# Why has it become unnecessary to sing well live?



## nightlight (Sep 30, 2021)

This is just something I've been noticing a long time, and I didn't pay much attention to it, but now it gets my goat. 

Listen to Aretha Franklin sing. Listen to Frank Sinatra. Listen to Jeff Buckley. They sound so good live. 

But nowadays when I listen to a lot of vocalists live, I cringe. 

It's like they make zero effort to try to sound like a record. 

Even worse, that's because they sound nothing like the records. 

James LaBrie comes to mind when I think of metal vocalists like that. It is absolutely hideous, that grating falsetto sounds nothing like the mellower voice on the album. 

Even in the case of cookie monster vocals, they don't sound like the records. 

I understand that there's always studio magic at play. Tonnes of studio magic. 

But shouldn't there be a line that isn't crossed? 

I'm just pushing 40, but even back in my day, this would be considered cheating your fans.


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## wheresthefbomb (Sep 30, 2021)

Part of it is probably all the processing and multi-tracking of vocals.

Part of it is probably people getting old, lot of screamers can't do it the same after their 30s.

Part of it is probably that we are more prone to notice negative than positive things because of evolution. There are still plenty of talented singers performing live, and there have _always_ been pretenders. We didn't always have MTV or social media for them to be outed on, and the further you go back they were simply forgotten by time.

Part of it is that James Labrie's vocals have always sucked.


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## KyleG (Sep 30, 2021)

Why would you expect a live performance to be perfect?


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## soul_lip_mike (Sep 30, 2021)

Look no further than periphery’s live album.


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## ArtDecade (Sep 30, 2021)

nightlight said:


> This is just something I've been noticing a long time, and I didn't pay much attention to it, but now it gets my goat.
> 
> Listen to Aretha Franklin sing. Listen to Frank Sinatra. Listen to Jeff Buckley. They sound so good live.
> 
> ...



Below is an example of a paragraph.

This is just something I've been noticing a long time, and I didn't pay much attention to it, but now it gets my goat. Listen to Aretha Franklin sing. Listen to Frank Sinatra. Listen to Jeff Buckley. They sound so good live. But nowadays when I listen to a lot of vocalists live, I cringe. It's like they make zero effort to try to sound like a record. Even worse, that's because they sound nothing like the records. James LaBrie comes to mind when I think of metal vocalists like that. It is absolutely hideous, that grating falsetto sounds nothing like the mellower voice on the album. Even in the case of cookie monster vocals, they don't sound like the records. I understand that there's always studio magic at play. Tonnes of studio magic. But shouldn't there be a line that isn't crossed? I'm just pushing 40, but even back in my day, this would be considered cheating your fans.


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## Blytheryn (Sep 30, 2021)

First time I’ve ever heard of anyone caring what a vocalist does/sounds like live on a guitar forum.


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## bloodocean (Sep 30, 2021)

I notice it frequently in metalcore bands with mixed harsh / clean vocals.

The harsh is serviceable live, then the clean is off pitch and just bad.

Howard Jones (KsE, Light the Torch) pulls it off the best I’ve heard.


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## spudmunkey (Sep 30, 2021)

Well, I would agree, if listening to a live recording. You notice it less in person, IMO, except for thr worst cases. Same with guitar playing for solos, too.


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## bostjan (Sep 30, 2021)

nightlight said:


> stuff


But my albums. I promise my vocals sound just as shyte on them as they do live.


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## wheresthefbomb (Sep 30, 2021)

bloodocean said:


> I notice it frequently in metalcore bands with mixed harsh / clean vocals.
> 
> The harsh is serviceable live, then the clean is off pitch and just bad.



This seems to bey very in-style among local bands right now. I remember being younger and wishing everyone would stop trying to do harsh vocals 100% of the time, now I'm like "please please just go back to screaming." 

If you're going to introduce wildly opposed dynamics in any musical setting, you have to absolutely nail them both or both suffer for it. I feel like most singers would be better off picking one.

Also, the best executions I have heard of the harsh/clean dynamic involve more than one vocalist each playing to their strengths.


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## STRHelvete (Sep 30, 2021)

Depends on the music. In a rock setting the energy just has to be there because that's what it's about, HOWEVER, when a singer is actually good live it makes it even better. Now that being said, touring musicians doing it every night, yeah it's not gonna be perfect every time. Shit happens. Another issue is (old man yells at cloud mode) musicians fake everything in the studio so much and autotune and correct everything so damn bad that they aren't even the band on their own recordings, so when you see them live you hear the real version without the studio polish job.

As a vocalist I kinda pride myself on being able to actually do the shit I do in the studio. I'm kinda in that same school of thought as my personal influences like Chaka Khan and Aretha. You don't use autotune, you ARE the autotune. I don't correct my recorded vocals ever. If I can't do it in the studio I work on it until I can because I'm not going to go to a live show and then give a performance that sucks on toast while hoping no one notices.

I REFUSE to end up like this on stage


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## Rev2010 (Sep 30, 2021)

Maybe the bands that you are hearing lousy vocals from live just aren't good singers. I've seen plenty that were just fine: Slipknot, Gojira, Marilyn Manson, NIN, Korn, Deftones (though Chino couldn't hit those high notes he does on the albums), Metallica, Iron Maiden, the list goes on and on and all were fine. Don't recall the last band with bad live vocals. You have to remember something though... is the band touring? Did they play a bunch of shows already before arriving in your town? Vocal chords are easily stressed and singing night after night is fucking rough duder! I know I'd never be able to do it, I honestly don't know how any singer can do it! Perhaps said vocalists throat is just stressed and tired. Lastly, on recordings obviously you get to take your time, use the best takes, use pitch correction, use multiple layers, etc. Some singers will figure live won't matter as much so long as the fans love the music overall, plus with most audience members likely under the influence of alcohol and having fun in a loud environment maybe they figure people won't focus on imperfections.


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## Nonapod (Sep 30, 2021)

wheresthefbomb said:


> We didn't always have MTV or social media for them to be outed on, and the further you go back they were simply forgotten by time.



My sense is that there's just waayyy more live recordings out there than ever. I mean, at a typical show it often seems like half the audience is holding up a phone recording it, and in many cases a lot of it ends up on Youtube. It's easy to look up live performances of just about any band currently turing on Youtube. So it's harder to get away with a crappy vocal, even if the singer is having an off night.

Back in the day, before the internet and even before MTV, there just wasn't as much recorded live performances. It was a really big deal if a band or artist performed on a TV show. So generally only the more successful groups and singers would have such an opportunity. And you can bet that the vocalist would absolutely bring their A game for that performance.

Conversely, in a modern touring band playing a new gig in a new city every night, every performance isn't necessarily going to be the best. So when you look at any given performance, maybe the singer is having an off night. Maybe they're tired or sick after weeks of touring. Maybe the mix is off in their in-ear monitors that night and they can't really hear themselves. Who knows?


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## Emperoff (Sep 30, 2021)

Humans age 



ArtDecade said:


> Below is an example of a paragraph.
> 
> This is just something I've been noticing a long time, and I didn't pay much attention to it, but now it gets my goat. Listen to Aretha Franklin sing. Listen to Frank Sinatra. Listen to Jeff Buckley. They sound so good live. But nowadays when I listen to a lot of vocalists live, I cringe. It's like they make zero effort to try to sound like a record. Even worse, that's because they sound nothing like the records. James LaBrie comes to mind when I think of metal vocalists like that. It is absolutely hideous, that grating falsetto sounds nothing like the mellower voice on the album. Even in the case of cookie monster vocals, they don't sound like the records. I understand that there's always studio magic at play. Tonnes of studio magic. But shouldn't there be a line that isn't crossed? I'm just pushing 40, but even back in my day, this would be considered cheating your fans.



And a pretty long one, I'd say. Let me join!

_"This is just something I've been noticing a long time, and I didn't pay much attention to it, but now it gets my goat. Listen to Aretha Franklin sing. Listen to Frank Sinatra. Listen to Jeff Buckley. They sound so good live. But nowadays when I listen to a lot of vocalists live, I cringe. It's like they make zero effort to try to sound like a record. Even worse, that's because they sound nothing like the records. 

James LaBrie comes to mind when I think of metal vocalists like that. It is absolutely hideous, that grating falsetto sounds nothing like the mellower voice on the album. Even in the case of cookie monster vocals, they don't sound like the records. 

I understand that there's always studio magic at play. Tonnes of studio magic. But shouldn't there be a line that isn't crossed? I'm just pushing 40, but even back in my day, this would be considered cheating your fans". _


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## ArtDecade (Sep 30, 2021)

Emperoff said:


>



Your paragraph I like.


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## odibrom (Sep 30, 2021)

... and this is one of the whys I went instrumental with PSIORB... finding a good singer/vocalist is difficult, very difficult.


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## StevenC (Sep 30, 2021)

James LaBrie is old, has had some vocal damage and his older stuff is incredibly difficult. In older 90s videos, he's pretty good. Then he injured his voice.

Ross Jennings was really good when I saw Haken, so I don't really understand your point. Is it just to complain about an old man with vocal damage?


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## mastapimp (Sep 30, 2021)

In many cases it's expected the vocals will be terrible and you just enjoy the show for what it is. Ozzy's live vocals are a joke, Fear Factory, Mastodon (all 3 vocalists) are rough live, and I don't know if I've ever heard a decent Dave Mustaine performance, but I think most people know that coming into the show. 

On the flip side, I've seen dream theater when James is on fire when I was expecting him to be struggling based on the gossip at the time. I've even been wowed a few times where the live vocals are better than the record (days of the new, alice in chains (w/ duvall), symphony x, nevermore).


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## MaxOfMetal (Sep 30, 2021)

I think it's sort of the other way around, the studio environment can be tailored exactly to the needs of the vocalist, whether it's spacing out takes over days, mutli-tracking clean/screaming, using a guide tone, etc. Whereas live you have absolutely nothing to fall back on. Nothing. Your voice is what it is. 

So maybe vocalists should try for a little less polish in the studio. 

That said, I actually like a lot of singers better live than on album, even if it means that it sounds quite different. Liam Cormier from Cancer Bats tends to just sound like any good hardcore screamer on album, but live he's insane, completely energizes the band.


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## eaeolian (Sep 30, 2021)

wheresthefbomb said:


> Part of it is that James Labrie's vocals have always sucked.



I'm convinced he blew his voice out on the tour for Images. So, yeah, pretty much.


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## mmr007 (Sep 30, 2021)

It's one of the side effects of the Covid vaccine...poor singing and apathy towards poor singing. They tried to warn us. Don't say they didn't


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## eaeolian (Sep 30, 2021)

MaxOfMetal said:


> So maybe vocalists should try for a little less polish in the studio.



This is 100% true. 

There's also a total lack of understanding that live vocals have only sounded like studio vocals for a brief window. No one sounded just like the record live before 1998 or so even at the arena level, and that wasn't even the goal. Live and studio aren't the same thing.

Hell, a lot of clubs I played in before the late '90s had, at best, an Alesis 3630 to compress the vox. Ugh.


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## eaeolian (Sep 30, 2021)

mmr007 said:


> It's one of the side effects of the Covid vaccine...poor singing and apathy towards poor singing. They tried to warn us. Don't say they didn't



I think you mean Pantera.


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## CanserDYI (Sep 30, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> Depends on the music. In a rock setting the energy just has to be there because that's what it's about, HOWEVER, when a singer is actually good live it makes it even better. Now that being said, touring musicians doing it every night, yeah it's not gonna be perfect every time. Shit happens. Another issue is (old man yells at cloud mode) musicians fake everything in the studio so much and autotune and correct everything so damn bad that they aren't even the band on their own recordings, so when you see them live you hear the real version without the studio polish job.
> 
> As a vocalist I kinda pride myself on being able to actually do the shit I do in the studio. I'm kinda in that same school of thought as my personal influences like Chaka Khan and Aretha. You don't use autotune, you ARE the autotune. I don't correct my recorded vocals ever. If I can't do it in the studio I work on it until I can because I'm not going to go to a live show and then give a performance that sucks on toast while hoping no one notices.
> 
> I REFUSE to end up like this on stage



Dude. That. was. fucking. Terrible. God.


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## bostjan (Sep 30, 2021)

mastapimp said:


> In many cases it's expected the vocals will be terrible and you just enjoy the show for what it is. Ozzy's live vocals are a joke, Fear Factory, Mastodon (all 3 vocalists) are rough live, and I don't know if I've ever heard a decent Dave Mustaine performance, but I think most people know that coming into the show.
> 
> On the flip side, I've seen dream theater when James is on fire when I was expecting him to be struggling based on the gossip at the time. I've even been wowed a few times where the live vocals are better than the record (days of the new, alice in chains (w/ duvall), symphony x, nevermore).



I never saw AiC live, but can attest personally to everything else you said. Symphony X, just in general, sounded fantastic when I saw them live. I don't even know if there was a sound guy, because they were on second stage fairly early in the lineup. Coincidentally, their set overlapped with Nevermore on the main stage at the same show.

Most younger bands playing harder music end up impressing me when I heard the vocalist live after hearing the record first. But older musicians sometimes phone it in more and more as they age.


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## KnightBrolaire (Sep 30, 2021)

bloodocean said:


> I notice it frequently in metalcore bands with mixed harsh / clean vocals.
> 
> The harsh is serviceable live, then the clean is off pitch and just bad.
> 
> Howard Jones (KsE, Light the Torch) pulls it off the best I’ve heard.


Probably because he's a classically trained opera singer.'


Corey from Slipknot has been excellent everytime I've seen them, same with Joe from Gojira. The singer from Volbeat was on point when I saw them (though he wasn't exactly pushing a difficult range most of the time). Matt from Trivium has been great the last couple of times I saw them. Nergal from Behemoth is killer live. Muhammad from Necrophagist sounded just like the album. John from Dying Fetus was also killer Honestly most of the vocalists I've seen in bigger metal bands tend to be more consistent.



The last time I heard reaaaaaaaaally terrible vocals was when I saw Tyr back in 09. They were completely offkey and everything sounded like shit.
Mastodon were ehh (minus Brann) when I saw em back on the Hunter tour.


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## Dumple Stilzkin (Sep 30, 2021)

Didn’t James LaBrie eat some bad shrimp and mess something up? Ah yes, here we go. 
https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/d...looks-back-on-the-darkest-moment-of-his-life/
I was pretty disappointed with him when I first heard him live. But whatever, I rarely listen to them anymore.


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## STRHelvete (Sep 30, 2021)

Some singers manage to sound even better live than they ever do on recordings. I admire those types. Those are the real MVPs


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## bloodocean (Sep 30, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> Some singers manage to sound even better live than they ever do on recordings. I admire those types. Those are the real MVPs



I’m not a nightwish fan, but their 2013 Wacken show (it’s on YouTube) with Floor Jansen… good god she absolutely crushed that show. Just belts it!

I will still listen to that recording, but their studio work is too polished.


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## TheBolivianSniper (Sep 30, 2021)

in flames


guilty as fuck of this



I dig this whole album but what the fuck, this sounds nothing like that


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## bostjan (Sep 30, 2021)

TheBolivianSniper said:


> in flames
> 
> 
> guilty as fuck of this
> ...



Whoah. That chorus was worse than most karaoke I've heard, especially the part where the band stops and all you hear is vocals. Maybe he was having a really rough day?


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## aesthyrian (Sep 30, 2021)

They just need more backing tracks and such to hide behind like it's become acceptable for guitarists to do. Chris Barretto can teach them, he was the backing track GOD when I saw Monuments live haha


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## GunpointMetal (Sep 30, 2021)

Can’t say I’ve personally seen too many that were absolutely awful live, but one thing I have noticed with a lot of modern metal singers is on the recording they can massage the timbre into something enjoyable and then live the pitch is decent but it’s super nasally and grating.


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## wheresthefbomb (Sep 30, 2021)

TheBolivianSniper said:


> in flames
> 
> 
> guilty as fuck of this
> ...




To be fair, he kind of primed us for his failure here. "it's heavy metal you can just scream whatever you want" followed by a minute of rambling, I wouldn't have had high expectations for what came next regardless.


Actually, this reminds me, I can't find the exact video but I watched a really cringe-inducingly bad performance by Kowloon Walled City with my buddy one time. The singer sounded off the entire time, and stopped halfway through the set to eat chinese takeout and ramble into the microphone. Honestly it turned me off of them for a long time. They've become one of my favorite bands and I've seen far more videos of them nailing it than biffing it at this point, but wow what a terrible impression that video made.


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## Manurack (Sep 30, 2021)

wheresthefbomb said:


> Part of it is probably people getting old, lot of screamers can't do it the same after their 30s.



Exactly what I was thinking. Look at Phil Anselmo during the Monsters of Rock show when Pantera played Moscow in 92'. 

Phil fucking KILLED it live back then. No watch any videos of him performing live in the past five years, dude isn't as powerful and aggro as he used to be live.

One guy that comes to mind and always delivers at near 50 is Randy Blythe of Lamb of God. Dude STILL kills it live to this day. I still can't believe that I fucking met him in 2009!


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## mmr007 (Sep 30, 2021)

A singer who fucking kills it live is Johannes Eckerstrom from Avatar





Nobody should be that good live...and Avatar requires SINGING *and* SCREAMING


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## Hollowway (Sep 30, 2021)

Yeah, I don't think this is anything new. Way back when singers still sucked live. When I was a kid I heard a lot of rock bands live, and I was shocked how bad the singers were. On the other hand, it made me appreciate those who could actually sing well. 

I don't think it's unusual that singers aren't as good live. In many bands, the singer is the de facto leader and "front man." If he can't sing super well, but is a great front for the band, then that's probably going to get him the job before the wallflower who can sing really well. Bono wasn't a good singer when U2 was starting out, but he was very outspoken in his role. DLR was notoriously bad at singing when he first joined VH. But both of those are bands that leveraged their singers-as-frontmen to huge audiences and album sales. I know these bands are from decades ago, but the point is that singing well is only part of the requirement for a lead singer. And arguably not even the most important part.


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## Matt08642 (Sep 30, 2021)

Makes me truly appreciate Devin Townsend's ability. Dude's 49 and can still hit everything he performs live as far as I can tell. I saw him live in 2009 and his vocals were identical/better than the album.


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## Werecow (Sep 30, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> Some singers manage to sound even better live than they ever do on recordings. I admire those types. Those are the real MVPs


Mike Patton is like that for me. There's so much more balls and aggression in his singing live, yet still in tune and sounds amazing. Quite a lot of the album recordings sound really tame in comparison.


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## akinari (Sep 30, 2021)

Hah! I'd love to see that if you come across it again. Scott actually had some problems with his voice after the early KWC records - you can hear he changed his vocal style around Container Ships. I forget what kind of vocal condition he had, but it's commonly caused by overuse and strain, and apparently the hallmark symptom is that your voice slowly starts to sound more and more like Winnie the Pooh. He talked about having to go on complete vocal rest for a while on his blog years ago. The song "You Don't Have Cancer" is about his throat exam.



wheresthefbomb said:


> I watched a really cringe-inducingly bad performance by Kowloon Walled City with my buddy one time. The singer sounded off the entire time, and stopped halfway through the set to eat chinese takeout and ramble into the microphone./QUOTE]


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## wheresthefbomb (Sep 30, 2021)

akinari said:


> Hah! I'd love to see that if you come across it again. Scott actually had some problems with his voice after the early KWC records - you can hear he changed his vocal style around Container Ships. I forget what kind of vocal condition he had, but it's commonly caused by overuse and strain, and apparently the hallmark symptom is that your voice slowly starts to sound more and more like Winnie the Pooh. He talked about having to go on complete vocal rest for a while on his blog years ago. The song "You Don't Have Cancer" is about his throat exam.



Wow that actually makes a lot of sense. I'd noticed they had more standard harsh vox on some earlier stuff, and always thought his vocal style on Container Ships and especially onward was really unique, now I know why.

His style now really fits their stripped-down guitar tones. They just put out two new tracks and they're awesome, and their last full length Grievances has been heavy rotation for me since release. I have to show up for them haha, I feel a little bad every time I tell that story because I liked them and still do but it was unforgettable.


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## Protestheriphery (Oct 1, 2021)

bloodocean said:


> I notice it frequently in metalcore bands with mixed harsh / clean vocals.
> 
> The harsh is serviceable live, then the clean is off pitch and just bad.
> 
> Howard Jones (KsE, Light the Torch) pulls it off the best I’ve heard.


His predecessor/successor, on the other hand- not anywhere close. I just block out the post-Howard KSE stuff.


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## The Mirror (Oct 1, 2021)

Don't get the problem.

Main bands I listen to in the metal genre at this time are Blind Guardian, Nightwish and everything Devin does, though.

That said. Dev live often complains about having a shit day / having a cold / not feeling well at all before singing his heart out on every show I've seen him.

You'll listen to shit bands I suppose.


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## Hoss632 (Oct 1, 2021)

I can agree with this for a lot of bands. But there are some that do sound good live. Myles Kennedy sounds great live, David Draiman when I saw Disturbed live sounded just like the albums. Ben Burnley for the most part sounds solid live, especially now with having the other vocalists in the band with him. Daughtry, Any Given Sin's singer also sound great live as well.


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## TheBolivianSniper (Oct 1, 2021)

I will say, for newer bands every live video of Slaughter to Prevail I've seen absolutely kills, Alex Terrible is a monster on stage. I have to find the video of them doing Demolisher live where he does the breakdown callout without a mic after people were talking shit and saying he was using studio effects for that insane growl.


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## STRHelvete (Oct 1, 2021)

Protestheriphery said:


> His predecessor/successor, on the other hand- not anywhere close. I just block out the post-Howard KSE stuff.


I prefer Jesse in the Life To Lifeless era. Howard may have more trained ability but he could never beat Jesse's emotion so Jesse wins hands down


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## Andromalia (Oct 1, 2021)

One thing to remember is that doing 200 shows a year will destroy anybody's voice, however talented. Being from a classical family background, with a professional choir singer mother, the number of reasons singers can cancel a show is like really really high. Not damaging the voice is paramount. Pavarotti canceled shows worth millions in tickets because he caught a cold. (Well he did at least once, a case I can personally attest)
Plus, those not-200-a-year shows also are not-in-open-air-with-rain-wind-and-5-degrees-celsius-temperature-variation, too.

Plus, some singers noted here for their quality also have had their bad days and times. Dickinson in the 90es sucked ass, and so did Hetfield in the 2000s.


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## budda (Oct 1, 2021)

If the singer doesnt take care of their voice (read: many) then it wont take too long to do damage.


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## Edika (Oct 1, 2021)

As mentioned before a lot of singers don't know how to take care of their voice or might not warm up properly. Plus a lot of consecutive shows will put a lot of strain on someone's voice. Especially if you're expected to bring all the energy and get people energized. Some of the examples given by the OP are the so called crooner era singers. Especially Sinatra. The microphone helped them not having to sing with too much volume, thus putting less strain on the voice and creating more nuance and feeling. None of those singers mentioned were singing above their range which helps a lot.


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## Lorcan Ward (Oct 1, 2021)

Vocal chords are a muscle and you need to mind them. Pre-show you need to be careful what and when you eat, warm up correctly, not blow out your voice to early in the show and make sure you don’t over exert it and have trouble the next show. Then after the show you need to be careful how much you party and how much you use your voice. Pair that with 1-200 shows a year and your voice will be screwed if you don’t mind it. We get lucky in Ireland so the last shoe of a tour often falls here and we get the best performance from the singer since they don’t have to reserve their voice for another show. Seeing Izzy Hale and Florence Welch sing at the top of their lungs makes for an incredible show. 

If a guitarist gets tired he can alternate pick instead of down pick, change up a complicated solo part to improv, skip the last soaring bend in a solo, play some power chords to get a break, Or simply stop playing and shake his hands about. often bands will start writing passages to give themselves a stamina break live. 99% of people won’t notice but nearly everyone will notice when a singer is having trouble.

I once saw Pvris and the singer would turn away from the crowd and pretend to sing while the backing track took over and during the chorus would hold the mic out. She barely had an octave range but hid it behind 50-60% miming and getting the crowd to take over. Worst gig I’ve ever been to. They even mimed playing piano : /


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## McKay (Oct 1, 2021)

Why has it become unnecessary to post well?

This is just something I've been noticing a long time, and I didn't pay much attention to it, but now it gets my goat.
Read old forum posts. Visit Andy Sneap's forum. Talk to people from gearslutz. They were so interesting,

But nowadays when I read a lot of posts, I cringe.

It's like they make zero effort to try to post well.

Even worse, that's because they format things strangely.

Nightlight comes to mind when I think of posters like that. It is absolutely hideous, that individual spacing.

Even in the case of facebook groups, they don't give the vibe of forums.

I understand that there's always modern devices at play. Tonnes of iphones.

But shouldn't there be a line that isn't crossed?

I'm just pushing 40, but even back in my day, this would be considered shitposting.


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## McKay (Oct 1, 2021)

ArtDecade said:


> Below is an example of a paragraph.
> 
> This is just something I've been noticing a long time, and I didn't pay much attention to it, but now it gets my goat. Listen to Aretha Franklin sing. Listen to Frank Sinatra. Listen to Jeff Buckley. They sound so good live. But nowadays when I listen to a lot of vocalists live, I cringe. It's like they make zero effort to try to sound like a record. Even worse, that's because they sound nothing like the records. James LaBrie comes to mind when I think of metal vocalists like that. It is absolutely hideous, that grating falsetto sounds nothing like the mellower voice on the album. Even in the case of cookie monster vocals, they don't sound like the records. I understand that there's always studio magic at play. Tonnes of studio magic. But shouldn't there be a line that isn't crossed? I'm just pushing 40, but even back in my day, this would be considered cheating your fans.



Damn, someone beat me to it. 

On topic: An example of pretty awful vocals from an old band. I always found Bruce hard to listen to on this one. I think he had a cold or something. People have better days than others, give them a break.


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## bostjan (Oct 1, 2021)

Lorcan Ward said:


> Vocal chords are a muscle and you need to mind them. Pre-show you need to be careful what and when you eat, warm up correctly, not blow out your voice to early in the show and make sure you don’t over exert it and have trouble the next show. Then after the show you need to be careful how much you party and how much you use your voice. Pair that with 1-200 shows a year and your voice will be screwed if you don’t mind it. We get lucky in Ireland so the last shoe of a tour often falls here and we get the best performance from the singer since they don’t have to reserve their voice for another show. Seeing Izzy Hale and Florence Welch sing at the top of their lungs makes for an incredible show.
> 
> If a guitarist gets tired he can alternate pick instead of down pick, change up a complicated solo part to improv, skip the last soaring bend in a solo, play some power chords to get a break, Or simply stop playing and shake his hands about. often bands will start writing passages to give themselves a stamina break live. 99% of people won’t notice but nearly everyone will notice when a singer is having trouble.
> 
> I once saw Pvris and the singer would turn away from the crowd and pretend to sing while the backing track took over and during the chorus would hold the mic out. She barely had an octave range but hid it behind 50-60% miming and getting the crowd to take over. Worst gig I’ve ever been to. They even mimed playing piano : /


To expound on that...

No matter how strong you make your diaphragm and/or throat muscles, the vocal folds (or in extreme music, the ventricular folds) are still wafer-thin membranes that can be torn by the slightest burst of unexpected air of puke at just the wrong time (like if your body doesn't have time to react). Unlike muscles that grow back stronger after injury, the vocal folds grow back thicker and often misshapen after being torn, which drastically alters the voice in a way that will likely never heal 100%.

Furthermore, trying to sing while sick or otherwise shouldn't be singing is one of the quickest ways to do permanent vocal damage. Playing guitar, if I break a string, I can take two minutes to replace the string and be good as new. A singer whose voice starts breaking up in an unhealthy way would need to stop immediately and rest for ~24 hours, which, as a touring musician would be considered unreasonable.

Personally, when I go to a show, I want to see the musicians perform the music. If the vocalist simply said "I don't feel my bets today, sorry, but the show will be performed instrumental only," I'd likely be pretty disappointed. Ultimately, though, if they cannot sing that evening without risking permanent vocal damage, it'd be best for everyone involved if the singer refrained from singing. IDK, I once saw King Crimson play and their PA system blew up less than 5 minutes into the show. They continued to play everything instrumentally, and it was just great (I only saw them that once, so I have no baseline to compare - maybe they would have been three times better with vocals, but at any rate, I was happy with the show). I've also seen dozens if a hundred videos on youtube of bands/vocalists faking their performances. When Ashley Simpson did it on SNL and got caught, it was the end of her career, but now it seems like it's pretty much expected for pop-rock. I don't get it. Why would I want to pay $200 for me and a friend to get tickets and park at a show just to see our favourite singer from a quarter mile away from the stage play their album for us whilst they pantomime around on stage like a douche?

Worst of all, I saw Staind once. (That's not the bad part yet, which may surprise some of you lol) There was a band opening up for them that was a sort of one hit wonder that has since been forgotten called "Finch." One of the guitarist's cables came unplugged, and there was no discernable change in the sound. The bass player didn't seem to be moving his hands in any sort of synchronization with what we could hear, and, to top it all off, the band played only one of their two big songs and a couple of covers and that was that. Again, maybe it was a bad day for them or something, but it was second-least favourite live performance that I ever witnessed (the other being Peter Frampton acting like a jerk and walking off stage), and I've been to a *lot* of live shows. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that Finch was just blasting audio and pantomiming everything. If they didn't feel well, I don't think anyone would have been more disappointed if they simply skipped their set.


----------



## ArtDecade (Oct 1, 2021)

I still think I would rather watch the guys from Finch playing checkers while their album played in the background than have to listen to Aaron Lewis on his best day.


----------



## Emperoff (Oct 1, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> Some singers manage to sound even better live than they ever do on recordings. I admire those types. Those are the real MVPs



Lizzy Hale, Russell Allen and Devin Townsend come to mind.


----------



## StevenC (Oct 1, 2021)

The last 3 shows I was at were Haken, Janelle Monae and King Crimson. Ross was great, but you could hear his voice get tired towards the end of the show. Janelle was crazy good, and Jakko was good but singing different parts because he wasn't on the records.

I wonder if OP is going to any not metal shows where people are there for the vocal hooks instead of the guitar hooks. The performance that sells the tickets will be prioritised.


bostjan said:


> IDK, I once saw King Crimson play and their PA system blew up less than 5 minutes into the show. They continued to play everything instrumentally, and it was just great (I only saw them that once, so I have no baseline to compare - maybe they would have been three times better with vocals, but at any rate, I was happy with the show).


Which lineup did you see? If it was the 2003 lineup that might have just been the show.


----------



## SamSam (Oct 1, 2021)

Protestheriphery said:


> His predecessor/successor, on the other hand- not anywhere close. I just block out the post-Howard KSE stuff.



You know Howard's live vocals had the absolute living shit processed out of them right?

On record Howard absolutely sounded better (although Jesse has improved his clean singing a fair bit).

But live I prefer Jesse simply because I can hear his vicals fairly clearly compared to that lo-fi radio type filter that was always present during Howard's live vocals.


----------



## eaeolian (Oct 1, 2021)

McKay said:


> Damn, someone beat me to it.
> 
> On topic: An example of pretty awful vocals from an old band. I always found Bruce hard to listen to on this one. I think he had a cold or something. People have better days than others, give them a break.



Bruce ABOLSUTELY sounded like crap, and needed time off - they'd been on tour for almost six solid years at this point, dating back to Piece of Mind. I saw three shows on this tour and he was all over the place.


----------



## bostjan (Oct 1, 2021)

StevenC said:


> The last 3 shows I was at were Haken, Janelle Monae and King Crimson. Ross was great, but you could hear his voice get tired towards the end of the show. Janelle was crazy good, and Jakko was good but singing different parts because he wasn't on the records.
> 
> I wonder if OP is going to any not metal shows where people are there for the vocal hooks instead of the guitar hooks. The performance that sells the tickets will be prioritised.
> 
> Which lineup did you see? If it was the 2003 lineup that might have just been the show.


https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/king-crimson/2001/royal-oak-music-theatre-royal-oak-mi-73d5aef1.html


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## eaeolian (Oct 1, 2021)

Emperoff said:


> Lizzy Hale, Russell Allen and Devin Townsend come to mind.


Devin is good live, for sure. Russ is GODLY live - the heir to Tate in that department.


----------



## wheresthefbomb (Oct 1, 2021)

I saw Nappy Roots up here about 10 years ago, they full on rapped over studio album tracks, mostly phoned it in, and had a super bad attitude toward the event staff at the university.

On the other hand, I saw Snoop Dogg up here around the same time. That dude brought an entire fucking actual band with him. Bass, guitar, keys, _two_ drummers, one behind a trap kit and one with bongos etc. He put on a hell of a show. He was late obviously because he was out finding a giant bag of weed, but he absolutely delivered._ 
_
Snoop is somebody who I feel could phone it in and nobody would really care. I wouldn't have thought any less of him, but I definitely think _more_ of him for trying when he really didn't need to, that and giving what I assume are pretty good paying jobs to five other people when he could've taken the whole enchilada for himself.


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## STRHelvete (Oct 1, 2021)

Chaka Khan, Patti Labelle, and Jennifer Hudson come to mind when thinking of singers who are even better live than in recordings.

I've seen Chaka so high that her eyebrows are sweeping the floor but you give her a mic and she'll bring the place down. There's a definite difference between just a singer and some whose voice is an actual instrument


----------



## StevenC (Oct 1, 2021)

bostjan said:


> https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/king-crimson/2001/royal-oak-music-theatre-royal-oak-mi-73d5aef1.html


Jealous


----------



## mastapimp (Oct 1, 2021)

wheresthefbomb said:


> On the other hand, I saw Snoop Dogg up here around the same time. That dude brought an entire fucking actual band with him. Bass, guitar, keys, _two_ drummers, one behind a trap kit and one with bongos etc. He put on a hell of a show. He was late obviously because he was out finding a giant bag of weed, but he absolutely delivered.



One of the best rap concerts I've seen was a private show in LA put on by Sony where Outkast played with a full band. I think there were 9 people on stage...no DJ in sight. They had a drummer, percussionist, horns, guitars, keys, etc. It sounded really good! I've been to a few of the "phone-it-in/rap-to-beats" shows you mentioned and this blew those out of the water.


----------



## ryanougrad (Oct 1, 2021)

Every time I saw Dillinger Escape Plan live Greg pulled off the vocals. Like his voice or not, he matches the albums.


----------



## bigswifty (Oct 1, 2021)

The other day I forgot to pull the right can off of my ear before hitting record and tracking some vocals.
When I hit playback, I nearly shit a brick because I was flat through the entire passage. Then I realized I had the full pair of cans on the entire time.

I removed the right side, hit record again, and away I went. This was drastically better.. a keeper take.

I guess I'm trying to say - it's hard as hell singing when you can't actually hear yourself amongst the surrounding noise. I've always given vocalists a lot of slack during live performances considering that fact. I still acknowledge if they're off, but as if I could do better. It's tough!


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## STRHelvete (Oct 2, 2021)

ryanougrad said:


> Every time I saw Dillinger Escape Plan live Greg pulled off the vocals. Like his voice or not, he matches the albums.


Never paid attention to Dillinger but his solo project is panty dropping material. That man is amazing


----------



## Seabeast2000 (Oct 2, 2021)

I think not hearing yourself is a huge deal.


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## mmr007 (Oct 2, 2021)

Seabeast2000 said:


> I think not hearing yourself is a huge deal.



Exactly. I am the world's most awesome singer. I sound exactly like Eddie Vedder when I want to...or Sebastian Bach when I want to...or Rob Halford when I want to...and I am ALWAYS in key....until I turn the stereo down so I can hear myself better and I remember I actually sound more like Rainman realizing he's in an airport about to get on an airplane


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## aesthyrian (Oct 2, 2021)

Yep, they just don't sing like they used to.


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## mmr007 (Oct 2, 2021)

aesthyrian said:


> Yep, they just don't sing like they used to.









at first I was pretty sure that awful sound was the tape dragging on one of the heads but that is a digital sound file so that aint it. The only thing I can come up with is somebody hates this band so bad that they recorded their drunk grandpa on the toilet slurring the words to this song and edited that sound on top of the real band

Oh and for people giving Vince Neil shit about how he sounds now and miss how he used to sound...then you were probably as coked up as he was back then....



Be thankful he only remembers or can breath out 10% of the words now


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Oct 2, 2021)

TheBolivianSniper said:


> in flames
> 
> 
> guilty as fuck of this
> ...




It's easy to suck live when you suck in the studio too.  Anders' clean vocals always sucked. Was best when he stuck with the growls + low-pitched rasp and avoided melodic singing like 99% of the time.


----------



## STRHelvete (Oct 2, 2021)

mmr007 said:


> Oh and for people giving Vince Neil shit about how he sounds now and miss how he used to sound...then you were probably as coked up as he was back then....
> 
> 
> 
> Be thankful he only remembers or can breath out 10% of the words now




Vince was ALWAYS garbage. He even sounded bad in the studio..but as of late he's gotten even worse and more people are recording it so it's getting out moreso than it did 100 years ago when he was in his "prime".


----------



## nightlight (Oct 3, 2021)




----------



## Lozek (Oct 3, 2021)

There were amazing singers and awful ones 'back in the day' and the same is true today. No-one has 'stopped trying' moreso than previous decades.


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## StevenC (Oct 3, 2021)

nightlight said:


>



James sounds pretty good on that Score video, but I'm sorry you're so disappointed a guy in his 40s can't sing like a guy in his 20s.


----------



## Leviathus (Oct 3, 2021)




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## STRHelvete (Oct 3, 2021)

StevenC said:


> James sounds pretty good on that Score video, but I'm sorry you're so disappointed a guy in his 40s can't sing like a guy in his 20s.


That's not really much of an excuse. Lots of singers are much older and sound just as good if not better


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## KnightBrolaire (Oct 3, 2021)

mmm yess nothing like some good ole lukewarm takes and ad hominem from nightlight. Perhaps you'd like tgp or rigtalk more, they tend to enjoy ad hominem and pining for the good ole days more over there.


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## StevenC (Oct 3, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> That's not really much of an excuse. Lots of singers are much older and sound just as good if not better


Yeah, it's a shame James didn't take better care of his voice or damage it with bad food. With the best will in the world, some people's voices will degrade more with age than others.


----------



## Emperoff (Oct 3, 2021)

nightlight said:


>




Man, ElRellano.com is a spanish parody website from the 90s. That Enrique Iglesias video is fake. Can't you even hear the audio is completely clipped as if recorded with a cheap desktop microphone?

With that being said, here in Spain we all know Enrique Iglesias can't sing for shit and it's kind of a running joke. Not that his target audience is musically discerning or anything.



STRHelvete said:


> That's not really much of an excuse. Lots of singers are much older and sound just as good if not better



This guy immediately came to mind:


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## MaxOfMetal (Oct 3, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> That's not really much of an excuse. Lots of singers are much older and sound just as good if not better



It's a genetic crap shoot. You can only do so much.


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## Seabeast2000 (Oct 3, 2021)

Going back to Vince....Sometimes it's good to replace a dubious vocalist outright , like they did for only one album unfortunately.


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## gnoll (Oct 3, 2021)

MaxOfMetal said:


> It's a genetic crap shoot. You can only do so much.



Oh, oh, can I use that as an excuse for why I suck at guitar?

I do practice, but I don't have the right genetics to be a good guitar player.

I shall totally say this the next time my drummer is disappointed in me.

(.....kind of joking......maybe......)


----------



## SamSam (Oct 3, 2021)

gnoll said:


> Oh, oh, can I use that as an excuse for why I suck at guitar?



It's not unreasonable to link the speed limits we can individually reach to our genetics. It's no different to a pre-disposition to strength, running speed etc.

Taste, ear and knowledge you can't really use that excuse though.


----------



## gnoll (Oct 3, 2021)

SamSam said:


> It's not unreasonable to link the speed limits we can individually reach to our genetics. It's no different to a pre-disposition to strength, running speed etc.
> 
> Taste, ear and knowledge you can't really use that excuse though.



On a more serious note I think that's taking things a little too far. If there's genetic differences when it comes to guitar speed limits, they must be pretty small. Like, what would the limiting genes code for? How fast you can move your hand? If we're talking olympic level athlete then yeah I could imagine even the tiny things make a difference, but pretty much anyone can learn to pick "fast" surely... And then if you can pick 250 or 251 bpm, does that really matter?

On the whole I think people tend to overestimate individual limitations. Mindset and effort can accomplish a lot.


----------



## mmr007 (Oct 3, 2021)

Emperoff said:


> This guy immediately came to mind:




I've been an atheist since I was 9 years old and yet I remember being soooo excited when I was a teenager to see Jesus Christ Superstar with Neely performing, thinking "yay" I get to see and hear the *real Jesus*. His voice is amazing


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## StevenC (Oct 3, 2021)

gnoll said:


> Oh, oh, can I use that as an excuse for why I suck at guitar?
> 
> I do practice, but I don't have the right genetics to be a good guitar player.
> 
> ...


I mean, yes. Robert Fripp is in his 70s and can play guitar better than any of us. I've been practicing his riffs for probably a decade now and some of them still cramp my arms. He doesn't have particularly big hands but he has a level of endurance for string skipping, alternate picking and stretches that a lot of people seem to be unable to just _develop. _In the same way I can't just develop dunking like LeBron James.

Jason Becker wasn't as good as a 6 years older Marty Friedman because he practiced more.


----------



## MaxOfMetal (Oct 3, 2021)

gnoll said:


> Oh, oh, can I use that as an excuse for why I suck at guitar?
> 
> I do practice, but I don't have the right genetics to be a good guitar player.
> 
> ...



Your voice box is literally a composition of organs. While exercises and practice (and diet to an extent) can help shape what you can do, there are limits imposed by the natural size, shape, and health of those organs through your life span.


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## Emperoff (Oct 3, 2021)

mmr007 said:


> I've been an atheist since I was 9 years old and yet I remember being soooo excited when I was a teenager to see Jesus Christ Superstar with Neely performing, thinking "yay" I get to see and hear the *real Jesus*. His voice is amazing



Yup, I don't give a damn about religions either but the dude is outstanding. He's 70 at that video. Crazy!


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## gnoll (Oct 3, 2021)

MaxOfMetal said:


> Your voice box is literally a composition of organs. While exercises and practice (and diet to an extent) can help shape what you can do, there are limits imposed by the natural size, shape, and health of those organs through your life span.



I was mostly making a joke, it was not meant so much as a comment on what you said about the human voice. I don't exactly disagree, but like I said I think people tend to overestimate these kinds of limitations. If someone sucks at singing, maybe it's because they're physically/genetically limited, maybe it's because they didn't put in enough effort.



StevenC said:


> I mean, yes. Robert Fripp is in his 70s and can play guitar better than any of us. I've been practicing his riffs for probably a decade now and some of them still cramp my arms. He doesn't have particularly big hands but he has a level of endurance for string skipping, alternate picking and stretches that a lot of people seem to be unable to just _develop. _In the same way I can't just develop dunking like LeBron James.
> 
> Jason Becker wasn't as good as a 6 years older Marty Friedman because he practiced more.



Maybe it's not about "just developing" skills, maybe it's about working hard in exactly the right way. Learning things is complex, a lot of different things go into learning and developing skills. Just because people don't manage to learn stuff doesn't necessarily mean they absolutely categorically couldn't.

And maybe you couldn't play basketball like LeBron James, but I bet you could be pretty damn good at it if you spent your life chasing that one skill. But I really think elite level sports is different to the arts. To be a top level athlete may require some genetic disposition because the skills are so specific and mechanical, and because to compete at the top level you need to have those specific skills absolutely maxed out. Obviously being tall can help you dunk easier in basketball since the hoop is way up in the air. I'm short so I might have a tougher time being a top level basketball player, but I doubt that limits me as a musician.


----------



## Emperoff (Oct 3, 2021)

gnoll said:


> I was mostly making a joke, it was not meant so much as a comment on what you said about the human voice. I don't exactly disagree, but like I said I think people tend to overestimate these kinds of limitations. If someone sucks at singing, maybe it's because they're physically/genetically limited, maybe it's because they didn't put in enough effort.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



People has this misconception that some people are born "gifted" to excuse their lack of dedication at their skill of choice. While it's true that genetics obviously play a role, anyone practicing guitar (not noodling around) 8hrs a day will develop a great skill level for sure. Most people just can't afford to do it being because of time or money.

Regarding athletes... That's a whole different story. You can be good, bad or mediocre at your instrument but still manage to make great music or at least have your audience. In sports is either you win or you lose, and to win you have to best your opponent. Simple as that. And you that by training a crazy amount of time, not "being gifted".

This is how you win an Olympics gold medal being 40 years old:


----------



## eggy in a bready (Oct 3, 2021)

gnoll said:


> I was mostly making a joke, it was not meant so much as a comment on what you said about the human voice. I don't exactly disagree, but like I said I think people tend to overestimate these kinds of limitations. If someone sucks at singing, maybe it's because they're physically/genetically limited, maybe it's because they didn't put in enough effort.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


you're contradicting yourself. elite basketball requires certain physical attributes, but somehow that doesn't matter in guitar playing?

also, your point about being tall is confusing. tallness is the desired trait in basketball, long fingers/big hands are for guitar playing. an anecdote: i have short fingers, and on top of that, i was blessed with even smaller pinkies. you can bet your ass that hampers my guitar playing. even power chords can be hard to nail sometimes, due to how i have to move my hands to shape them. don't even talk to me about sweeps.


----------



## gnoll (Oct 3, 2021)

eggy in a bready said:


> you're contradicting yourself. elite basketball requires certain physical attributes, but somehow that doesn't matter in guitar playing?
> 
> also, your point about being tall is confusing. tallness is the desired trait in basketball, long fingers/big hands are for guitar playing. an anecdote: i have short fingers, and on top of that, i was blessed with even smaller pinkies. you can bet your ass that hampers my guitar playing. even power chords can be hard to nail sometimes, due to how i have to move my hands to shape them. don't even talk to me about sweeps.



You don't compete in the same way in the arts and you don't have to do things exactly one specific way.

I also have small hands and I have trouble doing some things on the guitar that requires longer stretches. I've been a little frustrated by that at times but really, big fucking deal. I don't compete in the fret reaching olympics, it just doesn't matter like that. I can play it in a different way, or even play something else entirely.


----------



## eggy in a bready (Oct 3, 2021)

gnoll said:


> You don't compete in the same way in the arts and you don't have to do things exactly one specific way.


that's highly debatable.

both are physical activities that are defined (and limited) by your physiology. YOU may not want to be an elite shredder, but to someone who does? well, they're gonna have a hell of a lot harder time achieving that than say, someone like Devin Townsend, with his freak-ass alien hands.


----------



## gnoll (Oct 3, 2021)

eggy in a bready said:


> that's highly debatable.
> 
> both are physical activities that are defined (and limited) by your physiology. YOU may not want to be an elite shredder, but to someone who does? well, they're gonna have a hell of a lot harder time achieving that than say, someone like Devin Townsend, with his freak-ass alien hands.



I just don't agree. You can shred in different ways, you don't have to use enormous stretches across the whole neck. In some ways small hands might even be better because things'll be less cramped on the upper frets when playing frets close to each other. I wouldn't mind being a shred god but the reason I'm not is because I haven't practiced enough, it doesn't have anything to do with my genetics.


----------



## mmr007 (Oct 3, 2021)

40+ year career with the most annoying unlistenable voice and undiscernible lyrics in music history

you guys are disagreeing on a lot but at least we can all agree on this.


----------



## KnightBrolaire (Oct 3, 2021)

MaxOfMetal said:


> Your voice box is literally a composition of organs. While exercises and practice (and diet to an extent) can help shape what you can do, there are limits imposed by the natural size, shape, and health of those organs through your life span.


Yup. Your muscles naturally weaken as you age (including your diaphragm), your chest recoil declines as you age (intercostal muscles stiffen over time), cartilage hardens too.
It's less of an issue if you stay in shape, but nobody is going to be quite as good as they were in their 20s, regardless of talent. Just look at dudes like Rody from PTH or M. Shadows from A7X. Although those might not be the best examples since both of them hurt themselves with poor technique


----------



## Emperoff (Oct 3, 2021)

eggy in a bready said:


> you're contradicting yourself. elite basketball requires certain physical attributes, but somehow that doesn't matter in guitar playing?
> 
> also, your point about being tall is confusing. tallness is the desired trait in basketball, long fingers/big hands are for guitar playing. an anecdote: i have short fingers, and on top of that, i was blessed with even smaller pinkies. you can bet your ass that hampers my guitar playing. even power chords can be hard to nail sometimes, due to how i have to move my hands to shape them. don't even talk to me about sweeps.




Here's some guitar playing with short fat fingers for you:


----------



## zappatton2 (Oct 3, 2021)

Some singers just need those less-than-stellar vocals. Every time I hear someone cover a Tom Waits song in a perfectly melodic voice, I just think about how much a prefer those tunes projected through that two-pack-a-day gravel pit.


----------



## USMarine75 (Oct 3, 2021)

Watch some Rick Beato vids. Everyone is auto tuned and quantized. 

tldr: They don’t sing perfect on the album so why would they live?


----------



## StevenC (Oct 3, 2021)

Basically, since some people don't get it, imagine you and I both practice exactly the same things for the same amount of time everyday and by some miracle are as good as each other after a decade of playing. We stretch and warm up the same. But then one day I develop arthritis and can't play as fast or as long or as stretchy.

That's the difference. Health outcomes have more variables than you're considering.


----------



## Seabeast2000 (Oct 3, 2021)

I'm convinced there is a Pinky gene that allows that finger to articulate for some but not for others. I'm in the latter camp. Having a freak pinky like Gilbert or George may preclude this advantage. This is my beliefs.


----------



## Emperoff (Oct 3, 2021)

We've become so used to fake pitch perfect vocals that when we hear live unprocessed recordings the difference is just too obvious. It's kind of an "uncanny valley" situation. 



StevenC said:


> Basically, since some people don't get it, imagine you and I both practice exactly the same things for the same amount of time everyday and by some miracle are as good as each other after a decade of playing. We stretch and warm up the same. But then one day I develop arthritis and can't play as fast or as long or as stretchy.
> 
> That's the difference. Health outcomes have more variables than you're considering.



Thing is, for that outcome to be relevant all people would need to warm, stretch and practice as hard. And that is by no means true in the real world.

A truckload of singers know shit about taking care of their voice, or they simply don't give a damn. Of course you can develop arthritis just like you can develop lung cancer even if you don't smoke, or be struck by a car for that matter. Point is if you treat your body like shit chances of bad stuff happing will increase a lot.

The two singers in my cover band have to sing +4h long shows, and they know how to "manage" their voice on tour. They know they can't "give it all" every night. They don't drink (on tour) or smoke at all. Oh, and one of them has beaten cancer twice, so she knows what it is to have bad shit happening.

So yeah, if you want results, stop complaining, start training. Maybe you won't be able in the future and you'll regret it.


----------



## eggy in a bready (Oct 3, 2021)

Emperoff said:


> Here's some guitar playing with short fat fingers for you:



yeah, and for every Earl Boykins, there's a million short dudes who can't even dream of taking it to the hoop.

some people are just predisposed to be able to do certain things.


----------



## Emperoff (Oct 3, 2021)

eggy in a bready said:


> yeah, and for every Earl Boykins, there's a million short dudes who can't even dream of taking it to the hoop.
> 
> some people are just predisposed to be able to do certain things.



Yeah, some people are just predisposed to work their ass off instead of whining on the internet. They're rare birds indeed. 

For example, this guy is just predisposed to play the guitar with his feet. His crazy determination to achieve that feat without arms is definetely unimportant.


----------



## eggy in a bready (Oct 3, 2021)

you people really are fucking dense, lol. no shit hard work is a factor, but the best of the best also possess the RAW NATURAL ABILITY to make it to the top. that includes things like PHYSIOLOGICAL ADVANTAGES.


----------



## eggy in a bready (Oct 3, 2021)

Emperoff said:


>



cool. i'd love to see this guy do a 4 octave sweep.

oh wait, he can't. because he's physically incapable of doing so.


----------



## Emperoff (Oct 3, 2021)

eggy in a bready said:


> cool. i'd love to see this guy do a 4 octave sweep.
> 
> oh wait, he can't. because he's physically incapable of doing so.



Yet there he is, jamming with Andy Timmons instead of whining on the internet 

Maybe he can't do sweeps, but sure as hell he can do _music_.


----------



## sakeido (Oct 3, 2021)

Django Reinhardt played guitar with two fingers. If he had any "physiological advantages" he lost them when he burnt the shit out of his hand. 







Maybe post less and practice more


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## eggy in a bready (Oct 3, 2021)

i was actually just about to post django. 

y'all think him and the foot guy got to where they were based solely off of HaRd WoRk? 
or perhaps it was because they both possess freak abilities that allowed them to be great?


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## mmr007 (Oct 3, 2021)

So can we all just admit its a little of column A and a little of column B?

First it is inaccurate to diminish guitar playing into the simple dexterity of digits when musicianship in general is a skill that can be improved but like anything else there are NATURALLY gifted people. Most people will NEVER be Mozart. Regardless of the effort they put in because for Mozart, it was effortless.

Just some some people can study physics their whole lives and will never be Einstein. I have to spend 6 months practicing for every 6 hours my friend spent to achieve the same level of play. That is not a lack of dedication...it is a combo of his freakishly long fingers and innate ability to understand music and instantly play a song he just heard without tabs or instruction and he has always had this ability after less than a year of play.


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## eggy in a bready (Oct 3, 2021)

mmr007 said:


> So can we all just admit its a little of column A and a little of column B?
> 
> First it is inaccurate to diminish guitar playing into the simple dexterity of digits when musicianship in general is a skill that can be improved but like anything else there are NATURALLY gifted people. Most people will NEVER be Mozart. Regardless of the effort they put in because for Mozart, it was effortless.
> 
> Just some some people can study physics their whole lives and will never be Einstein. I have to spend 6 months practicing for every 6 hours my friend spent to achieve the same level of play. That is not a lack of dedication...it is a combo of his freakishly long fingers and innate ability to understand music and instantly play a song he just heard without tabs or instruction and he has always had this ability after less than a year of play.


i mean, this is more or less what i'm saying.

you can work at something your whole life, but there will probably be someone with the god-given gifts that will outperform you.


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## mmr007 (Oct 3, 2021)

so besides this showing up in my feed which is again being proof my phone is spying on me and my conversations...I love Lady Gaga, always have and I think she has an amazing voice but many disagree so we are never going to come to consensus on the original beef in this thread


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## StevenC (Oct 3, 2021)

Yeah, who was talking about musicality? We're talking about physiological aptitude.


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## eggy in a bready (Oct 3, 2021)

i'm sure foot guy can dual wield like he's michael angelo batio if only he would just _work a little harder_.


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## eggy in a bready (Oct 3, 2021)

mmr007 said:


> so besides this showing up in my feed which is again being proof my phone is spying on me and my conversations...I love Lady Gaga, always have and I think she has an amazing voice but many disagree so we are never going to come to consensus on the original beef in this thread



love her. talk about god-tier ability.


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## StevenC (Oct 3, 2021)

It's weird that Steve Vai says he can't sound like EVH when playing through his rig. Maybe he should practice more.


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## Emperoff (Oct 3, 2021)

The only thing I've ever heard from all the greats that all have in common, is that they all played guitar a fuckton of hours a day and practically did nothing else in life. That is not a physiological ability, if anything is a mental state. Discipline and determination towards their passion.

I rememember Paco de Lucía (one of the greatest flamenco players to ever live) to say in an interview. "Yeah, where I live when you're good at guitar they say you have "Duende". I call it playing guitar 12 hours a day." 

But hey, what do they know. Size of fingers or an alleged mystical untangible ability given by an imaginary being matters most 

/unwatch thread.


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## StevenC (Oct 3, 2021)

Emperoff said:


> The only thing I've ever heard from all the greats that all have in common, is that they all played guitar a fuckton of hours a day and practically did nothing else in life. That is not a physiological ability, if anything is a mental state. Discipline and determination towards a goal.
> 
> But hey, I guess they were all wrong. Size of fingers or an alleged mystical untangible ability given by an imaginary being matters most
> 
> /unwatch thread.


Or maybe there's some self selection of people that practice 10 hours a day and people that have the physiology to be able to practice 10 hours a day.


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## eggy in a bready (Oct 3, 2021)

sure wish i could have 12 hours a day to practice. any sugar daddies out there feel like paying for my rent, utilities, car loan, phone bill and groceries?


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## StevenC (Oct 3, 2021)

If I play more than like 2 hours I need a massage the next day. Guess I shouldn't have had a random skeletal disorder.


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## eggy in a bready (Oct 3, 2021)

StevenC said:


> If I play more than like 2 hours I need a massage the next day. Guess I shouldn't have had a random skeletal disorder.


sounds like you need to go to the hard work store and get some hard work pills. they'll magically fix your spine and oh yeah you'll be able to play like guthrie govan.


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## Flappydoodle (Oct 4, 2021)

Bands absolutely DID used to be able to sing well live



Every single member of that band singing almost flawlessly


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## SamSam (Oct 4, 2021)

I recall in the Rick Graham thread that it was mentioned that he had commented that he reached a high speed of playing within the first few years of playing. 

I have known several people who similarly learned to shred somewhat quickly after picking up the guitar.

Obviously a certain amount of effort is required in all accounts, but you having more fast twitch fibres in your body is always going to be an advantage when it comes to speed and dexterity.

There are of course other environmental factors, but physiological advantages are a factor in any activity which requires physical effort. Be it strength, speed, accuracy, endurance.


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## STRHelvete (Oct 4, 2021)

How the fuck did this turn into whining about some people naturally having some magical guitar abilities?

Back to vocals, yeah if you don't take care of your shit you lose it. Lots of people don't take it seriously enough to maintain their abilities long term, which sucks.

And fuck autotune and pitch correction. Do it right or don't do it. Why's that such a hard concept for some people?


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## LostTheTone (Oct 4, 2021)

I've resisted joining in this thread, because I've had shit to do and I could talk about this all day but I've just finished up a very frustrating practice session because my proper gear is packed up to go to band practice tonight and it really reminded me just how shitty "live" set-ups for vocals really are, and how badly they serve people who scream, growl and screech.

This isn't by any means excusing singers who just aren't fucking trying to sing well live, but unless you have a very high end set-up (silent stage) then you are not going to get any help at all to sound good. 

The best friend of any metal singer is the compressor. It helps you keep a nice manageable level of scream that you can do all night, and teaches you to turn up and never try to sing over guitar amps (because no matter how hard you try you won't get louder). But in a live setting you can't compress anything like as much, because the extra gain creates feedback. So your levels are less consistent, fullstop, and you have to use a lot more mic technique but rabid headbanging is not conducive to precise mic movements. 

Your EQ is also going to be dictated at least in part by feedback problems, and the monitor mix is going to sound quite different from the house mix, so the singer can't actually hear what the audience is hearing. As we all know from the studio, EQ is hugely important and in particular making space in the mix for a singer to come through. If that space is in the wrong place you are going to sound garbage. The balance of your voice will be in the wrong place, and so will emphasize the shitty parts of your voice. 

Now, I too absolutely loathe bands that do so many tricks in the studio that they genuinely can't perform them live in a credible way. While they don't go quite so far, I have a particular frustration with Killswitch Engage and Lamb of God here, because the album versions of a lot of their songs deliberately create what sounds like quite significant vocal shifts within a single word. That sounds good on the album, and puts a lot of emphasis where they want it, but it's all production. They never even try to do it live, they just sing the melody. As it turns out, momentary diversions into black metal screeches just aren't things that humans can actually do like that. 

But, having said that, both those bands (and many others) have good singers who DO sound like most of what they do on the albums. They aren't lying. They aren't pitch correcting to within an inch of their lives, or whatever. But it still annoys me that someone stuck all this in. If it was me, and someone was really insisting, I'd be telling them that if they can figure out how to do it live then I'm down, but otherwise this is creating something that isn't necessary and which people will be annoyed that I can't do for reals. 

To some degree; it's not really that vocalists are shitty live (although Burton C Bell is actually fucking DREADFUL live) it's that there's a lot that can go wrong and a lot of the time you just have to live with it and be happy that the sound comes out at the far end somewhat close. But that's not excuse for dicking around and doing stuff you can't even attempt.


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## SamSam (Oct 4, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> How the fuck did this turn into whining about some people naturally having some magical guitar abilities?
> 
> Back to vocals, yeah if you don't take care of your shit you lose it. Lots of people don't take it seriously enough to maintain their abilities long term, which sucks.
> 
> And fuck autotune and pitch correction. Do it right or don't do it. Why's that such a hard concept for some people?



There are more guitar players on the forum than vocalists (obviously). Therefore it is only logical that we make the comparison to something that we all have in common, which is at the same time a musical skill that requires physical effort and dedication to the craft. Although different they have a lot in common.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 4, 2021)

SamSam said:


> Although different they have a lot in common.



They are different kinds of abilities. Guitar playing is 100% a skill; singing is mostly a talent. By that I mean that no matter who you are, you learn to play guitar. You might learn fast, and you might have an aptitude for it, but you still start as a clumsy ape flapping at the wood and then improve. Singing is... You sort of learn, but it's also a kinda "you just know" thing that is weirdly experiential and very individual. 

The best way I can think of saying it is that singing is a distinctly analogue process, and guitar is more digital. If you press down on the 7th fret, you get the note of the 7th fret. When you sing you kinda just aim, take a shot and wobble around a bit, but the more you practice the more reliably you'll get there. Voices are not calibrated in a whole semi-tones, and your range and abilities really wobble around over time.


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## StevenC (Oct 4, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> How the fuck did this turn into whining about some people naturally having some magical guitar abilities?


Because some people have a hard time with biology so maybe they'd have an easier time with an analogy.


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## SamSam (Oct 4, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> They are different kinds of abilities. Guitar playing is 100% a skill; singing is mostly a talent. By that I mean that no matter who you are, you learn to play guitar. You might learn fast, and you might have an aptitude for it, but you still start as a clumsy ape flapping at the wood and then improve. Singing is... You sort of learn, but it's also a kinda "you just know" thing that is weirdly experiential and very individual.
> 
> The best way I can think of saying it is that singing is a distinctly analogue process, and guitar is more digital. If you press down on the 7th fret, you get the note of the 7th fret. When you sing you kinda just aim, take a shot and wobble around a bit, but the more you practice the more reliably you'll get there. Voices are not calibrated in a whole semi-tones, and your range and abilities really wobble around over time.



This is why we may have so many poor singers. Singing is absolutely a skill that can be taught and developed. A good singer should be able to apply theory and develop a skill. Even if some have a natural affinity to it (such as other forms of musicianship) you cannot discount the skill development involved. That also includes maintaining your voice.

I would however add, that I do feel that learning to sing to an acceptable standard is easier than learning to play a guitar since to a certain degree it heavily involves something that we do frequently (using our voices).


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## eaeolian (Oct 4, 2021)

mmr007 said:


> Oh and for people giving Vince Neil shit about how he sounds now and miss how he used to sound...then you were probably as coked up as he was back then....
> 
> Be thankful he only remembers or can breath out 10% of the words now



So, yeah, he always sucked. I mean always - I saw them open for Ozzy on the "Bark at the Moon" tour, and he was bad - but the band was so energetic and present you didn't care for 40 minutes. When they were headliners, his ability (or lack thereof) really made the shows grate. When people talk more about the drum solo than the band, well...


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## eaeolian (Oct 4, 2021)

I think the point you're all missing here is that playing fast != playing well. Much like voices, there are people that work and expand their abilities to be the best they can possibly be, and connect with the listener.

THAT's music. It's not an athletic contest.


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## TedEH (Oct 4, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> it's all production


I mean, that's the point isn't it? What person here wouldn't, if given the opportunity, make the biggest/bestest production out of their music that they could? It's entertainment. It's supposed to be a production.

The thing that has changed isn't that "singers are lying to us", it's that we've gotten past the idea that an album is a capture of a live performance. It hasn't been about "capturing a real performance" for a long time. Production techniques are no secret at this point. A "recording" is a distinct production from a live performance, and IMO we're just cheating ourselves if we go in expecting those two things to be the same.

I'm all for processing and production and correction and all that junk as long as nobody is making a claim that they pulled it off without it. Don't _literally lie_, and you're good. At this point, it's really obvious that a lot of processing goes into vocals, and as long as nobody is claiming otherwise, we're cool.

Something I'd be _actually_ mad at would be those Idol-style singing competition TV shows that absolutely play for a naive audience who are likely to believe there's zero assistance going on. The types of people who believe those dumb rumours about singers so great that they don't even need mics for stadium shows. If you've got a good ear, the processing is sometimes pretty easy to spot (not just compression, but pitch correction, etc).


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## eaeolian (Oct 4, 2021)

Well, it's always been production - these tricks are easier now, but they're hardly new. Eventide has been around for a long, long time, and using the 990 to "fix" a vocal was an art form, which is why it only happened on big-budget productions, but comping vocals is an industry standard, and has been for a long time.


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## gnoll (Oct 4, 2021)

SamSam said:


> I recall in the Rick Graham thread that it was mentioned that he had commented that he reached a high speed of playing within the first few years of playing.
> 
> I have known several people who similarly learned to shred somewhat quickly after picking up the guitar.



Alright but...

Years?

There's 365 days in a year, and each of those days have 24 hours of which you might be able to practice for at least a few. That's like... a lot of hours. That's literally thousands of hours. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that most people would be able to learn to play guitar fast with thousands of hours of quality practice. And that's another thing, quality practice. All practice isn't equal. It matters how well and efficiently you practice, and if you practice the right things for what you want to achieve. If two people each spend 1000 hours practicing guitar and one of them gets much better than the other person, that doesn't necessarily mean he has more innate talent, he might just have used those 1000 hours in a better way.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 4, 2021)

TedEH said:


> I mean, that's the point isn't it? What person here wouldn't, if given the opportunity, make the biggest/bestest production out of their music that they could? It's entertainment. It's supposed to be a production.
> 
> The thing that has changed isn't that "singers are lying to us", it's that we've gotten past the idea that an album is a capture of a live performance. It hasn't been about "capturing a real performance" for a long time. Production techniques are no secret at this point. A "recording" is a distinct production from a live performance, and IMO we're just cheating ourselves if we go in expecting those two things to be the same.
> 
> ...



Oh I don't have a problem with production, I totally want a producer to make me sound as awesome as he can.

My problem is when the production creates something that I actually couldn't perform. Its fine to polish, but not to fabricate. 

And to be clear, the problem isn't that albums are presented as if the singers do all the work themselves, the problem is that you come to a show and it sounds like a different dude with the mic.


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## jco5055 (Oct 4, 2021)

My two cents (and this is as both a singer and guitarist, and I get singing lessons from a legit guy who actually studied under Pavarotti's teacher himself):

In terms of singing, a big issue is that a lot of singers (both screaming/gutteral stuff or even classic clean singers like Halford and the like) produce sounds that are only possible through unsafe means for longterm vocal health. For example, I've been singing Foreigner songs with my teacher as they usually "sit" in an area that is what I need to currently focus/improve on, and a lot of the stuff I actually sound less "full" in the high notes but that's actually not because I'm not good enough yet, it's just to sing with the same exact sound Lou Gramm had it would be guaranteed I blow my voice out eventually. So since most of these singers, even the great ones, were self taught, they happened to self learn stuff that long term wasn't the best for them (and by long term I mean years and decades down the line). And don't get me started on stuff like Phil Anselmo's singing, there's a reason he can't sing even close to how he did on the records or even really sing clean at all now. And all of this is not even including the factors of smoking/drinking/touring.

In terms of guitar ability, I think there are multiple factors. I think guitar is weird, in that technically yes you can put enough hours in to offset natural talent in it, but having innate talent helps one not need to literally have no life to become a great player, not to mention learning things like feel and adding emotion in to your playing I think is almost impossible to teach. I actually met one of the modern day guitar heroes, and I was a nervous wreck of a 19 year old but honestly he seemed even more nervous/awkward, to the extent I'm like "Oh he's not lying when he said he literally only played guitar besides going to school as a teen". So I think it's a "talent" in itself to have the personality/drive to be fine playing 14 hours a day or whatever also.

I don't really think having big hands is necessary at all unless you really want to do huge stretches (unless you are like a child or a small woman with just tiny hands)...but then again I have abnormally large hands and was definitely have natural talent so maybe it is haha?


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## LostTheTone (Oct 4, 2021)

jco5055 said:


> In terms of singing, a big issue is that a lot of singers (both screaming/gutteral stuff or even classic clean singers like Halford and the like) produce sounds that are only possible through unsafe means for longterm vocal health.



There is definitely a lot of truth to this.

I don't think its strictly a technique thing, I think its the combination of that with touring, playing too much and all kinds of rockstar bullshit.

Singing on tired vocal chords will fuck your voice up. Trying to sing over 100w stacks will fuck your voice up. Singing drunk will fuck your voice and make you sound shitty. Doing opiates dries out your mucous membranes and numbs them up so you shred them real quick.

If you look after your voice and don't overcommit then you can still be rocking at 50. But that means being a bit of a diva and making sure you have some tea with honey for after your set, instead of Jack Daniels and groupies, and I respect people who chose the other side of that equation.


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## jco5055 (Oct 4, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> There is definitely a lot of truth to this.
> 
> I don't think its strictly a technique thing, I think its the combination of that with touring, playing too much and all kinds of rockstar bullshit.
> 
> ...



yeah and rock overall is so young (the absolute oldest people are what 80?) that you can't look at the current oldtimers and be like "See it's just age nothing could have been done to prevent this", there's too little sample size/the science wasn't there yet.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 4, 2021)

jco5055 said:


> yeah and rock overall is so young (the absolute oldest people are what 80?) that you can't look at the current oldtimers and be like "See it's just age nothing could have been done to prevent this", there's too little sample size/the science wasn't there yet.



And, frankly, no-one "old" expected they'd still be touring at 50, let alone 70. No-one really considered longevity. Yes, there are a few people like Lemmy and Ozzy who basically never changed, but they are outliers in many attributes and shouldn't be treated as typical of anything. Its a minor miracle that Rob Halford and Steve Tyler are alive at all, let alone that they can still sing.


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## SamSam (Oct 4, 2021)

gnoll said:


> If two people each spend 1000 hours practicing guitar and one of them gets much better than the other person, that doesn't necessarily mean he has more innate talent, he might just have used those 1000 hours in a better way.




I am pretty confident that even if those thousand hours of practice were conducted together whilst being taught by the same teacher that you would have a strong chance of getting two players at different levels for various reasons. Not just physical attributes, what about intelligence? Aptitude?


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## TedEH (Oct 4, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> My problem is when the production creates something that I actually couldn't perform. Its fine to polish, but not to fabricate.


IMO it almost always does this though. A modern recording is always a fabrication in some sense. No performance, when you're comparing it to modern produced western music, will ever be quite the same thing. I guess the trick is that people will draw that line between polish and fabrication in different places. If vocal processing is bad, than is editing guitar or bass takes? Drum samples? Kick triggers? Pads and sound effects? Delay / reverb? Are noise gates and compressors cheating? What about quad tracking, or extra filler guitar bits, etc? What about "orchestral" backing tracks?

There are soooooo many production techniques that can't be "naturally" performed, why does it only matter when it's vocals?


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## LostTheTone (Oct 4, 2021)

TedEH said:


> IMO it almost always does this though. A modern recording is always a fabrication in some sense. No performance, when you're comparing it to modern produced western music, will ever be quite the same thing. I guess the trick is that people will draw that line between polish and fabrication in different places. If vocal processing is bad, than is editing guitar or bass takes? Drum samples? Kick triggers? Pads and sound effects? Delay / reverb? Are noise gates and compressors cheating? What about quad tracking, or extra filler guitar bits, etc? What about "orchestral" backing tracks?
> 
> There are soooooo many production techniques that can't be "naturally" performed, why does it only matter when it's vocals?



I couldn't care less about 'natural' - It's fine to have racks of effects and whatever. Its fine to have a vocoder that triggers cascading synthesizers if you like. You are still performing it in real time.


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## bostjan (Oct 4, 2021)

TedEH said:


> IMO it almost always does this though. A modern recording is always a fabrication in some sense. No performance, when you're comparing it to modern produced western music, will ever be quite the same thing. I guess the trick is that people will draw that line between polish and fabrication in different places. If vocal processing is bad, than is editing guitar or bass takes? Drum samples? Kick triggers? Pads and sound effects? Delay / reverb? Are noise gates and compressors cheating? What about quad tracking, or extra filler guitar bits, etc? What about "orchestral" backing tracks?
> 
> There are soooooo many production techniques that can't be "naturally" performed, why does it only matter when it's vocals?



Meh.

Who cares at this point? No matter how perfect or how raw or how whatever-adjective a metal band is, metal fans will still mostly hate it, because metal fans have painted them into a corner where they are impossible to please now. Might as well record yourself farting blast beats into a kick drum mic and call it flatulcore and just let everyone pour their hatred all over it.

For me, personally, I don't care what the band does as long as there's some level of honesty. I know that's subjective, but if someone frankensteins a hundred thousand individual notes together into a song that sounds impossible to play, and then records the vocals in monotone and programs the entire vocal track through melodyne, I'd check it out. If they do all of those things and then try to deliberately pass it off as them being the greatest guitar virtuoso and vocal technical god then I'll be just as happy to see them crash and burn for their deception.


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## TedEH (Oct 4, 2021)

bostjan said:


> Might as well record yourself farting blast beats into a kick drum mic and call it flatulcore and just let everyone pour their hatred all over it.


That's the most metal thing anyone has posted in the thread so far.


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## gnoll (Oct 4, 2021)

SamSam said:


> I am pretty confident that even if those thousand hours of practice were conducted together whilst being taught by the same teacher that you would have a strong chance of getting two players at different levels for various reasons. Not just physical attributes, what about intelligence? Aptitude?



Or mindset, drive and determination?

Meh. Obviously people think differently about this. I just think it's so sad when people don't give things a shot because they think they lack some magical talent gene. I know that bs mindset has fucked me over before bigtime, but luckily that won't happen again.


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## MFB (Oct 4, 2021)

bostjan said:


> Might as well record yourself farting blast beats into a kick drum mic and call it flatulcore and just let everyone pour their hatred all over it.



If you manipulate your cheeks during a fart to create syncopation, I think by definition you can call yourself a percussionist.


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## VGK17 (Oct 4, 2021)

It's probably been said but the reason is that many of the "modern" vocalists just aren't good singers. Because they can fix and piece together parts in the studio they don't have to put together a single good complete performance anymore. Also factor in that bands don't play live nearly as long before recording now as they used to (mainly because recording at home is so good, inexpensive and easy to do). Vocalists in the past had to perform first and record second. That's really it.


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## KnightBrolaire (Oct 4, 2021)

bostjan said:


> Meh.
> 
> Might as well record yourself farting blast beats into a kick drum mic and call it flatulcore and just let everyone pour their hatred all over it.
> .


sooo basically slam lmao


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## LostTheTone (Oct 4, 2021)

VGK17 said:


> It's probably been said but the reason is that many of the "modern" vocalists just aren't good singers. Because they can fix and piece together parts in the studio they don't have to put together a single good complete performance anymore. Also factor in that bands don't play live nearly as long before recording now as they used to (mainly because recording at home is so good, inexpensive and easy to do). Vocalists in the past had to perform first and record second. That's really it.



No, I don't think that's true. Yes, it is easier to record now, but bands still practice together and write together. Yes, there are some online only projects, but these are seldom commercially successful, and honestly a lot of the 'one man band seeks singer' types are much more demanding than bands who want to play gigs. Gigging bands expect you to sing alright, but they don't expect polished magic through a dodgy PA. Online collabs tend to expect a polished, perfected recording and turn their nose up at demo quality stuff even if its just to share an idea.

In these days where everyone can put together a decent recording, the emphasis is firmly on gigging as determining if your band is really real.


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## budda (Oct 4, 2021)

MFB said:


> If you manipulate your cheeks during a fart to create syncopation, I think by definition you can call yourself a percussionist.



Things I didn't expect to read on the internet today for $1000, Alex.


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## wheresthefbomb (Oct 4, 2021)

gnoll said:


> Or mindset, drive and determination?
> 
> Meh. Obviously people think differently about this. I just think it's so sad when people don't give things a shot because they think they lack some magical talent gene. I know that bs mindset has fucked me over before bigtime, but luckily that won't happen again.



I see both sides. People have different natural aptitudes, but with that most people can achieve most things with sufficient time invested, and the longer of a time span you put it to the closer the difference will be.

I also think that natural talent can often lead people to actually achieve less. It's similar to "gifted kid syndrome" where public school trains "gifted kids" that everything is incredibly easy to grasp at first glance with very minimal effort because they have to teach at the median level, on top of which everyone tells you how brilliant you are and how you can do anything, and then the real world slaps you repeatedly across the face with the realization that many things are actually _way_ harder than that and if you can't grasp them immediately with minimal effort it destroys your entire received image of yourself and you're trapped under the weight of your own impossible perfectionism because you spent 20 years not really knowing what it was to actually _try_, much less fail.

In hindsight, a sport would've been really good for me.

Meanwhile, people who have had to _try_ consistently have no earthly reason to feel entitled to not-trying, they're just doing what they've always done and it seems to often get them further.





MFB said:


> If you manipulate your cheeks during a fart to create syncopation, I think by definition you can call yourself a percussionist.



The drummer in a band I used to play in once observed, "trumpets are just musical farting." His wife holds a graduate degree in... you guessed it! Trumpet Performance.





TedEH said:


> IMO it almost always does this though. A modern recording is always a fabrication in some sense. No performance, when you're comparing it to modern produced western music, will ever be quite the same thing. I guess the trick is that people will draw that line between polish and fabrication in different places. If vocal processing is bad, than is editing guitar or bass takes? Drum samples? Kick triggers? Pads and sound effects? Delay / reverb? Are noise gates and compressors cheating? What about quad tracking, or extra filler guitar bits, etc? What about "orchestral" backing tracks?
> 
> There are soooooo many production techniques that can't be "naturally" performed, why does it only matter when it's vocals?



One I think about a lot is quantizing/using a live click with loop heavy stuff. I watched a gear breakdown of the band Battles, and they have all of their loopers synced to a midi clock and the drummer gets a click from that. Upon hearing this I realized the obvious truth that it would be impossible for multiple players to keep multiple layered loops in time, it would start to fall apart almost immediately because humans just aren't capable of that level of precision on a consistent basis.

I'm not a huge fan of Battles but it must be said they're creating some really impressive/unique stuff, all while using technology to do things that would be absolutely impossible for a human being on their own. I definitely wouldn't take anyone seriously who tried to argue that they're worse musicians for it.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 5, 2021)

wheresthefbomb said:


> One I think about a lot is quantizing/using a live click with loop heavy stuff. I watched a gear breakdown of the band Battles, and they have all of their loopers synced to a midi clock and the drummer gets a click from that. Upon hearing this I realized the obvious truth that it would be impossible for multiple players to keep multiple layered loops in time, it would start to fall apart almost immediately because humans just aren't capable of that level of precision on a consistent basis.



I actually don't mind this kind of thing at all. Obviously they are doing it live so big thumbs up there, but in general I think its fine to use technology to make stuff work in whatever way is helpful.

My band uses some samples in recorded tracks. Since we don't have any spare DJs and/or percussionists to do that stuff we have a sync track for the drummer and a pad he can hit to trigger the sample. These are older tracks already recorded by an older line up, so we can't change them, but until the new lineup hits the studio we are booking stuff on the basis of the old material, so the only choice is just figuring it out. 

Personally I'm not a huge fan of all band click tracks, and I think that 'tight but loose' sounds better overall, but its firmly a musical aid.


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## GunpointMetal (Oct 5, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> Personally I'm not a huge fan of all band click tracks, and I think that 'tight but loose' sounds better overall, but its firmly a musical aid.


Tight, but tight always sounds better unless its like classic rock band or something. Whether its as entertaining of a show is entirely up to the band


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## LostTheTone (Oct 5, 2021)

GunpointMetal said:


> Tight, but tight always sounds better unless its like classic rock band or something. Whether its as entertaining of a show is entirely up to the band



True. 

For my money, click tracks create as many problems as they solve which is why I am not keen on using them. Whatever other bands do is up to them though; their show and they can decide. If it helps them out, no shade thrown. But my experience is that click tracks lead to people being focused exclusively on just playing their part "correctly" and so are less aware of what else is going on.


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## GunpointMetal (Oct 5, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> True.
> 
> For my money, click tracks create as many problems as they solve which is why I am not keen on using them. Whatever other bands do is up to them though; their show and they can decide. If it helps them out, no shade thrown. But my experience is that click tracks lead to people being focused exclusively on just playing their part "correctly" and so are less aware of what else is going on.


 if everyone plays their part correctly and everyone is on the same time base, that means you’re playing the song correctly and on time. If you’re in a group that does lots of improvisation, I can see how that might be detrimental, but if you’re playing the same arrangements over and over again the only people that have to worry are the ones that can’t stay tight.


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## dspellman (Oct 5, 2021)

nightlight said:


> This is just something I've been noticing a long time, and I didn't pay much attention to it, but now it gets my goat.
> 
> Listen to Aretha Franklin sing. Listen to Frank Sinatra. Listen to Jeff Buckley. They sound so good live..



It began before you were born; when someone decided it was a good idea (and even necessary) that a performer write his own material. 
Tradition was, largely, that there were singers and there were songwriters. Sinatra never sang anything he wrote, nor did most performers. Irving Berlin, Rogers & Hammerstein, etc., were famous songwriters but never performed their own material. Even during the swing era, bands and bandleaders might be performing their own material instrumentally, but it was Doris Day out front singing it, and she never wrote a lick. 

For that matter, a lot of early (and, honestly, current) rock acts had issues duplicating their records live because they weren't actually the musicians on the recordings. Studio musicians actually had to teach band members songs and solos before the latter went out on the road. It was actually a bit of a surprise if you went to a concert and the band sounded like their record.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 5, 2021)

GunpointMetal said:


> if everyone plays their part correctly and everyone is on the same time base, that means you’re playing the song correctly and on time. If you’re in a group that does lots of improvisation, I can see how that might be detrimental, but if you’re playing the same arrangements over and over again the only people that have to worry are the ones that can’t stay tight.



Yeah, but the problem I've found is that mistakes do always happen eventually. People drop plectrums or drum sticks. People miss their cues. Leads get pulled out. Feedback appears from nowhere. It happens. And I prefer to play with people who are ready when the unexpected happens and can hold it together. 

That's a personal preference, of course, and I do get why many bands get all clicky. I just don't like it myself.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 5, 2021)

dspellman said:


> It began before you were born; when someone decided it was a good idea (and even necessary) that a performer write his own material.
> Tradition was, largely, that there were singers and there were songwriters. Sinatra never sang anything he wrote, nor did most performers. Irving Berlin, Rogers & Hammerstein, etc., were famous songwriters but never performed their own material. Even during the swing era, bands and bandleaders might be performing their own material instrumentally, but it was Doris Day out front singing it, and she never wrote a lick.
> 
> For that matter, a lot of early (and, honestly, current) rock acts had issues duplicating their records live because they weren't actually the musicians on the recordings. Studio musicians actually had to teach band members songs and solos before the latter went out on the road. It was actually a bit of a surprise if you went to a concert and the band sounded like their record.



Worth adding to this that, as you say, singers were _singers_ and for the non-famous people that meant they had to have a wide repertoire and be able to go slot in with whatever band needed them. You had to be able to pick up some sheet music and sing along pretty quickly.


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## dspellman (Oct 5, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> True.
> 
> For my money, click tracks create as many problems as they solve which is why I am not keen on using them. Whatever other bands do is up to them though; their show and they can decide. If it helps them out, no shade thrown. But my experience is that click tracks lead to people being focused exclusively on just playing their part "correctly" and so are less aware of what else is going on.



Probably true for small and barely professional bands. 
For a while I did orchestra pit work for large performances (think Cirque), and a lot of it had either pre-recorded bits woven in or relied on click tracks for timing, etc. The orchestra leader had options along the way in case there were issues, but there were so many moving parts (performer timing, lighting, moving stage props, etc.) that click type work was essential.


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## GunpointMetal (Oct 5, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> Yeah, but the problem I've found is that mistakes do always happen eventually. People drop plectrums or drum sticks. People miss their cues. Leads get pulled out. Feedback appears from nowhere. It happens. And I prefer to play with people who are ready when the unexpected happens and can hold it together.
> 
> That's a personal preference, of course, and I do get why many bands get all clicky. I just don't like it myself.


 The whole band shouldn't be playing catch up for one person, though. It's even easier with a click because you can all hear where the "1" is so you're not guessing around trying to figure out who to catch up to. IDK, it's all preference, YMMV, but IME no-one ever performed worse because of a metronome unless there was already some major issue with their ability or practice.


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## CanserDYI (Oct 5, 2021)

TedEH said:


> IMO it almost always does this though. A modern recording is always a fabrication in some sense. No performance, when you're comparing it to modern produced western music, will ever be quite the same thing. I guess the trick is that people will draw that line between polish and fabrication in different places. If vocal processing is bad, than is editing guitar or bass takes? Drum samples? Kick triggers? Pads and sound effects? Delay / reverb? Are noise gates and compressors cheating? What about quad tracking, or extra filler guitar bits, etc? What about "orchestral" backing tracks?
> 
> There are soooooo many production techniques that can't be "naturally" performed, why does it only matter when it's vocals?


I always ask the plug in or the pedals to play me a solo, if it cant, then its a tool, not a cheat.

What I was getting at is I agree with you, modern recordings are fabrications in a way, and I don't find it cheating.


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## Demiurge (Oct 5, 2021)

dspellman said:


> It began before you were born; when someone decided it was a good idea (and even necessary) that a performer write his own material.
> Tradition was, largely, that there were singers and there were songwriters. Sinatra never sang anything he wrote, nor did most performers. Irving Berlin, Rogers & Hammerstein, etc., were famous songwriters but never performed their own material. Even during the swing era, bands and bandleaders might be performing their own material instrumentally, but it was Doris Day out front singing it, and she never wrote a lick.
> 
> For that matter, a lot of early (and, honestly, current) rock acts had issues duplicating their records live because they weren't actually the musicians on the recordings. Studio musicians actually had to teach band members songs and solos before the latter went out on the road. It was actually a bit of a surprise if you went to a concert and the band sounded like their record.



This is a good point. Sometimes our idealization of being an artist can be unrealistic. Composer, studio performer, and live performer as showman/entertainer- with the endurance to tour- are very, very different hats to wear, but artists get a hard time for not being all of those things.


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## TedEH (Oct 5, 2021)

CanserDYI said:


> I always ask the plug in or the pedals to play me a solo, if it cant, then its a tool, not a cheat.


Would a looper count as a pedal playing a solo?


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## Flappydoodle (Oct 5, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> I actually don't mind this kind of thing at all. Obviously they are doing it live so big thumbs up there, but in general I think its fine to use technology to make stuff work in whatever way is helpful.
> 
> My band uses some samples in recorded tracks. Since we don't have any spare DJs and/or percussionists to do that stuff we have a sync track for the drummer and a pad he can hit to trigger the sample. These are older tracks already recorded by an older line up, so we can't change them, but until the new lineup hits the studio we are booking stuff on the basis of the old material, so the only choice is just figuring it out.
> 
> Personally I'm not a huge fan of all band click tracks, and I think that 'tight but loose' sounds better overall, but its firmly a musical aid.



I'm really enjoying your posts and the expertise you're bringing. What you said earlier about vocalists live performances was really insightful.

So I have a follow-up question. Is it also correct that this type of music (metal) is also less conducive to good live vocal performances?

If you look at that The Eagles live gig I posted 1-2 pages back, all of them sing pretty much perfectly. But it's also "easy" singing, I assume. (Sorry, not a vocalist so I lack the terminology). But I hear simple melodies in comfortable ranges, comfortable volume, not adding distortion or doing fancy techniques. They also have background music where it probably isn't impossible to hear yourself and everybody else. Whereas metal now seems to be about pushing lots of boundaries - screamed verses and then melodic choruses, and the background music being much busier. Is that a factor like I imagine it would be?


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## CanserDYI (Oct 5, 2021)

TedEH said:


> Would a looper count as a pedal playing a solo?


Damn man, I never asked it to. He might be a little sassy and talk back a few times before I slap him silly.


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## TedEH (Oct 5, 2021)

Here's a thought:
What if this observation is another case of how the farther back in time you go, the more likely you'd only really be remembering exceptional cases? As in, if you're going to compare _all of modern music_, to the handful of people who were memorable enough from earlier eras of music, it's never going to be a fair comparison. 90% of famous people _back in the day, _whenever that day might be, is probably a tiny fraction of the number of people you can recall doing modern performances. You're comparing the general modern population of vocalists to only the pasts standout cases. We have exceptional vocalists now too, but they're a much smaller fraction of how many vocalists you encounter as a whole, because that barrier is much lower. Any jerk with a computer and time can create music that any joe might encounter. That never happened before.


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## CanserDYI (Oct 5, 2021)

Also, why are we calling classical composers *Edited because I'm not so smart with the words* geniuses, when in all reality they're the ancient equivalent of soundcloud rappers and beatmakers using samples and arranging songs? I bet you most of those composers couldnt play most of those instruments/voices to save their lives. And here we are hundreds of years later still oohing and ahing over their arrangements.


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## bostjan (Oct 5, 2021)

CanserDYI said:


> Also, why are we calling Bach, Pachlebel, and Mozart geniuses, when in all reality they're the ancient equivalent of soundcloud rappers and beatmakers using samples and arranging songs? I bet you most of those composers couldnt play most of those instruments/voices to save their lives. And here we are hundreds of years later still oohing and ahing over their arrangements.


Wat?


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## Emperoff (Oct 5, 2021)

CanserDYI said:


> Also, why are we calling Bach, Pachlebel, and Mozart geniuses, when in all reality they're the ancient equivalent of soundcloud rappers and beatmakers using samples and arranging songs? I bet you most of those composers couldnt play most of those instruments/voices to save their lives. And here we are hundreds of years later still oohing and ahing over their arrangements.


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## CanserDYI (Oct 5, 2021)

bostjan said:


> Wat?


Theyre sitting down at a desk, writing music and layering it on a harpsichord. A soundcloud rapper/beatmaker usually sits down at a desk, writes out the music and layers it all on his keyboard. Granted yes, the antique composers probably have a lot more musical knowledge and difficulty in their arrangements, but we shit on the guy making a record on his laptop calling it "not music" and ooh and ahh at classical music. 

I realize I'm speaking in extreme hyperbole, but its just funny to me.


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## CanserDYI (Oct 5, 2021)

Separate note and kind of back to OP's train of thought, what drives me nuts is when I go see a metalcore/metal/screamy type shit, and the vocalist gives up half way through and just puts the mic out into the crowd and you hear Myspace Johnny's attempt at a screech as 4 other mall kids fall on top of him, 15 times a song. That drives me nuts.


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## bostjan (Oct 5, 2021)

CanserDYI said:


> Theyre sitting down at a desk, writing music and layering it on a harpsichord. A soundcloud rapper/beatmaker usually sits down at a desk, writes out the music and layers it all on his keyboard. Granted yes, the antique composers probably have a lot more musical knowledge and difficulty in their arrangements, but we shit on the guy making a record on his laptop calling it "not music" and ooh and ahh at classical music.
> 
> I realize I'm speaking in extreme hyperbole, but its just funny to me.


Who's "we?"

You realize that two of the three examples you chose were technical prodigies, right? Maybe you just got unlucky and picked the wrong examples, but the post came off sounding really strange.


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## CanserDYI (Oct 5, 2021)

bostjan said:


> Who's "we?"
> 
> You realize that two of the three examples you chose were technical prodigies, right? Maybe you just got unlucky and picked the wrong examples, but the post came off sounding really strange.


HAHAHA YES, it was 3 random composers who's names came to mind as classical music! I just morely meant the composers of before, where it was done in scholar sessions and handed to the musicians to recite back.

I merely found it funny that many discredit the modern laptop musician, but its no different than music scholars back in antiquity.


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## VGK17 (Oct 5, 2021)

CanserDYI said:


> HAHAHA YES, it was 3 random composers who's names came to mind as classical music! I just morely meant the composers of before, where it was done in scholar sessions and handed to the musicians to recite back.
> 
> I merely found it funny that many discredit the modern laptop musician, but its no different than music scholars back in antiquity.


WAY different and a really bad example. The classical composers had a lot of music theory knowledge and had to understand each instrument, it's unique sound and how it fit into the orchestra or ensemble. The typical "laptop producer" these days has all that automated for them. However, there are a lot of gifted modern composers who use software as their instrument to compose but these people aren't the average artist, particularly imo in the pop genre.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 5, 2021)

Flappydoodle said:


> So I have a follow-up question. Is it also correct that this type of music (metal) is also less conducive to good live vocal performances?



Yeah, it probably does lend itself to bad vocal performance. It's less obvious when screaming singers are shit, frankly. Flat notes barely register, and honestly as long as you sell it aggressively the fans won't notice.

On top of that the problems that come from bad technique are long term. It's not easy to scream well, but its fairly easy to scream vaguely adequately, and the consequences will be to your throat.

As an opera singer, its obvious when you're wrong, and if you don't have technique you literally can't perform. In a modern metal band, you can genuinely forget the lyrics and hide it in cookie monster mumbling. 



Flappydoodle said:


> If you look at that The Eagles live gig I posted 1-2 pages back, all of them sing pretty much perfectly. But it's also "easy" singing, I assume. (Sorry, not a vocalist so I lack the terminology). But I hear simple melodies in comfortable ranges, comfortable volume, not adding distortion or doing fancy techniques. They also have background music where it probably isn't impossible to hear yourself and everybody else. Whereas metal now seems to be about pushing lots of boundaries - screamed verses and then melodic choruses, and the background music being much busier. Is that a factor like I imagine it would be?



Yeah, your right to some degree. I would never say that singing well is easy, but as you say The Eagles (and many others) are well set up to succeed. They are professionals and practice, but no-one would listen to that vocal line and say "oh hell no".

Metal singers do (in my experience anyway) feel pressure to mix it up and try new styles and techniques. Where classic heavy metal singers tend to find a groove and work it, modern metal singers are quite aware that their lines start to sound the same and they need to be broken up and played with, and that syncs up nicely with different bits of a song. Plus it's hard to switch voices, and doing it well makes you feel baller.

Or we all have some inferiority complex about not being 'proper' singers. Who knows.


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## bostjan (Oct 5, 2021)

I mean, I could make the same argument (although I don't see what point it would prove) by choosing any three of anything and then belittling their accomplishments in their respective field.

You even hear examples of this all of the time.

Like, "Pfft, all Usain Bolt does is run really fast, anyone could do that!" or "Christopher Columbus just got lost on his way to India, he didn't do anything special!"

I mean, Columbus didn't "discover" America, obviously, because, you know, there were already a lot of people living here, but what he did do was something special, in that he revolutionized agriculture. Yes, agriculture. No one in Europe had ever eaten a tomato or a potato or a pepper or roasted maize or smoked tobacco or ... Imagine Italy without marinara sauce or without pizza. Crazy, right, but that's what Columbus did - he's the reason there's pizza.

And in the 15th century, it was a lot of work to build a ship (or three) and convince a crew (or three) to sail away on a long journey. You knew the Earth was round, but does the guy who patches the holes in masts on your ship know that? If he doesn't, how are you going to convince him to go with you to India, 'round the long way...? But I digress - my point is that everything is easy to brush off as taking little effort until you actually try to do it. Also, everything takes a combination of effort and luck. Even though Bolt worked really hard to become super fast, there may very well be faster people who live in extreme poverty and simply have to rely on their speed for survival rather than for gold medals.


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## CanserDYI (Oct 5, 2021)

Okay fine, maybe my examples were bad, like I said it was hyperbole. Just found it funny that we never really left that era, just got better tools.


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## ixlramp (Oct 5, 2021)

nightlight said:


> Why has it become unnecessary to sing well live?


I doubt this has happened, it is probably an illusion of perception with various causes including nostalgia and perhaps negativity.


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## StevenC (Oct 5, 2021)

CanserDYI said:


> Also, why are we calling classical composers *Edited because I'm not so smart with the words* geniuses, when in all reality they're the ancient equivalent of soundcloud rappers and beatmakers using samples and arranging songs? I bet you most of those composers couldnt play most of those instruments/voices to save their lives. And here we are hundreds of years later still oohing and ahing over their arrangements.


You just said this and then people started proving your point. Wow. Are you a magician?


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## gnoll (Oct 5, 2021)

CanserDYI said:


> Okay fine, maybe my examples were bad, like I said it was hyperbole. Just found it funny that we never really left that era, just got better tools.



Examples aside, what you said is pretty weird and I don't agree.

Classical composers from like baroque to post-romanticism/modernism were often really good at playing instruments. Many performed their own pieces. And if they hadn't, so what? Would that make their music worse? No. And if a rapper can't play an instrument, does that make his/her music worse? No.

And I don't think we're simply "calling classical composers geniuses". Over the course of history there's been some composers who wrote really really good music and in the process changed the entire history of western music. I don't think it's so weird that we think highly of those composers. But for every Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, don't you think there's also a bunch of composers who you never heard being called a genius by anybody, or even heard of at all?


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## CanserDYI (Oct 5, 2021)

I wasn't making a serious apples to apples comparison, I just thought it was a funny full circle happening. Meh.


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## bostjan (Oct 5, 2021)

CanserDYI said:


> I wasn't making a serious apples to apples comparison, I just thought it was a funny full circle happening. Meh.


Oh, so now you are saying that an apple has no talent unless it can be eaten equally well on its own or in a pie?!

LOL JK

Just felt like everyone was piling on, so I couldn't help it...

On a weirdly sort-of-barely related note, I just saw a documentary about Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus" and how Falco was kind of like a modern day (well, in the 80's) Mozart, because he pushed the boundaries of electronic music. I was also pretty confused by that analogy.

I've heard plenty of people say stuff like "rap requires no talent; it's just talking into a mic," but I've never heard that from anyone who was able to then throw down a hot dis track to prove their point.

Interestingly, though, almost the reverse happened in "ancient" Prussia. Frederick the Great was a flute player who was like "Pfft, conquering is easy, let me try that," and then kicked Europe's ass.


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## gnoll (Oct 5, 2021)

wheresthefbomb said:


> I see both sides. People have different natural aptitudes, but with that most people can achieve most things with sufficient time invested, and the longer of a time span you put it to the closer the difference will be.
> 
> I also think that natural talent can often lead people to actually achieve less. It's similar to "gifted kid syndrome" where public school trains "gifted kids" that everything is incredibly easy to grasp at first glance with very minimal effort because they have to teach at the median level, on top of which everyone tells you how brilliant you are and how you can do anything, and then the real world slaps you repeatedly across the face with the realization that many things are actually _way_ harder than that and if you can't grasp them immediately with minimal effort it destroys your entire received image of yourself and you're trapped under the weight of your own impossible perfectionism because you spent 20 years not really knowing what it was to actually _try_, much less fail.
> 
> ...



Yeah, effort is what should be praised, not talent/intelligence. Looking back on my school days makes me frustrated and angry. With the understanding of effort, learning and mindset that I have now, I see how noone told me the right things back then and so I ended up with a harmful mindset and making bad life choices.


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## bostjan (Oct 5, 2021)

gnoll said:


> Yeah, effort is what should be praised, not talent/intelligence. Looking back on my school days makes me frustrated and angry. With the understanding of effort, learning and mindset that I have now, I see how noone told me the right things back then and so I ended up with a harmful mindset and making bad life choices.



It's a weird difference between Eastern and Western cultures. In the far east, when a child does well in school, they are more likely to hear "we are proud of your hard work and efforts" and, in the west, more likely to hear "we are proud of how smart/athletic/special you are."

The smartest kids in my high school... well, some of them burnt out hard, either from drugs or just no longer being interested. We all know that nearly everyone excelling in high school athletics ends up gaining little to no benefit from the athletic programs themselves. But, if you are part of a team and you learn how to put effort into completing a task or learn how to work well as a integral part of a team, it's a soft skill that can do you a lot of benefit later in life. Otherwise, if we're looking at the kid that the coach put in forward position because he was the fastest, it's probably going to be a rough life by the time that kid is 40.


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## gnoll (Oct 5, 2021)

CanserDYI said:


> I wasn't making a serious apples to apples comparison, I just thought it was a funny full circle happening. Meh.



Sorry man, I'm an overly argumentative person and I also get a bit defensive when people diss classical composers. It's been a kinda trendy thing to do lately.


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## bostjan (Oct 5, 2021)

gnoll said:


> Sorry man, I'm an overly argumentative person and I also get a bit defensive when people diss classical composers. It's been a kinda trendy thing to do lately.


Luigi Boccherini was goofy looking and smells bad.


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## ArtDecade (Oct 5, 2021)

gnoll said:


> Sorry man, I'm an overly argumentative person and I also get a bit defensive when people diss classical composers. It's been a kinda trendy thing to do lately.



Salieri didn't kill Mozart.


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## Lorcan Ward (Oct 6, 2021)

gnoll said:


> Yeah, effort is what should be praised, not talent/intelligence. Looking back on my school days makes me frustrated and angry. With the understanding of effort, learning and mindset that I have now, I see how noone told me the right things back then and so I ended up with a harmful mindset and making bad life choices.



Thats what blows my mind about child/teenage virtuosos. The foresight to know what to practice that will put them on the fastest path to getting good at music paired with the drive to do it. In my 30s I understand exactly what you need to do to get to that level, how a 14 year old gains that knowledge without life experience is beyond me.


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## gnoll (Oct 6, 2021)

Lorcan Ward said:


> Thats what blows my mind about child/teenage virtuosos. The foresight to know what to practice that will put them on the fastest path to getting good at music paired with the drive to do it. In my 30s I understand exactly what you need to do to get to that level, how a 14 year old gains that knowledge without life experience is beyond me.



I think good encouragement from their environment often helps a lot. But mostly I think it's about having a really burning interest in something and wanting badly to do it and to improve. And not just in general terms like "I want to be a rockstar" but more like "I can't rest until I learn this technique because I want to be able to do it so badly". So I don't think it's about knowing what needs to be done but rather doing it anyway as a side effect of their interest.

I just remember having a vague desire to be as cool as all the bands I listened to, and going to my music lessons listening to a teacher telling me... something... and then... going home to play computer games? Yeah no wonder I never got good at anything.


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## bostjan (Oct 6, 2021)

gnoll said:


> I think good encouragement from their environment often helps a lot. But mostly I think it's about having a really burning interest in something and wanting badly to do it and to improve. And not just in general terms like "I want to be a rockstar" but more like "I can't rest until I learn this technique because I want to be able to do it so badly". So I don't think it's about knowing what needs to be done but rather doing it anyway as a side effect of their interest.
> 
> I just remember having a vague desire to be as cool as all the bands I listened to, and going to my music lessons listening to a teacher telling me... something... and then... going home to play computer games? Yeah no wonder I never got good at anything.



I think the most discouraging thing a student can hear is "you're doing it wrong." I heard that a lot when I was starting out. I was holding a pick wrong, I was holding my fretting hand wrong, I was hammering-on and pulling-off too hard, etc. etc. It's much more encouraging to hear, "maybe that approach works for you, but let's try this, too, because maybe you'll see [insert advantage here]." Ultimately, the more different techniques you try, the more likely you are to find new techniques and push the boundaries, and the more likely you are to find what works most comfortably for yourself.

I started playing the guitar at something like 5 years old, but I could only play a few single note at a time versions of TV theme songs until I was, IDK, like 13. It's crazy to think of 7-8 years of playing "Gumby" and "Frere Jacques," but I just wanted to be like my Dad and my Uncle, who both played in bands, and I had no idea how to get from plucking one string to playing the stuff I heard on the radio, and the first guitar teacher I had was no help at all. Then I got a new teacher, who was really into blues music, and the fact that the blues was both simple and challenging perfectly bridged the gap for me, and soon I was playing the actual guitar part in Gumby and other TV themes. 

So, I guess, in a way, I wanted to be a rockstar (in the eyes of a little kid), which got me to pick up the guitar, but it was actually enjoying the music I was learning that got me _playing_, and you get better at playing by playing, not by wishing.


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## Sermo Lupi (Oct 6, 2021)

Lorcan Ward said:


> Seeing Izzy Hale and Florence Welch sing at the top of their lungs makes for an incredible show.





Emperoff said:


> Lizzy Hale, Russell Allen and Devin Townsend come to mind.





eaeolian said:


> Devin is good live, for sure. Russ is GODLY live - the heir to Tate in that department.



Russell Allen is indeed a god. Each time I've seen him live, he's been unreal. It isn't a coincidence that he's shared the stage with Lzzy Hale, Floor Jensen, Jorn Lande--so many greats, really--and all have given effusive praise of his talents. Russell Allen is likely recognized as the best of his generation among his peers. 

There's no single answer to the original post that explains why some bands give bad vocal performances. Increasingly rigorous touring schedules probably play a role in addition to everything else.

At this point I think most facets of the question have been covered so here's two non-Symphony X videos of Russell Allen crushing it that some of you may not have seen yet.  Enjoy!


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## Emperoff (Oct 6, 2021)

Sermo Lupi said:


> Russell Allen is indeed a god. Each time I've seen him live, he's been unreal. It isn't a coincidence that he's shared the stage with Lzzy Hale, Floor Jensen, Jorn Lande--so many greats, really--and all have given effusive praise of his talents. Russell Allen is likely recognized as the best of his generation among his peers.
> 
> There's no single answer to the original post that explains why some bands give bad vocal performances. Increasingly rigorous touring schedules probably play a role in addition to everything else.
> 
> At this point I think most facets of the question have been covered so here's two non-Symphony X videos of Russell Allen crushing it that some of you may not have seen yet.  Enjoy!




Shame on me for forgetting about Floor Jansen. I didn't give a damn about Nightwish until she joined. What a beast of a singer.

Russell Allen for me is the perfect metal singer. He just has it all. He has the range, he has the grunty voice, and he has a great stage presence as well. He's also consistently awesome in every performance I've seen.


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## ArtDecade (Oct 6, 2021)

Emperoff said:


> Shame on me for forgetting about Floor Jansen. I didn't give a damn about Nightwish until she joined. What a beast of a singer.
> 
> Russell Allen for me is the perfect metal singer. He just has it all. He has the range, he has the grunty voice, and he has a great stage presence as well. He's also consistently awesome in every performance I've seen.



Floor doesn't have a quarter of the range of Tarja, but Nightwish is boring either way.


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## TedEH (Oct 6, 2021)

Nightwish, for me, lands squarely in that "wants to sound operatic but for an audience who has no idea what an opera actually sounds like" territory where I'd rather they just stop singing altogether. Waaaaaaaaaay too much vibrato, way too much of that weird projection that I can't put into words, way too much everything. It's nails on a chalkboard to me.


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## Emperoff (Oct 6, 2021)

TedEH said:


> Nightwish, for me, lands squarely in that "wants to sound operatic but for an audience who has no idea what an opera actually sounds like" territory where I'd rather they just stop singing altogether. Waaaaaaaaaay too much vibrato, way too much of that weird projection that I can't put into words, way too much everything. It's nails on a chalkboard to me.



Which is why I like Floor Jansen. She doesn't sing operistic at all. Maybe some falsetto at some points but that's it.

All my female metalhead friends love Nightwish so I get to hear it a lot. I didn't care about the band until Floor came in since I didn't care about Tarja's style. Floor + Marco combination is killer though.

You may not like the band, but the vocals are sick.


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## bostjan (Oct 6, 2021)

I'm impressed by Jinjer's vocals. You don't typically hear such good distorted and such good clean vocals out of the same face.

I've come across quite a few people in my travels, who have told me that they do not like female vocalists. I'm sure there is a multitude of reasons why a person would say that, but I find that to be a pretty general discrimination that shuts them off to a lot of music. I can't imagine what the 90's alt rock seen would have been like if it hadn't been for female vocalists.


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## TedEH (Oct 6, 2021)

Realistically, I find it the other way around. Between the two, I'd rather listen to Floor, but despite the music itself sounding good, the vocals in either case aren't my jam at all. I tend to be one of the people who will say I don't generally like female vocals, and I stand by that for the most part. As far as female vocalists go, I'd much rather listen to Aleksandra Djelmash for example (who I know mostly from contributions to David Maxim Micic stuff). Jinjer is pretty listenable. Anneke Van Giersbergen is generally a positive contribution to most things she's involved in (the guest bits for Amorphis were good).

It's just that tendency for some vocalists to lean on those trope-y "pretty/girly/pseudo-operatic" styles of singing with a bunch of vibrato and too much leaning on falsetto in place of actually projecting, etc. It bothers me for some reason. And a lot of it tends to be in power metal that I'd otherwise probably have liked. Plenty of great vocalists out there, though.


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## bostjan (Oct 6, 2021)

TedEH said:


> Realistically, I find it the other way around. Between the two, I'd rather listen to Floor, but despite the music itself sounding good, the vocals in either case aren't my jam at all. I tend to be one of the people who will say I don't generally like female vocals, and I stand by that for the most part. As far as female vocalists go, I'd much rather listen to Aleksandra Djelmash for example (who I know mostly from contributions to David Maxim Micic stuff). Jinjer is pretty listenable. Anneke Van Giersbergen is generally a positive contribution to most things she's involved in (the guest bits for Amorphis were good).
> 
> It's just that tendency for some vocalists to lean on those trope-y "pretty/girly/pseudo-operatic" styles of singing with a bunch of vibrato and too much leaning on falsetto in place of actually projecting, etc. It bothers me for some reason. And a lot of it tends to be in power metal that I'd otherwise probably have liked. Plenty of great vocalists out there, though.


No love for Nina Hagen, then, I suppose?


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## TedEH (Oct 6, 2021)

Googling.... please wait......

[...2 minutes later...]

Well... not at all what I was expecting. Not my jam music-wise, but I can't fault her as a vocalist.


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## gnoll (Oct 6, 2021)

I thought Nightwish had some pretty good music in their early albums, but when I checked out what they were up to later I thought the music had gotten really bland and had to turn it off. So I have no idea which singer is best.


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## wheresthefbomb (Oct 6, 2021)

I have no stake in this Nightwish discussion, but Floor is a fucking rad band.


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## Seabeast2000 (Oct 7, 2021)

I'll just leave this here:


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## STRHelvete (Oct 7, 2021)

bostjan said:


> No love for Nina Hagen, then, I suppose?


Diamanda Galas has entered the chat


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## ArtDecade (Oct 7, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> Diamanda Galas has entered the chat



Via a 2400 baud modem on her C64.


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## STRHelvete (Oct 7, 2021)

ArtDecade said:


> Via a 2400 baud modem on her C64.


She can just scream from wherever she is and we'll be able to hear it here.


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## ArtDecade (Oct 7, 2021)




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## TedEH (Oct 7, 2021)

I'll be hearing it in my nightmares.
Not the worst thing I've ever heard though. Would pick over most country songs.


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## Werecow (Oct 7, 2021)

Seabeast2000 said:


> I'll just leave this here:


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## kamello (Oct 7, 2021)

aesthyrian said:


> They just need more backing tracks and such to hide behind like it's become acceptable for guitarists to do. Chris Barretto can teach them, he was the backing track GOD when I saw Monuments live haha



Barretto was awesome when I saw Monu live with him. Backing tracks? Yes, but a song like Atlas or Horcrux just doesn't hold up without all the vocal play in it

Regarding the comparison to singers like Sinatra or Franklin; I would say that the aproach to music just was different, in that type of music you can hear every element clearly and it was aproached in a way to be replicated live, also, they had the budget to replicate the arrangements, your local metalcore kids can't present themselves with a keyboardist, an orchestra, 6 singers and 8 guitarists and most modern metal songs are aproached in a "let's throw everything here and see how the hell we can replicate it live later" (which honestly, I like, as long as the result can be replicated decently live)

Currently im on the search for a vocalist for my band and the search has been hard, but atleast we've got some great auditions. shy of 8 years ago there wasn't a single good vocalist in my local scene, so I thank youtube and the easier access to information for that


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## STRHelvete (Oct 7, 2021)

TedEH said:


> I'll be hearing it in my nightmares.
> Not the worst thing I've ever heard though. Would pick over most country songs.


I fucking love Diamanda Galas. I could listen to her all day


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## aesthyrian (Oct 7, 2021)

kamello said:


> Barretto was awesome when I saw Monu live with him. Backing tracks? Yes, but a song like Atlas or Horcrux just doesn't hold up without all the vocal play in it



That shit doesn't hold up with those backing tracks either. It was horrible and embarrassing when I saw them. Wish it wasn't.


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## The Mirror (Oct 8, 2021)

ArtDecade said:


> Floor doesn't have a quarter of the range of Tarja, but Nightwish is boring either way.



I mean, sure this is meant as a joke and I don't want to keep this up for too long, but in the end their ranges should still roughly be the same with the added benefit that Floor can do quite a few more vocal styles, including growls (Empty Hope) and operatic soprano (Shoemaker), compared to Tarja.

Which should come in rather handy now that Marko is gone.


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## nightlight (Oct 9, 2021)

StevenC said:


> James sounds pretty good on that Score video, but I'm sorry you're so disappointed a guy in his 40s can't sing like a guy in his 20s.



In that video, apparently there are some backing tracks being played. That's why I highlighted it. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge Dream Theater fan, and have two or three of their live albums. The live shows are a bit of let down though compared to their albums. 

I think you couldn't get away with that crap fifty years ago, maybe even as recently as 30 years ago. 

Forget DT, look at most modern pop stars. They can't sing for toffee, barring a few, and it's really sad that anyone would go watch that stuff live. 

Heck, I see videos on youtube and Instagram all the time where you can make out that the vocals are all autotuned to perfection. But the singers probably don't cop it live. 

That's kind of sad. We live in a plastic, make-believe world, where most of the stars that are forced down our throats are as real as Barbie.


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## nightlight (Oct 9, 2021)

KnightBrolaire said:


> mmm yess nothing like some good ole lukewarm takes and ad hominem from nightlight. Perhaps you'd like tgp or rigtalk more, they tend to enjoy ad hominem and pining for the good ole days more over there.




Ad hominem. I'm not sure you understand what that means. And regardless, I'm not going to get sucked into this again after my last post was deleted. 

The problem is that you conflate your fantasy world with what was said. The premise of the thread is that people are doing stuff on their albums that they cannot pull off live. 

The reference to older acts was because they didn't have all this technology as a crutch. Nowadays, it's become painful to look at so many live acts - for me at least - because they basically altered everything about the actual recording. 

There have been tonnes of bands like that over the years. Most of them got outed and lost fans. The situation nowadays is far from that, and I was just asking why it has become less necessary to sing well live. 

With regard to guitar players, the guy from Rings of Saturn comes to mind after he was outed for being unable to play what he was doing on the album. Why should there be a double standard for vocalists?


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## nightlight (Oct 9, 2021)

ixlramp said:


> I doubt this has happened, it is probably an illusion of perception with various causes including nostalgia and perhaps negativity.




Just go to an Ozzy or a Guns and Roses show. The people in the crowd there are the ones who are hanging on to nostalgia. The singing is actually horrible. 

Back in the day, they could definitely cop it. Maybe there should be a time to bow out gracefully. 

Look at Tom Jones or Richard Clyderman or Cliff Richards. They really could sing and I respect them for that.


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## StevenC (Oct 9, 2021)

nightlight said:


> In that video, apparently there are some backing tracks being played. That's why I highlighted it.
> 
> Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge Dream Theater fan, and have two or three of their live albums. The live shows are a bit of let down though compared to their albums.
> 
> ...


That's not what that video is about. They're claiming that the vocals were rerecorded for the CD release of Score. And you're right, I can't think of an example of that happening 50 years ago.

But Live and Dangerous came out 43 years ago and is famously one of the most doctored live albums ever. Jimmy Page overdubbed live speed in the 70s too. And then go listen to Live at Leeds and you'll hear Roger Daltrey not singing as well live. 

You'll be amazed to find out how many Eventides have been touring the world in pop vocal racks for decades doing one effect, vocal doubling, to make singers sound better. This isn't anything remotely new.

--

As a side note, using fewer slurs might help your posts survive.


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## Schmeer (Oct 9, 2021)

nightlight said:


> Look at Tom Jones or Richard Clyderman or Cliff Richards. They really could sing and I respect them for that.



Seriously, you just can’t compare Cliff Richards with modern rock or metal vocalists. Might as well be comparing Hank Marvin with Jason Richardson 

I don’t mean to talk down either of those, but you just can’t compare someone performing at, or close to, their limit for most of the show with someone that’s more or less cruising at 60-70 % of their physical capability.

They just don’t put the same strain on their voices.


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## SCJR (Oct 11, 2021)

In recent news, Tommy hit the fuck out of the high note in Backwards Marathon last month, with a blown voice.


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## Emperoff (Oct 11, 2021)

nightlight said:


> Back in the day, they could definitely cop it. Maybe there should be a time to bow out gracefully.



I've been hearing that bullshit all my life. "This or that guy should retire, they're mummies on stage", yada, yada.

And I wonder... If those people sell out arenas and both them and audience have a blast (while also making a living out of it), _*why the hell would they quit?*_

Man, If I was Keith Richards I'd be rocking the stage until I fucking died. I think this thread calls for...


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## kamello (Oct 12, 2021)

aesthyrian said:


> That shit doesn't hold up with those backing tracks either. It was horrible and embarrassing when I saw them. Wish it wasn't.



how in hell a fvcking djent band could afford 30 guys on stage for the chorus of 3-4 songs?


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## bostjan (Oct 13, 2021)

nightlight said:


> The reference to older acts was because they didn't have all this technology as a crutch. Nowadays, it's become painful to look at so many live acts - for me at least - because they basically altered everything about the actual recording.



There were great older acts, but there were also a lot of older acts that cheated in the studio all of the time. They'd either just not play those songs live or rework them somehow so that they could be pulled off. For example, Led Zeppelin sped up some of their recordings to make Robert Plant sound like he could sing higher or to make Jimmy Page sound like he was playing faster. They also often slowed down the drum tracks to make them sound heavier. The Beatles sometimes used trickery to make it sound like John Lennon doubled his vocals, when he had a hard time dubbing doubled tracks (for whatever reason). A lot of old shredders used the same tape speed trick to make it sound like they had incredible speed, when, in fact, they were tuning down and speeding the tape back up to pitch on playback. And most of those examples were of fantastic musicians being "clever" (read: lazy). The less talented ones were doing many of the same tricks being being less successful over time.

The idea of fake pop music is nothing at all new.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 14, 2021)

kamello said:


> how in hell a fvcking djent band could afford 30 guys on stage for the chorus of 3-4 songs?



The correct answer would be to rearrange the live version of the songs so that you can play them live, or don't play them. 

I'm just saying... If your band has written this amazing track that will define their careers, but it needs 4 guitarists and a trombone to play it live, you better go hire some fucking guitarists and teach the singer to play the horn.


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## STRHelvete (Oct 14, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> The correct answer would be to rearrange the live version of the songs so that you can play them live, or don't play them.
> 
> I'm just saying... If your band has written this amazing track that will define their careers, but it needs 4 guitarists and a trombone to play it live, you better go hire some fucking guitarists and teach the singer to play the horn.



I mean...he DO got a point tho...


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## gnoll (Oct 14, 2021)

I think it's better to figure out a way to be able to play what's written rather than relying on playback.

Maybe you can work on the writing/arranging so that you don't need so many people to perform it or maybe you can work on your live show setup so that you can actually play more things. Keyboards can do lots of things, you can split the keybed and layer sounds etc. Maybe someone can play something with a controller on the floor. The singer can learn to play an instrument.

I think things can mostly be figured out to work well without needing backing tracks. And the show will be way better without playback stuff.


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## STRHelvete (Oct 14, 2021)

Honestly it depends on what you're doing. A 4 piece band has a bunch of weird instruments and choirs and shit in a song, it's not realistic to expect them to recreate that.

Nobody thinks about this shit other than gear nerds and whatnot. Everyone else just goes to the show and enjoys it


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## Lozek (Oct 14, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> Everyone else just goes to the show and enjoys it



Exactly this. People are enjoying shows, money is being made, it will continue to be this way whether anyone likes it or not.


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## kamello (Oct 14, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> Honestly it depends on what you're doing. A 4 piece band has a bunch of weird instruments and choirs and shit in a song, it's not realistic to expect them to recreate that.
> 
> Nobody thinks about this shit other than gear nerds and whatnot. Everyone else just goes to the show and enjoys it



this, atleast for me
composition > everything

Another example that came to mind are David Maxim Micic and Jakub Zytecki. For those who aren't that familiarized with those guys, both tend to do a lot of work together, but their approach to writting is completely different. David goes in the "everything is valid" direction, with songs that use big band format, 3-4 singers per album, multiple guests and a shitload of layers and instruments. When he came to Chile, he got a few guitarists for support and one of his singers acompanied him. there was a bunch of backing tracks but the show was so good that no one gave a fuck (and the setlist selection made the reliance in backing tracks less obvious) Still though, I wouldn't change absolutely anything from his albums.

Zytecki on the other hand tries to barely use any backing tracks, instead, relies mostly on samplers and loopers, and his compositions -although heavily layered- can be re-arranged in a trio format, but for a guy like Zytecki it would just be plain impossible to do a show like the ones that David does


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## LostTheTone (Oct 14, 2021)

gnoll said:


> The singer can learn to play an instrument.



That is slander, and I am contacting the singers union immediately!


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 14, 2021)

I couldn’t read through all the thread, half of it’s like me commenting on MMA fighting or building space shuttles; I’ve got no experience in either and don’t know shit about how it’s actually done. 

There’s so many factors that go into it and any single factor can fuck up the rest of them and create a domino effect but the biggest one of all is the mix. Most live TV feeds sound like we’re only hearing the monitor mix with no effects/compression on it.

Getting into heavier vocals, you need that compression to smooth things out so it’s not all over the place. That in itself will make a great singer sound like shit, even on a great night.
Very, very few singers can nail a vocal with a wide dynamic range. That’s why shit gets automated to hell and back in the studio. You get none of that live and just gotta pray the compression is doing it’s job through FOH.

Even more so when you’re getting into the singer/screamers because every guy approaches it differently. Jesse Leach just does the full on false chord screaming, that shit’s pretty loud, where Howard is doing the fry thing and I’d bet $1,000 that Howard’s screaming voice and singing voice aren’t very far apart volume wise from each other, as where Jesse’s is vastly further apart in volume. That’s a big clue on why Howard might sound more polished live than Jesse, he stays within the same dynamic range as where Jesse is jumping from loud to quieter nonstop. Jesse’s gotta hope whoever is mixing whatever you’re hearing realizes that and does what he has to do to squash the shit out of his vox.

You can also watch their mic technique and how that differs to get a good idea of the volume changes going on between the two voices; Howard’s is pretty consistent and Jesse will pull the mic away from his face when he’s getting ready to scream in it.

And that’s not even getting into the health aspects of it and how much a small sinus clog can totally fuck up your night. To the guys like Cornell, Ian Thornley, LaBrie, Geoff Tate (when he kicked ass) like the serious singers, a clogged sinus cavity means it’s going to be a rough fuckin’ night. Myles Kennedy is another one. The way those guys, specifically those guys, get up in their higher registers is ‘directing’ their voice out that whole sinus cavity area, like around the bridge of your nose/3rd eye spot. David Draiman, Chester Bennington, Richard Patrick, Don Henley, Rod Stewart…..same exact thing. Ritchie Kotzen…Robert Plant….a sinus infection would fuck any one of those guys up. All those dudes utilize their head voice and they can all bridge like motherfuckers. (Moving from your chest voice to your head voice, or mixed)

And actually, this is a big reason why pre-Sacrament, Randy Blythe did his thing 99% consistently night to night; the technique he used back then was pure fry and didn’t even touch his sinus cavity in the way the guys listed above do. It wasn’t until Randy started adding more of his pure voice into things that his performances started to be a little more inconsistent and even then, Randy’s had very, very few off shows. He just doesn’t stray out of the zone he knows he can pull off. Doesn’t matter how stuffed up he is, he can go sing “Laid To Rest” every night until he can barely speak any more.



Emperoff said:


> The only thing I've ever heard from all the greats that all have in common, is that they all played guitar a fuckton of hours a day and practically did nothing else in life. That is not a physiological ability, if anything is a mental state. Discipline and determination towards their passion.




This, this, this and more this.

I couldn’t sing for shit when I first started. I couldn’t sing for shit for the first 10 years I started singing and didn’t start singing how I wanted to until the last 2 years and that required me stopping completely for over a year to reproach all the bad technique I picked up along the way.

I think the best way to describe the voice is, imagine handing a beginner an AxeFX; you’ve got everything in there to get the tones you want and hear in your head, but absolutely no experience on how to achieve them. The voice is no different; everything is already in there, it’s just a matter of learning how to use it.

The perspective on how to approach things greatly changes the progress made.

IE- I thought to scream like Randy from LoG or Chad from Mudvayne I had to push as hard as I could (well….that’s what Chad’s doing, but that’s also why he can’t fuckin’ sing live) and it wasn’t until years of blowing my throat out, sounding nothing close to Randy Blythe and reading/watching everything I could in regards to that kind of screaming that I finally figured it out one day.

And the thing that pissed me off those most about figuring out the Randy Blythe thing was that it’s so fucking easy I was doing it the whole time, just not projecting it enough and thought I was faking it as a result.

Devin Townsend said it well a few times, “The only reason I can do anything I do, ability wise, is sheer force of will. I wasn’t born like this.” Hearing that kicked my ass into high gear. I love so many different vocalist and want to be able to hit notes like Geoff Tate in the 80’s, or scream like Devin or Randy or sing like Cornell.

How I used to sing and how I sing now are COMPLETELY different. Like I said, I had to take 2 years off with no singing at all to evaluate all my bad habits and start fresh. I was fucking myself up bad.

And just some “I’m not talking out of my ass” clips-

16 years ago when I just started singing/screaming. If I’m screaming in here, I’m trying to sound like Randy Blythe. If I’m singing, I’m either trying to sound like Mike Patton or Layne Staley. I sound like none of those guys at all because I had no fuckin’ clue what I was doing-


Now fast forward 14 years after busting my ass and changing my perspective on how I do things-

The Randy Blythe voice-
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/quXcKQN5KGmENzXN7

In this one I cover almost all my favorites; Devin (prechorus), Randy (layered underneath) Phil Anselmo, Layne/Jerry…..I’m all over the place in this one-
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/quXcKQN5KGmENzXN7

If you go to 3:28 in this song I get up into some Cornell territory-
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/qxAupSKbaWQQ3fW77

And this one is probably the most reflective of where I’m actually at when I don’t try to sound like anyone except myself, which I’m doing a lot more of these days. Though there’s definitely a lot of Maynard influence on the chorus….and the long note at the end.
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/vFMawWsuHngxJdYb9

There’s no way in fuck I’d be able to sing ANY of that stuff 16 years ago. It wasn’t until I completely re-learned my technique and changed my perspective on it that I could start doing the shit I wanted to. It was in me the whole time, I just had no clue how to approach it. I’m not gifted or have some special ability no one else does, I’m just another dumbass like everyone else who gets off on pulling off the shit I hear in my head.

The other part of this, outside of the technique, was learning how to mix my vocals so they sounded like I wanted them to. Learning how to set my vocal chains for specific voices, it’s definitely not a set it and forget it thing. It’s mainly compression and figuring out exactly what works with my voice. Most of those vocals were recorded with a 57 straight into Logic with a few plug-ins, it wasn’t until last year I finally got an SM7B. And hell, most of it’s just a CLA-76 and CLA-vocals….sometimes a little Butch Vig’s vocal dirt plug-in (can’t remember the name).


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 14, 2021)

eggy in a bready said:


> you people really are fucking dense, lol. no shit hard work is a factor, but the best of the best also possess the RAW NATURAL ABILITY to make it to the top. that includes things like PHYSIOLOGICAL ADVANTAGES.



Prove it.


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 14, 2021)

TedEH said:


> That's the most metal thing anyone has posted in the thread so far.



I’m just pissed someone found out about my concept album before I announced it.


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## bulb (Oct 14, 2021)

All bands suck and are a waste of our time.

Sometimes it’s like they don’t even just have fun with it.


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## ArtDecade (Oct 14, 2021)

bulb said:


> All bands suck and are a waste of our time.
> 
> Sometimes it’s like they don’t even just have fun with it.



Just because you are in a sucky band doesn't mean that the rest of us aren't having fun.


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## Emperoff (Oct 14, 2021)




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## TedEH (Oct 14, 2021)

Anything worth doing on one level is probably a waste of time on some other level.


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 14, 2021)

bostjan said:


> There were great older acts, but there were also a lot of older acts that cheated in the studio all of the time. They'd either just not play those songs live or rework them somehow so that they could be pulled off. For example, Led Zeppelin sped up some of their recordings to make Robert Plant sound like he could sing higher or to make Jimmy Page sound like he was playing faster. They also often slowed down the drum tracks to make them sound heavier. *The Beatles sometimes used trickery to make it sound like John Lennon doubled his vocals, when he had a hard time dubbing doubled tracks (for whatever reason)*. A lot of old shredders used the same tape speed trick to make it sound like they had incredible speed, when, in fact, they were tuning down and speeding the tape back up to pitch on playback. And most of those examples were of fantastic musicians being "clever" (read: lazy). The less talented ones were doing many of the same tricks being being less successful over time.
> 
> The idea of fake pop music is nothing at all new.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_double_tracking?wprov=sfti1

That’s where ADT (automatic double tracking) came from, which has been used all over the place ever since. I use Waves Reel ADT all the time, sometimes just bussed out and barely even mixed in to add some width to the vocals without really sounding like it’s doubled.


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## TedEH (Oct 14, 2021)

I had no idea that had a name. I've been doing something similar for a long time.


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## aesthyrian (Oct 14, 2021)

nightlight said:


> With regard to guitar players, the guy from Rings of Saturn comes to mind after he was outed for being unable to play what he was doing on the album. Why should there be a double standard for vocalists?



Many people seem to forget or simply ignore the fact that he explained the video in question and proved that he could play the lead and even included raw guitar DI's to prove it even further.

I'm all for vocalists doing the same haha


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 14, 2021)

TedEH said:


> I had no idea that had a name. I've been doing something similar for a long time.



I don't hear it mentioned as much these days, mostly because there are a few delay plug-ins that'll do it, but Waves Reel ADT is the only one I know of that actually call it ADT. 

What's interesting, and I haven't really looked into why, is that it works great for vocals but not so much for guitar.


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## TedEH (Oct 14, 2021)

Wouldn't any basic delay do the trick? Unless I misunderstood. I use ReaDelay - basically just have two taps, one with a 0 time delay, and another with a tiny delay, then drop the dry to 0, pan each tap to taste.


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## bulb (Oct 15, 2021)

ArtDecade said:


> Just because you are in a sucky band doesn't mean that the rest of us aren't having fun.


I have to say, I’m impressed that you make time to respond to pretty much every post I make, and I’m genuinely flattered!


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## LostTheTone (Oct 15, 2021)

TedEH said:


> Wouldn't any basic delay do the trick? Unless I misunderstood. I use ReaDelay - basically just have two taps, one with a 0 time delay, and another with a tiny delay, then drop the dry to 0, pan each tap to taste.



I too prefer to use a delay with delay controls, rather than anything that is sold as a doubler. I'm sure there are good doublers, but I always have to fiddle so much that a delay on a stereo bus that I can pan around is faster to set up.


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## bulb (Oct 15, 2021)

Double tracking is cheating


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## LostTheTone (Oct 15, 2021)

RevDrucifer said:


> I couldn’t read through all the thread, half of it’s like me commenting on MMA fighting or building space shuttles; I’ve got no experience in either and don’t know shit about how it’s actually done.
> 
> There’s so many factors that go into it and any single factor can fuck up the rest of them and create a domino effect but the biggest one of all is the mix. Most live TV feeds sound like we’re only hearing the monitor mix with no effects/compression on it.
> 
> ...




This man speaks the fucking truth.

My band was kinda shocked I showed up to audition with a rackcase and a fancy chrome plated mic. But after a couple of months of practise they got it. Some high pass, a little boost around 3k and a lot of compression is how I get the best out of my voice, and so I can come through the mix properly even in a live setting. The V7 mic I use was chosen because it has very mild proximity effect, so I can crowd up on it when I scream without it turning muddy.

And getting close when I scream is important because my projected clean voice is a lot louder than my screaming. Oh I can scream loud enough... But not for very long. Like, after one song I'll be struggling. So yes, mic technique is important too.

And much like my esteemed colleague, I had to stop and take breaks and figure out why I was fucking my voice up before I figured it out. Just like having to rearrange instrumentals to make it work live, I have had to tweak plenty of vocal lines so that I can pull them off properly live.

There's a lot of moving parts here, and you have to take an interest in them. Getting a good mix in your monitor really matters, for example. And small things can throw you off. Too much phlegm changes how your voice sounds.

Even really great singers have off nights, where it just doesn't come together. Mediocre singers who have off nights sound trash. And sometimes FoH just fucks you.


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 15, 2021)

TedEH said:


> Wouldn't any basic delay do the trick? Unless I misunderstood. I use ReaDelay - basically just have two taps, one with a 0 time delay, and another with a tiny delay, then drop the dry to 0, pan each tap to taste.



There’s some modulation going on to tweak the pitch just a litttttle bit, a slow warble. If I remember when I get home tonight, I’ll make a little clip of the Reel ADT. It’s surprising how close it sounds to an actual double-track.


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 15, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> This man speaks the fucking truth.
> 
> My band was kinda shocked I showed up to audition with a rackcase and a fancy chrome plated mic. But after a couple of months of practise they got it. Some high pass, a little boost around 3k and a lot of compression is how I get the best out of my voice, and so I can come through the mix properly even in a live setting. The V7 mic I use was chosen because it has very mild proximity effect, so I can crowd up on it when I scream without it turning muddy.
> 
> ...



Great point about the monitor mix; I gotta have that shit blaring over the top of the band and really, one of the things that I know messes a lot of people up and lends itself to bad technique is lack of proper monitoring and/or a PA that’s just not loud enough. I used to fight it and try to get louder with my voice but all I was doing was destroying it faster. One of the last bands I sang in, we had a couple shows where the guitarist told me he could barely hear me through the PA and asked if I was purposefully not projecting as much. That wasn’t the case at all, I just refused to push myself any harder than I really had to. 

Then you run into a lot of venues where the monitor mix is just dry as fuck, no compression, no reverb, nothing. While I can get by, it’s really not preferable. I’d just tell everyone soundguy to compress the shit out of my vocals and pray for the best. 

Melissa Cross gets into that discussion quite a bit; not pushing yourself to compete with the band/amps. It’s a valuable lesson to learn. I got one of those small B-52 PA’s with the sub and the two small speakers, it didn’t matter where we were playing, I’d bring that to almost every gig just so I could monitor myself (and we had some bass bombs going into the sub) in case their PA sucked. Getting in-ears soon and I’m definitely anxious to see what things are like with those. I know Devin Townsend said his live pitch isn’t even a concern anymore after switching to them. 

And I’m the same way, my projected/clean/gritty voice is a hell of a lot louder than my screaming voice. I can track screaming stuff in my apartment all day long, but if I start belting, my neighbors start stirring around. That’s the one thing I’m still really focused on; getting that speech-level-singing down to a science. Layne Staley was such a huge influence on me and take the chorus to “Man In The Box”, it sounds like he’s belting that out at a stupidly high volume, but if you listen to the isolated tracks/watch the studio footage, you can see/hear that’s not the case. 

It’s the smoke and mirrors aspect of recorded audio; automation, compression and the right reverb will make a vocal sound like it’s being belted out at a ridiculous volume, when that’s not the case at all. That “Man In The Box” chorus is a bitch to sing and I can do it if I’m going at it full volume, but getting the same delivery/tone at a lower volume is something I’ve still yet to obtain.


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## budda (Oct 15, 2021)

This thread just reinforces that singing lessons from a qualified person are a great idea. Something I would do, too, if I thought I'd practice it.


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## TedEH (Oct 15, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> I'm sure there are good doublers, but I always have to fiddle so much that a delay on a stereo bus that I can pan around is faster to set up.





RevDrucifer said:


> There’s some modulation going on to tweak the pitch just a litttttle bit, a slow warble.


Yeh, I assume there's some extra funky stuff going on in some implementations, but I understood the most basic version just to be a delay. I've no doubt that adding some modulation would improve the effect as long as you don't go overboard. I've never tried one of those Mimic pedals, but I assume it's doing something like this - although I could have sworn I read somewhere that "it's totally not doing that", but who really knows past the marketing speak.



budda said:


> This thread just reinforces that singing lessons from a qualified person are a great idea. Something I would do, too, if I thought I'd practice it.


Especially for harsh vocals, I would think. I learned to sing cleanly "the hard way" without any guidance, and it took until my 30s to feel confident that I'm doing it in something resembling "the right way". As soon as any dirt or yelling gets involved though - I feel like I'm playing with fire, so to speak. I've just never personally gotten along with "taking lessons" for music things. If I took singing a little more seriously, it would be the smartest route.


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## michael_bolton (Oct 15, 2021)

gnoll said:


> Yeah, effort is what should be praised, not talent/intelligence. ...



Depends on the context. "Student's" effort should defo be acknowledged/praised by the "teacher" (quotes because can be e.g. an athlete and their coach depending on the situation) - being able to apply sustained effort is a valuable skill applicable to all kinds of "real life" situations so defo something that should be encouraged and cultivated.

In a diff context - results matter more than the effort. E.g. if a lifter is busting their ass in the gym - and then goes on to compete - their level of prep effort in and of itself doesn't matter in that context. What does matter is who lifts more weight on the platform. Prep effort will defo be a major factor here but it's not the be all end all.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 15, 2021)

TedEH said:


> Yeh, I assume there's some extra funky stuff going on in some implementations, but I understood the most basic version just to be a delay. I've no doubt that adding some modulation would improve the effect as long as you don't go overboard. I've never tried one of those Mimic pedals, but I assume it's doing something like this - although I could have sworn I read somewhere that "it's totally not doing that", but who really knows past the marketing speak.



Adding some modulation is supposed to help, but when I've used dedicated plugins for it the warble is always so frustrating to work with. Either it sounds properly fake and wobbles around in a way that no human singer actually does, or it's too flat and just slightly out of tune. And of course I can just actually just double the track; just literally record another take and layer them.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 15, 2021)

budda said:


> This thread just reinforces that singing lessons from a qualified person are a great idea. Something I would do, too, if I thought I'd practice it.



Personally I don't rate lessons for vocals, at least not as an on-going thing. You definitely benefit from a coach though; another singer who can tell you what you're doing wrong. 

I know that it may sound like splitting hairs a bit, but I do think there is a real difference. I think you learn to sing best by learning the stuff that you want to sing, and picking up the techniques that go with it. For me at least (admittedly a weird guy who legit has ADHD) I find that learning is so much easier when I see for myself that I genuinely do need to learn to breathe properly or whatever. And much like with guitar, a good deal of getting good is just putting in the time and actually getting things down. 

So instead of having a teacher, I have a couple of friends who I go talk to when I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. They don't teach me to sing in tune, they say "You're fucking flat, how can you not hear that?" and I go away and work on that by myself.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 15, 2021)

RevDrucifer said:


> Great point about the monitor mix; I gotta have that shit blaring over the top of the band and really, one of the things that I know messes a lot of people up and lends itself to bad technique is lack of proper monitoring and/or a PA that’s just not loud enough. I used to fight it and try to get louder with my voice but all I was doing was destroying it faster. One of the last bands I sang in, we had a couple shows where the guitarist told me he could barely hear me through the PA and asked if I was purposefully not projecting as much. That wasn’t the case at all, I just refused to push myself any harder than I really had to.
> 
> Then you run into a lot of venues where the monitor mix is just dry as fuck, no compression, no reverb, nothing. While I can get by, it’s really not preferable. I’d just tell everyone soundguy to compress the shit out of my vocals and pray for the best.
> 
> ...



Yeah, amen to that man. I need to hear myself nice and clear, and then I can hear my pitch and intensity and sing just like I'm at home, and that makes me a happy boy. And you really can see the difference. At home I have done like monster 8 hour sessions before (some dude asked me to write like three songs to audition for his progressive metalcore project) and while it's tiring it's fine. Before I went and bought my own monitor setup, doing a couple of hours in a rehearsal room with the band and I literally couldn't sing the next day. Could barely talk at the end. It was rough. 

Totally get you about doing quieter vocals too - I have been trying to do some stuff like Corey Taylor does where he's in the middle of screaming and then he drops back to almost spoken then builds right back up. And it's super cool but it's really hard to do live without someone riding the mic volume, because my speaking or softer singing is really quiet, and I find it weirdly hard to get pitch when I'm that quiet too. I kinda have to cup the mic and then really eat it to get even vaguely good volume. 

Don't completely pin your hopes on IEMs btw - I have a custom set of IEMs which I love so very much, but my band just isn't set up to run like that. Even when I said I would happily buy all the gear to mic amps and drums, they didn't want us (or me anyway) learning to rely on a set-up that takes a reasonable amount of time to put together and that sometimes we might just not be able to use. And to be fair, now I have my own wedge and a bit of experience I'm happy enough with it. I would still way prefer to have proper control over my mix, but at least I'm ready to go and play with the least sophisticated FoH possible. I will never stop pushing the idea that we should be doing quiet stage and all on IEMs, but maaaaan that feels a long way off right now.


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## TedEH (Oct 15, 2021)

I've personally always found it very difficult to give feedback to other singers. Dunno why, but sometimes a lot of ego comes along with vocalists.

When I give feedback to a guitarist: "Hey, I have an idea, want to try doing x?" "Sure, I'll try it out." Tries it, either likes it or doesn't. We move on.

When I give feedback to vocalists: "Hey, I have an idea, want to try doing x?" "You don't like how I'm doing it?" or "I don't understand" or "I don't want to sound like that". Much lower chance that a suggestion will be tried out. Obviously depends on the vocalist though.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 15, 2021)

TedEH said:


> I've personally always found it very difficult to give feedback to other singers. Dunno why, but sometimes a lot of ego comes along with vocalists.
> 
> When I give feedback to a guitarist: "Hey, I have an idea, want to try doing x?" "Sure, I'll try it out." Tries it, either likes it or doesn't. We move on.
> 
> When I give feedback to vocalists: "Hey, I have an idea, want to try doing x?" "You don't like how I'm doing it?" or "I don't understand" or "I don't want to sound like that". Much lower chance that a suggestion will be tried out. Obviously depends on the vocalist though.



Oh yeah it's definitely pretty context dependent. And yeah, voice is a weirdly personal thing. In fact, I find that even my band are reluctant to give me feedback on either lyrics or performance, which is honestly kinda frustrating. They'll tell me if they hate it, but that's about it. 

But I'm really talking about genuine problems with singing, rather than style or taste. Just getting some fresh, dispassionate ears when the notes are misbehaving, and especially when you seem to keep making the same mistake and don't know why. Talking to another dude about why you seem to always miss that one note is useful, at least to me.


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## bostjan (Oct 15, 2021)

It's a two-way street. A large number of singers react very poorly to criticism, so a large number of other musicians have come across a singer who reacts poorly to criticism and, thus, tend not to offer criticism to singers.


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## GunpointMetal (Oct 15, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> Don't completely pin your hopes on IEMs btw - I have a custom set of IEMs which I love so very much, but my band just isn't set up to run like that. Even when I said I would happily buy all the gear to mic amps and drums, they didn't want us (or me anyway) learning to rely on a set-up that takes a reasonable amount of time to put together and that sometimes we might just not be able to use. And to be fair, now I have my own wedge and a bit of experience I'm happy enough with it. I would still way prefer to have proper control over my mix, but at least I'm ready to go and play with the least sophisticated FoH possible. I will never stop pushing the idea that we should be doing quiet stage and all on IEMs, but maaaaan that feels a long way off right now.


 Going OT again here, but all you really need is a app-controlled mixer, a splitter for your vocal mic, kick mic splitter, and a couple of stage mics, all of which can be set-up and tore down in a matter of moments with a little planning. Especially if you mostly just want to have better vocal monitoring. That way you can get your vocals as loud as you want and then just bring in the other mic's to supplement the stage bleed in your IEM. If the rest of your band doesn't want to get on board, I'd say do it anyways.


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## Emperoff (Oct 15, 2021)

bostjan said:


> It's a two-way street. A large number of singers react very poorly to criticism, so a large number of other musicians have come across a singer who reacts poorly to criticism and, thus, tend not to offer criticism to singers.



*THIS*


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## gnoll (Oct 15, 2021)

michael_bolton said:


> Depends on the context. "Student's" effort should defo be acknowledged/praised by the "teacher" (quotes because can be e.g. an athlete and their coach depending on the situation) - being able to apply sustained effort is a valuable skill applicable to all kinds of "real life" situations so defo something that should be encouraged and cultivated.
> 
> In a diff context - results matter more than the effort. E.g. if a lifter is busting their ass in the gym - and then goes on to compete - their level of prep effort in and of itself doesn't matter in that context. What does matter is who lifts more weight on the platform. Prep effort will defo be a major factor here but it's not the be all end all.



Well, the conversation was about school. And the whole point was effort brings results long-term.

I'm not suggesting a change to the way sports results are determined. I don't even like sports.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 15, 2021)

GunpointMetal said:


> Going OT again here, but all you really need is a app-controlled mixer, a splitter for your vocal mic, kick mic splitter, and a couple of stage mics, all of which can be set-up and tore down in a matter of moments with a little planning. Especially if you mostly just want to have better vocal monitoring. That way you can get your vocals as loud as you want and then just bring in the other mic's to supplement the stage bleed in your IEM. If the rest of your band doesn't want to get on board, I'd say do it anyways.



At some point I probably will bite the bullet and get a proper setup for it, but a wedge is working fine for me at the moment while were really just rehearsing and writing songs, with the odd little 'get the rust off' gig.

My bass player is very keen on us being able to get set up really fast, and being able to walk into any venue and be ready to go in two minutes. I think he'll change his tune a bit once we get out and playing regular gigs, because moving around on stage becomes way more important. And at proper gigs most FoH will have mics rigged up for sound reinforcement anyway, so the speed will be shown not to be relevant either. He knows I'd rather be on IEMs anyway, I think he's just a proper old school dude and needs to be reassured that it'll work out alright.


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## michael_bolton (Oct 15, 2021)

gnoll said:


> Well, the conversation was about school. And the whole point was effort brings results long-term.
> 
> I'm not suggesting a change to the way sports results are determined. I don't even like sports.



sports is just an example. the point is - the level of effort, while commendable, does not automatically equate to result and in many situations its the results that matter not what it took to get there.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 15, 2021)

bostjan said:


> It's a two-way street. A large number of singers react very poorly to criticism, so a large number of other musicians have come across a singer who reacts poorly to criticism and, thus, tend not to offer criticism to singers.



To be completely fair - Most people react kinda poorly to criticism. Singers do tend to be proper little divas, but few musicians are happy to have some random guy stick their head around the door and say 'wow, you sound _garbage_'.

Its all about the relationship to the critic, I think. Which is why I tend to just go out to people I trust and respect, but even then I'm only asking about specific things I have a problem with. It doesn't start with 'What do you think?', it's more like 'I keep fucking up this chorus, what do you think I'm doing wrong?'.


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## GunpointMetal (Oct 15, 2021)

I love it when my bandmates have opinions on my riffs/songs. It's almost impossible to be impartial when you're coming up with the material, and I'd rather share the blame if something ends up being shit, lol. 


LostTheTone said:


> My bass player is very keen on us being able to get set up really fast, and being able to walk into any venue and be ready to go in two minutes. I think he'll change his tune a bit once we get out and playing regular gigs, because moving around on stage becomes way more important. And at proper gigs most FoH will have mics rigged up for sound reinforcement anyway, so the speed will be shown not to be relevant either. He knows I'd rather be on IEMs anyway, I think he's just a proper old school dude and needs to be reassured that it'll work out alright.


Old school guys are the hardest to convert. I have oldhead drummer and bassist in one of my bands. Fought me on click tracks, now they love them. Fought me on IEMs, now they love them. If you do a little bit a planning for your live rig the extra 90 seconds it adds to setup is negated by the fact that you don't spend 4-5 minutes getting monitors leveled for everyone with the FOH guy. Anecdotally, my deathcore band runs full band IEMs, a pre-progammed light show with our own lights, a backdrop, and two scrims and our setup/teardown is usually fast enough that we're standing around waiting for the FOH guy to set up microphones at the beginning and we're struck and off in under 5 minutes unless the path to get offstage is plugged.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 15, 2021)

GunpointMetal said:


> I love it when my bandmates have opinions on my riffs/songs. It's almost impossible to be impartial when you're coming up with the material, and I'd rather share the blame if something ends up being shit, lol.



Yeah, I'm the same man. I keep telling them that I'm super not precious about lyrics, and that I find it hard to tell how good they are myself because I have to go through them so much. Still, I'm the new guy and I get that it feels weird to just say 'Nah bro, this sucks'.



GunpointMetal said:


> Old school guys are the hardest to convert. I have oldhead drummer and bassist in one of my bands. Fought me on click tracks, now they love them. Fought me on IEMs, now they love them. If you do a little bit a planning for your live rig the extra 90 seconds it adds to setup is negated by the fact that you don't spend 4-5 minutes getting monitors leveled for everyone with the FOH guy. Anecdotally, my deathcore band runs full band IEMs, a pre-progammed light show with our own lights, a backdrop, and two scrims and our setup/teardown is usually fast enough that we're standing around waiting for the FOH guy to set up microphones at the beginning and we're struck and off in under 5 minutes unless the path to get offstage is plugged.



That is encouraging to hear! Like I say, I definitely want to go in that direction, so I will get there eventually. But I don't want to show up to practise with a grand of brand new gear and act like we're doing this whether the other guys want it or not. Getting them to see that it's something that will help us all play better, so they want to try it too, that'll be the breakthrough. But when we are exclusively playing in fairly small spaces where the guitar and bass just use their cabs, and there isn't much room for anyone to move, I guess it doesn't feel like it's a big deal to them.


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## bostjan (Oct 15, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> To be completely fair - Most people react kinda poorly to criticism. Singers do tend to be proper little divas, but few musicians are happy to have some random guy stick their head around the door and say 'wow, you sound _garbage_'.
> 
> Its all about the relationship to the critic, I think. Which is why I tend to just go out to people I trust and respect, but even then I'm only asking about specific things I have a problem with. It doesn't start with 'What do you think?', it's more like 'I keep fucking up this chorus, what do you think I'm doing wrong?'.


Right.

And I think there is even more of a stigma with singers because their instrument is literally their body. Also, a lot of singers in rock music have less music theory training than instrument players, plus the terminology is more unique. So, there's a bigger divide between singers and guitarists than, say, bassists and guitarists, or even drummers and guitarists.

So, where I've heard a lot more guitar players complain about the drummer's cymbal choke or the bass player leaving strings ringing out, or just literally telling the keyboard player that their tones sound like shit, and it causes friction or whatever, the biggest meltdowns I've ever seen were the times someone in the band told the singer they didn't love something about the performance (usually in the studio).

Of course, like anything else, there are tons of counter-examples. Probably, most singers are no worse than most musicians in general about criticism, but the ones that are 3 standard deviations above the norm sure are _extra_ about it.


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## gnoll (Oct 15, 2021)

michael_bolton said:


> sports is just an example. the point is - the level of effort, while commendable, does not automatically equate to result and in many situations its the results that matter not what it took to get there.



fine dont bother with effort then


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## LostTheTone (Oct 15, 2021)

bostjan said:


> Right.
> 
> And I think there is even more of a stigma with singers because their instrument is literally their body. Also, a lot of singers in rock music have less music theory training than instrument players, plus the terminology is more unique. So, there's a bigger divide between singers and guitarists than, say, bassists and guitarists, or even drummers and guitarists.
> 
> ...



Yeah man, you're completely correct.

Singing is weirdly intimate. It's all in your tubes, you know? And you're limited by literally your body.

When you say a guitarist has bad tone, you're not really criticising them as a person. To some degree you are saying they maybe have bad taste, but you're really saying their amp or their pedals aren't up to the job. For a singer it's their throat and lungs that aren't up to it. It feels really personal.

And to make it worse, singers are much closer to the metal when they perform, much less stuff between the person and the speakers. So when there are issues, its always you. You don't have some knobs to twiddle to sound good. 

I kinda make a point of not being precious - Partly that's because it helps me writing songs. I try to just write SOMETHING, so I have lyrics to work from. But that is a deliberate choice, and it took me a while to actually feel ok about trashing a song and starting over. The more you do it, the more you trust that you can just write more, and the more you know that you can get to something good eventually. But that's learned, not natural.

Basically I decided I wasn't going to be one of _those_ singers. I'm already a difficult enough guy to work with, given my tendency to make poor life choices involving substances and young women. The least I can do is always show up with a song to sing, you know?


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## michael_bolton (Oct 15, 2021)

gnoll said:


> fine dont bother with effort then



don't bother with the results lol


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## bostjan (Oct 15, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> Yeah man, you're completely correct.
> 
> Singing is weirdly intimate. It's all in your tubes, you know? And you're limited by literally your body.
> 
> ...



I just wanted to be a guitar player. My first gigging band - we all just wanted to play. The other guy who played guitar drew the short straw, so he ended up being the singer. I enjoyed working with those guys, but we changed personnel a lot. Eventually the guy doing the singing moved away, and then we were on the lookout for a new singer, and almost everyone we auditioned or jammed with either didn't want to play out or was not our kind of crazy (oh the stories I'll tell my grandkids, though). I worked with a few people here and there, but it seemed like everyone eventually moved away or had a falling out or whatever. After years of looking, and having music we wanted to get out there on demos, I figured I'd just do it myself, just for the demo... then, I'll do the vocals live until we find our singer, then I guess I was just kind of "it." I know my vocals were never anywhere near great (honestly not even good), but I kept working on improving them since we already failed plans A, B, C ... It was good enough at the time for us to be modestly successful.

I wonder if anybody in a big time band fell into the same circumstance. I know, that's rhetorical. But if I had been doing my singing thing back then, and my band had had a big break, then I'd be this guy who just wanted to play guitar who was probably stuck being the singer, and I'd be touring with maybe (at the time) one year of vocal training. I'm sure my voice would have been shot at some point.

Hell, I didn't learn how to do distorted vocals without just literally screaming until I was in my 30's. Had I been playing more than a couple 20 minute shows a week, there's no way I _wouldn't_ have injured my voice.

And all that time, me knowing my vocals were not good, not a single person ever criticized my vocals to me.

Meanwhile, doing the cover band thing, you play shows that go for 4-5 hours, sometimes more. Sure, you aren't going to be doing Hammer Smashed Face at your coworker's sister's wedding, but people are going to request you play "You Shook Me All Night Long" or whatever that you'll have to screech your way through somehow, and still follow that up with Elvis or Roy Orbison or whatever the Grandpa of the Bride wants to hear. So there is no room for injury error.

And playing in several bands with female vocalists, I lost count of how many times people from the audience would corner me to complain about how the singer sounded- yet- to her face, it was always "you sound so great!" or whatever.

So, there might be another factor in all of this (I know it took me 26 miles of text to get here, sorry), but singers tend to get disproportionately large amounts of positive feedback about their singing, when sometimes a little negative feedback could go a long way, and that tends to lead people who don't know how not to hurt their vocal chords being ushered into situations in which they will inevitably injure their vocal chords.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 15, 2021)

bostjan said:


> I just wanted to be a guitar player. My first gigging band - we all just wanted to play. The other guy who played guitar drew the short straw, so he ended up being the singer. I enjoyed working with those guys, but we changed personnel a lot. Eventually the guy doing the singing moved away, and then we were on the lookout for a new singer, and almost everyone we auditioned or jammed with either didn't want to play out or was not our kind of crazy (oh the stories I'll tell my grandkids, though). I worked with a few people here and there, but it seemed like everyone eventually moved away or had a falling out or whatever. After years of looking, and having music we wanted to get out there on demos, I figured I'd just do it myself, just for the demo... then, I'll do the vocals live until we find our singer, then I guess I was just kind of "it." I know my vocals were never anywhere near great (honestly not even good), but I kept working on improving them since we already failed plans A, B, C ... It was good enough at the time for us to be modestly successful.
> 
> I wonder if anybody in a big time band fell into the same circumstance. I know, that's rhetorical. But if I had been doing my singing thing back then, and my band had had a big break, then I'd be this guy who just wanted to play guitar who was probably stuck being the singer, and I'd be touring with maybe (at the time) one year of vocal training. I'm sure my voice would have been shot at some point.
> 
> ...



That's the weird thing about singers. We do tend to be a sensitive bunch, but we also tend to be very self-critical too, and that makes it difficult for people we don't know to give kinda moderate feedback. Plus people don't really know how to give constructive feedback without sounding like a dick, especially people in the audience.

I have had so many nights where people said 'Yeah dude, you were great' and I had to say 'Nah man, I was kinda meh tonight'. Because, well, I was. I can tell when I'm fucking on it and when I'm just not quite getting there. But most of these dudes never heard me before, and even if they had its not a huge difference to their ears. I seldom sound dreadful, but I always know when something isn't quite 100%.

Another thing here is that singers are always fun people to be around. Big personalities, larger than life. Face of the band. Even with just some unknown band, people like to hang out with a singer, maybe buy him a pint. You're much more memorable, and people want to kinda treat you like a rockstar because its fun. So some dude, or especially if its a lady who wants my attention, is not going to tell me I was dreadful to my face. Even if I was dreadful.


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## ArtDecade (Oct 15, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> So some dude, or especially if its a lady who wants my attention, is not going to tell me I was dreadful to my face. Even if I was dreadful.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 15, 2021)

ArtDecade said:


>



In my experience chicks, and especially Goth chicks, who show up to see metal bands are more like this:


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## Emperoff (Oct 15, 2021)

bostjan said:


> I just wanted to be a guitar player. My first gigging band - we all just wanted to play. The other guy who played guitar drew the short straw, so he ended up being the singer. I enjoyed working with those guys, but we changed personnel a lot. Eventually the guy doing the singing moved away, and then we were on the lookout for a new singer, and almost everyone we auditioned or jammed with either didn't want to play out or was not our kind of crazy (oh the stories I'll tell my grandkids, though). I worked with a few people here and there, but it seemed like everyone eventually moved away or had a falling out or whatever. After years of looking, and having music we wanted to get out there on demos, I figured I'd just do it myself, just for the demo... then, I'll do the vocals live until we find our singer, then I guess I was just kind of "it." I know my vocals were never anywhere near great (honestly not even good), but I kept working on improving them since we already failed plans A, B, C ... It was good enough at the time for us to be modestly successful.
> 
> I wonder if anybody in a big time band fell into the same circumstance. I know, that's rhetorical. But if I had been doing my singing thing back then, and my band had had a big break, then I'd be this guy who just wanted to play guitar who was probably stuck being the singer, and I'd be touring with maybe (at the time) one year of vocal training. I'm sure my voice would have been shot at some point.
> 
> ...



James Hetfield is the best example I can give you of a guitar player that ended up singing because they couldn't find anyone fitting.

I was in a band where the bass player ended up singing as well for the very same reason.



bostjan said:


> Right.
> 
> And I think there is even more of a stigma with singers because their instrument is literally their body. Also, a lot of singers in rock music have less music theory training than instrument players, plus the terminology is more unique. So, there's a bigger divide between singers and guitarists than, say, bassists and guitarists, or even drummers and guitarists.
> 
> ...



There is a LOOOOOT of truth on this post.

Tell a guitar player they're playing off-key and they'll probably tell you: "yeah man, I got the wrong position" or "I hit the wrong fret", etc. Tell a singer they're singing off-key, and you'll be hurting their self-esteem. They don't see their voice as an instrument, but as a part of themselves. Any criticism is usually very badly received.

Of course this doesn't mean everyone is like this, but I'd say probably 12 out of 10 singers in my experience.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 15, 2021)

Emperoff said:


> James Hetfield is the best example I can give you of a guitar player that ended up singing because they couldn't find anyone fitting.
> 
> I was in a band where the bass player ended up singing as well for the very same reason.
> 
> ...



Nah man, Dave Mustane is a better example because Dave cannot fucking sing. Hetfield isn't like a voice for the ages, but he's alright.

Yngwie deserves an honorable mention too, because he went from being smart enough to know he couldn't sing to being a idiot who sounds like a wounded moose.


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## Calibix (Oct 16, 2021)

mmr007 said:


> So can we all just admit its a little of column A and a little of column B?
> 
> First it is inaccurate to diminish guitar playing into the simple dexterity of digits when musicianship in general is a skill that can be improved but like anything else there are NATURALLY gifted people. Most people will NEVER be Mozart. Regardless of the effort they put in because for Mozart, it was effortless.
> 
> Just some some people can study physics their whole lives and will never be Einstein. I have to spend 6 months practicing for every 6 hours my friend spent to achieve the same level of play. That is not a lack of dedication...it is a combo of his freakishly long fingers and innate ability to understand music and instantly play a song he just heard without tabs or instruction and he has always had this ability after less than a year of play.



While I agree with your sentiment, the science nerd in me can't help but criticize Einstein as your choice of analogy. The standard model is dying the slowest death imaginable. Eienstien himself wrote that he couldn't see quantum mechanics and relativity coexisting. Yet here we are decades later forcing a square peg into a round hole. 

And for real, if you don't think some people just "have it", your dense. No matter how hard I try I will never be as good as LeBron.


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## bulb (Oct 16, 2021)

Who is the Max Verstappen of singers?


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## StevenC (Oct 16, 2021)

bulb said:


> Who is the Max Verstappen of singers?


Geoff Tate


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## LostTheTone (Oct 16, 2021)

bulb said:


> Who is the Max Verstappen of singers?



So Dutch, second generation singer who is also really good?

That is a very specific combination of characteristics.


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## nightlight (Oct 16, 2021)

bulb said:


> I have to say, I’m impressed that you make time to respond to pretty much every post I make, and I’m genuinely flattered!



Worst part is that I'm not even in a band and I get so much of that shite too that I understand why you aren't here more often.


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## jco5055 (Oct 16, 2021)

TedEH said:


> Nightwish, for me, lands squarely in that "wants to sound operatic but for an audience who has no idea what an opera actually sounds like" territory where I'd rather they just stop singing altogether. Waaaaaaaaaay too much vibrato, way too much of that weird projection that I can't put into words, way too much everything. It's nails on a chalkboard to me.



I actually was talking to a girl on Tinder a few years ago, and she was going to music school for classical singing, and she was obssessed with female opera singers. When I showed her Nightwish (Tarja), she was like "Oh my god that is horrific opera singing".


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## LostTheTone (Oct 16, 2021)

jco5055 said:


> I actually was talking to a girl on Tinder a few years ago, and she was going to music school for classical singing, and she was obssessed with female opera singers. When I showed her Nightwish (Tarja), she was like "Oh my god that is horrific opera singing".



That's true, but that works in all directions. A lot of the time the crossover version is a kinda vulgarized version, which sounds like fans of the parent genre think it sounds like rather than what it should actually sound like.

Most of the rap-rock in the world is really basic rapping. Always on the beat, no playing with the rhythm or rhyme scheme, no interesting word bends, all written and no natural flow.

My buddy who is a proper goth (dude wears a cape) is really into something called goth-country at the moment. And its not bad, but it sure as fuck is not really country as a country fan would understand it. 

But for all that, the goal is to play with these elements in a way thats different to their parents. Now, I am not a Nightwish fan, or really anything thats called 'symphonic' or 'epic' or whatever. But it doesn't bother me that their singers aren't actual sopranos, or that they go way over the top. I mean, its a symphonic power metal band. Obviously it's over the top. 

Also, dude where the fuck do you live that you get opera singers on Tinder? Round here we get... Whatever the exact opposite of cultured and classy is. I got married in part as a defense mechanism.


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## jco5055 (Oct 16, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> That's true, but that works in all directions. A lot of the time the crossover version is a kinda vulgarized version, which sounds like fans of the parent genre think it sounds like rather than what it should actually sound like.
> 
> Most of the rap-rock in the world is really basic rapping. Always on the beat, no playing with the rhythm or rhyme scheme, no interesting word bends, all written and no natural flow.
> 
> ...



I live in the actual city of Chicago, she was from the Chicago suburbs going to school in Iowa ( I always set my radius for the city proper, like 2 miles, but she apparently set hers to like 30).


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## bulb (Oct 16, 2021)

nightlight said:


> Worst part is that I'm not even in a band and I get so much of that shite too that I understand why you aren't here more often.



I check in every now and then


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## bulb (Oct 16, 2021)

StevenC said:


> Geoff Tate



who is the Lewis Hamilton


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## StevenC (Oct 16, 2021)

bulb said:


> who is the Lewis Hamilton


Freddie Mercury


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## LostTheTone (Oct 16, 2021)

jco5055 said:


> I live in the actual city of Chicago, she was from the Chicago suburbs going to school in Iowa ( I always set my radius for the city proper, like 2 miles, but she apparently set hers to like 30).



Man, those opera bitches are apparently real thirsty in Chi-town.


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## nightlight (Oct 17, 2021)

bulb said:


> I check in every now and then



That's what you think, but in reality, you can never leave.


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## bulb (Oct 17, 2021)

StevenC said:


> Freddie Mercury


Carlos Sainz?


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## StevenC (Oct 17, 2021)

bulb said:


> Carlos Sainz?


Phil Anselmo


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## nightlight (Oct 17, 2021)

bulb said:


> Carlos Sainz?



Nah. He's the F1 racer who was dating Nicole Scherzinger.

Back on topic, has anyone heard that "Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me" song of late?

Obviously auto tuned, and it sounds like the vocals are tuned in lower C#.


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## bulb (Oct 17, 2021)

StevenC said:


> Phil Anselmo


This one I don’t get.

How about Nikita Mazepin


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## StevenC (Oct 17, 2021)

bulb said:


> This one I don’t get.
> 
> How about Nikita Mazepin


Carlos has his associations with far right groups. 

Mazepin is Yoko Ono


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## mikernaut (Oct 17, 2021)

I hear Al Mu'Min has a lovely singing voice.


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## bulb (Oct 17, 2021)

StevenC said:


> Carlos has his associations with far right groups.
> 
> Mazepin is Yoko Ono


Good call on Yoko, never heard about this with Carlos though?


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## USMarine75 (Oct 17, 2021)

There are many singers I prefer to hear live.

Just glancing through recently played tunes and they’re all live performances…

Chris Stapleton (listen to the vid below… damn)
Richie Kotzen
Eric Martin (has perfect pitch)
John Mayer
Kelly Keagey (Night Ranger)
Sam Maghette
Sam Cooke
Winston McCall (Parkway Drive)
Gary Clark Jr
Brendon Urie
Sammy Hagar






(@31:40)

tldr you’re prob listening to the wrong genres. Try listening to stuff pre-autotune era like Motown. Back then music was recorded live in the studio. Not multi tracked and fixed in post. So good in the studio was more accurately represented live.


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## Veldar (Oct 18, 2021)

MaxOfMetal said:


> I think it's sort of the other way around, the studio environment can be tailored exactly to the needs of the vocalist, whether it's spacing out takes over days, mutli-tracking clean/screaming, using a guide tone, etc. Whereas live you have absolutely nothing to fall back on. Nothing. Your voice is what it is.



This is it, we can spend as long in the studio trying/fixing whatever we want, live will never be that.

A band like Mastodon aren't going to practice scales, they write riffs add vocals later with the help of a producer.

Metal, generally being a Guitar/drum genre will never be as conserned for vocal performance as a genre like jazz for example.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 18, 2021)

Veldar said:


> This is it, we can spend as long in the studio trying/fixing whatever we want, live will never be that.
> 
> A band like Mastodon aren't going to practice scales, they write riffs add vocals later with the help of a producer.
> 
> Metal, generally being a Guitar/drum genre will never be as conserned for vocal performance as a genre like jazz for example.



Some bands are definitely vocal lead though, and plenty of songs start out as a vocal theme that then is musiced. And certainly many bands are lead by their singer.

And of course jazz and blues and folk and classical music have their roots in a time where the primary way to consume music was by hearing it played live, probably not by its original artist. And of course live performance was the primary form of income, often specifically playing well known covers and not your own stuff.

In 1932, your jazz band is going to be hired to play a lot of dances and bars, because live music is the only real option, and that's how you pay your bills. You're going to be expected to play a lot of 'standards' because only people who have heard you play live before have even had an opportunity to hear your own music. You're going to be judged against every other version of Ain't Misbehavin' that people have heard before. So yeah, you better be on it. All of you, vocalist included. 

This is the era when being a musician is a skilled trade, much more than it is an artistic endeavour. Even if you are into improvisation, trading fours is more like improv comedy where the goal is to keep the joke going and you have to stick to the established form. The breakout stars are the lead soloists, and while some were vocalists (Ella Fitzgerald etc) most were not. The jazz legends are people like Miles Davis and Bird, who were not singers. Even people like Louis Armstrong was as successful as he was because he was also a very able trumpeter. I don't think that Glen Miller (swing, not jazz, but same era) can be heard singing on any of his recordings.

Point being that it was a different time to be a musician. Composers and band leaders did the writing, and the rest of the band could be quite large, with members who switched in and out, and the new guy was expected to learn from sheet music, know the scales and cope with improvisation.

Heavy metal (the first true 'metal' genre) is rooted in the late 1960s and early 1970s where recording is the primary way that people consume music. Sure, bands have to be good live acts too, but bands are now largely performing their own stuff and the emphasis is definitely on your recordings being as good as possible because that is where people are going to hear you first. When you play live the real selling point is that you are 'the real deal' - the people who created the music, and that makes the audience much more forgiving. This also blends into music being much more artistic, and also having a stronger cultural vibe. Ozzie showing up drunk and sounding shit doesn't really do his reputation much harm, because this is an edgy, badboy area of art. And anyway, he sounds good on the LP.

in general, singers in all kinds of metal write their own lyrics and are significant creative members of the band. They can be replaced, but their contribution is deeper than it used to be. Once upon a time if you had rough nights the band leader would say 'Plenty of other tenors our there...'. Today you would have to be pulling an Yngwie on stage to get to that level. Oh sure, a singer might be shit live, but after 160 dates you can't really hold it against them, and they did write the bloody songs.


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## StevenC (Oct 18, 2021)

bulb said:


> Good call on Yoko, never heard about this with Carlos though?


The Sainz family is closely linked to the far right Vox party in Spain, and Carlos has done blackface before. They've been very careful not to mention Carlos Jr though, but the rest of his family are big supporters.

This all came about 2 races into the season when Carlos was notably absent from the antiracism video, which was then recut to include him more prominently.


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## bulb (Oct 18, 2021)

StevenC said:


> The Sainz family is closely linked to the far right Vox party in Spain, and Carlos has done blackface before. They've been very careful not to mention Carlos Jr though, but the rest of his family are big supporters.
> 
> This all came about 2 races into the season when Carlos was notably absent from the antiracism video, which was then recut to include him more prominently.


Interesting, I suppose I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now, I like him.


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## Emperoff (Oct 18, 2021)

nightlight said:


> Worst part is that I'm not even in a band and I get so much of that shite too that I understand why you aren't here more often.



Nah, he's just busy making music (and a living out of it).

According to this thread he probably also has a plethora of supernatural god-given talents as well, since that seems to be the only way to succeed in music.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 18, 2021)

Emperoff said:


> According to this thread he probably also has a plethora of supernatural god-given talents as well, since that seems to be the only way to succeed in music.


----------



## StevenC (Oct 18, 2021)

Emperoff said:


> Nah, he's just busy making music (and a living out of it).
> 
> According to this thread he probably also has a plethora of supernatural god-given talents as well, since that seems to be the only way to succeed in music.


I mean, Misha has said himself that his success is entirely down to his ear for writing music not his guitar playing ability, so is someone hiding the secret to learning hit song writing? Like is that all practice and the people who've been writing music for decades without success are just not writing enough?


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## LostTheTone (Oct 18, 2021)

StevenC said:


> I mean, Misha has said himself that his success is entirely down to his ear for writing music not his guitar playing ability, so is someone hiding the secret to learning hit song writing? Like is that all practice and the people who've been writing music for decades without success are just not writing enough?



That is at the same time a spectacularly deep and incredibly shallow question. 

Let me tell you a story. 

I used to write teen romance novels (DM me if you want to read them!) and I took it pretty seriously. I was working with an agent to make tweaks in the hopes of that first book deal. She loved my writing, and said I had great potential, but in the end she said the real problem was that what I wanted my books to be was not the same as what publishers and readers wanted my books to be. I could change my books, or write new ones, that were more mainstream and accessible, and less overtly traumatizing for those 14 year old girls to read.

As my agent had correctly identified, traumatizing schoolgirls is what makes writing fun for me (which is why it's the name of my PowerViolence band). And even put in a less glib manner; the only reason I wanted to write in that genre was because I wanted to deliberately do weird and dark stuff that isn't normally done and play off that dissonance. The traditional form of that genre does not interest me; the traditional form of that genre is what I enjoy subverting. 

Now, I could have just shrugged and written more traditional stuff, or written in a genre more suited for my particular brand of brain abuse, but I kinda didn't want to. And so my novels remain unpublished, and will probably stay that way for forever. 

On the one hand, you could say my problem was that I just needed to write more. But equally you could say that I needed to fundamentally change direction in what I was doing. 

If I just kept writing books that I enjoyed, and letting my style develop, I probably would have eventually landed on a book that was weird but just about could squeak by as a normal piece of fiction. We all get better over time, and become more in tune with what the audience is interested in. We also get a better handle on our process and simply do better and faster. So it is not ridiculous to suggest that I could have gotten my break eventually. And I was, and am, a good writer. That's got to count for something!

But if I actually wanted to make my money writing books, it would surely be a good idea to deliberately aim for commercially accessible works. But that's not quite as easy as it sounds. I think of "commercially accessible" as dirty words, and in any case I don't read those books because I find them facile and boring, so recreating what I think they are supposed to be like, while also keeping something there that actually makes me want to write them... That's rough man. It's not an easy thing. You can somewhat work towards that, but there is no secret. And in any case, there is a lot of trend and fashion involved, and if you aren't aggressively plugged in to that the lead time on books is so long that you can't jump on the bandwagon late. 

Point is... If you are not yet successful, you do need to write more. If you haven't thrown double sixes, you need to roll the dice again, you know? No matter how hard you stare at the dice, they ain't changing. 

But equally, there is a talent, or at least a less tangible skill in terms of tailoring what you do towards the interests of success. In books, you need something comfortably normal that an agent is confident they can sell, but that also has a hook that a publisher can promote on (and also don't make your teenage girls stab themselves in the spine with knitting needles). For some people that comes naturally, their ideas are just within that already. Some people can learn it, if they try. And some people just kinda can't. And they either stick to writing just for themselves, or they stop writing. 

The more things you write, the more opportunity you have to develop the skills of selling to agents and publishers. And in your next book, once you learned a bunch, you actually have the chance to write something from the ground up that is (hopefully) more in line with that. The more times you do it, the better you get at it. But only if you actually tailor towards that. If you just keep not caring then the best you get is just luck. 

Many people who are much worse writers than me are successful authors. There are a million different reasons why they are successful and I am not, but through luck or judgement they produce the kind of books that actually land on shelves. I don't know if talent is the right word, but man some people are just really good at spurting out works that people buy. 

Mostly they don't even know why. They just do. 

Success is like a pachinko machine man, you have a little bit of control over one part of it, but after that the balls just go wherever they are going and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. All you can do is keep buying the balls.


----------



## nightlight (Oct 18, 2021)

Emperoff said:


> Nah, he's just busy making music (and a living out of it).
> 
> According to this thread he probably also has a plethora of supernatural god-given talents as well, since that seems to be the only way to succeed in music.




The music is good, the band members are talented. I never understood the need to piss all over musicians for one perceived failing or another. I'm sure they have fun making music and they have fans who like it too.

Of course, he could be the satanic demon seed spawn of some Illuminati high lord, WHICH IS WHY I'LL BE KEEPING AN EYE ON YOU BULB.


----------



## mastapimp (Oct 18, 2021)

nightlight said:


> The music is good, the band members are talented. I never understood the need to piss all over musicians for one perceived failing or another. I'm sure they have fun making music and they have fans who like it too.
> 
> Of course, he could be the satanic demon seed spawn of some Illuminati high lord, WHICH IS WHY I'LL BE KEEPING AN EYE ON YOU BULB.


You're trying a little too hard to get him to reply.


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## StevenC (Oct 18, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> That is at the same time a spectacularly deep and incredibly shallow question.
> 
> Let me tell you a story.
> 
> ...


It's obviously a shallow question because to just write what you enjoy and have that resonate with everyone isn't something you can practice.

You can practice writing particular styles to market to specific people, and you can practice writing in general to maybe eventually have a crossover hit. But you can't practice having the same taste as other people or being a taste maker.


----------



## gnoll (Oct 18, 2021)

StevenC said:


> I mean, Misha has said himself that his success is entirely down to his ear for writing music not his guitar playing ability, so is someone hiding the secret to learning hit song writing? Like is that all practice and the people who've been writing music for decades without success are just not writing enough?



Writing music is a skill like any other. But that doesn't mean that by spending "x" amounts of time you'll automatically be "x" amounts better. It matters what you do, how you do it, what your approach is. Becoming good at writing isn't ONLY about writing "enough". And even if you do become good at it, that's not any guarantee for success since a lot of other factors are involved. For example, does your music have wide enough appeal so that enough people want to hear it? Is it offering people anything they can't hear elsewhere? Do you have a good way to distribute your music and get it out to people? And so on and so on and so on and so on......


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## gnoll (Oct 18, 2021)

StevenC said:


> But you can't practice having the same taste as other people or being a taste maker.



Man, what does this stuff even mean? Being a "taste maker"? Is there a gene coding for that or something?


----------



## StevenC (Oct 18, 2021)

gnoll said:


> Man, what does this stuff even mean? Being a "taste maker"? Is there a gene coding for that or something?


You said as much in your other post.


gnoll said:


> For example, does your music have wide enough appeal so that enough people want to hear it? Is it offering people anything they can't hear elsewhere?


You literally can't practice enjoying making music that you don't want to make. Not everything is genetic, environment makes up a lot ability and sensibilities. 

Misha makes music he wants to make and it resonates with a lot of people and there are a lot of people now copying that style. It is incredibly difficult to define or discover what factors go into that, and thinking it's all genetic is naive at best.


----------



## LostTheTone (Oct 18, 2021)

StevenC said:


> It's obviously a shallow question because to just write what you enjoy and have that resonate with everyone isn't something you can practice.
> 
> You can practice writing particular styles to market to specific people, and you can practice writing in general to maybe eventually have a crossover hit. But you can't practice having the same taste as other people or being a taste maker.



Sure you can. But you have to _want_ to do that, and then also spend a lot of time working on that, and that is a different skill set to actually making creative works.

An agents job is to know the tastes and trends and the publishing schedules and the promotional opportunities. But that is a full time job all of its own. It helps to like the genres you work with, but its not necessary.

As a creative you can absolutely learn this stuff yourself and tailor you work. I know people who shamelessly do that. People sit around discussing what is going to be the next big trend and trying to get into it before anyone else.

Now, yes you do need to be good as well. You need to have some talent and some flair and tap into a Zeitgeist not just follow it. You need something more compelling than just being in the right place at the right time with the right stuff. You can't teach that. Its not genetic, but it's not really a skill. Inspiration is seriously intangible.

But you can set yourself up to be in the right place and the right time with the right stuff. And that gives you a really good chance of doing something that resonates. You don't have to be a genius, as long as you have the chops to sound sincere.

I doubt that Misha ever sat down to analyse what was missing in the metal market. I bet he just said 'Man, I wish someone made music like that, I bet people would love it' and then he did it himself. But the ability to spot something that isn't there is effectively the same as spotting trends, just done in a less cynical way.


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## gnoll (Oct 18, 2021)

StevenC said:


> You said as much in your other post.
> 
> You literally can't practice enjoying making music that you don't want to make. Not everything is genetic, environment makes up a lot ability and sensibilities.
> 
> Misha makes music he wants to make and it resonates with a lot of people and there are a lot of people now copying that style. It is incredibly difficult to define or discover what factors go into that, and thinking it's all genetic is naive at best.



Eh, ok. It feels like we don't completely disagree at least.

My main point was I really think writing music is a skill that can be learned. But when it comes to what you enjoy I also think you can totally change your tastes and learn to like new things. Appreciation comes a lot from familiarity I think. Although brutally forcing yourself to like stuff is maybe not a great idea...


----------



## LostTheTone (Oct 18, 2021)

gnoll said:


> My main point was I really think writing music is a skill that can be learned. But when it comes to what you enjoy I also think you can totally change your tastes and learn to like new things. Appreciation comes a lot from familiarity I think. Although brutally forcing yourself to like stuff is maybe not a great idea...



Perhaps even more than changing what you enjoy, you can integrate new things into the music you enjoy and still come out with stuff you enjoy. And you can equally be in a band playing music that is not your thing, but just doing your one part, and still enjoying it. 

You know, Clown from Slipknot is known as being a really important part of the bands creative process. He comes up with loads of really weird dark stuff to write songs about. But he isn't like some savage death metal dude, his side project is very much not a metal band. So how does a guy whose not really into the style of this band end up being a critical part of the band? 

Creativity is complex. Sometimes the thing that makes you kinda boring (or even not good enough) in one genre makes you really different and weird and exciting in another. And your being weird might well be the thing that resonates with fans who weren't quite finding what they wanted.


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## nightlight (Oct 18, 2021)

mastapimp said:


> You're trying a little too hard to get him to reply.



Nah. Bulb has inscrutable motives. I'm happy when he doesn't appear on SSO otherwise (in his own words) dudes living in John Bollinger's dark stash start trolling him and then I have to put up a faux defence of him because he's a "nice guy on the Internet". 

Also, Misha and I are genetically at odds, dude. He's from Pakistan and I'm from India. We'd suicide bomb each other if we could.


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## USMarine75 (Oct 18, 2021)

nightlight said:


> Also, Misha and I are genetically at odds, dude. He's from Pakistan and I'm from India. We'd suicide bomb each other if we could.



Jesus man… at least throw in an emoji at the end.


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## nightlight (Oct 18, 2021)

USMarine75 said:


> Jesus man… at least throw in an emoji at the end.




Dude, I was born in the 80s. Emojis are a millennial thing. Plus, it's haram to use that shite. Have you noticed Misha never uses them?


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## nightlight (Oct 18, 2021)

USMarine75 said:


> Jesus man… at least throw in an emoji at the end.




Also, they're singing about Morocco.


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## nightlight (Oct 18, 2021)

Otherwise, given his Internet persona, Misha's posts would always end in ;(


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## Emperoff (Oct 18, 2021)

nightlight said:


> Dude, I was born in the 80s. Emojis are a millennial thing. Plus, it's haram to use that shite. Have you noticed Misha never uses them?



If you were born in the 80s, you're a millenial 

Also, Misha has his own emoji:


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## Metropolis (Oct 18, 2021)

nightlight said:


> Nah. Bulb has inscrutable motives. I'm happy when he doesn't appear on SSO otherwise (in his own words) dudes living in John Bollinger's dark stash start trolling him and then I have to put up a faux defence of him because he's a "nice guy on the Internet".
> 
> Also, Misha and I are genetically at odds, dude. He's from Pakistan and I'm from India. We'd suicide bomb each other if we could.



Misha's father is from Mauritius and he's born in the USA, so not a pakistanian. At least that's what I remember from some interview.


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## bostjan (Oct 18, 2021)

Metropolis said:


> Misha's father is from Mauritius and he's born in the USA, so not a pakistanian. At least that's what I remember from some interview.


Wasn't one of his parents a diplomat for Mauritius or something? But I don't think Mauritiussian (Mauritiusainian? Mauritiuseese? IDK) is really an ethnic background, is it, unless you're a dodo bird or something, I think everyone there came from somewhere else, if I'm not mistaken. The most common religion there is Hinduism, followed by Christianity, I think.

Anyway, who cares? My great-great-grandfather was stabbed by Charles Manson's grandfather. My 5x great-grandfather was Nigerian royalty. My 9x great grandfather was Johann Sebastian Bach's uncle. No one gives two shits.



nightlight said:


> We'd suicide bomb each other if we could.



If you believe in reincarnation, I suppose it could be a much more frightening weapon. Imagine a guy who could just keep doing that over and over!

Probably not the best thing to joke about these days, but it's a messed up world...


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## StevenC (Oct 18, 2021)

I believe Misha is Marussian


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## ArtDecade (Oct 18, 2021)

bostjan said:


> My great-great-grandfather was stabbed by Charles Manson's grandfather. My 5x great-grandfather was Nigerian royalty. My 9x great grandfather was Johann Sebastian Bach's uncle. No one gives two shits.



I just gave one shit.


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## Emperoff (Oct 18, 2021)

nightlight said:


> Nah. Why this obfuscation? A few pages back you said I was slurring people when I've never done such thing until Misha arrived in the thread.



Slurring? I didn't even know that word, lol. Maybe you're confusing me with someone else?

Anyway, I don't give a single fuck about where Misha is from. Neither should you. 

I can understand your excitement having Misha posting in your flame thread. But remember some of us have been around here for quite some time, and are quite used to see him trolling. 



ArtDecade said:


> I just gave one shit.



We need a "Give a shit" button


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## ArtDecade (Oct 18, 2021)

nightlight said:


> Nah. Bulb has inscrutable motives. I'm happy when he doesn't appear on SSO otherwise (in his own words) dudes living in John Bollinger's dark stash start trolling him and then I have to put up a faux defence of him because he's a "nice guy on the Internet".
> 
> Also, Misha and I are genetically at odds, dude. He's from Pakistan and I'm from India. We'd suicide bomb each other if we could.



Not a fan of Periphery, but also pretty sure that making jokes about suicide bombing Misha might be a little worse than trolling him. D-bag.


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## STRHelvete (Oct 18, 2021)

Sidestepping the Periphery talk..because dear god please no.

One of the greatest insults I ever heard was Whitney Houston talking about Paula Abdul and Whitney said "Paula Abdul ain't shit..that girl is singing off key, on the record..."

My heart sank at that one. I'm not Paula but even I felt that. Damn.


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## Jeffrey Bain (Oct 19, 2021)

Whenever I think of great vocalists and maintaining it while performing live, one dude comes to mind (I'm sure he's been brought up at some point in this thread):


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## LostTheTone (Oct 19, 2021)

Jeffrey Bain said:


> Whenever I think of great vocalists and maintaining it while performing live, one dude comes to mind (I'm sure he's been brought up at some point in this thread):




Devin definitely does very well live, but out of the modern mainstream metal crowd I think Sam Carter from Architects takes the cake playing live. He's slightly annoying if you watch live videos, because he tends to do the "get the crowd to sing stuff" but everything I've seen of him playing live he sounds great. Not just like "pretty good, considering". Sounds properly on point like he isn't even working hard, and his vocals are properly challenging.



Edit - Not to say that Devin doesn't have demanding vocals or anything, just that the way Architects tend to write there is absolutely nowhere to hide if you're having a bad night.


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## Jeffrey Bain (Oct 19, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> Devin definitely does very well live, but out of the modern mainstream metal crowd I think Sam Carter from Architects takes the cake playing live. He's slightly annoying if you watch live videos, because he tends to do the "get the crowd to sing stuff" but everything I've seen of him playing live he sounds great. Not just like "pretty good, considering". Sounds properly on point like he isn't even working hard, and his vocals are properly challenging.
> 
> 
> 
> Edit - Not to say that Devin doesn't have demanding vocals or anything, just that the way Architects tend to write there is absolutely nowhere to hide if you're having a bad night.



Sam Carter is a fucking legend no doubt. Another one from that style of music I think is maybe one of the best is Winston McCall from Parkway Drive. Guy is just fuckin UNRELENTING.


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## bostjan (Oct 19, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> Sidestepping the Periphery talk..because dear god please no.
> 
> One of the greatest insults I ever heard was Whitney Houston talking about Paula Abdul and Whitney said "Paula Abdul ain't shit..that girl is singing off key, on the record..."
> 
> My heart sank at that one. I'm not Paula but even I felt that. Damn.


Whitney Houston could sing.
Whitney Houston could also shit all over some other acts.

Paula Abdul was a cheerleader for the Lakers who caught the eye of some producer and was hired to work on Janet Jackson (whom Whitney also hated) videos, and then was like "I want to make an album." The producers looked at her and thought "well, she's rather good looking and she can dance, who cares if she can sing." (paraphrasing, but you get the gist)

Did Paula deserve that? IDK, not really, but she didn't really do anything to not deserve it. It's not like Paula Abdul sang in clubs for years and worked her way up to singing backup for Chaka Khan before being discovered by a talent scout while performing in a shitty bar.


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## wankerness (Oct 19, 2021)

I couldn't be bothered reading more than the first and last two pages of this thread, and now it's apparently one guy acting like a trolling spaz at Bulb, but in regards to the original post:

I think it's more that since the advent of autotune, any ol' talentless idiot can be forced into being a singer. Like, I'd say it was around the time Britney Spears showed up and very obviously couldn't sing a lick compared to the more "traditional" teen idols of the time like Christina Aguilera that actually had serious pipes and were more in the Mariah Carey mold. Once her popularity took off vs them, everyone saw you don't even need your singer to be able to sing, just be able to 1) lip sync live 2) afford tons of processing on all their vocals, any vocal talent requirements went out the window. As those tools rapidly trickled out to anyone with a computer and a recording input, the bar just dropped for everyone else that much more.

Back in Aretha Franklin's day, if you sounded like shit and they held a microphone up to you in a studio, you still sounded like shit. You'd still get Ozzy Osbournes or Dave Mustaines or The Go-Gos or Paula Abdul or whatever that probably took fifty takes in the studio to get something that sounded even halfway decent and then often sounded like a nightmare live, but it still was at least their own voice on the record doing what it was physically capable of. And as these tools get easier to use live and things like playing to click tracks that punch things up with pre-recorded vocal harmonies become more and more widespread, the ability to actually be able to sing live becomes less and less important.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 19, 2021)

Jeffrey Bain said:


> Sam Carter is a fucking legend no doubt. Another one from that style of music I think is maybe one of the best is Winston McCall from Parkway Drive. Guy is just fuckin UNRELENTING.



I have a difficult relationship with Parkway Drive, because I really really hate the vocal style, but Winston certainly can pull it off live extremely well. Which is impressive, because even though I don't like his primary deathgrowl, he does move around quite a bit and do clean bits and higher notes. I just wish it was more to my taste.


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## bostjan (Oct 19, 2021)

wankerness said:


> Like, I'd say it was around the time Britney Spears showed up and very obviously couldn't sing a lick compared to the more "traditional" teen idols of the time like Christina Aguilera that actually had serious pipes and were more in the Mariah Carey mold. Once her popularity took off vs them, everyone saw you don't even need your singer to be able to sing, just be able to 1) lip sync live 2) afford tons of processing on all their vocals, any vocal talent requirements went out the window.


I agree with what you are saying, but it's a bit ironic that, nowadays, Mariah Carey lip synchs her high runs to a track. Turns out she is getting older just like the rest of us.

Frankly, if I went to see a singer's singer, I would want to hear every little wart in the vocal performance to make the person seem more human and the take seem achievable. But, what do I know?

Anyway, pop music, also even more so rock music and all of its derivatives (punk, metal, etc.) aren't where you find the most polished and technically best singers. It's where you find Joe Cocker, who sounds like he gargled a bottle of sulfuric acid, or Bob Dylan, who sounds like he put cotton balls up his nose, or the Ramones, who sound like friendly muppets, or Knocked Loose, who sound like angry muppets, etc., and we love them all, but they are not good singers through the lens of classical music, nor jazz music, nor really any sort of music that existed before rock. It's the spirit of rock and roll that you work the best you can with what you've got and, "just have fun with it."


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## Konfyouzd (Oct 19, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> As a vocalist I kinda pride myself on being able to actually do the shit I do in the studio. I'm kinda in that same school of thought as my personal influences like Chaka Khan and Aretha. You don't use autotune, you ARE the autotune. I don't correct my recorded vocals ever. If I can't do it in the studio I work on it until I can because I'm not going to go to a live show and then give a performance that sucks on toast while hoping no one notices.




This shit right here...

No matter how much I practice I always feel like I improve the most when it comes time to record something because I usually hate the way it sounds the first 50,000x.


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## STRHelvete (Oct 19, 2021)

Konfyouzd said:


> This shit right here...
> 
> No matter how much I practice I always feel like I improve the most when it comes time to record something because I usually hate the way it sounds the first 50,000x.


HEEEEEY! Where you been? You pop up once in a blue moon


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## LostTheTone (Oct 19, 2021)

wankerness said:


> I think it's more that since the advent of autotune, any ol' talentless idiot can be forced into being a singer.



People overestimate the power of autotune. Firstly AutoTune (the specific piece of software) sounds like garbage. Sure, you can use it to get 'the autotune sound' like Cher in Life After Love and that's fine. But man AutoTune suuuuucks for transparent polishing. And even just in the realm of general pitch correcting software, there's fundamental limits on what you can polish. 

Thing is, people sing in phrases. They run notes into each other, and the way they slide from note to note and find their pitch is just really difficult to work with. If your singer is hitting within about 25 cents of the right pitch, sure you can get that down to zero (which you shouldn't do but you could). But if they are more than about 40 cents out then correcting it is almost not worth the effort. The further away from correct pitch you are, the worse it sounds when corrected.

Yeah, you can just set the studio gremlins on a track and eventually make it work. But it'll be better to just play the melody on piano and say 'Hey, sing this'. And then beat them mercilessly until they succeed. If they can't even sing a phrase correct in isolation then obviously there'll be problems playing it live, but you should also reconsider why you are trying to make this person sing. 

If someone is going to lipsync anyway, why do you even need them to sing?


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## STRHelvete (Oct 19, 2021)

bostjan said:


> Whitney Houston could sing.
> Whitney Houston could also shit all over some other acts.
> 
> Paula Abdul was a cheerleader for the Lakers who caught the eye of some producer and was hired to work on Janet Jackson (whom Whitney also hated) videos, and then was like "I want to make an album." The producers looked at her and thought "well, she's rather good looking and she can dance, who cares if she can sing." (paraphrasing, but you get the gist)
> ...



To me that's the greatest insult ever. First off, for that to come from one of the greatest singers of all time, yikes..BUT that insult hurts because of what it implies.

In the studio you can fake anything. You can autotune, do a million takes (several artists have "studio notes" that they hit in the studio that took a million tries and they couldn't do it live on the spot), and you have every advantage in the world..and the bitch was STILL off key. She was so hopeless that a major label pouring money into her still couldn't help her which also implies that what's on the record IS the best take..so what must the out takes sound like? Not to mention the girl was never singing anything that took real talent. She wasn't doing some power ballad, just some simple sing-songy bullshit and she STILL couldn't cut it.

As a singer and recording studio nerd, that particular insult hurt my soul lol.


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## Konfyouzd (Oct 19, 2021)

STRHelvete said:


> HEEEEEY! Where you been? You pop up once in a blue moon


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## akinari (Oct 19, 2021)

Man, this place has taken a dark turn since covid.


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 19, 2021)

TedEH said:


> I've personally always found it very difficult to give feedback to other singers. Dunno why, but sometimes a lot of ego comes along with vocalists.
> 
> When I give feedback to a guitarist: "Hey, I have an idea, want to try doing x?" "Sure, I'll try it out." Tries it, either likes it or doesn't. We move on.
> 
> When I give feedback to vocalists: "Hey, I have an idea, want to try doing x?" "You don't like how I'm doing it?" or "I don't understand" or "I don't want to sound like that". Much lower chance that a suggestion will be tried out. Obviously depends on the vocalist though.



Hahaha all I can say from my experiences with this is I write 98% of my vocal melodies based off what the drums are doing and the only thing I really care about in regards to guitars is the pitch and depending on the part itself, the subdivisions, but that's really rare. When guitarists have handed me stuff in the past, I can tell immediately they're basing the vocals off the riff underneath it, but if I didn't know how to play guitar, I probably wouldn't pick up on that. It's not even so much following the melody of the guitar, but rhythmically you can tell where they based their idea from. Or when it WOULD follow the guitar melody...that's rarely something I'm into doing unless it's going to create a really cool sounding harmony and if I can fit a counter melody over/under it.

I'll always give something a shot until it's fully realized, everyone deserves to throw their idea in the hat and see it through, I've just had limited luck with it. I've had two bass players that were really great with giving ideas and the last guitarist I played with wrote a lot of lyrics/melodies I ended up singing, but that dude and I were tied to the waist when it came to writing/playing and very much had the same thought process when it came to vocals.

There was one night in particular, I was only singing in this band and the guitarist kept wanting me to sing the guitar part, but it was like this staccato Lamb Of God riff. I'd do it and he'd get all excited about it and then I'd tell him, "But dude, it's literally just the guitar riff, there's no interaction with it or the drums, I'm just singing what you're playing."

"No you're not. I'm doing :: plays riff:: and you're going ::sings lyrics in the exact rhythm and syncopation as guitar part::"

Everyone in the band is looking at him, waiting for him to realize it. He always commented on how he can't sing and play at the same time, so I told him to try singing it and playing it at the same time, knowing he'd be able to do it because it was the same fuckin' thing. He got about 5 words in before he stopped and said "Ahhh fuck ok"


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 19, 2021)

GunpointMetal said:


> Going OT again here, but all you really need is a app-controlled mixer, a splitter for your vocal mic, kick mic splitter, and a couple of stage mics, all of which can be set-up and tore down in a matter of moments with a little planning. Especially if you mostly just want to have better vocal monitoring. That way you can get your vocals as loud as you want and then just bring in the other mic's to supplement the stage bleed in your IEM. If the rest of your band doesn't want to get on board, I'd say do it anyways.



That was what I was thinking of doing. Also, some of the IEM's have external mics to pick up the room noise, I don't know how well those work out, but really, I'd most likely just end up with my guitar, bass and vocals going into the IEM's. I don't plan on playing any stages that big, anytime soon, where I won't be able to hear the drummer. Hahahah.....they're half the reason I want IEM's.


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 19, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> To be completely fair - Most people react kinda poorly to criticism. Singers do tend to be proper little divas, but few musicians are happy to have some random guy stick their head around the door and say 'wow, you sound _garbage_'.
> 
> Its all about the relationship to the critic, I think. Which is why I tend to just go out to people I trust and respect, but even then I'm only asking about specific things I have a problem with. It doesn't start with 'What do you think?', it's more like 'I keep fucking up this chorus, what do you think I'm doing wrong?'.



I've sang in 5 different bands now, 3 of those I was only the singer and not even playing guitar. When I first started, I was so shitty that I was willing to take all the critique I could get, in hopes it'd push me into a better place, but that's where the relationship aspect comes into play heavily. I know my former drummer, even if he was saying "Yo man, that sounds like shit and you're scum for even letting that come out of your mouth.", he didn't actually mean that and I'd laugh. In other situations, someone could say that and I might not know if they're serious or not. So yeah, the relationship goes a long way. 

The other part that's sometimes not recognized by band members is asking a singer to do something over and over and over ain't like practicing a riff over and over. The last band I was in, where I got along GREAT with the guitarist/main writer, the first time I went to track vocals I walk into the studio and the whole band is in there. I'd been recording with the bass player for 12 years prior to this in other bands, so we had a great history of working in the studio together. It was a free-for-all on "Hey! Try this!", "Ok, now try it this way!" and ya try to make everyone happy and give it a shot, but that first session didn't leave a single take that was kept and my throat was shot. 

We cut it down to just the guitarist, bassist and I and then I started running into issues with him dictating every damn syllable, like literally, "Ok, you know on the word "subjugation", can you add just a tiny more grit to the "jug" part of the word? Like that whole line is PERFECT, except I just want like a tiny more grit, just lay into that "Jug" just a little more." And then I'd spend 20 minutes trying to nail this thing that only he is going to hear in his head "correctly". That band actually imploded as a result of those sessions because I could not do anything I actually wanted to. Whether it was the melodies, delivery, effects, tracking.....I had to fight for every little thing I sang and then when it came time to mix, ugh. I'm just as anal as a guitarist when it comes to how my vocals come across on a recording; I know exactly what effects I want, how I want them EQ'd, if I want something doubletracked or where I want harmonies, etc. but for some reason, I've always run into opposition with that. And then when I'd ask, "Well, did you tell Wayne he can't use reverb on that clean guitar part?", "Did you tell Nacho to not use a wah pedal on his solo?"....I'd get a blank stare and then it'd be "Well, I'm the one mixing this and it's going to get the mix I think is best. If you want to push the buttons, feel free."

And that's why I have a home studio and record on my own now.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 19, 2021)

RevDrucifer said:


> That was what I was thinking of doing. Also, some of the IEM's have external mics to pick up the room noise, I don't know how well those work out, but really, I'd most likely just end up with my guitar, bass and vocals going into the IEM's. I don't plan on playing any stages that big, anytime soon, where I won't be able to hear the drummer. Hahahah.....they're half the reason I want IEM's.



It's still a difficult decision, honestly, and a big reason why I haven't just done it right away is because I spend a lot more time in rehearsal rooms where 'hearing the room' doesn't cut it. When there is a mediocre PA that constantly tries to feed back, and then 3 amps around the perimeter and a full kit and me, throwing up a couple of mics doesn't get me anything. I really want to get a proper mix, where I can dial in how much of each instrument I want. If I don't get a better mix than today, then the extra cost and gear isn't helping me much, except being able to turn them down I guess. 

But the leap to micing each cab, and the kit, and then mixing it is really quite big in terms of cost and complexity. You need a better mixer to have enough mic preamps then you also need to have lots more mics, and mic stands and loads of cables, and then I still have to run around desperately trying to stomp out these terrible PAs and trying to make sure that they don't feedback. Its so much extra to do just for my own use. 

If the whole band is into it, that's a lot more hands to get involved, and people appreciate why its taking longer to set up. But standing around and fiddling with a tablet to get the mix right when everyone else wants to practise sounds like a pain.


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## bostjan (Oct 19, 2021)

Man, it's been more than 20 years since I did vocals on my first demo and no one ever gave me any sort of specific feedback on vocals, ever. I was lucky if I ever even got someone to say as vague as "that sounds like shit."


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## LostTheTone (Oct 19, 2021)

RevDrucifer said:


> I've sang in 5 different bands now, 3 of those I was only the singer and not even playing guitar. When I first started, I was so shitty that I was willing to take all the critique I could get, in hopes it'd push me into a better place, but that's where the relationship aspect comes into play heavily. I know my former drummer, even if he was saying "Yo man, that sounds like shit and you're scum for even letting that come out of your mouth.", he didn't actually mean that and I'd laugh. In other situations, someone could say that and I might not know if they're serious or not. So yeah, the relationship goes a long way.
> 
> The other part that's sometimes not recognized by band members is asking a singer to do something over and over and over ain't like practicing a riff over and over. The last band I was in, where I got along GREAT with the guitarist/main writer, the first time I went to track vocals I walk into the studio and the whole band is in there. I'd been recording with the bass player for 12 years prior to this in other bands, so we had a great history of working in the studio together. It was a free-for-all on "Hey! Try this!", "Ok, now try it this way!" and ya try to make everyone happy and give it a shot, but that first session didn't leave a single take that was kept and my throat was shot.
> 
> ...



You're definitely right about having too many cooks. Its bad enough when I am working at home and trying to nail it. Like, I have a loop set for this verse and it's just running over and over as I settle on how I want it and try to get it down good. That's rough, because you sing way more than you would running through whole songs. But when you add in everyone else asking you to try stuff that you don't know if your throat can do... Yeah that's garbage.

I try never to even practise vocals with the band until I have them reasonably set. If they want something different, that's fine, no problems, but I want to go away, work on it, play some rough takes and see what people think. I strongly dislike just taking a shot of something I haven't learned of practise. I have been known to get mad at the musicians when they have been working on a song and changed it around without giving me a heads up before practise. I hate finding out there is now a verse missing and I just have to stand around while everyone plays through.

Singing is tough, and you only do it well when its clear in your head. Doing it off the cuff is not good, and it just frustrates everyone.


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## TedEH (Oct 19, 2021)

I brought up the feedback thing, but in some fairness, I think most of the people I've jammed/collaborated with on whatever level have usually improved in that regard as time goes on. Receiving input isn't something that comes naturally to everyone, so there's some learning room there. I'm not exactly perfect in that regard either.

I does help that people know I can do a bit of everything - I'm not "just the bassist" trying to tell other people how to do their bits.


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## STRHelvete (Oct 19, 2021)

I dig feedback on my vocals. I never really get any besides what I read in album reviews and stuff, though. My band members aren't gonna say shit, so I just have to listen to my own stuff and make notes on what I need to work on


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 19, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> You're definitely right about having too many cooks. Its bad enough when I am working at home and trying to nail it. Like, I have a loop set for this verse and it's just running over and over as I settle on how I want it and try to get it down good. That's rough, because you sing way more than you would running through whole songs. But when you add in everyone else asking you to try stuff that you don't know if your throat can do... Yeah that's garbage.
> 
> I try never to even practise vocals with the band until I have them reasonably set. If they want something different, that's fine, no problems, but I want to go away, work on it, play some rough takes and see what people think. I strongly dislike just taking a shot of something I haven't learned of practise. I have been known to get mad at the musicians when they have been working on a song and changed it around without giving me a heads up before practise. I hate finding out there is now a verse missing and I just have to stand around while everyone plays through.
> 
> Singing is tough, and you only do it well when its clear in your head. Doing it off the cuff is not good, and it just frustrates everyone.



I got really use to scatting in the practice room. Sometimes I'd try improvising vocals when I wasn't scatting in the corner.....

But really, I always come up with the best melodies the first or second thing that pops in my head after hearing something the first time, so when I joined the last band with the guitarist I got along with really well, I'd just scat the vocals until I ended up finding melodies I could write lyrics to. Hell, I've scatted vocals at shows before.....lots of them. No one fuckin' knows as long as you throw out a real word here and there. 

I had always wanted to sing, but when I started my first original band, my drummer wasn't having it and rightly so, I was fucking terrible. It wasn't until our singer quit and we had some bigger shows booked (namely the video I posted in my first post in this thread, that's the venue down here all the national acts play at and our singer bailed 2 weeks before that gig, leaving me to figure out how to play and sing that shit at the same time) and I never stopped after. I work well under pressure, which is probably why I don't mind improvising on the spot and writing in the studio. Actually, many songs I've tracked vocals to haven't had lyrics written until I was in the studio and had to write them. Which always brought the, "What the fuck have you been singing at practice?"

Nothing, I'm just scatting in the corner.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 20, 2021)

RevDrucifer said:


> I got really use to scatting in the practice room. Sometimes I'd try improvising vocals when I wasn't scatting in the corner.....
> 
> But really, I always come up with the best melodies the first or second thing that pops in my head after hearing something the first time, so when I joined the last band with the guitarist I got along with really well, I'd just scat the vocals until I ended up finding melodies I could write lyrics to. Hell, I've scatted vocals at shows before.....lots of them. No one fuckin' knows as long as you throw out a real word here and there.
> 
> ...



I think you're right about getting the best melody by just sticking with whatever jumps out at you and that's how I typically write vocal lines too. My problem is normally that I can't really tell whether things really fit or not until I sing them. So if I just sit and write lyrics, with or without the band around, then I go up to the mic and try to sing it 90% of the time the first line has too many syllables and I need to rethink it.

I also don't have a great ear for pitch, and doubly so when I'm doing screamy stuff and the pitch is harder to pick up on. At home my process is normally to sing a clean version that's something close to where I want to be, then I go look at it in Melodyne and get an idea of which notes it's supposed to be. Then I get out my little midi keyboard (with the note names written on the keys, because I never got past 1st grade piano) and record a little guide of the first note in a phrase and any others that I can't quite resolve (like, the scale says it could be an A or a B but I weirdly always hit A#) so I have a reference to keep me on track. Once I've settled on the pitch and had some practice it's fine. But doing that live, when the other guys are trying to figure out their lead parts and what the drums are doing just frustrates me.

We had a practice on Monday, playing a new song that I had a rough version of to write lyrics too. Which I did, and it's a heavy fucking song. I had some troubles getting the clean chorus down, but I got there. But we start playing it and the band is just a little bit faster than the recording. And suddenly I just can't sing this fucking thing at all. My verses were written like short line, medium line, long line, long line. And they sound great. But there's uneven gaps, and the first two lines don't sit right on the start of the bar. And just trying to get this to sync when the band are kinda playing it a different speed each time is making my brain hurt, because I'm always singing it as if it'll be the same speed we played it last time.

So when we play through and it turns out there is now a third sung verse (there used to be a lead break over the verse riff which has now moved). I can jam out the lyrics for another verse no problem. In fact writing for this song has been real easy. But holy crap I did not want to try just throwing out the new verse on the night. I know the new one fits, because its the same as the others, but trying to get it to land off the cuff sounds miserable. 

Maybe I should just be bolder and start yelling stuff. My process is quite uptight, you might even say tending towards perfectionism. But I have a classic bit of inferiority as someone who isn't a proper musician; my band are a good group of lads who have good chemistry and work well together. They go from 'what was that riff again?' to being spot on real quick, and I do feel an obligation to not be the problem and make sure practise time is us all playing as a band.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 20, 2021)

TedEH said:


> I brought up the feedback thing, but in some fairness, I think most of the people I've jammed/collaborated with on whatever level have usually improved in that regard as time goes on. Receiving input isn't something that comes naturally to everyone, so there's some learning room there. I'm not exactly perfect in that regard either.
> 
> I does help that people know I can do a bit of everything - I'm not "just the bassist" trying to tell other people how to do their bits.



Oh yeah a lot of people are hesitant to give feedback when its outside their defined role. And I'm just as guilty of that as everyone else. I'm a singer, I don't even really speak music!

When I give feedback to the guitarists it's kinda big picture stuff - Does this lead shred? Is his riff heavy? And I don't speak drums at all.


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## STRHelvete (Oct 20, 2021)

A stopped clock is right twice a day. You don't have to be proficient at an instrument to give an opinion.

Sometimes the outsider perspective is what's needed since you're not making music for musicians, you're making music for the average listener.


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## TedEH (Oct 20, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> And I don't speak drums at all.


This one always throws me for a loop. Took me a long time to understand that rhythm doesn't come naturally to a lot of people. I always thought that was just a "thing" that everyone "got". I was very wrong.

Like I always understood that idea that the muscle memory isn't there, but you'd imagine something like "oh, you've been playing music in some capacity for years, you must have a basic understanding of what drums are dooooing, right?" .....right? As in, you know what a snare and bass drum do.....? Oh no.

A few years ago I tried to teach someone how to play guitar a bit and they could handle the fretting hand but when it came to strumming..... it's again that complete lack of rhythm. I have no idea how to teach that. It feels so fundamental that I can't wrap my head around not grasping it. That's some "describing colour to the blind" territory.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 20, 2021)

TedEH said:


> This one always throws me for a loop. Took me a long time to understand that rhythm doesn't come naturally to a lot of people. I always thought that was just a "thing" that everyone "got". I was very wrong.
> 
> Like I always understood that idea that the muscle memory isn't there, but you'd imagine something like "oh, you've been playing music in some capacity for years, you must have a basic understanding of what drums are dooooing, right?" .....right? As in, you know what a snare and bass drum do.....? Oh no.
> 
> A few years ago I tried to teach someone how to play guitar a bit and they could handle the fretting hand but when it came to strumming..... it's again that complete lack of rhythm. I have no idea how to teach that. It feels so fundamental that I can't wrap my head around not grasping it. That's some "describing colour to the blind" territory.



Yeah, its a weird one. 

Some of it is just that people like me haven't taken the time to learn how to talk about drums. But some of it is definitely that I just don't have a natural feel for the drums. 

I play enough guitar that I landed at this forum, and I get the difference between alternate picks and triplets. But for drums... Dude what the hell is a paradiddle anyway?


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## ArtDecade (Oct 20, 2021)

At its most basic....

LRLL RLRR


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## LostTheTone (Oct 20, 2021)

ArtDecade said:


> At its most basic....
> 
> LRLL RLRR



Sorry dude, I'm a PC gamer, can you convert that from Xbox to keyboard and mouse?


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## ArtDecade (Oct 20, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> Sorry dude, I'm a PC gamer, can you convert that from Xbox to keyboard and mouse?



It is just the stroke pattern:

Left Right Left Left
Right Left Right Right

As you play them, you can hear the rhythm as paradiddle paradiddle paradiddle, etc


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## LostTheTone (Oct 20, 2021)

ArtDecade said:


> It is just the stroke pattern:
> 
> Left Right Left Left
> Right Left Right Right
> ...



Fair enough, ty for that impromptu drum tutoring.


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## TedEH (Oct 20, 2021)

Basically listen to some Rush or Gojira and you'll hear some of that pattern put into use. I'm pretty sure half of Subdivisions is either that pattern or pretty close to it.


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 20, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> I think you're right about getting the best melody by just sticking with whatever jumps out at you and that's how I typically write vocal lines too. My problem is normally that I can't really tell whether things really fit or not until I sing them. So if I just sit and write lyrics, with or without the band around, then I go up to the mic and try to sing it 90% of the time the first line has too many syllables and I need to rethink it.
> 
> I also don't have a great ear for pitch, and doubly so when I'm doing screamy stuff and the pitch is harder to pick up on. At home my process is normally to sing a clean version that's something close to where I want to be, then I go look at it in Melodyne and get an idea of which notes it's supposed to be. Then I get out my little midi keyboard (with the note names written on the keys, because I never got past 1st grade piano) and record a little guide of the first note in a phrase and any others that I can't quite resolve (like, the scale says it could be an A or a B but I weirdly always hit A#) so I have a reference to keep me on track. Once I've settled on the pitch and had some practice it's fine. But doing that live, when the other guys are trying to figure out their lead parts and what the drums are doing just frustrates me.
> 
> ...



Oh I've run into that! 5 BPMs can fuck up a phrase or something not as easy to spit out really quick, especially when you're getting into the higher BPMs. 

Hahaha my MIDI keyboard also has the notes written on it because I just can't seem to memorize the damn thing! 

I think the thing that gets me about improvising vocals is that, when I'm completely unhindered, the coolest stuff has come out then and I don't stick to any safety zones or pitches I know I can handle, I'll just go for it and see if it works. Of course, that's led to some really horrible sounding things coming out of the PA, but it's also what's pushed me into different directions. While I have my main vocalists that I love and get a lot of influence from tonally, Mike Patton's biggest influence on me is how the dude can just sing any fuckin' style like it's nothin', that's really what I wanted to hammer in once I got to the point where I was capable as a singer. I still have a LONG way to go there, but all in all, I think I've got the rock/hard rock/metal aspects down, now it's just getting into stuff I've never sang; R&B, pop, country even (I almost shit myself the first time I tried singing something with a country twang to it and if I stay in my lower register it's pretty damn convincing). Improvising stuff on the spot allowed for more of those variations to come out, especially in the last band I was in because some of those songs were proggy as fuck and went all over the place. 

I highly recommend being bold; you're with your bros and they might bust your balls when something shitty comes out, but it's good for laughs. As long as they understand you're just trying shit to see what works, it shouldn't be an issue. I mean shit, 75% of singing is just having the balls to do it in the first place, knowing you're very capable of bombing in front of people with the main focus being on you. Once you actually DO bomb a couple shows, it gets easier.  I've certainly had some rough ones, especially when I was figuring out the screaming technique.


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 20, 2021)

TedEH said:


> Basically listen to some Rush or Gojira and you'll hear some of that pattern put into use. I'm pretty sure half of Subdivisions is either that pattern or pretty close to it.



When I first started learning rudiments, I didn't understand how much they're used across the entire kit. I was only thinking in terms of fills, but my buddy started showing me how to incorporate them into grooves and it was like being given keys to the castle. Like if you're playing that basic RLRR LRLL on a hihat, open/close the hihat on the downbeat and hit the kick/snare on 2 and 4, there's a disco beat. It made a whole bunch of Queensryche drum parts make a lot more sense to me; Scott's king of busting shit up between the ride/hi-hat and it's pretty much all rudiments. 

Man, I miss playing drums.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 20, 2021)

RevDrucifer said:


> I think the thing that gets me about improvising vocals is that, when I'm completely unhindered, the coolest stuff has come out then and I don't stick to any safety zones or pitches I know I can handle, I'll just go for it and see if it works. Of course, that's led to some really horrible sounding things coming out of the PA, but it's also what's pushed me into different directions. While I have my main vocalists that I love and get a lot of influence from tonally, Mike Patton's biggest influence on me is how the dude can just sing any fuckin' style like it's nothin', that's really what I wanted to hammer in once I got to the point where I was capable as a singer. I still have a LONG way to go there, but all in all, I think I've got the rock/hard rock/metal aspects down, now it's just getting into stuff I've never sang; R&B, pop, country even (I almost shit myself the first time I tried singing something with a country twang to it and if I stay in my lower register it's pretty damn convincing). Improvising stuff on the spot allowed for more of those variations to come out, especially in the last band I was in because some of those songs were proggy as fuck and went all over the place.
> 
> I highly recommend being bold; you're with your bros and they might bust your balls when something shitty comes out, but it's good for laughs. As long as they understand you're just trying shit to see what works, it shouldn't be an issue. I mean shit, 75% of singing is just having the balls to do it in the first place, knowing you're very capable of bombing in front of people with the main focus being on you. Once you actually DO bomb a couple shows, it gets easier.  I've certainly had some rough ones, especially when I was figuring out the screaming technique.



I find that timing is a way bigger problem than pitch or style. I mean, I can fuck them up plenty too, but that specific fuck up where you go to start singing something, miss the beat by miles, and then just sort of awkwardly wait for it to come around again, then fuck it up again... Urgh. And all that comes out is breath noise into the mic like a half-asleep bear is lazily snuffling at it. All I can say is that I'm fucking glad that I spent a week learning the fuck out of the songs I brought to my audition.

At least when I try to do the "octave up" top line that I just convinced people was in my range that's funny. And, you know what, I wasn't that far off for a first shot!

People definitely do take for granted that they can just casually drop into singing other styles. I think metal people especially have a feeling that since they are good at doing this really demanding style that they will have naturally picked up all the others on the way through. They super haven't though.

I did musical theater when I were a lad, before I got into what my music teacher scornfully called "popular music... or perhaps not so popular music". So I have a decent enough set of fundamentals, but I was used to singing in big spaces without a mic and with big over the top stylings. And that's super useful, and weirdly easy to transition to doing metal vocals. But it left a hole in the middle of my range where I couldn't do kinda moderate vocals. I still am figuring out how to get more relaxed vocals that still have a decent enough volume to use.


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 25, 2021)

LostTheTone said:


> I find that timing is a way bigger problem than pitch or style. I mean, I can fuck them up plenty too, but that specific fuck up where you go to start singing something, miss the beat by miles, and then just sort of awkwardly wait for it to come around again, then fuck it up again... Urgh. And all that comes out is breath noise into the mic like a half-asleep bear is lazily snuffling at it. All I can say is that I'm fucking glad that I spent a week learning the fuck out of the songs I brought to my audition.
> 
> At least when I try to do the "octave up" top line that I just convinced people was in my range that's funny. And, you know what, I wasn't that far off for a first shot!
> 
> ...



Timing can certainly be tricky, and I know EXACTLY what you’re talking about with losing your place and waiting there breathing into the mic anxiously awaiting for a spot to jump in. “Hmm….nnnn….ehh….BWOWOWOWOWOWO” 

I wish I would have done something like musical theater, I just fucking hate musicals with a passion.  But the training would have been beneficial for sure. 

Do some digging on speech-level-singing, it’s all about delivering what you want, regardless of pitch or tone, at speaking volume. Straw training can certainly help with that, too, as it limits your ability to get really loud and makes you focus on staying within a certain dynamic range. 

For years I couldn’t figure out why it sounded like I was pushing so hard to sing stuff like “Man In The Box” or really, any AIC stuff, when Layne sounded so relaxed doing it. It was because I was indeed pushing too damn hard. That’s still very much a work in progress for me because when I don’t get the results I want right away, I’ll end up diverting to my own thing. With that kind of singing, there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in regards to compression/mic gain/reverb, lending to the idea that the singer is really fuckin’ going for it, when that’s not the case at all. 

Hell, listen to any live recording of Layne singing the chorus in “Man In The Box, even on his off nights (which were very rare) he had no problem belting that chorus out, even though one would think it’d be the most challenging part of the set. From all I can tell, he’s just dumping all his support down in the gut, ‘dumping’ his larynx/tongue/jaw (keeping them in a relaxed position).

Still, the guy who gets me the most is Geoff Tate in his prime. Knowing that’s how he was singing that stuff, barely over speaking volume, well, first it made me realize why he sounded so damn good live, but my lord that dude can just bridge up and down like it’s NOTHING while still having the same intensity in his voice.


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## gnoll (Oct 25, 2021)

Drums is just hitting stuff with sticks.


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## TedEH (Oct 25, 2021)

Not even. It's sequenced out samples of people hitting things with sticks, half the time.


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## Emperoff (Oct 25, 2021)

RevDrucifer said:


> I've sang in 5 different bands now, 3 of those I was only the singer and not even playing guitar. When I first started, I was so shitty that I was willing to take all the critique I could get, in hopes it'd push me into a better place, but that's where the relationship aspect comes into play heavily. I know my former drummer, even if he was saying "Yo man, that sounds like shit and you're scum for even letting that come out of your mouth.", he didn't actually mean that and I'd laugh. In other situations, someone could say that and I might not know if they're serious or not. So yeah, the relationship goes a long way..



I hear you. In one of my bands, our backingup singer gets really affected whenever someone gives criticism, so we have to wrap our words into silk an wool. Our drummer is also very thin-skinned in that regard.

With the other singer, we've even bursted in laugther after a voice break, comparing him to "that Youtube goat" 

So yeah, relationship is critical. Luckily the rest of musicians get along just fine and just refer to "are you playing free jazz?" whenever someone is playing like shit. Problem with metal is that a lot of people take themselves too seriously. They want to be mean and tough, and cricitism is often interpreted as an attack to their self-steem.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 26, 2021)

Emperoff said:


> So yeah, relationship is critical. Luckily the rest of musicians get along just fine and just refer to "are you playing free jazz?" whenever someone is playing like shit. Problem with metal is that a lot of people take themselves too seriously. They want to be mean and tough, and cricitism is often interpreted as an attack to their self-steem.



I think metal is more prone to it, but all musicians have a tendency towards "How dare you judge my art?".

Whatever the genre, we tend to find it emotionally difficult to separate out whether something is a shit idea or whether it was shittily executed. It gets even harder to separate with singers, because we mostly are writing all the lyrics and deciding how to sing them. 

Now I am happy enough to have anyone criticise either aspect of my, for want of a better word, genius. But they are different all the same. I can hear when I'm flat or nebulously shit, you know? But just because I know doesn't mean that I can fix it in the moment, and sometimes I won't fix it until next time because I need to sit down and re-learn it in the right pitch. So people pointing out that I'm flat is going to happen by a lot of the time the answer is "I know, it's pissing me off too". Which sounds very passive aggressive, but its true. I hear it, and while its ok to tell me my voicebox doesn't have tuning pegs.

And on the other side, I find it really difficult to know when my lyrics are good or not. But when the lyrics are the problem just being told that they are shit doesn't help me. You kinda need to talk about them in the right way. Is it the overall theme that is just a bad idea? Or is it the rhythm or rhyme or what? I need to know what bothers you specifically, not because I'm precious about lyrics but simply so I understand what the criticism actually is.

A lot of singers react poorly to both, but it doesn't help when criticism doesn't quite land on what its trying to criticise.


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## gnoll (Oct 26, 2021)

TedEH said:


> Not even. It's sequenced out samples of people hitting things with sticks, half the time.



True. No sense of timing even needed, just slap it on the grid, bam.

Edit: Actually please don't do that, I hate drums that are perfectly in time, ugh.


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## TedEH (Oct 26, 2021)

See, people say that, but I have a suspicion that when it comes to both drum and vocal processing, people _say_ one thing but actually _enjoy listening to_ another.

It's like we want to trick ourselves. 
We want something that sounds accurate... but no so accurate that you have to consciously acknowledge that it wasn't really performed that way.

Nobody actually wants to listen to sloppy kick drums and pitchy vocals.


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## RevDrucifer (Oct 26, 2021)

TedEH said:


> See, people say that, but I have a suspicion that when it comes to both drum and vocal processing, people _say_ one thing but actually _enjoy listening to_ another.
> 
> It's like we want to trick ourselves.
> We want something that sounds accurate... but no so accurate that you have to consciously acknowledge that it wasn't really performed that way.
> ...



I dunno man, my ex listened to a lot of punk that primarily featured sloppy kicks and pitchy vocals!


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## LostTheTone (Oct 26, 2021)

RevDrucifer said:


> I dunno man, my ex listened to a lot of punk that primarily featured sloppy kicks and pitchy vocals!



Yeah, but she's also an ex for a reason my dude


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## TedEH (Oct 26, 2021)

RevDrucifer said:


> punk


Isn't punk the exception? Isn't sounding shitty half the point of punk?


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## LostTheTone (Oct 26, 2021)

TedEH said:


> See, people say that, but I have a suspicion that when it comes to both drum and vocal processing, people _say_ one thing but actually _enjoy listening to_ another.
> 
> It's like we want to trick ourselves.
> We want something that sounds accurate... but no so accurate that you have to consciously acknowledge that it wasn't really performed that way.
> ...



Right - People dislike hearing something that sounds like some jerk just sat there and pieced it together, but that's much more to do with composition than actual tools used. 

When people call Gene Hoglan "The Atomic Clock" or "The Human Drum Machine" they mean that as a compliment; that he has great accuracy even at high speeds or working with complex patterns. People weren't listening to his recordings with Death or Testament or Fear Factory and saying "Meh, this is just _too_ tight". Nah, dude sounds great. 

It's not accuracy that makes drum machines sound worse than real people, it's the lack of creativity and chemistry with the drums. You can program a drum machine to sound exactly like John Bonham. We have the technology. And that would sound great. But that drum machine couldn't sit with the rest of Zeppelin and write songs and contribute ideas and make the drums an integral part of the sound. 

Of course we want tight drumming, because sloppy sounds dreadful. But we also want drums that are well used and part of the sound, rather than an afterthought.


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## TedEH (Oct 26, 2021)

I tend to think of it more in terms of being used to a certain level of production - at this point we recognize, for example, quantized kick drums to be an element of a "polished" recording. So even a very good drummer, who would otherwise be fantastic on his own at a show or something, would still have some sway and be a little off-the-grid in a recording, might come across as sloppy because the standard is set really high.

And I think the same of vocals. We've become so accustomed to pitch-corrected vocals without acknowledging it, that to not use any correction comes across as pitchy in a lot of cases. My current theory - my best guess without really being there to know - is that we use more pitch correction than we let on, and just don't talk about it openly.

Certainly some artists are good enough to not need these, and I'm primarily talking about metal and other very-produced-sounding genres, where the expectations exist. But those exceptional artists are the one in a million. A regular joe like me is going to lean on those extra polish tools, and I've no qualms with it.


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## ArtDecade (Oct 26, 2021)

TedEH said:


> And I think the same of vocals. We've become so accustomed to pitch-corrected vocals without acknowledging it, that to not use any correction comes across as pitchy in a lot of cases. My current theory - my best guess without really being there to know - is that we use more pitch correction than we let on, and just don't talk about it openly.



Has anyone watched the Adam Neeley video about pitch correcting vocals?


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## LostTheTone (Oct 26, 2021)

TedEH said:


> I tend to think of it more in terms of being used to a certain level of production - at this point we recognize, for example, quantized kick drums to be an element of a "polished" recording. So even a very good drummer, who would otherwise be fantastic on his own at a show or something, would still have some sway and be a little off-the-grid in a recording, might come across as sloppy because the standard is set really high.
> 
> And I think the same of vocals. We've become so accustomed to pitch-corrected vocals without acknowledging it, that to not use any correction comes across as pitchy in a lot of cases. My current theory - my best guess without really being there to know - is that we use more pitch correction than we let on, and just don't talk about it openly.
> 
> Certainly some artists are good enough to not need these, and I'm primarily talking about metal and other very-produced-sounding genres, where the expectations exist. But those exceptional artists are the one in a million. A regular joe like me is going to lean on those extra polish tools, and I've no qualms with it.



Oh yeah man, I have no problems saying that I use Melodyne very frequently. I don't make huge changes using it, but as a tool it's one of the most commonly used things in my DAW. Let me take a screenshot and I'll show you why:







This is from the song I was working on this afternoon. The pictured section covers two lines of vocals, or about 8 bars. For those who don't use it - The blobs are notes, and the lines show how pitch moves around within a blob. So, as you can see, even within words that in theory should just be one proper note, they bounce around all over the bloody place. It's partly because I'm an imperfect human, but even if I were really on point I'd be sliding between notes and stretching the words out to fill the space. 

The three blobs I circled are ones that I have edited. The first one I moved up a bit so that the majority of the blob now sits properly on C. I still slide up too high, over shoot, then come back, but now all of that happens within the vicinity of C. The second one I've realigned so that the top of the spike hits C, so the emphasized syllable is correct and the off-beat one is wobbly, instead of the other way around. The last one I've reduced the pitch wobble by about 50%, so that even though there is wobble it all again stays within the boundaries of E. 

Thing is; there is "on pitch" and there is "_on pitch"_. Just the fact that you are singing means that there is going to be movement. Always. And that's fine. That's normal, and you shouldn't remove it. But it is completely acceptable (to me anyway) to look at those bits of movement and imperfections and helping them to sit in a way that is more musical and pleasing to the ear. 

Now, this take is a rough one anyway (trying a new melody for this chorus) so I'm substantially less accurate than I am on finished takes, but even on much better takes I'm going to listen for things that stick out and then go look at what is happening, and gently massage those tails so start and finish in the right place. Where I do long notes, I'll often remove a bit of wobble.

This is all pitch correction, but it's a long way away from flagrant autotuning. Sure, I could just keep practicing and recording forever and ever until I get it just so. But I have other shit to do; other songs I need to write. Even if I were rather more professional; in a real studio with a recording contract; there would still only be a finite amount of time to get things recorded. I would want to come in well practiced and on point, but after a day or two any sane producer would say "Yeah we got it, don't worry". 

Now, people do expect singers to be really good. And an album is around forever. It's the canonical version of a song. So yeah, you want to get rid of audible imperfections, and make it sound as good as it can. Sometimes that means doing another take, but sometimes that means trusting the producers to get it just so. 

These are tiny changes to flatter my performance. It's not creating something that isn't there, it's just putting the last little bit of polish on it.


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## TedEH (Oct 26, 2021)

ArtDecade said:


> Has anyone watched the Adam Neeley video about pitch correcting vocals?


I did watch it and I kinda hated it. He just let the software round to the nearest note instead of correcting towards the singers intent. The trick to vocal correction, IMO, it's just hitting the GO button and seeing what happens. There's a lot of work that goes into good and transparent correction.


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## ArtDecade (Oct 26, 2021)

TedEH said:


> I did watch it and I kinda hated it. He just let the software round to the nearest note instead of correcting towards the singers intent. The trick to vocal correction, IMO, it's just hitting the GO button and seeing what happens. There's a lot of work that goes into good and transparent correction.



Well, yeah, but I think Adam wanted layman to hear what the software is capable of and how it can distort how people hear music. If he was trying to be so subtle to the point of being imperceptive, it probably would not have made a worthwhile video.


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## TedEH (Oct 26, 2021)

I just means that his clickbait title implies "auto tune makes things worse", which is a bad premise if his "fix" is to just drop it in place and make no actual corrections so we can laugh at rounding errors and how software isn't good at interpreting user intent.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 26, 2021)

TedEH said:


> I did watch it and I kinda hated it. He just let the software round to the nearest note instead of correcting towards the singers intent. The trick to vocal correction, IMO, it's just hitting the GO button and seeing what happens. There's a lot of work that goes into good and transparent correction.



Yeah exactly that. And I know he's doing it for fun, but he starts out talking about all the things that aren't going to fit into a strict chromatic scale then goes on to not care at all and just force it to fit anyway.

And he's right, Melodyne is a great tool but it isn't an automatic one. Yes, you can just press 'correct pitch' but the software is just guessing which note you meant for it to be. And sometimes its good. And sometimes its garbage. It's not good at figuring out which octave screamed vocals are supposed to be in, for example.


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## bostjan (Oct 26, 2021)

Hang on.

Switching melodyne to autopilot and calling it good _would_ be a poor representation if we could be sure that's not what some studios are doing... but when (*insert random reality television star here*) with no vocal or musical training at all decides to release a hit pop song, do you _really_ think that's not *exactly* what happens in the studio?

Maybe the moral of the story isn't autotune=bad

Maybe the moral of the story is autotune=/=learning how to be a good singer

Which, I think, is pretty much the point of this entire thread, in a way. We've just gotten lazy. Instant gratification. We'll fix it in post. Just activate the "shitty singer reducer" button on the DAW.


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## TedEH (Oct 26, 2021)

bostjan said:


> Maybe the moral of the story is autotune=/=learning how to be a good singer


Maybe. But also maybe not. I'm sure melodyne is a pretty impressive bit of software, and I've never tried it personally, but as I understand it, there's still a lot that it can't correct for without becoming really obvious. You still need to be at least ok as a singer to be able to use it in a way that's going to be transparent to everyone.

Take reality tv singing shows as an example - you can hear the auto-tune mistakes.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 26, 2021)

bostjan said:


> Hang on.
> 
> Switching melodyne to autopilot and calling it good _would_ be a poor representation if we could be sure that's not what some studios are doing... but when (*insert random reality television star here*) with no vocal or musical training at all decides to release a hit pop song, do you _really_ think that's not *exactly* what happens in the studio?
> 
> ...



I think you're probably right in spirit, but it should be noted that its not autopilot for the talentless hacks either. Some poor sod seriously laboured over the tracks of the latest hack or hackette of the day. The track won't necessarily sound amazing, because the more you have to correct the less natural it sounds, so they can't work miracles, but even just getting it sound feasible is such a horrible and painstaking job.

You are right in spirit though - That the technology encourages us to be less professional and accept more sloppiness. It can be fixed, and its not our job to fix it, so fuck it that'll do.

But the technology also allows us to be more professional and to deal with sloppiness in faster and easier way too, at least if we can be bothered to. If you learn to read Melodyne you can learn a lot about what you're doing wrong in a very fast way. You can see, even if you can't hear, that this note is wobbly, and that one is flat, and that one you took two stabs at to hit. You can correct it, listen to how it should be then do it better. Then repeat. 

Even if you don't like freestyle rap, you have to admire the work ethic of some of those guys. Just set up some beats and start rhyming over the top of it. And keep doing that until they can do it anytime.

That's really the issue here - If you don't put the work in you can still sound good, but you won't sound good live and you'll only sound alright on the album. If you do put the time in you'll sound amazing on the album, and sound good live. No, you don't have to make the time if you don't want to, and I can understand why people who play six instruments (and also bass) on the album don't have the time to get polished vocals. Singing is tough, and its tough to practise too because you can't just plug in some headphones and jam quietly. 

But dammit you got to take some fucking pride in your craft.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 26, 2021)

TedEH said:


> Maybe. But also maybe not. I'm sure melodyne is a pretty impressive bit of software, and I've never tried it personally, but as I understand it, there's still a lot that it can't correct for without becoming really obvious. You still need to be at least ok as a singer to be able to use it in a way that's going to be transparent to everyone.
> 
> Take reality tv singing shows as an example - you can hear the auto-tune mistakes.



Yes, that's correct. 

Melodyne is really good, and you can adjust lots of stuff, but the story is always the same that the more you change the worse it sounds. Often you try to cover by making two smaller adjustments, say to pitch and to note connection at the same time. That makes the note's pitch closer, but it also smooths out the bump where you wobbled into it, so the problem is much less audible. 

And this is all great, but I can't emphasise enough that this I polishing work. Melodyne would let you de-tune the whole track by 2 steps, but it doesn't sound much better than your normal pitch shifting pedal. It can sometimes be useful to hear a note shifted around to a couple of different notes (for example, if you are musically illiterate and don't know what key its supposed to be in) but that's just to hear the note, you can't use that in a recording.


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## eaeolian (Oct 26, 2021)

nightlight said:


> That's kind of sad. We live in a plastic, make-believe world, where most of the stars that are forced down our throats are as real as Barbie.



Hahahaha...you act like this is something new:


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## eaeolian (Oct 26, 2021)

bulb said:


> All bands suck and are a waste of our time.
> 
> Sometimes it’s like they don’t even just have fun with it.



My band sucks more than yours.


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## LostTheTone (Oct 26, 2021)

eaeolian said:


> My band sucks more than yours.



Yeah but my band wastes more time than yours so....


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## bostjan (Oct 26, 2021)

eaeolian said:


> My band sucks more than yours.


My band squawks sucks more than any of yours!

Best way to not have to worry about having to auto-tune your vocals is to play microtonal music. That way, it sounds out of tune to everyone whether your singer is in key or not.


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## bulb (Oct 26, 2021)

eaeolian said:


> My band sucks more than yours.


Debatable


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## ArtDecade (Oct 26, 2021)

Bulb is right.


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## bulb (Oct 26, 2021)

ArtDecade said:


> Bulb is right.


Making this my signature.


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## ArtDecade (Oct 26, 2021)

The endorsement you've been waiting for.


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