I'm Not the Only One (Sam Smith)

This is my attempt to study / learn a legit pop song - written by 22 year old Sam Smith and his partner James Napier.  At first I liked it, but now I'm sick of it as are my neighbors I'm sure - but this happens every time I try to record a song. 

I was trying to figure out that Pop voice quality on this one which is... well you know it when you hear it on a CD or on the radio.  I've theorized that its hard to practice / develop this tone because the technique demands resonating on / in a very "narrow" space where you are very vulnerable to tightening up in the throat or just over taxing it or resulting in a very small sound.  I can imagine voice teachers everywhere saying its a bad technique which I can kinda agree with because if you're trying to learn to sing then you might as well learn the classical style which is way more open and rich and has lots of important repertoire and you can leverage this traditional sound into other styles down the road - so yes from this perspective its relatively less good.  Classical guitar is the same - If you learn classical rep then you'll be set up for success to learn pretty much all the other genres...except for ones where you use a pick...which I guess is everything else...

These new microphones sound awesome.  This time I used the free program Audacity because Garageband is such a nightmare for me to use - but maybe its just me.

The set-up

Challenges

 - Range - lowest note is an octave and a half away from the highest note

 - Crescendo on a F# in the passagio which is super hard and annoying to do consistently each time

 - Hard NOT to end up just shouting during climax on high notes

 - Tricky rhythm on guitar part is vulnerable to speeding up when played against tricky vocal part.  Difficult to keep a steady pulse.

Ishida