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« on: August 24, 2017, 11:20:24 AM »
Well I wasn't really refering to him having trouble hitting key high notes, I was refering to him choosing to make his natural voice tone sound the highest it ever has, and his voice is sounding thin with no power/projection sometimes because of it, I could be wrong, but it feels like this is a new vocal direction he's deliberatly doing and I don't think he notices what it makes it sound like at times, he can easily bring his tone down and have a fuller sounding voice.
But yeah, when it comes to hitting certain high notes in a fast paced song you may not hit it and your vocals will crack instead when you're a little older sometimes, however being inconsistant with reaching the high notes/cracking has always been a problem for Toshi, and a lot of great singers don't have this problem, there's still famous rock/heavy metal singers around in their 60s not cracking like Toshi does, in recent years, I can sort of agree with you though it's probably due a little bit to the overworking on his vocals/beatings he went through during that time, that maybe he can never 100% recover from.
However I think you have to recognise that Toshi is doing more over the top antics on stage that would wreck his or any singers voice than ever before. In the 90's he probably shouted on stage to the audience more than any other singer, that's why he's my favourite front man as well. But now, he's shouting a lot more than he even did back then, there's very few moments in some shows where he's not screaming his lungs out, like at the end of kurenai instead of singing 'cry in deep red' he'll shout "ah yeeeah!!" five to ten times in a row, followed by him almost literally killing his voice intentionally at the end of art of life. If he feels his voice is starting to go, he should end the note right then and there, instead he intentionally screams it raw and wrecks it, on top of all the other screaming.
Singers are also not meant to talk before a show or really during it, so pretty much all singers keep it brief, Toshi on the other hand as well as all the screaming will talk to Yoshiki for fifteen minutes on stage, on three seperate occasions during the same show, Yoshiki really not helping him there. I also don't believe he sings enough, X only does a couple of shows a year, and as far as I'm aware he only does a few solo shows a year.
I think you have to take all this into account plus other singers older than him who still reach powerful notes and don't crack, to me it's extremely likely that these are the majority reasons his voice gives out so much live, not because of his age or hoh imo, if you listen to 'X' during the recent acoustic live, he couldn't sing 'kokoro moyase' without a bad voice crack, and that was the slow non agressive acoustic version, that didn't happen a few years ago. I just can't see it as an age problem, it's something he can fix if he changed certain things he's doing like shout a bit less, lower his voice sometimes so he'll have a stronger tone like in the 90's.
In some way his vocal technique probably isn't 100% correct which is why his voice has always cracked, at this point I think he should recognise this and be privately learning vocal control with somebody.
Eh if noone's discussing this further because I put people off with how long it is, welp I'm sorry it's just how I feel about some of his singing right now and I was detailing the things I think he's doing to weaken parts of his voice, but that's just seen as rambling on I guess. Toshi's still my favourite singer and none of this is meant to be overly critical or mean spirited in any way.