by Versilaryan » 04 Nov 2011 01:04
Overkill and I are probably going to work on a guide on singing soon. After he gets back from wherever he is. >.>
The most noticeable thing right now is that the singing sounds robotic. I remember you mentioning that you sang it slower and sped it up, and I said your phrasing would go right out the window -- I meant it. I'm not sure how much you know about musical performance, so I'mma go over the basics. Feel free to skip over anything you already know.
So you're probably familiar with the idea that all music either goes somewhere or comes from somewhere. That's the basic idea behind phrasing. You need to pick points in the music that will be your high parts, pick points in the music that will be the beginnings of phrases, and when you sing, crescendo into those high parts and decrescendo until it's the beginning of the phrase again. Oftentimes, the high point will be the end of the phrase, so you don't have to worry about decrescendoing. This is harder to do with the faster, more fragmented verses of the MLP theme song, but if you pick something slower like So Many Wonders, you will definitely notice that the music rises and falls in certain places. And when you're singing, you have to adjust your volume to those swells and falls.
The reason why I bring this up is because in your singing, you sound like every single note is the start of a new phrase, making the whole thing sound disjointed and robotic. Meaning, you start every note strong and then die down before suddenly hitting the next note strong again.
On top of that, your consonants are really fast, another result of the technique you're using. =P There's a huge reason why I'm so against speeding things up in the studio like that.
So focus more on making larger phrases with your music and not letting the note decay before it hits the end of a phrase.
Some tips for practicing: If you want to sing something fast and accurate, you're going to need to start slow. Sing it slowly and with a piano, guitar, or something else you can play without thinking too much about it. Focus on hitting every single pitch as in-tune as possible while singing it slowly. And once you've got it in your head and you're hitting pitches properly, speed it up a little. And then once that's down, speed it up more. It's a long and arduous process, but it's the only way to get these things down.
Alternatively, if you're going to T-Pain it anyways, just work on making your pitches consistent so that when you sing it, you can just use the autotune to get your singing in-tune without sacrificing singing quality. I'd recommend this only if you need to get something done quickly, though, 'cause this isn't going to help your singing at all.