How to Become a Better Singer (Without Trying Too Hard)
I know we mainly cover the production angle in Remix, and that mainly pertains to all things regarding recording instruments, sampling, DAWs, software, etc. But I’m guessing a fair amount of you produce singers or do some singing yourselves. I’ve been singing since before I could put a sentence together, but it wasn’t until last year that I actually starting working with a vocal coach. I guess you could say I just had “raw talent.” I’ve been recording, playing live and touring for a long time, but I was never trained. I felt like I had to be trained to play the saxophone (back in my middle school and high school days), and I took guitar lessons, but I never feel the need to take vocal lessons. That was until I hit a wall with a particular part I was trying to sing while in the studio. My friend Dusty DiMercurio (who works for Digidesign) turned me on to The Voice Studio (www.thevoicestudio.org) in San Francisco, and I started training with a supercool instructor, Heather Pierce, who is also the frontwoman for a awesome band called Karmacoda (www.karmacoda.com).
Suddenly, I realized I’d been singing all wrong. Okay, not all wrong, but not all right, either. I was working my voice and vocal chords too hard, and I was losing my voice more than I should. If you see pictures of me singing, I often have my mouth really wide open. It looks like I’m really going for it…because I am. I tend to write vocal parts that run the gamut of my range, and I really push myself to run all over the place on the scale. It’s not histrionic in the R&B sense (hitting 25 different notes on one word), but I don’t make my job particularly easy, either.
I started to learn about something called “Speech-Level Singing.” Basically, it’s about singing like you talk. It’s more natural sounding, and it makes it a hell of a lot easier to hit the notes.
When I sing live, I think I’m fairly solid, but I miss the mark (even if by a little) sometimes. I want to improve the odds of making the mark. Speech-Level Singing helps with that, and it also helps with endurance when you’re singing night after night and improves the consistency of tone, agility, flexibility and range.
There are three parts to your voice: chest voice, mix voice and head voice. Between each part, there is what’s called a bridge. According to the Voice Studio, that is “where the resonance shifts from one area of the body to another.” With this technique, you can learn how to make those transitions flow better by narrowing the vowels and not widening your mouth too much. You produce the sound more easily, and it sounds better, too. For example, there’s a line in one of my songs that goes up over my mix-voice bridge into the head voice and back down again. The line is, “Something pulls me back inside.” Heather has me sing it with a different accent to narrow the vowels, so I can get up over the bridge (which is the A flat above C) and back down with less trouble and effort. Now I’m less freaked out every time that part of the song comes up. When I practice the part, it now sounds a little like, “Sew-ew-um-thin pools meh beck insoid.” And when I hit “thin,” the highest note, I drop my jaw a little to accommodate the sound. Now I’m not singing with my mouth as horizontal but more vertical. I think it’s fascinating. I’m smoothing out my voice, making things easier on myself and becoming a better singer. Now, why didn’t I do that ten years ago?
You can read more about it Speech-Level Singing here: www.speechlevelsinging.com.
June 12th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Im a really bad singer and i have a great talking voice my old singing teacher said i can sing like demi and that girl in paramore and by the way big fan.I want my natural voice but i sing like (hjfgbvjvdghfds) yeah that means shit.haha well i need help any videos or comments please i have a talent show and my new singing teacher wants to embarrass me on stage.I really cant sing so help!
July 28th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Thanks
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