MafiaScum Idol Season 1 (And the winner is...)

[toolenduso]

I might do this. When do you need entries by?

[toolenduso]

Entered! Let me know if I did anything wrong.

I don't know how I'm gonna do but I guess I just gotta have faith in myself

[toolenduso]

Question: Are you going to post all the entries for everyone to listen to?

[toolenduso]

Ah, so awesome to hear all these. Great job people!

Viz, I liked yours and thought you sang well. I also understand being nervous and/or anxious about something like this, so I think you need to decide for yourself.

@Malk, I did not realize just how much reverb it was putting on my voice until you pointed it out. I'll take a look and see if I can figure out how to turn that off.

[toolenduso]

If you're a little tech savvy you could try Audacity. That's what I used. I captured my desktop audio for the song, and then recorded myself a few times singing, and then used the best portions for the final mix.

I've used Audacity before but I'm a fan of how SingSnap allows me to be very lazy. I also was not aware that it can take vocals out of a song, that's neat-o

[toolenduso]

Yeah, I really miss going out to karaoke with friends

[toolenduso]

I think that maybe people could be allowed to opt in for either public or private constructive criticism if they want it.

I kinda like that idea.

I don't think SingSnap's gonna work for me this time, it's doing this weird thing where my voice is either way quieter than the music or it's clipping horribly. Probably specific to the song I chose, which has a pretty wide volume range between the verses and choruses, but w/e...trying to figure out the vocal removal effect in Audacity.

[toolenduso]

Submitted. Had some clipping in my final entry but it's not too bad...I don't think, anyway

[toolenduso]

Oh, and I know you said it doesn’t really matter but I feel I should clarify — I am not the one playing guitar in my entry. I found an instrumental cover to sing over.

[toolenduso]

I try not to comment on other entries (since I don't want to accidentally slight the people I DON'T mention), but I'll just say I would have given toolenduso a super high score.

Aw thank you Mina!

Can't wait to listen to all these, and I am very happy flubber picked Chop Suey. I love SOAD, and I kind of thought they were one of those bands that people should just avoid for karaoke until I was pleasantly surprised when somebody did Toxicity and it worked wonderfully.

Also malk, I'm not sure what you mean by this part ("lift"), can you explain?

My recommendation is if you can take a little lift before hitting those high notes, that will help give you the breath support in order to hit those notes without straining your voice.

[toolenduso]

I will say, there might be some songs that qualify as Broadway/musicals you'd be surprised by. The Little Mermaid, The Lion King and Fiddler on the Roof were all on stage, so you could do Under the Sea, I Just Can't Wait to Be King, Hakuna Matata or If I Were A Rich Man. Mamma Mia used Abba songs, Jersey Boys used Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons songs, Rock of Ages used tons of rock songs...I mean, I don't want to speak for Malkon here, but I do think you probably have more options than you realize.

[toolenduso]

Queen has a musical

waaaaaaaaaaa I need to look this up

[toolenduso]

I'm not sure what song I'm going to do but I've spent a good chunk of the day listening to songs from musicals so that's a plus

[toolenduso]

OK I think I've got a take I'm happy with. Malk, do you want entries submitted via PM again?

[toolenduso]

Sent! I had a lot of fun with this one, so thanks to Mina for the category.

[toolenduso]

ahhhh thank you so much!

I actually just saw Hamilton for the first time recently so I had to spend most of the submission period just learning the song, but I'm happy I picked it because, well, it's super fun, and also as it happens it's like perfectly within my range. I was definitely trying to channel Jonathan Groff, but I discovered during recording that it's very hard for me to scrub the emo inflections from my voice.

I'm excited to hear everyone's entries!

Uhhhhhhh I'm torn between a couple categories let me think about it

[toolenduso]

OK I might end up regretting this but let's do GENDER BENDER HERE WE GOOOOO

time to gend some bends

[toolenduso]

let me know if anyone wants specific feedback from me - this is probably the one category I'd feel comfortable talking about

Oh yeah, I'll sign up for this.

Also /in

/in in case it wasn't clear

I am /in as well

[toolenduso]

Go outside and scream, "You can't take the kids from me god damn it Karen" at the top of your lungs for 30 seconds, it opens your vocal tract and has lots of different vowel sounds

Fun spin on this -- shout a different name every time you do it to

really

keep your neighbors interested.

All Star by Smashmouth

NGL, this is on my list of future possible karaoke songs.

Ugh changed my mind. I’m really struggling with choosing a song, does anyone have any suggestions?

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh let's see, I'll throw out some random ones:

-Helena by My Chemical Romance
-I Will Follow You Into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie
-Somebody Told Me (or When You Were Young, or Mr. Brightside...) by The Killers
-Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard
-Thinkin Bout You by Frank Ocean

[toolenduso]

Thank you! Apologies for not getting it in yet, I think I'm having a hard time remembering the difference between song contest deadlines and idol deadlines, so I thought I had until end of day and then I checked and realized I did not. I will definitely have it in by this time tomorrow!

[toolenduso]

I finally submitted! This category turned out to be much harder than I expected, and I wound up switching songs after I realized I couldn't figure out how to do my first pick without straight wrecking my voice. But I did have fun doing the one I settled on!

Really excited to see what everybody else does.

[toolenduso]

Errata:

-My original pick was I Need a Hero by Bonnie Tyler. She kinda yells for a lot of that song, and it was hard to keep up with. I considered going low for that song too, but it didn't sound as good as going low for I Will Survive.
-Rolling In the Deep was on my shortlist! Flubber, you did great with it.
-Sorry to see you go, Aris! I'll miss your entries. You were the only one brave enough to go on camera (so far)!
-Hellfire was a very fun choice and that last note was awesome, lilith
-Not sure what it is, but Mina's voice sounds especially great on the minor notes of Still Loving You

[toolenduso]

So I started watching that Eurovision movie on Netflix because Khan said it was good, and that's when I realized that Eurovision contestants perform

original

songs and not covers like I thought. So I looked up the most famous Eurovision songs and I have heard exactly one of them, and I have heard that song like maybe once before in my entire life. Soooooooo assuming we have to do a Eurovision-themed round at some point, that is not gonna be easy.

[toolenduso]

I have entered, here is a clue about what I entered

[toolenduso]

Rabble

[toolenduso]

Ok, to explain my clue from earlier. Let the Mystery Be was used as the intro for season two of The Leftovers (a fantastic show), and it was truly an excellent choice, both for that season and for the show in general. I find the message especially cool given the genre, which is known for being very rah-rah America and Christian and redneck, etc. Here comes Iris DeMent saying "live and let live" while acknowledging non-Christian beliefs and being great at what she does.

Anyway, The Leftovers was equal parts depression, craziness and Justin Theroux's abs:



Seriously, they made that man take off his shirt so many times.

[toolenduso]

Submitted! Lottttttttts of mic issues, but what're ya gonna do. Happy to even record this song, it's one I've loved a long time and has a lot of fun bits.

Also, I've been waiting for two people to choose the same song and I feel like this is the round it'll happen.

[toolenduso]

I am drunk and ready for resulllllllllts

[toolenduso]

Know what the best animated song is

Get Schwifty

[toolenduso]

Wait the song with Mickey Mouse and the brooms

[toolenduso]

Shyuss

[toolenduso]

It was from that thing

Where a person

Was giving avatars

To other people

[toolenduso]

Ok I expected everyone to do my song but then everyone* did part of your world

*two people

[toolenduso]

Some notes:

-For those wondering, yes, I am aware that it's "with all the

force

of a great typhoon." I've struggled to get that one right for like most of my life. "Force" and "strength" are so similar in my head, and the rhythm is exactly the same, etc.
-Because of the harmonies I never puzzled out exactly how Donny Osmond sang the very last "dark side of the moon" in that song until I started recording for this round. Once I figured out how he went up for all of those words and not just for the word "moon," I felt this miniature thrill because, well, harmonies are awesome, and this song is excellent at building up the energy.
-Donny Osmond did so freaking great with this song, and hearing how it came out when I sang it I gained a new appreciation for how well his singing supported the character. He sounded so authoritative and measured. I didn't know for a long time that it was a different singer for Li Shang than the performer who did the spoken parts (BD Wong), and I think a big part of that is because Osmond's voice felt like such a natural extension of Wong's delivery and the animation of the character.
-Damn lilith really held out that note at the end.
-Malkon's notes about emotional depth are interesting to me, they seem like a very tangible way to play around with different approaches to a song that I want to try out in the future. Honestly I usually just try to capture what I love most about the original performance, and volume/breath/style control could be a way to help match that but it could also be a way to take the emotional qualities of a song in a different direction.
-Ngl, I forgot there was music in Anastasia, but I liked that one. And I am always impressed when somebody can sing while dealing with throat issues and still rock it.

[toolenduso]

My song choice was perhaps a tad ambitious but I love the song and I'm happy I did it

frickin falsettos are

killer

, man

[toolenduso]

*a tad too ambitious

[toolenduso]

Ooh interesting.

Idk, there was a lot of male falsetto going on in the 70s

[toolenduso]

Oh flubber I think I just realized what song you’re thinking of and that is not the one I did. Though in retrospect my choice of words does make it seem that way

[toolenduso]

I put fairly strict rules on myself for karaoke song choice, and that’s one of the nice things about this contest because we can do multiple takes instead of risking it live

[toolenduso]

just feeling a bit overwhelmed with life at the moment <3

if it hadn't been 70s songs I'd probably have kept going, but I really really struggled with finding a song and was having flashbacks to earlier rounds that sucked for me and didn't think it was going to be worth it. I changed my mind at the last minute but then couldn't find a good song anyway so

my Eurovision pick would have been Rise Like a Phoenix

Sorry to see you go lilith!

As a note, I will allow songs from the Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga movie that released on netflix earlier this year.

[toolenduso]

Submitted

This has been the hardest round for me

Much clipping

Very wow

[toolenduso]

The fact that there was no ABBA in this round is 100% due to this rule:

As a note, I will allow songs from the Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga movie that released on netflix earlier this year.

[toolenduso]

Notes:

-So when I picked Lion of Love, I was kind of like, "Oh this will be a fun silly song that won't take a ton of effort!" And then I was very wrong. That song requires either excellent control or huge volume, and since I don't have excellent control, I went with volume, and it was a frickin battle to get through the whole song every time I tried.
-I've been recording with my personal laptop up until this round, and the built-in mic was terrible, so my wife suggested for this round that I try her work laptop, which is a mac. So I did, and the built-in mic was waaaaaay better.
-One of the ways it's better is at handling clipping. There are two moments in the song where it was clipping: "won't get away this

time

" and on that last big "meet the lion of

love

." On my personal laptop that would've sounded like total garbage, but on the mac it wasn't too bad!
-Just to get that last big, drawn-out "love" to even be recordable, I held the laptop as far away from my body as I could and turned my head around as far as it would go. I think you can tell in the recording that my voice suddenly sounds farther away even though it's louder. It still clipped.
-Wow Dschingis Khan is silly. A lot of fun. Haschel, you did a great job selling all the weirdo vocalizations and stuff.
-Anyone else think Rise Like a Phoenix sounds like a theme song to a Bond movie?
-Sad to see Bella cut... I know that's the whole idea of the contest, but still.

[toolenduso]

Omg toolenuso that intro was epic

Lol thank you. It's a silly song, so it inspired me to be silly. Come to think of it, it's exactly the kind of campiness the drummer of my college band desperately wanted me to embrace on stage...guess I owe it to him.

I have no idea how my entry this round is going to go over, but it's one of my favorite picks I've done so far so I'm kind of enjoying just doing a bunch of takes. I also had it in mind for a couple rounds before this one.

[toolenduso]

Aw yay!

Also wow those are some twists coming down the pipe!

[toolenduso]

Notes:

-The reason my voice is so much clearer this round is that I got a USB mic -- a cheap one, but still leaps and bounds better than my laptop's built-in mic. It's especially helpful that it came with a foam cover to help prevent those Ps and Bs from ruining things.
-It was a hugely different recording experience as a result of having the mic. For one thing it started picking up the speaker audio, which meant I had to wear earphones to play the track instead of listening to it out of the computer while singing. It allowed me to sing with less volume, which gave me more style options. The biggest thing is that it was picking up on every little thing I did so much more clearly that it really forced me to play closer attention to how I was singing and be more conscious of the little things.
-I was surprised to find that the hardest part of that song for me was the rhythm. It's got some weirdness in there, and moments when things don't start when you expect them to. With that last three words, for example, I couldn't figure out the right way to place them until the very last take, which is the one I submitted.
-I had the song in mind for a few rounds because my wife and I randomly decided to watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory a little while ago and I had forgotten how much I liked that song. It's really very beautiful, both musically and lyrically. And Gene Wilder brought so much personality to it.
-Malkon wasn't kidding when he said this was a great round, damn! They were all really good. My favorite pieces were the softer bits in Flub's, the highest notes in HC's and the downward-falling vocal flourishes in Mina's (hope you know what I mean, that's the best way I know how to describe them).
-I had no idea Nine Inch Nails wrote a song for a Lynch movie, but it also does not surprise me in the slightest.
-I find myself both happy that nobody had to be cut this round and scared of the double cut coming this next round.

[toolenduso]

Oh man, I'm sorry Malkon. Hope it turns out all right.

[toolenduso]

Yay!

[toolenduso]

Also sorry to see Flub and Haschel go. I just want to keep singing with everybody!

[toolenduso]

Go Mina!

[toolenduso]

Lol I was trying to find this ridiculous YouTube video I saw a while ago where one wrestler is trash talking another using like...some warped version of statistics. Couldn't find it. So I'll just publicly root for you instead!

[toolenduso]

Yes!!!!! That's the one. Thank you Davsto.

Uh, just pretend it's me trash talking Mina I guess

[toolenduso]

Congratulations Mina! You did a great job. I'll post some more thoughts in a bit, like probably tomorrow.

[toolenduso]

Thoughts:

-This contest was a ton of fun. I think I mentioned earlier that I'd been pretty sad about not being able to do karaoke because of the pandemic. I love singing, and I love singing for other people, so I was very happy to have this place to do that.
-Thanks to Malkon for running it, especially in the middle of apocalyptic fires. This was a sensitive thing and it required the right kind of personality to run it. You did a great job hosting.
-Everyone did a great job, and I loved being surprised by what people chose in each round and hearing how they did it. It kind of made me sad that the nature of the contest was people getting eliminated each round because then there were fewer entries to listen to.
-The process of practicing and recording gave me newfound appreciation for the singers whose songs I was doing. You learn so much about what it takes to sing, you notice brilliant little choices you never noticed before, you find things that didn't seem that hard to do but very much are once you're the one in front of the mic. Frank Ocean in particular, hoo boy. He makes the falsetto sound so effortless and beautiful. It took me considerably more effort to make that happen.
-At first I was a little irked at having to go learn new songs in some rounds because I just wanted to go cover all the songs I already knew and loved, but by the end I wound up appreciating the fact that we had a new theme each round. It forced me to branch out and now, looking back over all the rounds, I see how much variety and ground we covered. I especially liked learning For Forever because I hadn't heard that (or anything from Dear Evan Hansen) before and it's a really striking, unique, powerful song.
-I do feel like I learned a thing or two about singing during this. The "lift" was new to me, and learning about it gave me a lot more information about what and where my soft palate is and how to control it. I did the same vocal warm up video on YouTube every time and messing around with different octaves during that video helped me more clearly understand the limits of my range. And I definitely learned a few things about singing in falsetto, and about sustaining it.

edit: wait, that did not need to be spoiler'd