brywool wrote:kgdjpubs wrote:brywool wrote:He didn't change his voice. The road changed his voice. Overuse changed his voice.
I think there was a little bit of intentional in there also. As a vocal style, Street Talk and ROR are very different from the pre-Frontiers material. I'm talking about phrasing here, not the notes hit.
I'm not talking about phrasing. I'm talking about the roughness in his voice. Escape and prior- Crystal Clear.
Frontiers and beyond- Raspy.
He's alluded to wanting to use that style of singing. However, I think that's PR. WHAT singer would basically come out and say "yeah, I f'd up my voice, hope you like it"? I think him saying that was just kind of revisionism. Again, I might be wrong, but if I had the Escape and prior voice, the LAST thing I'd want to do is lose a few notes of my range and the other last thing I'd due is allude to it in my interviews. The guy has gone on record saying that his voice can't do what it once did and hence his Howard Hughes-ness. Something on the Escape Tour or recording of Frontiers messed with his vocal chords. Doesn't mean he lost his voice then, but it does mean that it definitely changed. This has been talked about in a million threads here...
I don't disagree that something changed. I don't think ANYONE could say that after heading Escape and Trial By Fire back to back. You would think it is two different people. I'm just adding the point that I don't think he was lying by saying that the changes were intentional. He DID change the way he was singing...but there was a lot more going on. As you said, it's an easy excuse.
I would say the major change either happened somewhere during the Frontiers tour. You could hear changes up to Escape, and the tour for that album was insane. You can hear a change from early Escape to late Escape, but it's not all that dramatic. Early Frontiers recordings don't show that much change in his voice, which means any changes on the Frontiers album were intentional--ie singing lower, or singing in the morning when you get more rasp (which I'm pretty sure was said in an interview). Early Frontiers is still pretty clear. Not crystal, but clear.
I think it's the Frontiers tour where the main stuff happened. My guess is that some amount of range was lost for whatever reason, and the Frontiers tour was more stressful on the voice trying to reach notes that are now much closer to the top of your range than they were. Then, add the length of the tour, which wasn't much shorter, and stress (band, keeping your voice for the next show, personal stuff, etc.)--which WILL show an effect on the voice given time.
What surprises me the most is the change from ROR to the Against the Wall/FTLOSM recordings, when touring was NOT an issue.
