THE VOICE CONNECTION
SOUND OFF

Welcome to The Voice Connection Sound Off; a forum for users of books like Raise Your Voice, Melody to Madness, The Ultimate Breathing Workout, and Unleash Your Creative Mindset, as well as a place for Vendera Vocal Academy members to interact.

This message board was created so that singers could come together and "sound off" to help support each other during vocal development and the creative process of unleashing the creative spark that occurs when writing and producing music. Currently, myself and vocal coaches Ben Valen, Ray West, and Ryan Wall are here to respond periodicially to your questions, with new vocal coaches coming soon. But, feel free to help each other too:)

This board is here for you to ask questions about my and my fellow coach's books, videos, and MP3 programs, as well as offer others help with our vocal techniques. You may also post videos of yourself and your band to share your music and ask for critiques.

Please refrain from negative comments, profanities, spamming, and inappropriate criticisms of vocal methodologies, vocal coaches, and singers. All negative posts will be deleted and subject to banning without question. I will not respond to negative posts, because, as Mark Twain once said, “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” With that said, positive criticism is welcome because that is how you'll grow as a singer during the training process.


The Voice Connection - Sound Off
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Power Metal Vocalists

Hey Dick here. I bought Jaimes book Raise Your Voice and it's helped a lot! Now I have a question that I seemingly can't find an answer for. Is proper PA setup/effects just as important for Power Metal vocals? I've tried singing along without a microphone and it lacks some of the brightness and smoothness (or it comes off as a bit too harsh/gritty) that I suspect is provided through reverb or some other effect. For reference, my biggest influences overall are Bruce Dickinson (favourite vocals of his are on Brave New World), Dio (big fan of his Black Sabbath work) and post-Mercyful Fate King Diamond. Vocalists I'm a fan of in general are: Kai Hansen, Andy Biersack, Geddy Lee, Axl Rose, Myles Kennedy, Niklas Isdfelt from Dream Evil, and basically every skilled clean vocalist in Power Metal or similar vocals.

Re: Power Metal Vocalists

hello,
for years and years I looked for hardware, software... to improve how my voice sounds, but I learnt that the better is to make it sounding good in the first place with proper technique, placement, resonators...
Of course effects like reverb, delays... are useful and important so the vocals don't sound too "dry" et "raw" and it's important in the context of a band to help the vocals sitting in the mix. But the fact is that when you are on stage, you don't have any idea of which effects the soundman is adding in the PA and how it sounds like, you just have what you hear in the monitors (personally I ask no effects in my monitors) so it's important that the sound is the best as possible before it even hits the mic. I don't like effects in my monitors because time and space effects alter the natural sound in some ways, so it's more difficult to have a reference in what you hear.

I'm a huge Bruce Dickinson fan too. When he is on stage, he has no effect in his monitors, and some years ago he explained that the more important is how you feel the sound inside your own body, he said that using ear plugs helped him for that.

Nowadays we tend to use very subtle reverbs and delays, so you can't really notice the effects in the mix, but you hear that something is missing when you remove them.

So the answer to your question is yes and no! I mean yes reverbs and delays are important in live or studio sound, but if one day Bruce Dickinson was singing in a room in front of me without pa, I'm sure I wouldn't think "it would have been better with effects!"