My "singing" is all over the place, any good hints...?

[Fabian]

I am not a singer, and I never will be. But when putting down my own ideas in Reaper I try to do some kind of singing, just to get a feel for how it should sound and to give some hints to the real singer. But what comes out of my throat is all over the place. So any advice would be much appreciated.

The way I do it now is I program a song in MIDI and try to sing to that. When I realize that I cannot hit the high notes (and they are not so very high, my range is severely limited, D4 is max!), I transpose the whole song down a semitone, and try again. In this way I hope to eventually find a key that reasonably fits my abilities. But that never really happens!

What happens instead is that my range lowers... So say that first D4 was meant to be the high note of the refrain, but I only reach C#4. Then I transpose down a semitone, so that the key would fit that C#4. But then when recording I only reach C4! What the h* is going on? And I hear that it is out of key, but my throat just doesn't seem to be under my own control.

I'm getting so frustrated with this. Re-tuning myself after the fact only goes so far, and I really would like to be able to get a good enough vocal in a few takes, now I spend hours and hours on "singing", and hundreds of takes and the result still is all over the place.

Thanks for reading my self-rant, and as already said, any hints would be appreciated.

[Bri1]

I am not a singer, and I never will be.

Brother-you are failing at the very 1st hurdle-belief! you are doing yourself a dis-service.
Believe you can do it,even if you cannot now-and you will have a greater chance of getting all you 'want'.
People very often forget,how we were once all children-who have great imaginations--use <that> to your 'advantanges'!?
If you constantly programme yourself into thinking your not good enough-well that's where it actually becomes habitual thinking... it may be holding you back from releasing your truer potentials.
Try sweeping your voice pitches daily-it will strengthen the muscles that are used--because a lot of music and musicians use a lot of muscles--either your aware of that,or not.
Reciting a single tone like the classic "ohm",but in different octaves will also help you- 'spiritually'!!! =)
Oh and-try not to exceed your comfortable range- strain can be damaging.
GLHF! wish you well.

[slipstick]

Have you tried just concentrating on vocally getting the timing and feel you want without worrying about the right notes? You can then use Reatune to push the notes a bit nearer to the right pitches.

I famously can't carry a tune in a bucket, even more so since my hearing got worse, so that's as near as I get to "singing". It sounds pretty horrible but it does seem to work to give the real singer some idea of what I'm after (usually once they've stopped laughing!).

Steve

[OldG]

Originally Posted by Bri1

Brother-you are failing at the very 1st hurdle-belief! you are doing yourself a dis-service.
Believe you can do it,even if you cannot now-and you will have a greater chance of getting all you 'want'.
People very often forget,how we were once all children-who have great imaginations--use <that> to your 'advantanges'!?
If you constantly programme yourself into thinking your not good enough-well that's where it actually becomes habitual thinking... it may be holding you back from releasing your truer potentials.
Try sweeping your voice pitches daily-it will strengthen the muscles that are used--because a lot of music and musicians use a lot of muscles--either your aware of that,or not.
Reciting a single tone like the classic "ohm",but in different octaves will also help you- 'spiritually'!!! =)
Oh and-try not to exceed your comfortable range- strain can be damaging.
GLHF! wish you well.

Exactly this.. and keep practicing - scales and karaoke (plenty on youtube) until
you like what you are doing.

[Tiggerdyret]

Don't get discouraged. You can learn to sing. I started at 25 and I'm getting really good performances now 4 years later, but it didn't take long before I got much better having played music since I was 12. But I was everywhere in the beginning too. You'll stumble a lot, but recording yourself is the way to go. Watch a few tutorials online and don't judge yourself too hard. You need to get to know your voice, to know how it feels when you want to hit a note, then you'll start to relax and it'll get better.
I joined a choir and every time we started to sing I had no idea what note would come out of my mouth even though I knew what we were supposed to sing. Going to choir practice every week really made me evolve quickly. So I highly suggest joining one. There are choirs in all kinds of genres, mine sings stuff like James Blake and Bon Iver. Best thing I ever did for my voice!

[vdubreeze]

Don't worry if you need to switch to falsetto at a certain note. Nothing wrong with that. Staying in chest voice at the top of the range is not blessed upon most people : )

Also, try doubling the vocal. Even if neither is good enough by itself on the high notes often the added vibe of the doubling is enough to allow the pitch discrepancy to not take the listener out of the moment.

[grinder]

First get a guitar tuner make sure you are relaxed and aaah into it (turn it on!)
see what note you are getting. Then practice in that scale using that note as the root of the key, Major first then the minors etc. Write a song in that key just keep on practicing every 2nd or third day and after a year you will notice a real difference.
Then try new keys.

Grinder

[Tod]

Originally Posted by Fabian

The way I do it now is I program a song in MIDI and try to sing to that. When I realize that I cannot hit the high notes (and they are not so very high, my range is severely limited, D4 is max!), I transpose the whole song down a semitone, and try again. In this way I hope to eventually find a key that reasonably fits my abilities. But that never really happens!

What happens instead is that my range lowers... So say that first D4 was meant to be the high note of the refrain, but I only reach C#4. Then I transpose down a semitone, so that the key would fit that C#4. But then when recording I only reach C4! What the h* is going on? And I hear that it is out of key, but my throat just doesn't seem to be under my own control.

Hi Fabian, there's no way that lowering the midi also lowers your range. The only way that could happen is if you were playing a midi D4 but your ear was telling you it was a C#4.

If you play a D4 on the Keys, can you consistently hit the D4 and not the C#4?

How about the rest of the song, are you off there too, or is it just the D4? If that's the case, maybe the chord that's playing in that spot is maj7, or maybe you're hearing it as a maj7, so you're singing the maj7 instead of the root note?

[serr]

Originally Posted by Fabian

I am not a singer, and I never will be. But when putting down my own ideas in Reaper I try to do some kind of singing, just to get a feel for how it should sound and to give some hints to the real singer...

Are you writing music in your head that naturally has vocals? That's how you hear it? If yes, than like everyone else said, try to make it comfortable for however well you are able to sing. (eg. Sound more like Dylan than Strisand? Then go for comfortable talk-singing rather than awkward diva crooning.)

But if you don't hear vocals or vocal arrangements in your head, then find the instrument you DO hear and stop trying to put vocals in just because so many people write songs around vocals.

[Fabian]

Thanks everyone for the encouragement.

I'm closing in on 60 now so I am pretty sure I'll never be a singer, but the songs I write I do hear in my head with vocals, they are all centered around the lyrics. Unfortunately, what I hear inside my head does not sound the same way once it comes out; somehow the song (not just the singing) in my head is always much better

And I'm off key not only on the high notes, but almost always. It seems I'm a half note off most of the time, but very inconsistently, sometimes 50 cents up, sometimes down, sometimes off by much more than that. I cannot find any pattern, which is why I say that my "singing" is all over the place.

The takes do get slightly better the more I lay down, but only up to a point. But vdubreeze gave me an idea... I have now all those takes, so I threw away the worst ones, tuned the worst of the remaining ones, and then have all takes playing at the same time, between 9 and 14 of them throughout the song. That sounds rather good actually! And it fits my old-school 77-punk type of music, now I understand where "gang vocals" came from

Again, thanks everyone. Now I'll go back to practice with ReaTune as my teacher, doing the ooohs and aaahs and trying to keep them steady at certain notes. Maybe I'll eventually get somewhere. Thanks.

[Bri1]

Now I'll go back to practice with ReaTune as my teacher, doing the ooohs and aaahs and trying to keep them steady at certain notes. Maybe I'll eventually get somewhere. Thanks.

Heh each are their own student,teacher and master-- just be that what you was born as.
Would make extra efforts with everything i can not do well now-- practice the bits you have trouble with more than all else--this will balance you overall i reckon. =)
As for takes,and take system--well that's beautiful--until you think about actually live performing!

[ivansc]

Fabian: One thing that really helps is getting your breathing together.

After I had a pulmonary embolism many years ago I had to do breathing exercises for a fair old while to get my lung capacity back & the first casualty was my singing! As my lungs opened back up and I could fill them properly, so my voice came back.
Had the same thing happen a year or so ago when I developed an allergy to dairy products.
Once I figured it out, it took a couple of weeks for my voice to start coming back but a lot longer than that to regain my lung full capacity.
Do some exercises that get those lungs working and you might surprise yourself. You cant control what notes you sing properly unless you are cranking enough air over your vocal cords.

[Tod]

Originally Posted by ivansc

Do some exercises that get those lungs working and you might surprise yourself. You cant control what notes you sing properly unless you are cranking enough air over your vocal cords.

Hey old friend, my learning experience was a little different. One of my first gigs on the road was with a Las Vegas show group back in the early 60s. The leader was a great singer as were others in the group and he insisted I had to learn how to sing.

What he taught me was to sing from my stomach muscles, better know as the diaphragm. What he did was give me exercises to build it up and learn how to use it. One of the exercises was just opening my mouth and going "Whooaa" several times. Then to lay on my back and put something heavy on my stomach/diaphragm, and do the same thing.

To learn how to use it for vibrato, he had me push on my diaphragm, and quickly but smoothly, push in and out while singing oohs and aahs.

About 2 and a half months later I was walking out on the stage in a tux, with a single light following me, singing Dean Martin and Sinatra. Well, heh heh, I wasn't that good but I got applause.

The goal was to be able to sing oohs and aahs loudly with control and vibrato, while you put a match directly in front of your mouth without blowing it out.

[morgon]

I'm not a singer i.e no one would hire me as a singer but I can hit the notes okay. Prolly the frustration of not getting the voice tuned occurs well before the vocal potential is realised, in most cases.

You must persist, that's the main thing, don't give up, two or three years later you'll be glad you persevered.

[RDBOIS]

Originally Posted by Fabian

I am not a singer, and I never will be. But when putting down my own ideas in Reaper I try to do some kind of singing, just to get a feel for how it should sound and to give some hints to the real singer. But what comes out of my throat is all over the place. So any advice would be much appreciated.

The way I do it now is I program a song in MIDI and try to sing to that. When I realize that I cannot hit the high notes (and they are not so very high, my range is severely limited, D4 is max!), I transpose the whole song down a semitone, and try again. In this way I hope to eventually find a key that reasonably fits my abilities. But that never really happens!

What happens instead is that my range lowers... So say that first D4 was meant to be the high note of the refrain, but I only reach C#4. Then I transpose down a semitone, so that the key would fit that C#4. But then when recording I only reach C4! What the h* is going on? And I hear that it is out of key, but my throat just doesn't seem to be under my own control.

I'm getting so frustrated with this. Re-tuning myself after the fact only goes so far, and I really would like to be able to get a good enough vocal in a few takes, now I spend hours and hours on "singing", and hundreds of takes and the result still is all over the place.

Thanks for reading my self-rant, and as already said, any hints would be appreciated.

I would say that what is going with you is normal.

Signing, or at least doing it properly, is not as easy as it seems. You are experiencing first hand that recording a vocal track for a song -- that you will dissect with a microscope on later, is NOT like impressing your friends at karaoke night, or singing well by the fire at camp.

You doing hundred of takes it normal, for a amateur learning how to sing, and even for some pros. Listen, I write my own music, lyrics, melodies, sing and record go through the same process as you.

Lowing the key of the song is good idea to get you where you need, until your voice can handle more. Singing of a MIDI track is cleaver. I do the same thing, but add this little twist: I record many many TAKES and then cut and paste best parts, AND THEN I replace the MIDI track with this vocal track. Therefore, I now can sing with myself (kind of like dubbing), with a version tells me where I need to go - with tones, inflections, and everything else I choose from the takes. The reason I don't keep that composite vocal is because there is at times some subtle vocal sonic miscues that happen when you paste so many pieces together. For example, little differences in the tone and intensity - perhaps in one take I was running out of air, but in the other I had full lungs (... and that alone can cause slight tonal/loudness variation).

Having gone through what you have, I've done loads of research to better my technique. In this research I was both shocked and relieve to learn that Adele, Micheal Jackson, Mariah Carey, and many many more known and respected vocalist, sometimes record multiple takes. It has been said that Micheal Jackson and Mariah Carey can record up to a hundred takes!!! So don't feel bad; the very gifted that only record a single take are rare. So what if we are not gifted...

Work, Work, Work... Nothing wrong with that!

Some tips?

Here is a fun one: Do you know the song "Mother" from Pink Floyd? Go back to it and listen to the very very first sound on that song. What do you hear? I'll tell you, you hear Roger Waters doing a small quick inhale and then a very big EXHALE, then he sings "Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb?". I have sung that song to the recording dozens of times, but only I GOT why the big EXHALE?! It is because he needed to sing that bit with empty lungs in other to get the tonality and effect he was looking for. Try it! Seriously, do two things: 1) fill you lungs with as much air as you can and then sing that phrase, then 2) empty your lungs and sing it again. Shocking! The point is that, beginners tend to believe they always have to breath in before they sing a phrase. Breathing in is good, in many occasions, but sometimes it makes it very very difficult to get the proper sound out. Experiment with breath - perhaps you'll find that some of the notes you couldn't get with full lungs, you'll hit on half empty? I don't know exactly how this works, but in my case I feel I have better control of my the air flow when my diaphragm is not pushing on a full set of lungs; perhaps when my lungs are too full the sound want to come out in a burst (which would be great if you are yelling - screaming a punk/heavy metal song).

So you lowered the key. Great! But have you tried slowing the song down? I know this may mess up the dynamics of the song, but I've done this a few times and really helped me hit all the notes properly. As I'm learning how to sing better I know I'll be able to sing in all keys and all tempos, but for now I do what I can. And hey, in hind sight, I really like the songs I've slowed down. I would never want to speed them back up again...

Ohhh, on lowering the key, the song I'm currently working on was written in the key G. It is perfect when I play guitar and sing the song. But when I wanted to record it? A NIGHTMARE. So I did like you took it down, then down so more, and now a strange as it may seem I'm in D# ?! That much it took to be able to get all the high notes with exactly the tone, inflections, etc., I needed. The song went from 100 to 72 bpm. And because D# is soooo very near to E, I tuned down my guitar 1/2 tone so I can play the song open string; which is now perfect for recording the acoustic. As amateurs learning the art of singing we're giving ourselves a break until we master the techniques. Right?

Speaking of the art of signing... I'm sure you know about warming up you vocal cords and other singing exercises? If you don't do that, then hundred of takes may actually be what is needed, always?! Unless you're pulling a Dylan or Johnny Cash sort of thing...

Spend the hours. I know it is frustrating, but it can become rather fun. I used to be in a hurry to get the vocals down, but now I don't have that expectation anymore. I know it will take time. I now I'll have to redo it over and over. But, I think to myself, "all this effort is making me better at it". All these hundreds of take have taught me soooo much, even how to sing various parts in the microphone (get up close, pull back, tilt my head down a bit, when to breath in, breath out, etc.).

So much more...

[somebodyelseuk]

Exercise... lots of it.
Practise... lots if it.
Water.

Practice, speaks for itself, really. If you don't play guitar, you can't expect to just pick one up and bang out a tune from scratch.
Water - caffeine and alcohol really screw with you throat, milk too, not permanently, but when you're required to do some singing, it's best to keep away from them for a couple of hours.
Exercise. Breathing is everything. If you have 'good lungs' you can control your breathing better and, therefore, sing better. Also, you'll be better at controlling 'red light syndrone'. I highly recommend swimming - build up to couple of km, twice a week.

[G-Sun]

Originally Posted by Fabian

a feel for how it should sound

One thing is far more important than the actual performance, that is the consciousness of a what you feel is a good sounding vocal.
And, the good news, you have that

And as the others say: Believe in yourself. Drop that old programming that says you can't.
Your brain is much like a pc, it runs certain programs, and that manifests into reality.
So, choose to be a singer, and then watch it become so.

(I'm as much telling this to myself, as to you )

[grinder]

Find your natural key and start from there.

Grinder

[deeb]

if you want to sing the songs you are composing you must do them in your tone range .
If you want someone else to sing them probably record the melody on piano instead.
Also having singing lessons is good : ) because practicing mistakes is bad

Good luck!

[sjs94704]

Sorry, I put Arron in the title of this message, his name is actually Eric!

He is on YouTube.

Sir! I am 53 years old and I follow this guys instructions:

https://www.youtube.com/user/EricArceneaux

[sjs94704]

He is on YouTube.

Sir! I am 53 years old and I follow this guys instructions:

https://www.youtube.com/user/EricArceneaux

[Punk Duck]

I record a midi piano as a guide melody and sing following that often turning other tracks down so im not distracted. On lead and harmony vocals as im not a natural harmonizer. I find this helps me not wander from the pitch.