Right. You just made my argument stronger. Vocal chords has wayyyy more to do with genetic luck (can you scream like Axl Rose? Can you sing like Josh Groban? Etc...) Or if you aren't technically great do you have a super unique voice that people enjoy hearing?

Kinda proves my point. Though, with autotune, everyone thinks they can sing and genetics are less of a factor.

Is that not what I was saying from the start? What I was disagreeing with was that the same was true for something like the piano.

"Piano and vocal chords shouldn't really be compared as instruments on the same level, as vocal chords are fundamentally different to musical instruments in that each person's vocal chords are unique, whereas every piano in the world sounds (well, essentially) the same. If I was singing with Josh Groban's voice, it would indeed all come down to skill (technical/musical/etc) like on a piano, but I'm not, so there are more factors in play. Which is why I'll probably never sound like Josh Groban."

" If I was singing with Josh Groban's voice, it would indeed all come down to skill (technical/musical/etc) like on a piano"

This is the crux of the thing. You think that Josh Groban just woke up with Josh Groban's voice and that the work that he does in singing lessons etc (if you even believe he has those, if not you are very naieve, he has a full time vocal coach who works with people at the Met) is related to learning pieces, staying in tune, etc, whereas in reality the majority of his lessons especially initially are related to improving his vocal tone which most people think he just woke up with or is a product of his genetics.

The genetics play a tiny role in determining the quality of his tone but the majority of the richness comes from learning how to control the body, building up and coordinating the musculature in the body, being aware of small changes in your mouth and how they affect tone and pronunciation etc is what most people like Groban study until they basically are professionals, then they still usually keep it up improving the quality of their vocal tone.

You can learn this stuff by emulating other singers and just kind of unconsciously having your body do the right thing to get the better sounding tone, but someone like Josh Groban definitely knows the optimal place and shape his tongue and lips make when he sings the letter E if he wants to maximise resonance for example, as well as about a billion other things that are learnt when learning how to sing with a good vocal tone. It's a whole craft that has been worked on over hundreds of years, how to control breath etc. Pretty much every top level singer has a vocal coach, and the majority of the technique lessons are based on Bel Canto singing technique developed hundreds of years ago and advanced since then.

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it might help to listen to another pair of random example tracks i recorded:

the first is my band, about 2 years ago:
http://alexeimartov.bandcamp.com/tra...en-grass-blues

the second is some average classical singing from my last singing lesson- (
https://martinbradstreet.bandcamp.co...k/caro-mio-ben.

learning to sing like the second link with greater resonance, power etc but poor emotional performance, kind of pitchy, but some vocal technique is learnable by anyone that isn't tone deaf. the techniques apply to all styles of singing.

keep in mind that many people told me to stop singing in very much the same way you mentioned above or worse about 3 years ago as they thought my voice sounded bad. i just kept working at it and still am. thing was they had no idea why it was and probably put it down to genetics or fate or some ****. genetics is almost never the case, probably as common as people that are obese because of genetics. you also never even find out if you have good genetics for singing until you've actually been singing for a while (eg can sing in tune etc).

I feel like we're all probably just talking past each other at this point. Let's see some more piano covers, maybe!

fair enough sorry for hijack.

I don't know enough about singing to even know if the Caro Mio Ben track is even considered good singing.

its not really. i guess my point wasn't clear, was just trying to show that vocal tone is really just something that is learnable / changeable and that the people who have what you probably think is natural genetics giving them great tone have actually sat down and spent thousands of hours doing exercises etc to improve their tone (usually on top of their interesting sounding voice at the top level of music).

So Fabian should invest thousands of hours into his voice? Why? Because there is a 0.00001% chance that he's a great singer?

You aren't thinking practically, we are not given infinite hours in our life.

People telling him to stop singing are trying to be logical and make a judgment. We might be wrong but it's a really slim chance.

Encouragement is what moms are for.

haha alright then.

I'm working on Awolnation's Sail right now. I'm not any good at keyboard though but it's a fun one to play.

Anyone else covered this?

Heard of them, but not familiar. Hook us up A-Rod!

I pretty much got it down. It's not too hard. I just watch the synthesia videos on YT then try to memorize. I play a pretty bare-bones version with the left hand though.

I don't have a YT account so I would need to create one to upload it. Do I need a gmail account to set up YT?

Nah... I set mine up with my ancient Hotmail addy.

Just uploaded this cover... Please check it out, it's my first time on the piano.

http://youtu.be/3-mYq_S1z_8

Wow that's really nice.

You've got a really good voice. Piano sounds good too, barring the tuning issues.

Thanks guys! I was a bit worried about the vocal.. I didn't spend as much time practicing it as I did the keys.

The piano is out of tune?!?! I think the second A and the 6th F are a bit wonky but besides that idk. I'm due for a free tune up from the store I bought it from but I'm pretty sure they got bought out by another company so I might be fudged.

I'll post some more covers in the future. I had fun making this. Thanks again

What did you mean by "it's my first time on the piano" ?

By the way your voice kinda sounds like the guy from owl city

Hey A-rod. That's my first video of me playing piano and singing. I've done other vids before but they were all guitars. This was a lot of fun, I could use the experience for recording and performing purposes. By now I've accumulated more hours recording than I have performing. I'd like to do more of these to keep things in balance!

I've heard that Owl City thing before! The guy who wrote this told me it had a Ben Folds vibe with my vocal. Here's the original:

http://jlsongs.com/lostagain.html

I remember in college I had an argument with a roommate where he took a similar position with regard to "appreciation of jazz". Specifically he put forth that he had as much ability to "appreciate jazz" as did I, at the time a semi serious student of the genre. This was before I had acquired a robust etymological understanding of the word appreciate. But my point was that he was wrong, although my arguments to that end were at the time technically flawed.

Your contention that anyone singing is a singer and that degrees of skill are a matter of opinion are easily dismissed. Singing is a skill (much) more easily quantifiable than poker because there is no random element. Piano is still more easily quantifiable.

I play the piano. You also play the piano if we adopt similar standards by which to judge what constitutes a piano player, or at least you could also rise to that status by the mere act of striking keys in any order or none in particular. So would you admit that inexpert opinion notwithstanding there exists a test by which I could quickly prove my skill advantage over you on the keys? If you say no then I would respectfully inform you of your error and state my willingness to disprove you. If you concede then I would ask what differs beyond the superficial between a specified instrument and any other. Do the underlying skills not share a root facility, innate yet requiring refinement as the work of yeast? That is not a rhetorical question but a dichotomous one.

if you're learning songs and singing them start to finish, especially if it's to an audience, you're a singer. i don't really care where the definition starts personally but this much is clear to me. if you're learning piano songs and playing them to other people, you're a piano player (i'd say pianist save the connotations).

if you can play some covers on guitar, you're a guitarist. you might suck, but its still something you spend time doing and if you want to self identify that way, so be it. the idea that someone can say 'no you're not' in the singing situation is unique as no one would say to someone 'you're not a guitarist' after that person played Wonder-wall passably. People just think they have a right to tell singers they can't sing for some reason, and i believe it is rooted in the belief that people think being a singer of skill is not a continuum in exactly the way that being a pianist is- they simply think if someone sounds bad at a given moment, then they are not a singer, and if they sound good, then they are lucky they got born with such a nice voice.

i agree that some people are better than others and that banging on the keys doesn't make you a pianist- but if you are self identifying as a pianist as you spend time banging away at the piano with some kind of intention towards expressing yourself, what else do you really need.