Author: Mark JW Graham

Many people who come to me for sessions, often come with a very clearly defined self-given label for what kind of singer they are.

“I’m a weighty contralto with a light top”

“I’m a super-light tenor with an airy flip”

“I’m a hard-rock singer with high-octane vocals”

And 99% of the time, they are not any of those things. Let me explain why, and start with a simple caution that every singer eventually has to learn for themselves.

Rule 1: Don’t rush to definitions

It’s all too common to want to know “but what AM I?!“. We all want a handle, something that makes the intangible seem more tangible, and to get a grip on what we should or shouldn’t be doing. It’s an understandable desire.

In turn, when one knows they’ve got a long way to go, it only seems logical to start with whatever we presently have. We look at what we can presently do, and what we can’t, and extrapolate from there. But here’s the problem: what each of us has at the start of our vocal journeys is so fledgling, so minute, it often doesn’t give anywhere near enough of an indication as to what the voice will be with even a modicum of training. Continue reading “What kind of singer am I?”

Last time I wrote about how some songs are more favourable than others to sing. I also mentioned the three I suggest the most for clients to help begin to figure their voice out.

I’ve also written previously about unsingable songs. But this time I thought it might be helpful to give some examples of songs that may well be singable, but are really not that helpful for developing and figuring out your voice.

One way to categorise such songs are as wide-range songs, narrow-range songs, and sudden range-jump songs.

Wide-range songs – All I Want For Christmas

Now, I have clients who sing this song, and sing it well… but I also meet a lot of singers who attempt this way too early in their development, and to say they butcher it is an understatement. Continue reading “The Least Helpful Songs for Working on Your Voice”

When people first start, we have to start building their voice from the ground up. This is true no matter how long someone has been singing, or how advanced the material they want to sing happens to be.

Once we have a reasonable technical foundation laid down, we can start to deploy that newly built facility on song.

One of the hardest things to grasp is that not all songs are equally favourable for the voice. Three songs could have the same notes and same range, but the nature of the melody is such that one may feel exceptionally easy to sing, another a bit more difficult, and another may seem impossible. I’m sure you may have even experienced this ponderance first hand…

“This song goes EXACTLY as high as this other song which I’m doing so well on, yet I feel like I’m killing myself trying to sing it… what on earth is going on?”

How easy/hard a note in song is depends on many things: what was the note before, what was the note after, how fast or slow is the piece, how intense are you singing, how staccato or legato is the piece, etc.

It means that some melodies are extremely favourable for the voice, and others less so. It then follows that there are some songs that are amazingly favourable for the voice, and provide a fun playground to start to build your voice and figure out how it works.

With that in mind, I’m going to share the THREE songs I suggest most often, for male singers and for female singers: Continue reading “Three Great Songs to Figure Out Your Voice”

Several years ago, I read the book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell. This book is on the idea that for the areas we are each experienced in, often the first reaction is pretty correct. But for areas we are less experienced in, our first reaction is often not correct, and is missing a lot of nuance.

In one of the chapters they discuss the history of the Pepsi vs Coke taste test.

The Pepsi Challenge

Now, for those of you too young to remember, once upon a time Coca Cola was about the only game in town. Then Pepsi came on the scene.

What Pepsi was known for was the “Pepsi Taste Test”. This was (surprise surprise) a taste test, where participants blindly tasted Coke and Pepsi, and had to say which one they preferred. The overwhelming result of this was that people seemed to prefer the taste of Pepsi in these blind tests. 

As the results of the taste tests became more and more widely known, it was expected that Pepsi would overtake Coca Cola as the most bought soft drink.

Yet that day never actually arrived. Despite all the taste tests saying otherwise, the market buys far more Coca Cola than Pepsi. This means that despite all the taste tests saying more people prefer Pepsi, reality says more people actually prefer Coca Cola. Continue reading “Pepsi vs Coke Taste Test, and Singing”

I send one email a week, at 6pm on a Sunday, to those on my subscriber list. I only send one so as not to bombard people with more emails than we already get. If you’re not already subscribed, you can sign up via the vocal prospectus signup at the bottom of this page.

Come Friday/Saturday of each week, I look back on what has come up in client sessions and what has been on my mind, and send something out that is highly relevant to that specific week. Most of the time it’s a fresh article, and sometimes it’s one I’ve revised to bring up to date.

At the end of each year, I look back and see which articles grabbed people’s attention more than any others. Maybe there was something in the zeitgeist that year that meant everyone was thinking along the same lines, but sometimes it’s just because they are eternally relevant questions.

These are the five most read articles from my website for 2023. It’s fairly obvious why some of these are on people’s minds! Have a scan of the headlines for yourself, and dive into whatever grabs you!

1) Why some voices sound better than others?

2) Four singers that changed my life

3) Unsingable songs: Why there are some songs you’ll NEVER sound good on

4) If I could go back in time and tell my younger self THREE things…

5) What most voice teachers get wrong about singing
 

Want to learn more?

If any of these have piqued your interest and you’d like to discover more about your voice for yourself, you can book in your first session via my booking form right here.

One of the things I regularly discuss with clients is how a huge proportion of voice training, is actually ear training.

Sure, we are looking to train our body and voice to operate in more refined and better ways, and in this regard it is undoubtedly a physical/physiological endeavour.

However, we cannot hope to program our body in more refined ways, unless we know what we are aiming for, unless we have a target to shoot for. The more refined and clearly defined that target is, the better we can hit that target.

But there’s a problem with this target.

This target is not visual like an archery target, nor is it numerical like a mathematical or financial goal. The target is aural, and we can’t see it, touch it or measure it in any helpful way.

The only feedback about our accuracy that we get is from our own ears and bodies. Our brains then have to interpret all that data, and decide how accurate we were with hitting the intended target.

Two challenges present themselves

Even before we consider the physiological aptitude that we have, our ability to do great singing is therefore dependent on two main things:

1) What we hold in our heads as the aural target we are aiming for; and… Continue reading “How Voice Training Changes Your Brain”

I have had these two videos saved for many years, and I revisit them every so often.

1. Kaufmann
The first features tenor Jonas Kaufmann and conductor Anthony Pappano. Kaufmann is arguably the premier operatic tenor in the world today. In this excerpt, Pappano covers what the mixed voice is, and how one has to move across bridges/passagi in order to traverse the male tenor voice from low to high.

What I want to draw attention to is how incredible Kaufmann’s vocal control is. He can rise and fall on almost any note, low or high, and make it enormously dramatic or whisper quiet… even moving from one to another on the same note. It really is stupendous, as you’ll hear.

Moreover, I want you to notice just how complex this transition is, and how most of the singers’ orientation towards what they are doing is internal and experiential. There’s no frets to watch, piano keys to press, etc, you’ve got to play this instrument of the voice entirely by feel and by ear. This is what makes it so challenging to sing well, and to sing well means to make it sounds like it’s no challenge at all – one hell of an illusion!

2. Pavarotti
Speaking of taking a lifetime to master, this second clip features the wonderful Luciano Pavarotti.

In this very short clip, Pavarotti very succinctly describes and demonstrates the difference between merely hitting a high note, and sculpting it into something truly magnificent. This also represents a key difference between not just levels of singers, but the aesthetic requirement that opera places on singers.

Do you note his parting comment? That such a simple sound, that he makes sound so effortless, took him 20+ years to master. Even at the shorter end of the timescale, he said “it may take you 10 years to make a sound like that”.

People vastly underestimate just how skilled top-flight singers are, and what it takes to craft a beautiful and lasting vocal sound. I hope these two clips with such giants (at least in the classical realm) gives you some idea of the work great singers undertake and what they aspire to create.

If this is something you’d like to start to discover for yourself, I’d love to work with you. You can book yourself in via my booking form right here.

I have written a Beginners Guide to a Home studio on a budget, and also written a follow-up guide on the next steps for those with a home studio.

I had a few people email in reply, some of whom were grateful for the advice. But it struck me that some of you might not be sure whether they should only go to professional studios to record, especially if they want professional results. So that’s what I want to cover here today, as I there’s actually several reasons I strongly believe that every serious singer should invest in a home studio setup.

Let me explain why

Firstly, I wholeheartedly agree that if one is seeking professional results – and you yourself are not a said professional – then one should seek a professional and pay them to do the work they do best. It’s entirely why I applaud anyone who is progress focused enough to seek professional help to improve their voice in sessions. It astonishes me how many try to DIY their way to solutions without really knowing what they are doing.

However, many of you who sing seriously and record yourself will know, that there is far more to having a home studio than trying to avoid having to pay someone else. There’s a myriad of reasons that even a basic home studio setup is worth having. Moreover, I think a home studio is a wonderful complement to those who eventually want to get into a professional studio.

For those of you who do not have one, or are not sure why you should even set one up for yourself, I wanted to cover five reasons I think that every serious singer should have some kind of basic setup at home. Continue reading “The Benefits of having a Home Studio”