Breathing then Scale exercises – Still very scratchy at the top end. Tried recording high pitched section of Ironbark – sounded awful.

Day 3

Breathing, scales, a few songs.
Top end in much better condition to begin with. Recorded lots of vocals for Ironbark – first 20 minutes sounded good, then downhill from there! Stamina still lacking.

Day 4

No singing today, but I listened back to what I recorded yesterday.

Beast of the Air:

Happy with this, a couple of slightly off notes, one or two lines to rerecord, but basically it's done.

Miser's Will Part 1:

Not happy with what I recorded for this at all. The demo I recorded last summer sounded good – C minor was an okay key, and singing so much just above middle C was no strain at all. Yesterday's take of this soundes really strained and forced. I seriously need to work on singing in this range with a relaxed throat – there's way too much tension in this take and it really shows.

Miser's Will part 3:

 80% of this is good – it's all in the lower range which has escaped the ravages of illness and neglect. The only exception is a couple of notes towards the end which are supposed to float up into falsetto but sound too hoarse and forced when they do so.

It's not all bad, there's a lot I can keep from the last recording session, but listening back my voice still isn't where it should be.

Goals:

Work on singing the range just above middle C in a relaxed manner – volume without strain.
Sort out my falsetto – shouldn't sound so hoarse, and I could do with more breathe control here.

In other news, I've recieved a bad review here: http://bit.ly/hnRvgh

My this blog post is negative! It's not all bad really. Honest!

This was bought home to me when I tried recording some vocals for my second solo album Ironbark. Having set up the mic and warmed up a little I found that although my tuning and range where still there, my stamina and tone have really suffered.

There are lots of things that can affect the voice, general fitness and the state of your throat being the most obvious. Although I'm in the best shape I've been for a few years (Thanks to a wonderful and health conscious better half who has been dragging me along to the gym for the last few months) work has been crazy of late. This has left me fatigued and battling off stress-induced ailments that have gone straight for my throat. In fact I actually lost my voice for a few days in March.

Despite having lost my voice I tried singing a short online set and this really bought home to me how much work I need to do.

So today I start working on my voice properly for the first time in years.

To do this I made use of <a href=http://www.thesingthing.com/exercises.htm> The Sing Thing</a> and the Rock'n'Roll Singer's Survival Handbook.

The First Practice

I started with some breathing exercises, followed by some exercises that work the jaw and lips muscles, then onto some actual singing with some scale based exercises.

Apart from not having the stamina I once (that'll come back with practice) I still sound okay. The middle of lower end of my voice are relatively intact.

The problem at the moment is the higher register, notes above the E above middle C. Whether sung falsetto or with my full voice, this area sounds pretty hoarse.

Which is very annoying because there are a couple of passages on the new album that require the use of that range in a rather exposed fashion. Tommorrow I'll start working on these areas as best I can. Illness and tiredness often take away the top part of your voice first, and this range is currently sounding very ragged and unpleasant. Still, onward and, as they say, upward. More practicing tomorrow.

If you've got some favourite vocal exercises to share, please let me know. Always happy to try out something new.

banshee.mp3 Listen on Posterous

A couple of years ago I started writing some songs about outlandish horror-comic characters. I had a song about a banshee, one about the girl who was possessed by demons, another about a werewolf. The project has yet to come to fruition, but you can hear a demo from that project in this post.

At the end you get to hear 3 part vocals in 5/4 timing. Something that all songs should have.

the_making_of_ironbark.pdf Download this file

As you may be aware, I'm currently recording my second solo album.

I've put together a little PDF file to introduce you to the album – it includes some pictures and info about some of the songs. I'll update this regularly as I make progress.

Props and pics from our video shoot. This one will be even more silly the Spinning the Compass

See the full gallery on Posterous

Today I'm at Joe's shooting steampunk video.

Greetings!

So Joe The Dark Power Slatter and I have been planning a little video to accompany the new album. Here’s an extract of our email conversation about the project.

Joe Get thinking about some ideas!

I thought it might be cool to research some possible locations in and around london then visit them with a camera one weekend to scout ’em out.

Tom Well I fancy doing some relatively simple performance-footage videos, but steampunkified locations – maybe with a steampunked microphone to sing into…

Erm… I’m thinking of putting on my own gig, finding a suitably small and victorianish pub function room so that could be a thing to film.

Erm..

er…

or stuff.

Joe I’ll have a search for stuff too! What I thought we could do is stick a tall crazy steampunk tower into a suitable setting wiv computerz then film interiors in kew steam museum if they’ll let us.

We could have a shot of you with the in the foreground. You walk forward and as you approach it becomes clear the mic is in fact massive, like that forced perspective shot in airplane

Tom Are you sure about the mic gag though? Or is that a little too silly?

Joe Shut Up

Listening to the Beast of the Air. Should be possible to composite you onto the airship for some ‘searching’ shots.

Then I could make a sky kracken…….somehow……

Tom Random idea:

Talking heads. we could do some interview footage of you and then me talking about the video/music/steampunk. and then we could have some interview footage with Oldroid (maybe he talks via morse code and/or subtitles) talking about how much we torment him.

OLDROID PAIN. OLDROID DIE NOW? MWAAAAYAAAAAAH!

Joe Are you Drunk?

Tom Nearly

beastoftheairliveonline.mp3 Listen on Posterous

And here's Beast of the Air.

My voice sounds almost acceptable here. Wait till you hear the last 3 songs….

demonliveonline.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Yesterday, despite not having had any voice for four days, I played an online gig with some of the lovely folk over at cafenoodle.ning.com

Here's a Comrade Robot song 'Demon' from that gig.