I would love some critique/advice on my singing! (:

L

littlebluebird

New member
Hi :)

I've been singing for fun while playing the guitar or hanging out with friends for a few years. I've been wanting to take it more seriously lately and would love some real and honest advice and what I could do to improve! I've been feeling a bit stuck and like I'm not getting better lately :/ Feel free to be mean, I have thick skin and I can take it if it means I could improve myself!

https://soundcloud.com/tiinamaria
 
Well, er, the main thing is bad habits. Your pitching is not good in places, and you sing some notes as an ascending pair of notes - hitting a short lower note then jumping up, which sounds wrong. You also have a three different voices when you change from low register to high, and then for some notes the tone changes again and a vibrato/warble suddenly appears. I don;t know if these are intentional and planned or simply things you've just picked up and don't really notice. It's difficult for a person who does not have English as a first language, but your pronunciation of some words is very odd.

Sounds like you might have a good voice but need a proper teacher to get rid of bad habits and teach you how to support your voice.
 
Thank you, I appreciate you taking the time to respond!
I don't have any professional vocal training and I do agree transitioning from head to chest voice could be smoother, it's a technique I want to learn! I'm personally really into folk/country music and the style of singing and have probably picked up some things from that like vibrato etc. since I think it's the most fun way to sing :) Obviously since English isn't my first language I'm not gonna sound like it is, but I think it's actually a good thing to have singers with different accents and ways of articulating words and it can be a weakness or a strenght to sound different.
 
Sounds like you might have a good voice but need a proper teacher to get rid of bad habits and teach you how to support your voice.[/QUOTE said:
Ditto.......what he said. There are a number of places where your pitch is off. Assuming you played these songs back and listened to them.........and you're not sure where those pitch problems are..............tells me that you really need to get a vocal teacher. A good teacher will take you a long way. Have fun.
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Thanks for responding :)
I would love to go to voice lessons or have some kind of professional assistance with singing and music but the thing is as a college student I just simply can't afford that right now. I've been trying to get involved in all things music and singing related around campus and get as much objective feedback as possible so I could improve without spending money I don't have on a vocal couch.
 
Hi there!

I'm only a beginner so I hope I am not getting ahead of myself by replying, but here are my two cents:
  • I generally like your voice. It has that sort of delicacy that's quite nice. However I agree with previous comments that it has several different timbres that may be a bit startling sometimes (audible on True Colors when you climb higher, or on Mad World in the same case).
  • I also get the feeling that you put a lot of "air" in your voice. What that means is that your vocal folds do not always come together entirely when you sing, they stay a little apart. That gives this "breathy" sounds that is on the one hand very charming, but on the other hand can damage your voice if you overdo it, so be careful not to hurt yourself.
  • It is true that your pitch is hit and miss. On Creep for instance it's all over the place. I feel you might have an issue that I also have: because I'm a novice when I try going lower or higher than is comfortable for me, I might try to "cheat my way" out of it, and end up being sharp on the low notes and flat on the top notes :/ I think it's pretty common. Also sometimes when there is a quicker succession of notes in a song you tend to miss some of them, which would be the musical equivalent of slurring your words I guess. On that bit the only thing I can think of is: sing the song slower at first before going at it at the final pace, and don't take shortcuts with notes you aren't too comfortable about. Also if you can read music, get the sheet music for your piece, it gives you a visual representation of where the notes are, which can be very helpful. If you can't read it, look into it, it is virtually free to learn as you can do it with a book and some patience, and it comes in very handy.
All that being said, I am not competent enough to give you advice on how to overcome your problems, and even competent people will be limited by the fact that this is a forum. I do think that if you can afford even group singing lessons it might help you out quite a bit. Christmas is coming soon, might it be something to wish for :)?

Good luck with everything, keep at it!
 
Edhie said:
Hi there!

I'm only a beginner so I hope I am not getting ahead of myself by replying, but here are my two cents:
  • I generally like your voice. It has that sort of delicacy that's quite nice. However I agree with previous comments that it has several different timbres that may be a bit startling sometimes (audible on True Colors when you climb higher, or on Mad World in the same case).
  • I also get the feeling that you put a lot of "air" in your voice. What that means is that your vocal folds do not always come together entirely when you sing, they stay a little apart. That gives this "breathy" sounds that is on the one hand very charming, but on the other hand can damage your voice if you overdo it, so be careful not to hurt yourself.
  • It is true that your pitch is hit and miss. On Creep for instance it's all over the place. I feel you might have an issue that I also have: because I'm a novice when I try going lower or higher than is comfortable for me, I might try to "cheat my way" out of it, and end up being sharp on the low notes and flat on the top notes :/ I think it's pretty common. Also sometimes when there is a quicker succession of notes in a song you tend to miss some of them, which would be the musical equivalent of slurring your words I guess. On that bit the only thing I can think of is: sing the song slower at first before going at it at the final pace, and don't take shortcuts with notes you aren't too comfortable about. Also if you can read music, get the sheet music for your piece, it gives you a visual representation of where the notes are, which can be very helpful. If you can't read it, look into it, it is virtually free to learn as you can do it with a book and some patience, and it comes in very handy.
All that being said, I am not competent enough to give you advice on how to overcome your problems, and even competent people will be limited by the fact that this is a forum. I do think that if you can afford even group singing lessons it might help you out quite a bit. Christmas is coming soon, might it be something to wish for :)?

Good luck with everything, keep at it!
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for the detailed and constructive advice! :D I'm definitely going to take your points to heart and try my best to apply them when I start working on new covers :) It's also good to hear I'm not complitely hopeless... :,)

I can totally see where you're coming from when you say there's "air" in my voice. I think my voice isn't always strong enough to carry the notes in full strength which is really something I need to work on. I also might have a bad habit of relying too much on vibrato or ending notes in a kind of "cheat" way because of this but also because that's my personal preference in terms of style. But I could look into trying to not overdo it :,D I'm not sure what my most comfortable range or style is so I guess I'm just messing around with low and high notes and seeing what could work. Many singers I love use falsetto or higher notes and I'm inspired by them but obviously it's not as smooth as I want it to be.

You're actually not the first person to comment on my cover of "creep” being pitchy. So I guess I need to review that cover and try to improve on that, I definitely don’t want to be pitchy!
I don’t read music but I play guitar a bit so I can read chords, it’s probably not as helpful as reading sheet music would be though. I’ll have to look into maybe finding some kind of affordable singing lessons around where I live when I go home for the holidays :)

In your personal opinion which song would you say best suits my voice? (Out of the ones you listened to)
I'm a bit all over the place style and genre wise and am trying to find something that would work best for me.

Thanks again for taking the time to listen! :-)
 
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Happy if I can be useful in any way at all :)

Style wise, honestly, I don't think you should limit yourself too much. I like what you did with Desperado and what you did with True Colors, and they are fairly different songs. What you seem to cover is mostly pop, so you don't really have to choose as the technique would be the same for these songs - it's not as if you were hesitating between classical and black metal :) And you have a recognizable voice so you superimpose your style on all these songs anyway, which is pretty cool.

What I'd say is: try to pick songs that don't force you into falsetto (because it's hard to use properly and can sound disconnected) or down into the two or three lowest notes you can hit (because you seem to almost always get pitchy when you sing them). It limits your options a bit, but this way you can concentrate on getting your pitch and your "regular" voice right before exploring things further.

If you feel that you have issues with voice strength, the single most useful thing I've ever been told is the following:
Put your hand on your belly right below your bra, in the soft spot between the two halves of your ribcage. Now shout out "hey" as if you were calling at someone far away. You should feel a muscle tense under your fingers. That muscle is your diaphragm and it should be engaged at absolutely every moment when you're singing. It is what gives your note sustain and strength, and also control: you will have a hard time staying on pitch if your diaphragm messes around (I know that first hand, it's one of the issues I am trying to deal with atm :p) On the other hand, your abdominals should stay relatively relaxed.

I'd like to reiterate that, having heard your covers again, I think your "regular" voice has a great timbre. If you fix your pitchiness issues and find someone to help you ground the extreme ends of your range, I think you'll be an absolute pleasure to listen to.
 
Edhie said:
Happy if I can be useful in any way at all :)

Style wise, honestly, I don't think you should limit yourself too much. I like what you did with Desperado and what you did with True Colors, and they are fairly different songs. What you seem to cover is mostly pop, so you don't really have to choose as the technique would be the same for these songs - it's not as if you were hesitating between classical and black metal :) And you have a recognizable voice so you superimpose your style on all these songs anyway, which is pretty cool.

What I'd say is: try to pick songs that don't force you into falsetto (because it's hard to use properly and can sound disconnected) or down into the two or three lowest notes you can hit (because you seem to almost always get pitchy when you sing them). It limits your options a bit, but this way you can concentrate on getting your pitch and your "regular" voice right before exploring things further.

If you feel that you have issues with voice strength, the single most useful thing I've ever been told is the following:
Put your hand on your belly right below your bra, in the soft spot between the two halves of your ribcage. Now shout out "hey" as if you were calling at someone far away. You should feel a muscle tense under your fingers. That muscle is your diaphragm and it should be engaged at absolutely every moment when you're singing. It is what gives your note sustain and strength, and also control: you will have a hard time staying on pitch if your diaphragm messes around (I know that first hand, it's one of the issues I am trying to deal with atm :p) On the other hand, your abdominals should stay relatively relaxed.

I'd like to reiterate that, having heard your covers again, I think your "regular" voice has a great timbre. If you fix your pitchiness issues and find someone to help you ground the extreme ends of your range, I think you'll be an absolute pleasure to listen to.
Click to expand...

I never thought of myself as having a recognizable voice :,) but thanks, that's a nice suprise!

I'll try to cool down with the falsetto but it's hard since I love that style on singing (even though I really need to practice on it more...). I'm not sure what my most comfortable range is but I guess that's the area where I can stay on pitch and not struggle and I should figure it out. I'm gonna look into breathing and technique while singing, so far I've just been singing for fun and not really thought of that too much but I want to get better so I'll work on it

Thanks again for the feedback, it's kind of rare to get real and constructive feedback online so I really do appreciate it!
 
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