Round Five: Baronessa v Tara (380 views)

[Steve]

This is Baronessa v Tara in Round Five of the Clip-Off. You have five days to submit your clips, and until 23:00 GMT Time Sunday, July 19 to vote. July 20 is the Results Day.

For this round, you have to use all your singers!

The categories for Round Five are:
1. Best Distorted/Harsh/Heavy Singing: Singing that uses vocal distortion, a harsh tone and/or is generally heavy-sounding.
2. Most Pleasant Tone: Affecting a satisfying tone in order to sound pleasing to the ears in one way or another.

The pair are free to post their clips, voting commences as soon as they have.

Vote here.

Current Vote Count: 5

[Tara]

SPOILER: Click to show

{Heavy singing as in not-soft singing}

This was a very difficult category for me as none of my singers do screaming. I was told that heavy singing is the opposite of soft singing, so this is what I believe to be some intense heavy singing from Patrick Stump. The time is 1:38 until the end (3:15). He sings all the backing vocals, including the pre-bridge at 2:03 and the echoes of "I'm an American -, I'm an American -" in the bridge.
This album is about forms of lightness and darkness, particularly applied to personal relationships and what were current events in America at the time, including the civil uprising in response to the killing of Michael Brown (interview). In this song we see a story about an angry and disillusioned person, shown through Patrick's relentless and heavy vocals, repeating the word "American" a lot to reflect his mixed feelings about being American. I think the frenzied back-and-forth in the bridge is an interesting way to reflect civil unrest in America.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Pleasant Tone}
Here is Darren Criss performing the classic song "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Mis on a livestream. The time is 0:54 until 2:40. I like that he varies the types of pleasant tone he uses, from the rich B♭2 low to the soft mid-range sustains and the warm, rounded peaks in the bridge. Even in the despairing bridge part, he shows the character's anguish through increasing his volume rather than making his tone harsher, creating something dynamic and still easy to listen to.

[Baronessa]

SPOILER: Click to show

{Best Distorted/Harsh/Heavy Singing - Mike Patton}

1:48 - 2:53. Mike goes through quite a bit of range, and pretty much all of it is somehow distorted or harsh with varying degrees of heavy tonalities. Main highlights include cool C5s and the growls leading up to a climactic G5.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Most Pleasant Tone - Olivia Newton-John}

2:27 - end. In this rendition of "When You Wish Opon a Star" (no idea what that title could referring to, must be an original), Olivia does a nice build-up to a 10-second G5 all in mezza voce. Can't get much more deliberately pleasant than a literal lullaby for children.

[Steve]

This match-up has received the required number of votes.