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Much Appreciated Frank!
Best of luck and much success Sherbro!
My Brand New Album Oyster Pep "The 200 to 25mg Mixtape"
- Thread starter serenety now
- Start date
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2005
- Messages
- 61,592
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This is not the type of music I like. In fact, I abhor it. You are emulating a purely commercial, overproduced, deeply & rigidly formulated sound that currently tops the charts. I cannot stand Drake in any song where he "sings". I can't stand Post Malone, Kodak Black, Thaiboy Digital, Yung Lean, Lil Skies, Lil Pump, Bladee, blackbear, or any of the rest of them. I think it's terrible autotuned bullshit made by people intending to hide the fact they can't sing, and don't have a refined sense of tone.
So my opinion will not really be useful because all those people have billions or hundreds of millions of listens. If you were succeeding at your endeavor I wouldn't be the one to ask.
All that being said, I like the sonic environments you construct. That's promising. I liked the sound before you started singing. That isn't to say that I think you're a bad singer. From what I can tell you fit the paradism of this group, but I simply can't stand this style. One thing I noticed that you aren't doing is that you are never leaving your middle register. Drake gets away with this, but I think most of the people who want to draw the ear can't play it this safe. Sure, you layer in your (or someone's) falsetto over your main vocal track, oohing and aahing, which is a staple of this genre, but you never break out of that middle register with your main, lyricized singing track.
There were times when I felt the drift of the song was begging you to break out, as in "Dark Heart of Mine", and start singing with more emotion & volume in a higher range, an octave up, if you are capable of it, but not in a falsetto (or at least reserve that for really high notes). Instead you stuck to the safe, boring, cool guy who is talk-singing middle register. Contrast this to the chorus where you legitimately sing, "Yo I'm so motherfucking sick of it..." By the time you get to "the lightning strikes" you're in the cool guy talk-singing voice. That's fine, it's part of the genre, but when you come back to that chorus, around the -2:00 mark, I think it would command a lot more emotional heft if you sang it an octave up. Nothing has changed, and it feels like the song is going nowhere.
Music is about catharsis. People want those moments where they feel everything that is bottled up released in a moment of piercing weightlessness. I don't have the knowledge set to draw on examples in this musical style you're practicing, but take Halsey's "Nightmare", for example. She uses repetition in a relatively narrow range to establish an emotional baseline. It's smooth sailing. This is also a technique that creates more powerful contrast when she does kick things into a higher gear. So, almost out of nowhere, she suddenly screams, "I don't owe you a goddamn thing!" This is where she breaks out; where the song goes from being an okay tune that some might find pleasant to an anthem of rage and defiance that captures the hearts of millions, and makes her one of the most popular artists on the planet.
You have a polished sound, and a talent for sound engineering, but this is what you're missing. You need to find the rage, the anguish, the joy, and find that climax somewhere in the structure of your songs. Your songs don't have a climax. They're a flat line. They need an emotional arc. Changes in volume, tonal register, tempo, or other disruptive techniques to the phrases that carry the song are how you get there. Find these, and I think you'll ascend to the next level. You'll capture the ear, its thirst, and draw listeners in.
So my opinion will not really be useful because all those people have billions or hundreds of millions of listens. If you were succeeding at your endeavor I wouldn't be the one to ask.
All that being said, I like the sonic environments you construct. That's promising. I liked the sound before you started singing. That isn't to say that I think you're a bad singer. From what I can tell you fit the paradism of this group, but I simply can't stand this style. One thing I noticed that you aren't doing is that you are never leaving your middle register. Drake gets away with this, but I think most of the people who want to draw the ear can't play it this safe. Sure, you layer in your (or someone's) falsetto over your main vocal track, oohing and aahing, which is a staple of this genre, but you never break out of that middle register with your main, lyricized singing track.
There were times when I felt the drift of the song was begging you to break out, as in "Dark Heart of Mine", and start singing with more emotion & volume in a higher range, an octave up, if you are capable of it, but not in a falsetto (or at least reserve that for really high notes). Instead you stuck to the safe, boring, cool guy who is talk-singing middle register. Contrast this to the chorus where you legitimately sing, "Yo I'm so motherfucking sick of it..." By the time you get to "the lightning strikes" you're in the cool guy talk-singing voice. That's fine, it's part of the genre, but when you come back to that chorus, around the -2:00 mark, I think it would command a lot more emotional heft if you sang it an octave up. Nothing has changed, and it feels like the song is going nowhere.
Music is about catharsis. People want those moments where they feel everything that is bottled up released in a moment of piercing weightlessness. I don't have the knowledge set to draw on examples in this musical style you're practicing, but take Halsey's "Nightmare", for example. She uses repetition in a relatively narrow range to establish an emotional baseline. It's smooth sailing. This is also a technique that creates more powerful contrast when she does kick things into a higher gear. So, almost out of nowhere, she suddenly screams, "I don't owe you a goddamn thing!" This is where she breaks out; where the song goes from being an okay tune that some might find pleasant to an anthem of rage and defiance that captures the hearts of millions, and makes her one of the most popular artists on the planet.
You have a polished sound, and a talent for sound engineering, but this is what you're missing. You need to find the rage, the anguish, the joy, and find that climax somewhere in the structure of your songs. Your songs don't have a climax. They're a flat line. They need an emotional arc. Changes in volume, tonal register, tempo, or other disruptive techniques to the phrases that carry the song are how you get there. Find these, and I think you'll ascend to the next level. You'll capture the ear, its thirst, and draw listeners in.
