Creating a great Mix: Tone-matching

In the guitar world, tube amplifiers (the very first kind of amps for guitar that were ever created) have been the sought after tone machines for guitarists.

The issues with valve/tube amps are that they are heavy, too loud when delivering a great tone, require increasingly expensive maintenance, etc. As such, despite sounding great, with the advent of digital technology being so powerful now, people have long been trying to recreate the sound of tube amplifiers in digital products.

These are often referred to as ‘modellers’ as they are trying to recreate a working digital model of an existing amplifier. The advantage of this is that the devices are much smaller, work at any volume level, and virtually no maintenance costs.

Tone-matching

Nowadays there are products that can do live tone-matching with an existing tube amplifier.

What this entails is that the modelling system is hooked up to an existing amplifier and it runs various listening diagnostics to the amplifier to try and mimic the amp as closely as possible, in terms of tone, feel, etc.

This is super-important that the digital model not just sound the same as the original amp, but that the model FEELS the same as the original, as the closer all those factors are to the original, the less of a discrepancy there is in the digital model from the original amp… thus rather than creating something that elicits the response of “oh, that’s a convincing copy”… people are left completely unaware they are even listening to something other than the original – the tone-matched model and the original amp sound become essentially one and the same thing.

What has this got to do with singing?

We’ve talked a lot about chest voice in previous articles (because a solid established TRUE chest voice is of critical importance in building a voice). Now let’s consider this tone-matching analogy in guitar amps, but apply it to voice.

What guitarists are trying to do with modellers, is to take something that sounds a beautiful way NATURALLY, and try to emulate that in a domain that does NOT naturally sound that way. It takes time and repeated analysis, constant tweaks, to slowly get the tones to match.

The Voice is the Same

In the same way, once the true chest voice of a given singer is established in that singer, we have the “original” sound that we are looking to recreate everywhere in the voice. Our goal is therefore to tone-match that sound as we develop the functional ability to move through the rest of our voice and our bridges. Remember, we cannot drag ACTUAL chest voice up incredibly high. Attempting to do this is why so many people injure their voice. We have to do so with correct function first, then slowly tweak, like the guitar modeller example.

We develop functional ability to move through the voice first, but increasingly tone-match note by note from chest through the start of the bridge and upwards, making sure that each ascending note matches the one before it, both in terms of tone and feel (and certainly control of volume, though that takes time). If even one note is not matched to the extent given above, the consistency of the mix is lost.

The better the tone-match as we progress through the voice, the better the sound… AND the feel for everyone involved. For the singer, for the audience, for everyone. Once you can start to tone-match your upper register to your true chest voice, high notes stop SOUNDING or even feeling that high.

Of course the pitches being sung are still high in an absolute sense. But the lack of feeling like the singer is reaching, the evenness of timbre, the fact that the notes still sound like chest… these all mean we are psychologically primed to recognise the sound as chest. In turn, it therefore “feels” like those notes are in a comfortable range (as both singers and listeners).

This is huge

THIS is one key attribute of developing a great mix. Once the chest voice is established appropriately, tone-matching that quality throughout the range is what breeds a solid, powerful and expressive, mix. Few ever take the time to get that granular about their voice and any mix that may be established, but countless testimonials of my clients show that it is very possible and absolutely worth it.

If you’d like to book in and experience this vocal transformation for yourself, please do click the link below. I’d love to start work with you.