Okay so I basically just did a long session recently working on these vocals, just to practice the interpretation of it. Thought I'd share some of the vocal takes I liked from it and ask for feedback.

ordering the links from my most favorite take to least favorite (out of the best four) but it's a really tough call...curious if someone has a different preference.

Critique away! If you only have time for one, listen to the first link

https://app.box.com/s/6g8e779rj2xyjx8araqhc53ypk5qyeha

https://app.box.com/s/354sitn4s5z6hd5rbsfx8u3g1o1bn2nd

https://app.box.com/s/nvz1kfudcc4ueuul7latzkqd3ssluof9

https://app.box.com/s/1blal4puwsu2cm8wxm5n18aekvjbfdox

But ultimately I'm thinking of redoing it all in a new session - maybe go for a slightly slower tempo, record it live with the piano and vocals together, fix a few things I still couldn't get right (that "I want to GET out of this house" phrase...I still couldn't get that "GET" to sound natural!!!), and get more authentic emotion into it.

Also a cool story of the composition of this, I wrote this for an assignment at Berklee where the teacher said "set a timer and write a song in 45 minutes". And this is what came from that, 90% of this was written in that 45 minutes. Then months later I went back and tweaked the details, mostly just deciding the exact piano chords and I changed two lyrics, but that was all I had to do.

I highly recommend this kind of process to any intermediate/advanced songwriter. Wait until you have a have a really good first idea, that's the trick to making it work - and then immediately set a timer and go for 45 minutes straight and try to have everything finished by the end. Live with that for a while, then revisit it later on and fix whatever you have to.

The biggest benefit I felt from this is that I tapped into my true influences more rather than trying to force my musical aesthetic to be something different than what it truly was.