Phil Moufarrege said

Hi Owen. I really like how you're paying attention to the nuances of your delivery instead of throwing the sound out. With the "GET" I am imaginging that may be most likely you just not engaging enough volume. If you sing that louder it should find the right spot. A lot of your EEs and OOs were doing nicely and sounded very natural. There are a few spots where you open a bit too wide and lose the "focus" on your resonance that we worked on.

In our lesson together I felt you were in an even better spot with your voice when I was helping guide you, perhaps review that video again (it was 2 sessions ago I believe).

You've improved a lot man. I'm really proud of you. You are sounding so much more natural with your voice compared to your older recordings. You're thinking like a singer now. Your song is really good too.

The time you put into this is worth it dude, you are improving a lot. Bravo.

Thanks Phil. Everything you've helped me with has really accumulated to this.

Yea it was interesting because I nailed that "get" in the lesson, the resonance was more focused that anything I've ever sung, but I have had trouble recreating that! I'll definitely review the video.

In our lesson together I felt you were in an even better spot with your voice when I was helping guide you, perhaps review that video again (it was 2 sessions ago I believe).

You've improved a lot man. I'm really proud of you. You are sounding so much more natural with your voice compared to your older recordings. You're thinking like a singer now. Your song is really good too.

The time you put into this is worth it dude, you are improving a lot. Bravo.

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.