relax more on the higher full voice notes. That can be used to increase your range, but do it gradually by building it. Kind of like an athlete builds up their physical abilities.

Another important aspect of singing is support by using your abdominal muscles to control the airflow past the vocal cords. When you sing and press on your stomach at the same time you will add more support to your notes. Of course, there are breathing exercises to help this too. You'll find it easier to control support in full voice. Falsetto tends to be breathy and you'll run out of air faster. In this case, full voice can teach you to improve your falsetto.

I want to say that I'm not against education. Trained singers (and other types of musicians) tend to have the better technique. However, there are different ways of educating yourself which include lessons with a teacher, training yourself using a good method plan, incidental training by observing other singers you admire, and good old experimentation. A combination will probably give you the best results of strong technique with unique style(s). If you are into it (which I know everybody on this forum is into expanding their musicianship skills), you will undoubtedly do the research to achieve your goals.

Rock on everybody and be excellent.

[Master]

Well, I understand that some guitarists for example began by learning songs from artists they like, they figured out the songs by ear.
However if we look at the self taught guitarists, this guys knew their scales, knew their chords and stuff, Rusty Cooley used the courses from metal method, there's always some kind of instruction that's needed imo. Specially in the voice since it's such a delicate instrument, a lot of well known rock singers don't sing nearly as great as they did on younger times, there's so many unhealthy and wrong habits one can develop, this can be avoided by getting proper instruction, whether it's a vocal coach, an instructional program or whatever. I agree that the combination of resources it's the way that will give you great results, on experimentation however you need to know what you are doing, people have developed medicine by experimenting but they already knew what chemicals can produce good results. The thing is that if one is an untrained singer yet that person keeps singing with poor technique that voice won't last much. That's really the only reason why I suggest that people find a vocal coach which in my book it's the best way to avoid any vocal problems when it's a good coach. In guitar for example, I didn't have proper instruction at the beginning. Now I have some problems when playing, and it takes a lot of time and effort to eliminate those bad habits. SO in any case I recommend getting proper instruction. When getting instructional programs I find that learning from different programs it's the best option since one program might cover stuff the other one didn't, but focusing on one program at the time.
And I totally support the idea that you mention of knowing when to rest and not sing all out.
However I disagree with the idea of practicing full voice at first since normally that means pulling up chest voice and that means you are hurting yourself. In my book, "switching" to a fuller-sounding voice does not involve abandoning that head resonance. Rather it involves adding chest and pharyngeal to the existing head resonance. Abandoning the head resonance to even a slight degree will result in strain. Allowing your head voice to take over where it should will make getting into a full voice easier down the road.
This means that it's better to make a habit of finding head voice consistently than to pull up chest voice just for the sake of producing a fuller (albeit strained) tone. Vocal coaches find that it is much harder to teach someone how to blend the two voices if they must first unlearn the habit of pulling up chest.

[Master]

Now, I'm talking about mix here since that's the technique I'm learning. I cannot tell you anything about belting and how to approach learning that technique, IMO it's not that great for more contemporary styles since I think it's harder to go higher and at this time going higher it's really important because a lot of singers are getting trained on contemporary styles of singing.
But that doesn't mean that a classical trained singer cannot learn to sing contemporary styles because a lot of them do.