Doh! - Six Very Good Ways To Start Singing

This is an article I wrote a few days ago which has already been published on a number of websites and blogs around the world. Although it came into being through writing on karaoke and tribute band singing, the information in it applies to pretty much all singers looking to sing in a contemporary style. Enjoy!

If you are working in a tribute band, or competing in karaoke competitions, you want as much vocal flexibility as possible.

Your list of cover artists can increase dramatically if you have more choices with your voice and technique. So how do you change your vocal style, and what is vocal style anyway?

Style in singing is about the way you use your voice, rather than the actual sound you make. Perhaps it's the phrase shapes you use, such as many notes on one syllable, long phrases or short, single notes. Or even the type of accent or dialect you use when you sing (American, South London "reggae", Motown, 'Britpop', operatic, Italian English etc).

For this article I'm going to focus on one aspect of vocal style - the way you can start and finish a note. Starting a note is called Making the Tone Onset, and it happens right at the beginning of a note, word or phrase.

You can onset a sound in several different ways. Each musical style will use different types of onset by default. Each artist usually has a few favourite ways of starting and finishing, so let's explore.

I use the following exercise in my vocal studio to help my clients find out how to change their style. Classical or operatic singers usually use three standard onsets, so let's begin with those. Let's assume that you want to say the word "Ah":

1. You can stop the breath before you begin by putting a glottal stop in front of the word or holding your breath "closed" before you say the word ( 'ah! or 'uh-'oh). This is the word of surprise or warning. If you do this correctly, you actually start with a silence!

2. Allow the breath to flow first, by adding an h to the start of the word (ha). If you do this correctly, your breath will already be moving before you make the note itself.

3. You can glide into the note without either breath or a stop by holding your breath "open" or "hovering" before you make the sound - (~ah). If you do this correctly, the sound and the breath happen together, and you get a very smooth start to the note - there's no sound of breath flowing already, and there's no sudden attack. This is in fact the one that classical singers use the most, because it's a smooth, gliding onset.

Now let's move to the pop and rock recording artists (and of course blues, soul, gospel, death metal, grunge - you get the picture...). The three "classic" onsets are used in commercial music too, but pop and rock singers have fun with a great many different ones.

Here's a few for you to play with:

- Creak like an old door opening. You can sometimes find this if you talk like you are really tired. It's a really gentle sound and can mean you are being very tired or very sexy! If you do this correctly, your breath flow will be very small and slow, and the sound will "creak" into the note.

- Flip onto the note. This means that you usually start the note higher and flip down onto the "real" note. Depending on how high you start, you might end up sounding like Tarzan, but that's OK for the moment! This is a favourite with Country and Western singers. If you do this correctly, it'll sound like a yodel or a "catch in the voice".

- Squeeze the note! This carries more of an element of danger (it is supposed to sound dangerous, after all). You start by aiming for the note in your head and squeezing it out of a tighter throat. The best version of this is to begin the note with the squeeze then open your throat quickly to get a clearer sound. If you do this correctly, you'll stay on the same note but start it with a more muffled, "strained" sound and open onto a clearer note straight away.

Here's a tip: onsets work best when the word starts with a vowel, but you can do them on words beginning with other letters. So start by using words such as "ah", "yeah", "oh", and "uh"

And anything you can do to start a note, you can do to finish it. So experiment with these ideas:

- Sing a word and practise ending it with a creak.

- Do it again, but this time finish with a flip.

- Now sing the same word and end with a squeeze.

- Have fun mixing and matching


- Start a note with a squeeze and end with a flip

- Now start and stop with a creak

- Start with breath flowing and end with a creak

Now that you're getting the feel of these onsets and offsets, go back and listen to your favorite artist again. Remember that these onsets only happen at the very beginning of the note or phrase, and the offsets happen at the very end. Notice which onsets and offsets your singer uses.

In fact, they'll use some of the sounds you've just learned and not others. That's because their style includes certain things and excludes others, and they wouldn't want to change their style too much, or they might lose you as a fan!

Once you've found these onsets in your own voice, sing a few lines of your favourite artist's songs and experiment with using different onsets at the beginning of the phrases.


When you copy the onsets and offsets your vocal role model uses, you start to sound much more like them.


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Jeremy Fisher is a vocal and performance coach for singers, actors and teachers working in Musical Theatre, Opera and the pop/rock recording industry. You can find out more about Jeremy's coaching work at his training company's website

http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk/




[you are welcome to publish this article on your own website or blog provided the author's biog and Vocal Process weblink above is included]


Visit http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk/ for the latest downloads:
the Vocal Process eZINE (free electronic magazine)
86 things you never hear a singer say (free ebook)
The Voicebox Videos DVD website tells you all about the Looking At A Voice endoscopy video series
The Vocal Process website has a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.

Expert tips for tribute band singers

Is there a singer in your music collection that you want to cover?

How do they make those sounds?


You can't really go and ask them, so if you want to pay tribute to their talent, how can you find their vocal signature sound?

I train professional singers and their teachers, and I work with a number of tribute band singers who need to sound like someone else. I will use a mix of hearing, imitating and imagination to help find the "feel-sound" of a recording artist. So here are some exercises I use every day with my students.

First, I need to know whether my cover band singer has all the notes in their voice that they are going to need for the song. Remember that songs are always recorded in a key that suits the individual recording artist. You are not the same as your chosen artist (you may be a different age or even a different sex), so their key may not suit you. It does make a difference which key you are in, whether a tune sits well in your voice. I usually begin by asking my cover band singer to hum the tune, using ng' (as in the word "sing") instead of the normal mm humming sound. The humming lets me know whether the actual notes are easy to hit, without getting too worried about the sound or style. It also tells me whether we need to change the key of the song for that singer.

You can usually recognize a recording artist within a few notes because of their 'signature sound'. It's what the artist does with their physical structure (their body and throat) that makes the sound itself unique. Your favorite recording artist probably uses a singing sound close to their speaking voice.

Here's an exercise to help you feel what it's like to speak with your chosen artist's vocal "setup", the shapes they make with their throat and mouth: Use your imagination to find how your artist would talk. You don't even need to hear them speak (it's actually better if you don't know). Just listen to the way they sing and imitate what you think their speaking voice would sound like if they spoke like they sang. Listen to the way they pronounce words, the volume of the sound (soft and breathy, loud and straight), and how direct or gentle they are. Imagine them talking to you, telling you (for example) what they had for breakfast that morning. Feel the way they talk, and then speak, matching the sounds you think they would make.

With the same feeling in your sound, begin to talk on a higher pitch and then a lower pitch. We normally sing above and below the pitches that we speak on, so try speaking in a higher and lower voice than your normal one. You might feel ridiculous, but it really helps to get into someone's vocal habits.

Naturally, your chosen artist may be using several sounds or 'voice qualities'. That's fine. Choose another sound (louder or softer) that they use in their singing, and imagine how they would speak with that sound. Again, experiment with speaking higher and lower using the new sound.

When you feel comfortable with using their vocal setup in your speaking voice, you can start to use it in singing. Sing the song you were humming earlier and add the words, using the same shapes and sounds you've been experimenting with.

You'll be surprised how close to your chosen artist you sound. Go back and listen again to the recording, and notice how much more you understand the feel and flavor of the performance. Capturing the essence of an artist's voice is simple when you know how!

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Discover more simple and profound singing techniques from Jeremy's voice training company Vocal Process, "revolutionizing the way singing is taught" (LINK Magazine)
http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk



[you are welcome to publish this article on your own website or blog provided the author's biog and Vocal Process weblink above is included]



Visit http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk/ for the latest downloads:
the Vocal Process eZINE (free electronic magazine)
86 things you never hear a singer say (free ebook)
The Voicebox Videos DVD website tells you all about the Looking At A Voice endoscopy video series
The Vocal Process website has a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.

Once More With Feeling - Putting Emotion Into Singing

Here's an article I wrote recently for an articles submission company. It's aimed at tribute band singers, karaoke singers and anyone who wants to sound like their favorite recording artist.
It's also aimed at those who think (or have been told) that they need more emotion or commitment in their performing.

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Let's talk emotion. There are three major elements that make most people chose their favorite singer or recording artist
1. the sound
2. the song hook (the catchy bit, often the chorus)
3. the emotional level of the performance.

And of course you couldn't really call it singing if it didn't have emotion. So how do you sing with the same emotion as your favorite artist?

First, let's separate out a couple of things. If you want to sing for yourself, it's perfectly ok to feel the emotion and get really tied up in it (sometimes we just need to do that to help us feel better). However, if you want to sing for other people (and particularly if you want to sing professionally), getting tied up in the emotion of the song is just not going to work long-term. The problem with feeling strong emotions is that they can cause your throat to close up. The result? You can't sing. That's a bit of a problem for a singer!

Here's a secret that not many people know. When your favorite singer is suffering through their song, he or she is not necessarily feeling those emotions. Part of the job is to help you to feel them, to show that they understand what you are going through, that they've been through it themselves. So you can really identify with them and their pain (and of course buy their album).
So the "trick" is to sound like you are feeling the emotion without letting it overwhelm you. That way you can make everyone believe you are going through something huge, but you can carry on doing the gig, and repeat it night after night without becoming a vocal wreck.

Here's an exercise I use in my vocal studio to help my singers discover how to portray strong emotions. You might want to do this by yourself (when no-one else is home).

First, listen to the song you like and decide what the main emotion is - sadness, anger, hurt, happiness. Really listen to how the singer tells you what emotion it is, not with the words they use but with the sound of their voice.

Now talk out loud as if you have that emotion too - if it's happiness, tell an imaginary friend how happy you are. If it's anger, act out shouting at the dog. Notice what your voice does, what sounds you make, what tone of voice you use, how fast or slow you speak, whether you speak high or low, and even whether you stay speaking high (or low) or move around with lots of different pitches. (At this point, don't worry what your body is doing).

Happiness will often have the sound of an inner smile or a "bubble" going on behind it. Hurt will sometimes be slow-moving or have a "crying" sound behind it. Anger might sound sharp and hard. Remember each feeling/sound.

Now take a phrase from your chosen song and make it sound happy. Start by "being" happy or "thinking" happy, and move on to sounding happy without feeling the emotion. What do you have to do?

Now sing it again and make it sound hurt. What do you have to do? It might be the same as what you do to portray "happy", it might be different.

Go through as many "emotions" as you can, and discover what you have to do for each one.
This is a very powerful way to discover emotion in your own singing - you start by feeling the emotion itself, then you notice what that emotion does to your voice, then you reproduce the effects of the emotion in your singing, so you "portray" that emotion without feeling it. Believe me, as a professional performer myself, it's not cheating! If I really felt angry or hurt or deeply sad when I performed, I wouldn't perform well - I'd be too wrapped up in the emotion to be able to sing at all.

So now you can put everything you've learned together. You will be surprised how much your singing and communication skills have improved. And I'm sure it's given you a greater understanding of how skilled your chosen singer really is.

Enjoy!
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Jeremy Fisher trains singers and performers to find and maintain their best. He's the author of Successful Singing Auditions, creator of the UK's first endoscopy video ebooks, and is fascinated by bringing technology and innate skill together.http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk/

[you are welcome to publish this article on your own website or blog provided the author's biog and Vocal Process weblink above is included]

Visit http://www.vocalprocess.co.uk/ for the latest downloads:
the Vocal Process eZINE (free electronic magazine)
86 things you never hear a singer say (free ebook)
The Voicebox Videos DVD website tells you all about the Looking At A Voice endoscopy video series
The Vocal Process website has a series of free articles on vocal technique and style, memorising and different musical genres.