Metal Reviews

As per Goat's request, how I'm feeling today will be chronicled here since how I feel is 90% dependent on how I sing and it's getting a little out of hand for the other thread.


These are the best recordings I've ever made even though they aren't perfect. The technique is getting closer to where it needs to be even though the execution is somewhat lacking. These should sound completely different than anything I've ever released.

http://www.mediafire.com/#pap1mhgt6esr1

First link just leads to the mediafire main page.

Replace the # with ? (link is in his sig).

I listened to the Kamelot song. I think I've heard enough. Thanks for playing, sir.

I've got to tell you, Chris... You've gotten better actually. Keep going. Your chosen path is very difficult but you seem to be the epitome of determination.

You know something, Addy?

I respect the shit out of you for posting this stuff at a place where everyone rips on you so hard. That takes some serious courage and self belief, so good for you man. As for your singing, you still have to keep working at it for a while I think, but if you keep this state of mind, who the hell knows what you might be able to achieve. I wish I had the balls to follow my convictions like you.

Thanks a lot for listening everyone and the nice comments. Yes, everything needs work, but at least I'm on the right track now, I think. I think my subconscious has finally decided to quit trying to improve my vocal tract for me by making me think I'm doing everything right when I'm just exercising one of the overtones instead.

I ask you guys because I respect your opinions for telling it like it is and the fact that the vast majority do not have an singing advice that would be helpful so I won't get lectured on something I know already but have decided doing it another way or working on it later or whatever. I'm self taught for a reason and I don't want a teacher giving me bad ideas since half the stuff I read online by pros is flat out wrong. Some of it has been very helpful though and it is a real headache between the world's way of doing it and your own and bad ideas from both ruining things. I mean the smallest little detail can send lead to six months of tortorous frustration.

I am very very lucky that I do not have to worry about my voicebox or my diaphragm too much and only what the air feels like against my tongue which if you do everything right will be the end result no matter what, so you really don't need to worry about stuff that takes care of itself. That is a hard lesson to learn that you can't even control yourself, so control what you can. Your body either reacts the right way or not and mine always has. Luckily when I was doing everything wrong the parts I was doing right were the parts that can't be messed up.

Just think of it like a guitarist who pushes down on the strings too hard and picks the strings too hard hard or soft. If that's their only problem it isn't like they have to start from scratch to play music better.

I'm learning how to work with the EQ to make it sound better because my voice needs some of it in the presence region of 2-5Khz. My singer's formant which gives the clarity and power is a full octave too high from all these years of 12 hour singing an octave too high and it sits right in those areas that can fatigue the ear quickly so even if I'm perfect it would sound fatiguing if there's no reverb or EQ or something like that added. It would sound unbelievable in a reverb chamber though. Could be genetic though because my mother has an extremely loud talking voice and I hear the same type of "shoutyness" when I record, so who knows.

Last night I coughed pretty loud in one strong motion and heard my voice travel a good 100 feet, hit the neighbours garage door and traveled back to me and it sounded the same and it only lost about half it's power on it's trip. I wish I knew more so I could calculate how many decibels and how much energy that would have to be to move that fast and strong.

After a solid week the results are still consistently getting better. I think my analogy that everything has to hit your tongue (and it does, every single frequency or it will not travel anywhere and will distort the entire sound) and relying on it as one of the most sensitive to pressure and touch organs in the body has done wonders. Before I was using the top of my tongue and killing half the frequencies and making it impossible for the backflow of air to reach all the folds. I was moving the rear part of my larnyx up when that cuts off air to the false folds when I wanted to use falsetto voices and I was shrillly using harmonic overtones and whistle register to make up for the missing sound. Unlike virtually every singer I can imagine,

I produce a viciously loud singer's formant without lowering my larynx at all in position and can even raise it significantly and maintain good tone, this flexibilty explains the range. being able to adjust each side of my vocal folds independently and constantly maintain whistle and falsetto excitation and adjust the strength of each of those things explains the tonal range.

I'm actually doing more exercising now than ever which just involves isolating a muscle and practing moving it correctly in the right lateral, vertical, horizontal and rotational position.

I love singing now more than ever. I get to play in a world with more than three dimensions at least.

Today's sessions didn't offer as much in the way of quality vocal takes as I had hoped, but I know what I did wrong when I hear it. There's is nothing wrong with them, it's just the vocal folds were not tight enough because my Larynx wasn't lowered enough and my adam's apple was situated a little too high to counter the lack of tension. I can sing as a countertenor, but the lack of resonance comes off a bit shrill. In other words I was not using the false folds enough so the air was not getting high enough into my nasal passages and tip of my tongue and without the air volume being close to "full" you find the airflow not getting down deep enough either. I just really hate a breathy quality in my own voice any higher than really low and can't stand nasal vocals from myself. Avoiding the nasal passages and false folds altogether works for me but it loses the warmth and color. Just need to inject a little more. It will be okay.

I'm just do happy I know where the parts are, how they feel, which directions they can move in and how that movement affects the sound AND how it all comes together finally. I would be very frustrated if this were a month ago because I would have no idea how to correct something I didn't like the tone of. I am extremely lucky I have the luxury of which register I want to sing it in and how I want the tone to sound with respect to "proper" tone, though it has become a curse too.

I'm still amazed that I have sung so much so wrong that I have physically morphed my natural Baritone voice into something new. For example, a singer's formant provides the clarity and carrying power of the notes and makes them ring out; most trained classical/opera males have one from 2.5-3.5 Khz and females are a bit higher from about 3Khz to about 4Khz. Mine is around 4.5Khz making me a modern day castrate in the modal high voice. My Adam's Apple is the size of a pea because apparently my voice change was extremely non-violent when my larynx ripped itself in half and put itself back together. There's virtually no scarring or calcium buildup from the reconstruction process that happens to all people. I had to physically beat the shit out of my vocal tract to match that anomaly though. I had the worst "witches voice" on Earth five years ago when I tried to hit anything high. 10x worse than the one Warrel Dane sported with Sanctuary.

Got a lot of new clips. Half of these will be gone in a few days due to the quality not being consistent with more current material. I only wanna keep about 50 of these things up there, maybe a hundred

It comes down to the fact I am making one mistake and one mistake alone because I used to be a heavy Baritone and now I am a Tenor or Countertenor due to a period where I sang an octave high no matter what. I probably didn't like my voice and subconsciously fooled myself into taking the necessary steps to change it. My own voice doesn't annoy me like so many singers. Most hate their own voices like it's the worst thing they've ever heard.

Gotta use the tongue to feel that all the frequencies are there and at least for me I have to open up the bottom of the folds to add warmth. That is the hard "beyond 3d" part because you are influencing air current by rotation and the "bias" (difference) in the two different folds. My non uniformity in using each of the two folds is a minor issue but it's heavy on my mind because it was ignored so long.

From now on I will call the thing that makes your voice "vocal cords" because calling them "folds" does not include the vocal ligaments or the vestibules (false folds) and all three of things have to be in literally harmony to "ring out" the notes.

I would like to hear you singing your own stuff. I think the problem with most of this soundclips is that you're trying to emulate several vocalists, and that is of course quite difficult. You would be a good Power Metal singer. There are far worst vocalists out there who call themselves 'professionals'.

True. Yeah, that would be a good idea actually.

Thanks a lot Alexander.

I'm still working on it obviously. The thing is that if I can do one voice perfectly, I could do them all. There's always some problem, but it's getting better. I don't know how to describe it, but I sing in a way that protects my voice since I blew out one of my folds in the summer of 2009. I'm starting to get over it. I got drunk and for the first time ever actually sounded worse. I'm getting close to "full power."

It should be fairly obvious, but it isn't. Anything the band or producer does to a singer's voice after the fact has to be copied too. If a singer has a really thick voice on the record but is thin without all the equipment, well, I have to to the thick version to hear myself and cover up their vocal track. There's a reason I do it this way.

I really don't tamper with the color of the tone when I mix these things in. I might add the Sonic Maximizer, which does not color if the sound quality is too bright to too dark, but that does not change the sound of the voice, so it's okay.

Centering my voice a lot lower has changed the way I hear singers. I usually hear the overtones prominently, Now I'm starting to hear the fundamental or root of the "chord" much louder and it's making me use that part much more myself and the annoying high frequencies less and they aren't getting distorted.

I just learned my voice sound like shit without a Bass Boost and that is probably the number one reason the highs are so out of control and untamed. Now it really does sound like the recording. Trying to tame those highs in my voice is really ruining the intonation and tone when mixed properly. The notes get dull when I back off the highs with a bass boost.

The ridiculous frequency response of my voice and the ensuing harmonic complexity:

Keep in mind the microphone is rated to roll off at around 11.5Khz. This photo only shows up to 20.5Khz, but it routinely goes up to 48Khz. I have yet to find the stopping point of my voice. The sample was taken from a sustained note so silibance is not even in the equation whatsoever. There's simply more room for resonance because i've beated the shit out of my vocal tract near the roof of my mouth and higher so I can hit the highest notes possible without them sounding harsh because all the harmonic overtones are present and then some.

I seriously need a condenser rated up to 40Khz to hear myself properly and this has never been the case. My voice overloads the mic and makes it sound really phasey and weird due to the extreme amount of Subsonic Bass and Ultrasonic Treble that exists when everything goes right. I used to sing through my three way floorspeakers which have really high extremes of treble and bass response on vocals and I guess I emulated that effect. I used to practice with all sorts of bass boosting and treble excitement too which had me overexaggerated my emphasis on these frequencies form the get go.

Thank you everyone for everything you've ever said, the good comments keep me going and the bad ones make me change the shit that sounds bad because it forces me to do a better job.

Gonna take a while to figure it ALL out, but basically I am getting fantastic results by lowering the BACK of my Larynx and opening it wider and making sure the air goes all the way through my nose. As long as the folds are separated and stretched, all you gotta do is exert the right amount of airflow and direct it under your chin. And like I wrote before, the air pressure behind your tongue is critical.

I'm simply not going to be satisfied until I figure out exactly what every single part does and specifically what it contributes exactly to every note through all the musical octaves. You should be able to go from your absolute lowest note to the absolute highest modal and should be able to connect a whistle register to it to expand range, which if you do it right, will not whistle as a single frequency. The false folds are just for tone and tend to keep wildly different notes the same kind of color and sound.

There really is no excuse period. A bad microphone, which I use, is unflattering, but even so, smoking weed, cigarettes, not sleeping, bad diet, ect. are not going to keep your voice from working correctly, case closed.

Sorry, but I refuse to be a singer with different "registers", a limited range or use technique that sounds good at the expense of technical ability or sameness of execution of technique. You shouldn't have to reconfigure your entire singing style to sing a low part, then another one to do a high part, ect. because doing so is going to make you extremely inconsistent either tonally or you'll have trouble hitting the notes.

I'm kind of all over the place right now on the tone, but the technique getting there is exactly right and the same every time and that is how you end up sounding really good.

I'm going to start mixing Guitar Pro files into backing tracks and eliminate all the original tracks completely, very gradually, so that there will be no doubts it is all coming from me. I say this all the time, but the last time I thought I sounded like I was getting closer to being able to record the kind of music I want as a singer, it was missing some things or I wasn't totally aware of how it was happening, and that equals mistakes and inconsistency.

I'm very happy. I have mastered Rob Tyrant's singing style as far as I'm concerned and have about 15 good recordings featuring Labyrinth. I can't put all those up though. That's just a little too much borrowing of someone else's material that while is seemingly not any sort of copyright problem, it doesn't quite sit right with me to focus more than 10% of the demos on proving you can do someone else's work. The idea is to demonstrate that I can do anything within metal and pop. Not prove I sound a lot like Roberto Tyranti and am desperate to sing exactly like that. I have my own voice, but I have to demonstrate that my limitations are none and any way a note can be sung is not going to be an issue.

The length got out of hand. I apologize.

But that's how singers are - they have registers. Opera singers will agree with that. My advice is that you focus on one register first and find the one you're the most comfortable with, and then work on expanding it. If you're all over the place progress will be impossible.

Good advice!

That's why I put it in quotes. I've found using the same technique universally yields far better results, what the end product sounds like is another issue. It may sound totally different, but there shouldn't be a huge difference in how a singer arrives at their lower and higher notes.

The name of the game is your entire range retains the same tonal characteristics and that was not going to happen the way I was doing it.

Man, you're too old to explore, you need to get things done. Find a band, do rehearsals, club shows, demos. Do, damnit!