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Topic ClosedSingers: voice, techniq, melodies, lyrics, passion

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Gerinski View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 02:56
While many bands have certainly the figure of the songwriter who comes up with the vocal melody lines too, I believe that there are also many cases where the vocal melodies are in big part contribution of the vocalist himself, like the bands starts jamming on some riffs or chord progressions and the vocalist will start trying melodies on them.

I think that on vocalists we often focus a lot on the timbre and expression and tend to overlook the melodies. That's partly understandable because of the "melodies are from the songwriter" argument and also because, although we can make a reasonable guess at how would a song sound like sung by a different singer, it's basically impossible to guess which other melodies would a different singer have come up with being given the same backing music.

But this is quite different to what we do with instrumentalists. Often we focus on what they play and not so much on the particular sound patches or timbres they use. When we talk about how great is Hackett's solo in Firth Of Fifth we basically mean the melody, the particular sound contributes of course, but I guess if he had played it on a Stratocaster with a bit of a different timbre it would still be a great solo. Or in a drummer, we will concentrate more on what does he play, the rhythms, fills etc, and not so much on the particular timbre of his drum heads or how he has the kit tuned.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 03:06
^ Very true on pretty much all counts, ... but ...
Originally posted by Gerinski Gerinski wrote:

Or in a drummer, we will concentrate more on what does he play, the rhythms, fills etc, and not so much on the particular timbre of his drum heads or how he has the kit tuned.
Oh, I remember some exceptions to that. Mike Mangini got some feedback on the sound of the drums on Dream Theater, and Phil Collins' drum sound in the middle of "The Fountain of Salmacis" was once compared to the sound of a gavel.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - July 22 2014 at 03:07
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 09:05
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

I suspect that most of my favourite singers would rank very low on the technical 'chops' front (John Cale, Syd Barrett,  John Lydon, Mark E Smith, Robert Smith, Malcolm Mooney, John Wetton, David Byrne, Lou Reed, Robert Forster, Ray Davies, Stan Ridgway - the list goes on) but all have a unique timbre that even if not ostentatiously passionate, certainly emotes. Perhaps rock and blues forms are more forgiving of vocal technique than others? e.g. if someone is covering Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Billy Strayhorn, Harry Warren et al, unless they were blessed with a good technique it's likely they might render all the musical ideas as an approximate/sloppy parody. Having said that there are some singers on this site who are technically brilliant, very passionate and produce good lyrics like Arthur Brown, Christian Descamps, Demetrio Stratos, Richard Sinclair and Adrian Belew, (Not to mention several who have a beautiful timbre/texture but cannot string two words together i.e. Greg Lake, Jon Anderson, Roger Daltrey, Robert Plant, Ian Gillan,.. oops I just didWink)
Thumbs Up exactly this.


When this thread first appeared my immediate reaction after reading the OP was: Mark E Smith.


I suspect if I should attempt to analyse what qualities are important for me to consider a singer as a great singer it would be like trying to nail soot to plate or juggling jelly ... it'll get as messy as a mixed-metaphor.

The most gut-wrenchingly emotional vocal performance I have ever witnessed was John Cale at the Pheonix Festival in 1994. [Coincidentally The Fall played that day too]. I was exhausted from just listening to The World's Greatest Living Welshman sing to a tent-full of festival goers, most of whom I suspect were only waiting for The Pogues. I guess Cale would be the "box-ticker" for me if I were go down Gerard's list of important qualities, but it wouldn't make him a great singer by most standards. Unlike all other Rock musicians vocalist are more about personal taste and preference than any identifiable characteristics. It's not about breaking rules it's about what fits.
I agree with what both you and Iain are saying as I'm  currenting listening to and enjoying an acoustic album by Richard Thompson who I guess could be considered prog related due to his former connection to Fairport, but he is another rough vocalist that I prefer over prog singers. And most of my favorite vocalists are outside of prog, but when is it proper to bring them into prog discussions? I'm not criticising, just trying figure out when it's prudent to the discussion.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 09:36
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

I suspect that most of my favourite singers would rank very low on the technical 'chops' front (John Cale, Syd Barrett,  John Lydon, Mark E Smith, Robert Smith, Malcolm Mooney, John Wetton, David Byrne, Lou Reed, Robert Forster, Ray Davies, Stan Ridgway - the list goes on) but all have a unique timbre that even if not ostentatiously passionate, certainly emotes. Perhaps rock and blues forms are more forgiving of vocal technique than others? e.g. if someone is covering Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Billy Strayhorn, Harry Warren et al, unless they were blessed with a good technique it's likely they might render all the musical ideas as an approximate/sloppy parody. Having said that there are some singers on this site who are technically brilliant, very passionate and produce good lyrics like Arthur Brown, Christian Descamps, Demetrio Stratos, Richard Sinclair and Adrian Belew, (Not to mention several who have a beautiful timbre/texture but cannot string two words together i.e. Greg Lake, Jon Anderson, Roger Daltrey, Robert Plant, Ian Gillan,.. oops I just didWink)
Thumbs Up exactly this.


When this thread first appeared my immediate reaction after reading the OP was: Mark E Smith.


I suspect if I should attempt to analyse what qualities are important for me to consider a singer as a great singer it would be like trying to nail soot to plate or juggling jelly ... it'll get as messy as a mixed-metaphor.

The most gut-wrenchingly emotional vocal performance I have ever witnessed was John Cale at the Pheonix Festival in 1994. [Coincidentally The Fall played that day too]. I was exhausted from just listening to The World's Greatest Living Welshman sing to a tent-full of festival goers, most of whom I suspect were only waiting for The Pogues. I guess Cale would be the "box-ticker" for me if I were go down Gerard's list of important qualities, but it wouldn't make him a great singer by most standards. Unlike all other Rock musicians vocalist are more about personal taste and preference than any identifiable characteristics. It's not about breaking rules it's about what fits.
I agree with what both you and Iain are saying as I'm  currenting listening to and enjoying an acoustic album by Richard Thompson who I guess could be considered prog related due to his former connection to Fairport, but he is another rough vocalist that I prefer over prog singers. And most of my favorite vocalists are outside of prog, but when is it proper to bring them into prog discussions? I'm not criticising, just trying figure out when it's prudent to the discussion.
I would say it is impossible to confine this topic to Prog singers since comparisons to non-Prog singerists are inevitable and Prog doesn't have a unique singing style. It's like can we discuss guitar finger-tapping and only limit ourselves to Hackett and not mention EvH at all? I don't think that would be possible.


(Cale is in Prog Related so gets a free-pass anyway Wink)
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 10:43
Originally posted by Mirror Image Mirror Image wrote:


Originally posted by Ambient Hurricanes Ambient Hurricanes wrote:


Originally posted by Mirror Image Mirror Image wrote:


Originally posted by Ambient Hurricanes Ambient Hurricanes wrote:


Originally posted by Mirror Image Mirror Image wrote:


Originally posted by ebil0505 ebil0505 wrote:

I can't say really which one is more important to me. Some singers I absolutely hated when I first listened to them, and now it is the opposite that is true. I find that I should never give up on any singer, because eventually they will start to sound right to me.

Some examples are Jon Anderson and Fish and Peter Hammill. I love these singers, but at first they repelled me. That taught me that every singer deserves to be listened to, I think.

I just can't get into Fish or Peter Hammill. For Fish, the tonality of his voice is just annoying to me. For Hammill, it had to do with the way emotes his vocals and his delivery is just jarring to me. What both of these vocalists have in common, for me, is they just sing too much. One mouthful after another and there's no end in sight.
As in, "youbegintowonderifthepointsofalltheancientmythsaresolemnlydirected STRAIGHT AT YOU"?

Yep, you pretty much nailed it. Big smile
One of my favorite vocal moments ever LOL  But I can see your point.

Well it's not just the wordy vocals, I also can't stand a vocalist that just goes on and on. A good vocalist knows when to keep quiet.
A few of my favorite vocalists: David Gilmour, Peter Gabriel (though he about drives me crazy in The Battle Of Epping Forest and this is coming from a huge Genesis fan), Phil Collins (pre-commercial success), Greg Lake, Joanne Hogg, and Geddy Lee.


Those are some good vocalists, and I remember when I first heard Fish it was Script for a Jester's Tear. As soon as he started screaming "the game is OOOOOOooooooooooverrrrr!!!" I almost cried out in agony myself. It sounded horrifying.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 11:24
Originally posted by ebil0505 ebil0505 wrote:

I remember when I first heard Fish it was Script for a Jester's Tear. As soon as he started screaming "the game is OOOOOOooooooooooverrrrr!!!" I almost cried out in agony myself. It sounded horrifying.
That's nothing, me and my mates band covered it and you should have heard it by our singer, compared to him Fish was Caruso LOL  (not that my incarnation of Mark Kelly was spectacular either Embarrassed )
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 11:24
Originally posted by Gerinski Gerinski wrote:

While many bands have certainly the figure of the songwriter who comes up with the vocal melody lines too, I believe that there are also many cases where the vocal melodies are in big part contribution of the vocalist himself, like the bands starts jamming on some riffs or chord progressions and the vocalist will start trying melodies on them.

I think that on vocalists we often focus a lot on the timbre and expression and tend to overlook the melodies. That's partly understandable because of the "melodies are from the songwriter" argument and also because, although we can make a reasonable guess at how would a song sound like sung by a different singer, it's basically impossible to guess which other melodies would a different singer have come up with being given the same backing music.


Even apart from jamming, as such there is a vast gulf between how a non singer or a rudimentary singer would render a melody and how a great singer would do it.  In my regional music culture, we have had opportunities to see or rather hear this gulf because some songs were recorded in different versions by the composer as well as a good singer.  In rock, such opportunities to actually evaluate it don't exist but I doubt the situation would be very different.  If Tipton was such a fantastic singer, Judas Priest wouldn't have had Halford as their frontman. 

I would reasonably guess that in the case of bands who specifically have a person to do the singing (as separate from the one who does all the songwriting), the songwriter would probably not be a very good singer, at least not good enough to do justice to his own songs.  That is why in many guitar oriented bands, the lead guitarist doubles up as a singer because if he can do it reasonably well, he wouldn't need somebody else to do the singing.   You raise a good point on how often the melody itself is ignored in talking about the singing.  This does not take into account the fact that it also needs a really good singer to do justice to a good melody...it's not as if any tom, dick and harry can sing it and it would still be good.  None of this is to diminish the role of songwriting in any way, but great delivery is what reveals the very existence of a good song in the first place.  If it was rendered in a very mediocre way, we wouldn't be talking about it irrespective of the quality of the composition.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 11:29
To further buttress my above point, Close To You was rendered by a few singers, pretty prominent ones at that before Karen Carpenter sung it and suddenly a song that had not clicked for the other artists became a no.1 hit.  

Edited by rogerthat - July 22 2014 at 11:52
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 11:54
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

... I'm currently listening to and enjoying an acoustic album by Richard Thompson who I guess could be considered prog related due to his former connection to Fairport, ... .
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa ... no. We do not include artists by association. Thompson as a solo artist isn't prog, nor did he influence the prog scene as a solo artist ... that I know of. We might as well include both him and his ex Linda here.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - July 22 2014 at 11:55
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 13:50
Originally posted by Dayvenkirq Dayvenkirq wrote:



Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

... I'm currently listening to and enjoying an acoustic album by Richard Thompson who I guess could be considered prog related due to his former connection to Fairport, ... .
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa ... no. We do not include artists by association. Thompson as a solo artist isn't prog, nor did he influence the prog scene as a solo artist ... that I know of. We might as well include both him and his ex Linda here.
Strange, PA lists the late great Bert Jansch's solo albums both before and after his tenure with Pentangle, but not Pentangle's other ace axman John Renbourn. What's the deal with that? Something is strange in the state of Denmark.

Edited by SteveG - July 22 2014 at 13:59
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 14:03
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

Originally posted by Dayvenkirq Dayvenkirq wrote:



Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

... I'm currently listening to and enjoying an acoustic album by Richard Thompson who I guess could be considered prog related due to his former connection to Fairport, ... .
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa ... no. We do not include artists by association. Thompson as a solo artist isn't prog, nor did he influence the prog scene as a solo artist ... that I know of. We might as well include both him and his ex Linda here.
Strange, PA lists the late great Bert Jansch's solo albums both before and after his tenure with Pentangle. What's the deal with that?
"before and after" is irrelevant - the modus operandi here is to list the artist's entire discography regardless of the genre of each album - if he'd released a gospel-skiffle album in 1962 it would be listed here. For Jansch to be listed in Prog Folk as a solo artist means the Prog Folk team decided that at least part of his discography was eligible for inclusion as Prog Folk albums [I'm neither familiar with Jansch solo work nor an expert on Prog Folk so this is not simply my opinion]. One thing that is certain is he is not listed in Prog Folk because of his association with Pentangle - if that was the only reason then he would be in Prog Related along side Syd Barrett and Greg Lake. 


Edited by Dean - July 22 2014 at 14:09
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 14:06
^I see said the blind man.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 20:36
Originally posted by ebil0505 ebil0505 wrote:

Originally posted by Mirror Image Mirror Image wrote:


Originally posted by Ambient Hurricanes Ambient Hurricanes wrote:


Originally posted by Mirror Image Mirror Image wrote:


Originally posted by Ambient Hurricanes Ambient Hurricanes wrote:


Originally posted by Mirror Image Mirror Image wrote:


Originally posted by ebil0505 ebil0505 wrote:

I can't say really which one is more important to me. Some singers I absolutely hated when I first listened to them, and now it is the opposite that is true. I find that I should never give up on any singer, because eventually they will start to sound right to me.

Some examples are Jon Anderson and Fish and Peter Hammill. I love these singers, but at first they repelled me. That taught me that every singer deserves to be listened to, I think.

I just can't get into Fish or Peter Hammill. For Fish, the tonality of his voice is just annoying to me. For Hammill, it had to do with the way emotes his vocals and his delivery is just jarring to me. What both of these vocalists have in common, for me, is they just sing too much. One mouthful after another and there's no end in sight.
As in, "youbegintowonderifthepointsofalltheancientmythsaresolemnlydirected STRAIGHT AT YOU"?

Yep, you pretty much nailed it. Big smile
One of my favorite vocal moments ever LOL  But I can see your point.

Well it's not just the wordy vocals, I also can't stand a vocalist that just goes on and on. A good vocalist knows when to keep quiet.
A few of my favorite vocalists: David Gilmour, Peter Gabriel (though he about drives me crazy in The Battle Of Epping Forest and this is coming from a huge Genesis fan), Phil Collins (pre-commercial success), Greg Lake, Joanne Hogg, and Geddy Lee.


Those are some good vocalists, and I remember when I first heard Fish it was Script for a Jester's Tear. As soon as he started screaming "the game is OOOOOOooooooooooverrrrr!!!" I almost cried out in agony myself. It sounded horrifying.

I know what you mean. Fish is just so hard to stomach. How do you feel about Hogarth? I'm still 'on the fence' with his vocal work.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 22 2014 at 21:34
All of these qualities are important for me in a singer.
                My favorite singer is the late Helmut Koellen. One of the most beautiful and naturally musical voices I have ever heard, anywhere. He had a deep and golden delivery. Not one to shreik or scream for the super high notes, he had no need for that. Check him on his solo album You Won't See Me if you can locate it.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 23 2014 at 14:59
^I was listening to Mark Levin (American conservative talk show host) last night (not by my choice; I was in the car with family); he was listing off a series of great conservative thinkers and I could swear I heard him say "Helmut Koellen."  I don't know how he would fit into the mix.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 23 2014 at 15:06
Originally posted by Ambient Hurricanes Ambient Hurricanes wrote:

^I was listening to Mark Levin (American conservative talk show host) last night (not by my choice; I was in the car with family); he was listing off a series of great conservative thinkers and I could swear I heard him say "Helmut Koellen."  I don't know how he would fit into the mix.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 23 2014 at 15:08
My guess is a misheard "Helmut Kohl" 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 23 2014 at 15:09
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

My guess is a misheard "Helmut Kohl" 
The world just got bigger.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 23 2014 at 16:45
What makes a great singer in my opinion is the act of serving the song, instead of making the song serve you.

If the song is just a platform for you to promote yourself and what a diva you are, then I'm not interested.

What has always interested me about Peter Gabriel, Jon Anderson, Sting, John Wetton, Bruce Dickinson, Simon LeBon, Bono, Robert Plant, Geddy Lee, and so many others is the quality of submerging their own personality in service of the song. You get the feeling that what they have to say is more important than who is saying it.

Transatlantic is a great demonstration of the difference between singers. Roine Stolt has a humble voice, but he serves the song completely. Neal Morse has a great voice, but his own person gets in the way of whatever he is trying to sing. It's about Neal, no matter what the words say.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 23 2014 at 17:04
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

My guess is a misheard "Helmut Kohl" 
Most likely. There is absolutely nothing in the English language about Mr. Koellen's personal political or social views. Believe me, I would know. Maybe in German. Who knows?
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