My Voice

[Etherealite]

Hello! I am new to this forum, and I would love to get to know you. Here is me singing, tell me what you think!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34J0hJXfi_M

I love singing so so much!  This song is especially haunting; I adore it so much! Here are the lyric translation:

"Along the quay, the great ships, that ride the swell in silence, take no notice of the cradles. that the hands of the women rock. But the day of farewells will come, when the women must weep, and curious men are tempted towards the horizons that lure them! And that day the great ships, sailing away from the diminishing port, feel their bulk held back by the spirits of the distant cradles."

<3

Etherealite

[knight66]

Interesting and distinctive voice. Always a work in progress, both voice and the sheer learning of the piece.

Mike

[Xenophanes]

Pretty free voice production, nice voice quality, consistent tone production.  I like the way you float the tones on the voice, and sing the consonants on pitch.

I have done this song for many decades, and it is hard for me to remember just how it was when I was learning it and other songs when I was much younger. It is a song which makes some vocal demands with its long phrases. I think you have to be able to get through them without taking a breath. Now, interpretively, you may wish to take a breath some places but it should be at your control, not because you have to.

You need to learn the song better. The 12/8 time signature is fairly unusual, and you don't get some of the note values right. Your accompanist seems quite competent, and should coach you on this.  Personally, I count it in 4. Maybe this has happened already. My advice is to improve your technical musical skills. I would learn songs a lot easier if I read music better than I do.

Also, really knowing the song well is a great help vocally.  A lot of singing is confidence, and you can't be confident if you don't know the song. You do a lot the song quite well, and I think you are quite capable of doing it very well.

You French pronunciation is not consistent. I note especially the final "e" in ce, que, balance, tentent, leurent, and also the "e" sounds in re-ten- nu-e. It is pronounced "uh." Now, I found an excellent, if somewhat amusing, lesson in pronouncing the words in Les berceaux on Youtube. The teacher really makes her points!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDgcYfrbaJ8

I hesitate to provide links to someone singing the song well because there is always the temptation to imitate the voice of a great singer, which might be fine if your voice is similar---but that is not likely. You must learn to sing within your vocal limitations, and theirs are probably different from yours.  You have to develop an interpretation with your voice and personality.  So I will give recording by a couple of men. Jose van Dam is a singer you could not imitate, and he seems to me to do the song very well and his French seems excellent to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGG0Cbpp6yI

Leonard Warren did a fine job, and his French is OK, too. That recording is where I first encountered the song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iHvpcaMnfU

Good luck. Singing is a great sport--I mean that, because it is a very physical activity.

[zamyrabyrd]

You have a lot of courage in posting your own performance in such a forum. Even in our best hours, there will be something to criticize or even nitpick. It's great you love to sing. Everything proceeds from the desire and along the way we pick up the tools to get where we want to go. So there is encouragement here for a good journey ahead of you!
As for specifics, I personally think the key is too low for you. If you read the thread on vibrato and some of the links, there is something to think about here but moreover, to work on these issues with a good teacher.
The tone should be more focused, that is, controlled. This is the nitty-gritty work of a singer and doesn't ever stop in one's lifetime.

ZB