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I didn’t earn the nickname Eddie Van Tonedeaf without reason and it was FAR worse with singing than it was guitar playing. It took 15 years of bombing onstage regularly before I felt I could sing a set and walk away saying “that wasn’t terrible” 15 years. The *only* thing that got me recognizing pitch and then executing stuff vocally was sheer force of will. If you asked *anyone* who was there during that 15 years if I was a “natural singer” they’d hit the floor laughing their asses off.
It’s not like I had some belief I was good during that time, there was a lot of very confusing periods where I thought I was doing ok and then someone would point out “Dude you’re 1/4 step flat the WHOLE time, how do you not hear that?” and I honestly couldn’t. One of my roommates threw auto tune on something I recorded and it sounded like T-Pain after and the auto tune wasn’t even cranked. Or the first band I was in that paid someone to record us and when it came time for me to do vocals, the dude stopped after 4 hours and suggested I work with a vocal coach because we got maybe one line of one song done when I was in there to bang out 3 songs in a day. The voice I heard in my head was about 5 steps higher than what was actually coming out of my mouth and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how to get my inner ear aligned with my sense of pitch.
The only way I was ‘getting there’ was trial and error of people telling me when I finally got it, so I’d then go off muscle memory and that’s what eventually led to me blowing my throat out. When that happened I was actually relieved, because I felt like “F*ck it, whatever ability I had is now gone and I can’t afford to get surgery, so I just don’t have to worry about it anymore”, but it kept gnawing at me and after 2 years I said “I want to record this music and I want it sung a certain way, there’s only one way that’s going to happen” and 2 years was just enough time to forget some bad habits while creating a willingness to be completely wrong about everything I learned before.
And it’s not like I’m some accomplished singer or great in any way now, I’ll always be pushing to be better, but that was a 25 year journey to not suck. 99.9% of people I know would have quit or resigned with “I wasn’t born to be a singer”, I just refused to believe that to be the truth and ignored all the voices around me telling me I wasn’t born with the ability.
I’m going to dig around for some earlier recordings to make an example of what I’m talking about, but there’s a reason why EVERYONE around me kept telling me to stop singing or referring to me as Eddie Van Tonedeaf. While the way I sing may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it works for what I want to do with my music. Playing the stuff I’ve put out post-2 year break for the people who were there in the suck years always brings the same reaction “You finally learned how to not suck”, “You found the sound good effect”, “Where was that voice 15 years ago?”
The last chorus in this song was one of my first really proud moments with my voice and it’s not that it’s some amazing vocal feat, but when I first heard that back after tracking it I just kinda sat there in a daze because it’s the voice I always thought I had but was never able to squeak out.
(Starts at 3:25)
And in all the discussions I’ve had about this, there’s one GLARING difference between the stuff I say about it and those who oppose the idea. I never said “I can’t” or “It’s not in me”, those words simply never entered my head. I never put a limit on myself or doubted that the possibility was there.
