) Singing Blog #2 · 2:19am Apr 6th, 2017
I have produced another cover for you today guys.
I have made slight improvement since my last video, I think, but of course I still have a long way to go in the way of improvements. With the production of this cover, I think I will make it my own personal goal to get enough experience to be able to sing my original song. I don't know how long this will take; it may take a while. Or it may not be that long at all? (I wouldn't know; I don't think I'm a natural at this. 
)
However, this song means a lot to me because it is my mother's favorite song. She really likes the Johnny Cash cover of the song, and so I decided I'd sing it for her.
Curious to note, during the construction of this cover, I noticed that I had a very interesting stylization to the song that I'd like to explore; I do, however, need to get a little bit more experience before making a proper attempt at it.
I hope you find enjoyment out of this. 
Nicely done! Your voice is quite solid and you even put your own spin on the song.
It was indeed quite enjoyable.
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Thanks. It was a solid effort. You don't wanna know how many takes I took making it.
Nice. Got a lot of rubato (elongating some notes instead of others for a freer feel to the sound) in there for my tastes, but, like Battlecat said, it by no way sounds like you're just emulating Cash. It's original; pretty, even.
The audible exhalations after ending consonants for the slower phrases, though, bothers me a bit, though. You have good enunciation, but singing "know" with "knowuh," just for example, in this type of song doesn't sit well with me. Then again, it's appropriate for certain styles, and I get the feeling you're trying to bring a more pop sound to this, but, to me, a more classical approach to enunciating the words would preserve the song's poignancy.
I think the whole ending aspirations of the consonants of each phrase could be helped if you simply breathed a bit more deeply. I don't know if it's because I've done this song a number of times myself or it's just that I have a sound I compare it to this time around, but, regardless, I think your lack of experience and vocal training show a little clearer in this piece.
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Eh, my whole inexperience with singing bothers me, but we've already established I have no background experience, so it's really no surprise that I got so many things wrong. And believe it or not, this was actually one of my most reserved renditions of it to the classical approach, which say something about my taking it too lenient in singing. A lot of what I did in my other renditions were too flashy and also way out of tune.
I think my biggest problem was I was trying to hard to impress. I'm terribly sorry; I should have practiced some more. I just wanted to see if I made any improvement since my last time trying it. I've always been told that I was really, really bad at singing.
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Hey, it's okay. You put yourself out, and I would like to see you improve, so I remark. On what could be improved.
Well, this isn't even close to really bad in my book, so I'd say that you have either made progress or those people were a bit mistaken.
At the very least, you were nowhere close to tone deaf, and you are obviously trying to listen for the pictures and notes that you were going for, so you're definitely not someone who sounds tone deaf, either, in the sense of being a person who sings terribly because they simply don't care.
Vocally, Hurt is rather reptitive and has a rather small range, so I would advise you not to abandon this song for practice. I personally can't tell you that you were trying too hard, because I do not know enough about your vocal profile to know how you would sing this regularly. I do know, though, that it is very easy to get wrapped up in a song and end up singing the wrong notes. A friend of mine in chorus is very vocally gifted in private, but if you try to stretch his stuff in front of people, he misses notes I know he can hit and sometimes strays from the key.
It's natural, and it certainly happens to me. However, I honestly cannot tell you that it happens to the best of us, because some people are just so musically gifted that it does not happen to them. For the rest of us, we just have to work at it.
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I already know I was trying too hard. I know myself the best, I think.
I'm not put out by at all by your criticism (I would have like to have made you proud). The harsher the criticism, the better, in my opinion. You can't improve upon what you don't know is wrong.
Though, I honestly did know about the "knowuh" stuff, but it didn't come off to me as wrong when I was listening back to it the first time (now it does, thanks to your criticism). Earlier renditions of it, there was more of that, and more exhalation as well. That might be a result of my expecting to do longer notes when I didn't need to, perhaps?
My fiancé, though he is half deaf, is very sensitive to hearing tune. Without ever hearing the song, he can tell exactly how in or out of pitch I am.
When I had posted it, I had first asked him to review it and see if it was good, and while he said it wasn't great, he noticed considerable improvement over my singing and said it would be alright. He's my harshest critic, but he might be too light on me right now because I am just starting out in trying to get better. Before, when I wasn't trying, he was very harsh on critiquing it because I'd go into this falsetto that hurt everyone's ears, or be a whole two octaves off, or the pitch would just go all over the place.
I should get him to drop the nice act, I think, and be just as harsh as before about it. I'll improve faster that way, I think.
The next song I want to try out is a MLP song. I was thinking Changeling can Change.
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Well, I'm not trying to pull any punches. Since there are merits to certain things you did in that song to be original, however, I don't feel it is appropriate for me to comment on the things that were not to my liking simply because they're matters of my personal taste.
As for that aspect of the diction, I honestly though it was to fill the space. It felt like you could have held the notes out longer and just weren't, and I had assumed it was an issue of improper breathing, but you could be right. If you were following a vocal line or just the instrumentals and had more air than the phrases required, then I can see that as being a reason for that. However, the exhalations on those ending consonants was pretty audible, and that's something that experienced singers tend to avoid (although there are plenty of popular musicians who don't!).
Interesting. Yeah, falsetto is tricky. It took me a long time to actually get it under control, but then again, I was learning voice while I was still going through major puberty, which is probably the worst time for learning it.
In any case, I wouldn't say to doubt him; you weren't off on a lot of the notes that you were giving full voice to, although it is somewhat harder to tell when the singer is moving around a mostly repetitive vocal line like you were here. I don't know how you've progressed. I've only heard you twice. 
Interesting selection. Break a leg!
Stop the Bats is a favorite of mine, but I think it's the instrumentals more than the vocals that make it.
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Ooh...I really like my 7th try out of the Changeling Can Change... I'm going a little deeper. Possibly won't sound right to others, but it sounds good to me so far. I'm practicing holding in that breath as well to avoid exhaling and also making sure I don't add the consonants at the end this time. Seems to be working out so far. I sound a little bit better. Thanks!
I'm going to practice this one for a couple of hours for two weeks or so to make a higher quality finished product.
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That'll definitely help. Brute force practicing will definitely help. Just don't overdo it for your voice. I would try to avoid singing the same song for more than an hour per day, especially since you're not under the supervision of a formal voice teacher.
Remember, if it starts to hurt, stop. That's a hard-and-fast rule of singing. A few extra minutes of practicing or recording is not worth damaged vocal chords. Modern surgery also isn't quite up to the task of totally fixing damage done to vocal folds.
On thing about breathing properly for singing is to make sure the air you're getting is not only from deep breathing but also from natural diaphragmatic breathing. Proper breathing technique is the root of the best quality of sound a voice can emit. You don't have to hold your breath entirely; your phrasing of the music should be natural (since you're liking going off a recording instead of music, the actual recording from the show is likely to have good phrasing). I'd say if silence is still an issue, try just breathing in and out orally and getting used to ways that help dampen the sounds of exhalation and inhalation.
You'll hear me breathing plenty during my audio readings and voicings. A little sound is okay, but it shouldn't be as prominent as the notes themselves unless the style really calls for it.
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Yeah, I change up songs every now and then to keep from being bored of it, and I dont continue if it starts to get tiring, and definitely not when it hurts. As for breathing, I am mostly going by what feels natural. Now that you pointed it out Im paying a large focus for the tme being to get down the breathing techniques forst and then worrying about pitch.
Im noticing something else... i might be the opposite of what I thought I was. Now that I'm making an effort to discern the notes, I notice when I'm even a little off in pitch...And I can hear it a lot. That might also be a contribution to my breathiness, expectation of being off pitch and preemptively correcting it in my mind before producing the vocals.
You should get rest then, besty best friend.
Another beautiful cover! Fantastic singing and good song choice, Johny Cash is a very good musican
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Thanks. I had a few issues in it that I need to work out, aside from hitting the precise notes ( a few of them weren't quite right, but I dont have any technical background to explain what how I think my notes weren't quite right)
My main issue in it was extra consonant sounds and my breathing technique was poor in the cover.
I'll work to resolve these issues in the next one. The next one I'm doing is changelings can change, an mlp cover.
4487551 eager to see it