Here is my second recent vocal effort that I've been talking about and getting good advice from many (and especially Jayesskerr!), and per his advice, I set it aside for a month and worked on getting "Snow Day in Hell" completed. Coming back to it, I recorded another complete vocal line from start to finish with my new mic, a R0DE NT1-A, and mixed it in with the others.

Here is "Shine," for piano, vocals, and percussion. I deliberately limited myself in the instrumentation to force me to use vocals to fill out everything. I might have gone a little overboard with the 8 or more tracks of vocals in some places. I'm also NOT using the new EVO Harmony plugin I just bought, deliberately, to force me to do harmonies the old fashioned way, by multi-tracking.

"Shine"
https://soundcloud.com/stephen-sink-1/shine


Here's a fractal video, because, you know, that's what I do! And sing, and play the Chappy Stick Geetar and the Pianer.

https://youtu.be/xdckDMIAvOQ


https://vimeo.com/266832530


Lyrics


P.S. I originally had the title of this song in all caps, to make "SHINE," but my Japanese wife points out to me that it looks like the worst possible thing you can say to someone in Japanese, which is "SHI NE" (pronounced "Shee neh") and is in the command tense to order someone to die. As the Japanese pretend they have no swear words, and will NOT ever teach the ones they really do have, this is a pro tip to never use it to a Japanese person. It's the literal worst thing possible to say to someone in the language. Sorry for the random postscript. Back to the song!

Nice work, love the visuals too

Thanks, Josh! I may have been a bit too excited late last night and didn't catch a flew glitches in my vocals that I heard with some fresh ears.

I listened to it on the way to work this morning--the "car master test"--and found a couple of spots that had to be fixed, not that I got them all. Perfection never is achieved, but bad is bad and better is better. It's trying to do something different for the hope of making it better that can be an endless cycle, but I always try to fix the obvious glitches. The car master test, the cheap laptop speaker monitor test, and the built-in TV-speakers test, are all good ways to get a different feel for how the song sounds apart from the studio speakers and headphones. And I just punched in at one spot for 3 seconds to kill a spot that annoyed the heck out of me.

I uploaded the changed file to the SoundCloud spot. Also after playing with it in iZotope Neutron for a bit, which is a blast for mastering, EQ'ing, shaping transients, yadda yadda. I am learning lots by just doing, and tweaking.

I need to add a bass line to it probably, which is easy-peasy after the vocal sagas. There might not be much room for anything else in the mix. It's strange to me how the need for a solo section completely goes away when I start singing. (Fricking singers taking up the sonic space!!! Almost as bad as guitar players!) I have to remember to put all things in moderation, even moderation. But I'm (finally) enjoying vocals instead of treating it like eating my broccoli and doing my scales (shudders). Cheers!

I also posted "Shine" at icomposition.com, where it also stunk up the place without much notice or commenting. http://www.icompositions.com/music/song.php?sid=225638

This is the second of my songs from my big push to make songs out of my instrumentals catalog. I thought the songs might be better received than the instrumentals, which Icomposition.com seems to like. I have over 10,000 plays last year on icomposition now on the instrumentals. People do like songs, after all, but this one kind of went over like a lead balloon, and not Led Zeppelin, either.

Well, I'll keep trying! I'm not gonna quit on making songs, and posting them here. Some will have the Chapman Stick and some will not. This one did not, so fair enough, even for the Teflon section. Thanks everyone who listened and for Josh for commenting. I appreciate it!

i enjoyed that nice groove and great lyrics. As always love the fractal vids. Keep rocking it out.

Definitely don't quit making songs - it's been my experience that more people gravitate to a vocal "song" as opposed to an instrumental piece. Nothing against instrumental music, it's just the way things are... I think you have a really unique sound, so I really think it's cool to be able to sit back and watch your style unfold. Pretty cool.

It's important to recognize that there may be a lot of reasons that a tune doesn't gain much traction amongst your listeners, and it's not because there is anything wrong the song. It takes a lot of bravery to post a bit of playing, and even more courage to share an actual vocal cut...

Thank you both, guys! I'm absolutely going to keep Sticking with it, and my skills as a poor singer and a poor studio engineer who makes poor singers sound better, and also my abilities in general to just write songs, even if they'd be better off with someone else singing, will only continue to get better.

I usually take no response as a polite version of "if you can't say something nice, don't say something at all!" which is how these things should go. I doubt anyone is the world has ever been positively motivated by "This sucks!" although lots of people have thus been motivated to prove the critics wrong. (Did Mr Tritone ever make anyone better with the "You sucks"?) As the very first tune of mine to get literally no comments or ratings over at icomposition (other than from Tapicus Maximus, who is Jayesskerr, who is Scott Kerr, and my friend), I take it that this one wasn't liked as much as the vocal tune I uploaded last "Snow Day in Hell," which probably had the MOST comments of any of my tunes over there. The icomp gods giveth and they taketh away.

I'm confident enough about my instrument playing and instrumental song writing skills to both: 1) Ignore the doubters, and more importantly, 2) in the words and advice of Steve Martin: "Be so good they can't ignore you." So, I'll get there on the vocal stuff.

At least, of 40 million musicians in the world all trying to be different, I know I'll never have any problems with that! I don't mean that self-deprecatingly either. I know I'm not a Gilbert Gottfried unique voice guy, and I'm not shooting for Freddie Mercury or Frank Sinatra. I'd be just fine being a Beck Hansen (of the "band" Beck), if I had a model or goal for my singing. It's all about the songs, man.

Here is the most inspirational thing I've seen in months to encourage me on the singing (other than the comments by you fine gentlemen here, and especially Jayesskerr):

Ed Sheeran Singing Badly - The Jonathan Ross Show
https://youtu.be/flkjMuaKYQU


When people say "oh, you're so talented; you're born with natural talent." Nope. Lots of sucking to get through first. And then he practiced and got better.

I've got one more rocking song I want to add vocals to and here's what's up next on the menu, "The Purpling," for NS/Stick, Chapman Stick, and Drums. This song is fairly complete: just needs vocals and perhaps an analog-keyboard-sounding solo with my Stick and the EHFX Synth 9 pedal. My vocal model for this is David Lee Roth (but not the vastly-better singer, Sammy Hagar).


https://soundcloud.com/stephen-sink-1/the-purpling-perc

The next vocal project after that is probably going to be to add vocals to an EDM/electronic tune and either try real hard to be Trent Reznor but sound like me anyway, or try real hard to sound like Depeche Mode, and sound like me anyway. It could go either way.

Thanks, guys!
--Down in Fractal Singing Rock, Steve