I've been practicing in the car every day and expanded my vocal range massively the past few months (like MASSIVELY - it was tiny).
Now I just bought a microphone (for fun) and seeing what I actually sound like in my bedroom.
Its like, I sound worse than the worse person I've ever heard in my life? I can't even speak properly , missing notes that I should be hitting, and sound like a child.
If this is me after daily practice in the car to the same 4 fucking songs every day, what the hell am I supposed to do?
Please advice me someone. I LOVE singing, just I never done it because my vocal range has always been so bad that I would just sing out of tune thinking that I was in tune because I didn't realise I couldn't hit ANY notes physically, and also my voice sounds like I am autistic??
Below are 2 recordings from this morning the first time I'm trying to record.
The first one is after many attempts / warming up, I tried to sing in a "stylised" way and think it sounded OK actually.
The second one I also tried to sing more "wildly" to see if it sounded any good and its so painful that its actually embarrassing, even confusingly bad. I mean how can anyone be so bad? *actually i delete that recording and try again , give me a minute*
I will continue to record myself and try out "styling" my voice today.
Thanks :3
*will update with video clips in a min*
ok so here are the clips. i guess my question in short is ............... can i become decent at singing or do you have to be born (or grow up with) at least with some semblance of talent and natural inclination of quality?
do i need to "play around" a lot with my singing voice to find a style of communication that sounds good? because clearly my "natural" talking/singing voice is painful
(actually i find i adopt random accents when trying to sing to songs, i am british but often adopt a weird shit american accent or a hardcore british country accent for some reason. sometimes i even do a mumbling style like the guy from Lifehouse (band) . and sometimes i try to sing like The Cure or david bowie (the latter at which i fail at sadly). its like im trying to find a style or accent that sounds good rather than my own accent (which is naturally awful/autistic/nasally/confusing)? i dont understand it)
note im posting clip2 first because its more representative of my current behaviour :
maybe i need to find a way to sing with more confidence and go "all out" more, maybe thats the key to my problem??
both start around 12 sec
clip 2
clip 1
you can see quite clearly that in the second posted clip im trying to put on an accent and the top clip is more like my normal voice .... maybe i need to find out how to adopt an accent that im comfortable and confident with?
Recording yourself and getting a real idea of what you sound like is really the first step. We need this to open our ears to reality ... Our brains are fooling us.
"maybe i need to find a way to sing with more confidence and go "all out" more, maybe thats the key to my problem??"
well i knew i was trash tier, it hurts to find out that its possible to be even worse than that tho LOL i mean even literally a 2 year old sounds better than me
Nah, most people sound like that or even worse. Don't worry.
You never really practiced singing. Singing in your car doesn't count . So you're talking about an instrument you haven't even begun learning! You're supposed to be a beginner.
ok look i done what you said since my housemates are still out and tried singing even louder/let loose more i think it made a massive difference i thought you're not supposed to be loud when you sing but i have to be pretty loud as fuck to let loose like this i guess thats why people dont become singers, you literally cant practice singing if you live with other people...?????? here look its actually pretty fuckin good lol i try pop song next which will be MUCH harder to figure out................
I don't think you have to be REALLY loud. There's some middle ground where your voice resonates nicely and sounds powerful. But sometimes LOUD is good and right too. Depends on song. Other songs sound best when sung really quiet and awkward, like "Nine Inch Nails - Hurt"
i think to "let loose" i need to be pretty loud. i have awful elocution on top of being a classic southern british mumbler and having an extremely nasally voice and having extreme unfamiliarity with singing (ie hitting notes) so being louder helps a hell of a lot im not doing any songs near my vocal range at the moment so i'm not hurting myself in any way * i will move onto some new songs now tho which do but im used to pushing my vocal range a lot limits in the car since it was so small lol *
i tried to sing Torn but man its gonna be really hard for me to sound good to that song... maybe if i can somehow get it round my head to put my british accent into the song instead of some weird american accent that comes out of me.....????
not bad but stop copying David Bowie. really depends on the style you want to sing in. I've noticed a lot of good singers are hard to understand whereas you enunciate every syllable. Maybe it's normal to do the accents though. British people sound American when they sing.
sounds like you have a style similar to the guy in galaxie 500
I sucked badly but I kept analysing my recordings to spot my mistakes and just paid more attention to not repeat it, or improve my sound when there's something I dont like about it... It's really just like playing any other instrument.
or even BW, watch replay. Identify faults, find solution, execute solution.
On February 27 2016 23:37 imgbaby wrote: not bad but stop copying David Bowie. really depends on the style you want to sing in. I've noticed a lot of good singers are hard to understand whereas you enunciate every syllable. Maybe it's normal to do the accents though. British people sound American when they sing.
sounds like you have a style similar to the guy in galaxie 500
i really like how the guy from The Cure sings , im gonna record Catch by The Cure next . man i really have to belt it out to get the sound i want coming out of me, but that is def something gets should get easier to do over practice. im just super super happy im starting to produce sounds that i actually like (well, for the british accent songs anyway)
You play guitar too, right? How long you been playing?
Regarding the singing. I suggest you think about a way to consciously practice singing in tune. That usually means some kind of ear training (which coincidentally is best learned when sung, lol)
must be exaclty 1 year now im probably the level most people are after 1 year, "maybe" im above average with technique but at the same time i cant play anything after i quit my job in 4 weeks ill have the time and energy to actually improve rather than treading water this whole time yeah i will do the ear training in the future (need to for guitar too) but really i was unable to figure out if it was even possible for me to ever not sound like absolute shit because of my weird voice i guess my conclusion is for today is ... i still don't know if i'll ever be able to pull off a pop song .... maybe i can only do stylised sounds .... but at least thats something to work towards!!! that galaxie 500 album is really cool, im def gonna try to do this song tomorrow if i sleep ok youtu.be/vsfvdGjL4Yo?t=231
Recording yourself is already going a step further than most people that sing in their shower and believe they sound good (I'm looking at you, people living above me).
Now I'm no singer, but I know the easiest way to get better. Get a teacher. Sure, you can be born with a beautiful voice, but actually making music (hitting notes, rythm etc) with your mouth is a proper art, and it requires a lot of work to be good at it. There's no way around that, and getting a teacher makes the time you'll spend practicing more effective sice you'll know exactly what to work on and which exercices will help.
Lastly, don't put yourself arbitrary limits. You could pull off freaking opera if you spent enough time working on it. So, pop songs ? Pff, piss easy man.
Singing is like any other art. You may not be amazing, but almost everyone has the ability to sing competently.
You definitely need advice, even if it's from a youtube channel, of which there are many. There are three pieces of techinical advice that a really awful singer like me can give you.
1. Warm up. There are lots of exercises on the intertubes.
2. Are you lifting your soft palate? Sounds like you might not be. Open your mouth and pretend like you are sniffing a rose. You should feel your soft palate rising in your throat.
3. Sounds like you are swallowing your notes a bit. We generally talk about 5 different places in your mouth that you can generate sound. Try talking like you are talking to a baby, making the sounds right at your lips. Now try to move that sound back. Try to generate the sound in the 5 different places with 1 being the lips, 2 being a bit further back, 3 being right in the middle, 4 being towards the back and 5 being down your throat. When we talk, we tend to speak at 4. This sounds like crap when you're singing though. Try to sing at the 2 position. The best way to do this is to sing in front of a mirror and really get your lips involved.
Another thing is, we all love singing those pop songs, but not everyone is built that way. My personal preference is showtunes/broadway/chorus.
Get a good teacher who understands what you are after. With a decent teacher to guide you, you'll avoid learn bad habits and learn good foundational technique to build upon. Otherwise you're just experimenting blindly without even having the ability to know what is good or bad.
I think if you're really serious, you should train with a voice coach. If you don't want to spend that money, I guess singing songs that force you to use your diaphragm rather than your throat would be another step. My personal favorite would be "over the rainbow" from wizard of oz followed by "can you feel the love tonight" from the lion king. I also do a lot of Harlem Yu songs, but that's in mandarin so nvm about that. Songs that shift keys in the middle of the song would also help you fine tune your hearing.
On February 28 2016 19:45 imBLIND wrote: I think if you're really serious, you should train with a voice coach. If you don't want to spend that money, I guess singing songs that force you to use your diaphragm rather than your throat would be another step. My personal favorite would be "over the rainbow" from wizard of oz followed by "can you feel the love tonight" from the lion king. I also do a lot of Harlem Yu songs, but that's in mandarin so nvm about that. Songs that shift keys in the middle of the song would also help you fine tune your hearing.
This outlines some good choices, I would suggest the voice coach though. If you're serious, there is no better way to improve faster. Doing it on your own might save some money, but it will take an enormous amount of time.
As a sidenote, have you picked a genre you really love? Picking a genre you really love and then learning the tricks to that genre can really help, as well as listening to specific singers that have styles you like. For example Lake Street Dive's singer (Who's name I'm blanking on right now) sounds nothing like Maroon 5's Adam Levine in Songs About Jane. While they both put out jazz-pop fusion songs (and Lake Street Dive continues to do so) the way they do it is far different.
i dont think i can fit in lessons at the moment... i never got around to guitar lessons (let alone even practicing my guitar anywhere near enough as one needs to)
i love all styles of music except rnb (AKA radio music) from alan jackson to the offspring to floyd to magnetic fields to britney spears
but if i have to pick 1 thing in particular (which i probably should to begin with ) then i really like the style of The Cure . altho my accent isn't as strong as his , its sort of nearby so maybe its a good starting place....
i literally have 10 mins in the car to and from work to practice 5x a week and maaaybe saturday mornings or something like that ... ive been doing kareoke on friday evenings (in my room) but given how loud i was this weekend trying to get my singing to improve i doubt ill be able to get away with singing with that amount of effort (volume) if people are in the house
im moving house (to literally anywhere in the country lol) in 5 weeks or so , so its great to discover that it'd be useful to try to find somewhere that i can sing. (but really is there anywhere like that short of owning your own house or driving to some remote location in a field???? i mean i'm guessing its not normal to "hire" a recording studio for a friday evening just so you can practice singing a bit...)
thanks for the replies
to be fair i wouldn't mind just printing off some lyrics and driving to some field for a few hours with my headphones lol whats the normal way that people practice singing? i guess they would be doing it at uni and have some empty halls or something?
will take back my mixer tomorrow and probably get Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Usb Computer Audio Interface Mac / Pc instead.. hrm maybe i could get away with a "solo" usb interface actually since i plug my guitar in with usb (rocksmith cable)
You have a very interesting voice (in a positive way).
Where i would start with with you, is breathing tecniques for singing. Breathing is ever so important for singing, and for air instruments, like say a flute. Or an Oboe. or a voice. WIthout breathing tecniques, you may experience:
Fatigue after few minutes of singing (due to lack of physical air to support your vocal chords) Low control over pitches (regular breathing=regular air exaustion=easy pitch control)
When instead you learn them for singing, these things come easy after some time of practice. Take singing lessons. why? you love singing. For me, after singing in my car for several months, i did, and i benefitted from:
Interesting facts about sound Inspiration challanges the learning process
(Note: I'm not a great singer and I've never received proper instruction)
Here are a few things that have helped me:
1. Project/sing with confidence and volume (most people have talked about singing louder, breathing deeply, using your diaphragm so I won't beat a dead horse here)
2. Practice a line of a verse. Record it. Listen to it. Hear where you sound weird/weak/wrong/etc. Rerecord it. Repeat. Recording and listening is what helped me the most I think.
3. Choose a song you really feel and sing it. If you're mindlessly singing lyrics it might be hard to summon the emotion or confidence in you (but if you feel it too much you might start crying or just yelling angrily, avoid that too)
These are just a few things that have helped me... like I said I'm not great and I'm not professionally trained but I've gotten much better than I used to be (to the point where I was confident enough to sing my girlfriend a few songs).
I took lessons in singing for over a year, I can tell you it is possible, to dramatically improve.
First off, your mic probably is pretty shite and cuts out many frequencies, a nice mic for singing does not come cheap, so in real life you probably do not sound as terrible.
1. Practice with your guitar, practice your hearing. Play a simple power chord, just root and fifth, then play only the fifth, try to really find that tone with your singing voice, then play the root and sing the fifth over it to feel some harmony and learn about intervals.
2.Your voice is shaky as a twerk, go for songs that force you to hold a tone for a long time. Look into breathing exercises, get that vibrato under control.
3. As you stated, you sound very nasal. With your voice, your body is your instrument, you can use other rooms than your nose to make a sound. Go and find these rooms inside you, inside you neck, your cheast, sing from your stomage, use all the room inside your mouth and throat. For me Meat loaf helped me a lot there
Because I tackle this song like a classical singer would, opening up a lot of rooms I never ever use when trying to sing something else.
Yawn to find some room inside yourself for soundproduction. Put your head on your chest, do not look up if singing ever becomes dificult, looking up, stretching your neck closes a lot of rooms. Don't over stress your voice, sing a song in another key, lower or higher, go slowly about improving your vocal range, it is not that important, see whitney huston.
I think the biggest difference to before I got teached how to sing and now, is that I have good control over my breath and know my resonance rooms. I can sing quite quite, with stable tone and still power in my voice. Power without controll is not worth much in an unexpirenced singer imo.
EPT
... Our brains are fooling us.
