Success Story: Bethan

It’s been another mad week here at the studio, with people in every day and some other crazy things kicking off. I hope you’re all managing to stave off those coldy coughs that seem to be going round!

This week I was working with a lovely singer called Bethan, and the success she experienced in a very particular area of her voice was something I wanted to share with all of you. Continue reading “Success Story: Bethan”

How Long Does It Take To Learn To Sing Well?

I often get asked ‘How Long Does it Take To Learn To Sing Well?’… the answer is not just simply ‘how long is a piece of string?’, but it is dependent on your goals and many other factors.

So rather than answer the question of ‘how long does it take to learn to sing well’, I want to talk about how long it takes to become exceptional at something. I want to do this to cast light on how long it takes to learn to do anything, but also to help readers realise it’s a long process to become truly great at something.

Time waits for no man…

In today’s culture, we are often confronted by *successful* people around the world aged 21 or under. Having titles like ‘The Top 100 Most Influential Teens’ on magazines doesn’t help with this. Seeing ‘The Top 10 Richest Under-21s’, or how the pop-chart is populated by people who are all under the age of 25 or even 21 depending which week you are talking about, really doesn’t help with this.

And I think this is a fundamentally flawed world-view, because it propagates the cultural lie that the prime age for achieving success is somewhere between 18-25… and that if you miss *success* or critical acclaim in that period of your life, you have failed. If you haven’t learned to do something to an exceptionally high standard by the time you are 26, you may as well give up.

This is a flawed world-view, and fundamentally untrue.

How can I say this? I refer to exhibit A…

Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci is one of THE defining men of the last millennium. He is credited with countless paintings, inventions, great artworks and had one of the greatest minds not just of his generation, but of the last 1000 years. He truly was what is known as a ‘polymath’, someone who is exceptionally clever to the point of genius, and to be such a genius across multiple disciplines.

Now, for the gut punch. Da Vinci was not known by the world for ANY level of success until he was 46. That’s right. 46. Not 40. Not 30. Not 20. Not 18. Forty. Freaking. Six.

Bear in mind that people regularly died of illness and disease by the time they were 40 at the time Da Vinci was alive, so to not have accomplished anything of note by the time you were 30 could easily have been interpreted as a sign of *nothing will ever happen for me*, and in a far more severe way than we could ever comprehend in the Western world today where we regularly live to 70 years old and then some.

If you fancy an interesting read, go and find a biography of Da Vinci – you will be ASTOUNDED by how much of a failure in terms of critical acclaim he was for much of his life.

This is also consistent with another bit of information that is worth discussing…

The 10,000 hour rule

In multiple books, there is referenced something called the 10,000 hour rule. Without going into extreme depth on this, what this means is that experts in their field are generally found to have become experts by spending a minimum of 10,000 hours of focused practice on their chosen discipline. Studies in specific areas known to be truly difficult have found that there is no-one who becomes known as an expert in a given area who managed to get there without spending that requisite time focusing their mind on that task. Violinists, chess players, songwriters (namely, the Beatles) all got there through an incredible amount of hard work.

Let’s do the maths on that…

5 hours a day for a year, accounting for holidays, sick days etc, generally equates to about 1000 hours of workable time per year. That means to acquire 10,000 hours of focused practice, one should generally expect to spend about 10 years on a given task to be considered an expert in their ability. Obviously, if you work to spend more hours on a task, you will get there quicker, but it must be quality practice.

Either way, we are talking about YEARS of focus and determination to get to that level. Not ‘6 months and I STILL haven’t been successful’, or ‘2 years and I STILL haven’t got a record deal’… we are talking YEARS. In Da Vinci’s case, we are talking DECADES of dedication to his chosen craft (or crafts, even).

The Slow Road

We are surrounded by a ‘fast-food’ culture. Where stuff happens fast, and NOW. People don’t like waiting for things. Even movies are now ‘on-demand’. Amazon offer guaranteed next day delivery. Food shops are 24/7.

I’m not saying that you need to spend 10,000 hours in to learn how to sing. You can become a good singer pretty quickly with the right work. But the better you want to be, the loftier your goals, the longer it takes. The reality is, the road to success in ANYTHING is slow going. There may be moments where you speed up, moments where you slow down, but there is no substitute for putting in the time.

For those of you feeling a bit down at the moment…

… maybe you feel like you are getting nowhere, take a moment. Consider how old you are. Consider how long you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing. Consider how focused you have been on the task. Then realise that the road IS MEANT to be slow. It’s never been fast. The idea that you can become an expert in something within 2 hours of trying it for the first time is a cultural lie that we are led to believe.

Lasting ability is worth pursuing, but it does take time. It comes slow. It takes time, dedication, constantly renewed focus, and – I would say – an inner peace that this is the way it must be. Take heart, and keep going!

Lip Bubbles & Alternative Warmups

A lip bubble looks a bit like blowing a raspberry. But you also make a sound under it, and generally, we have our fingers in our cheeks to lift the weight of our cheeks off of our vibrating lips. Here’s a short video I put together explaining:
a) what lip bubbles are;
b) how to do them; and
c) alternatives if you’re finding them a bit tricky.

 

 

 

In all seriousness, the reason it’s a top favourite among voice coaches the world over is because it is extremely effective.

Of all the tools in my arsenal, if I could only ever use ONE of them forever and ever, I would pick the lip bubble.

How does it work?

As explained in the video above, it is what we call a ‘semi-occluded’ exercise. What this means, is that we are partially blocking the flow of air. This acts like a secondary valve after your vocal cords. Your vocal cords are a first ‘valve’ for regulating air, and your lips form a second ‘valve’. They restrict but do not stop the flow of air. It’s not a painful restriction either (at least not when done right), we are just trying to impede/slow the flow of air.

This creates a column of pressured air between your lips and your larynx, i.e. less air is being permitted to escape the lips than is being pushed towards it, therefore there is a build-up of pressurised air behind the lips, and therefore we end up with a column of pressurised air between the lips and the vocal cords.

This causes the column of pressurised air to act downwards on the vocal cords and larynx, helping to keep the larynx a little more stable during operation. By repeatedly doing exercises with the lip bubble, and exposing the singer and the singer’s body to such laryngeal stability, this promotes stability in the muscle memory of the student. It also helps to warm-up the vocal cords and stimulate blood flow to the vocal cords in a low-impact manner. I’ve even heard some teachers liken this to a form of vocal massage, as the column of pressurised air almost massages the vocal cords during their vibration. This certainly seems to make sense to me, and Ingo Titze’s videos on the use of the straw to massage and flatten out the vocal cords certainly seems to corroborate such a statement.

Where do we use it?

We use it during a warmup, a cool-down, and often as a connective exercise in lessons, e.g. to help connect a student from one part of their voice to another, keeping additional stability, and keeping the voice operating well but in a lower-impact manner than perhaps they were doing before. In short, we use it EVERYWHERE!

Why I like it?

Other than the already mentioned functional benefits to the lip bubble, there is a key psychological reason I really like the lip bubble.

Often, when it comes to singing, students concentrate so much on ‘what happens if I fail?!?!’ that they actually DO fail… because they are so distracted and wound up about ‘being right’, that they can’t do ANYTHING differently to what they were doing before. This is a shame, but 100% just the result of being a flawed human being. We’re all the same!

HOWEVER! The lip bubble, by its very nature of being an odd exercise, removes them from their normal hearing of their voice, and so they stop TRYING to do certain things, because they have no idea what they SHOULD be doing. As such, this allows us as voice teachers to introduce the singer to a different way of utilising their vocal cords. We as trained voice teachers can also hear the singer’s instrument (to some extent) underneath the lip bubble, which helps guide us towards the exercises that can promote stability and that is balanced to their particular instrument, whereas with excess manipulation by some students/singers, it’s sometimes hard to cut through the layers of over-styling/manipulation.

In short, I find that by giving them an exercise that is relatively easy to do, albeit bizarre, but that is totally unfamiliar, we bypass the singers natural tendency to want to overly control what is going on… and just let the process happen.

This is IMMENSELY useful in the process of vocal development, as it gives the student a new experience without having to be consciously made to do it (HINT: This is KEY to effective voice teaching, AND to long lasting vocal habits).

It can also be done in a relatively low-impact fashion, perfect for beginning students. It can be done with more intensity, over a wider range, and with more complexity, perfect for intermediate students. It can also be lengthened and altered or used with other exercises for more advanced students. It is what I would refer to as a ‘lenticular‘ exercise – something that is useable with every level of students, and every way is generally right, but that it can be used to greater effect in more complex and varied ways the more advanced a student becomes.

So not only can we use it as a warm-up, or a cool-down, or as a connective exercise, or a developmental exercise, but all of these, and everything in between.

The lip bubble is vastly underused by many singers, so get going with it.

Want to learn more? Get our free 10-page Vocal Prospectus

We’ve put together a free 10-page Vocal Prospectus to help you understand exactly how our full technique as used in coaching works. This goes from the basics, through to a primer on how the technique works and the principles it is based on. If you are finding lip bubbles helpful, you’ll find this extremely enlightening.

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How to record Youtube videos

So you want to know how to record Youtube videos?

You’re not alone. Last week I had another voice teacher contact me to ask about a student of theirs.

The student wants to start recording their own Youtube singing videos, and has no idea where to begin.

Turns out, the teacher felt about the same and didn’t know where to start! And I don’t blame them! It’s a confusing world out there for those sorts of things so as I was going to be blogging on this material anyway, I sent them a run-down on things I’ve found and what I would recommend.

Youtube channel material

If someone is looking to record Youtube style videos AND is just starting out, I’d opt for an all-in-one solution rather than separate microphones and separate cameras – i.e. there are devices that record high quality stereo audio AND HD video together, and put them into a single file for uploading to the internet. It means there’s no separate microphones, recording interfaces, new software that you need to learn etc. Instead, an all-in-one solution requires you to just connect up the device to the computer after recording a video, and then you’re done. No microphone cables, working out software, etc, it just records, then uploads.

In particular, it’s not just the acquisition of new equipment that poses a financial and technological challenge, there’s also the requirement to get a good sound from the combination… which can be a challenge for the uninitiated, and I certainly don’t consider myself the master there.

By opting for an all-in-one, your sound and configuration options are more restricted (not that you’re getting a bad sound, it’s just fixed), but the BIG upside is that if you LIKE the sound it will always be the same = simple recording in one go.

Within this category of all-in-one options, there are at least three main options folks can go down. There are obviously others but these are the three main branches I think folks are best to can look at:

Option 1: Zoom Devices

There’s one name in particular that stands out above the rest for these sorts of hand-held all-in-one devices, and that’s Zoom.

Q4 – here is around – £249 – it appears that the video is indeed true HD.

They are very simple and straightforward to use. I’ve had 3 or 4 students use them for recording their lessons, and I’ve even had some band members say they use them to record gigs and practice sessions for rewatching and assessing what to improve. So it’s certainly multi-purpose for all of you aspiring to improve your stage presence and singing!

Option 2: Sony

There is nowhere near the same level of buzz around the Sony offerings compared to the Zoom offerings, however that doesn’t mean they are worse. Zoom have just been doing it for longer, and have a wider range of options, and also a big range of older products available for cheaper.

MV1 – http://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/music-video-recorder/hdr-mv1 – around £220

Option 3: Use an iPhone!

How to record Youtube videos

No, seriously, this works GREAT!

With the advance of modern technology meaning everything but the kitchen sink can be put only a phone, more and more people are turning to iPhones for recording their audio and video together.

When student’s record their lessons, they often use the memo recording on the iPhone. The microphone quality on the iPhone is really quite impressive. It can distort easily, but you very quickly learn where to place the phone whilst recording to minimise this.

When you use the video camera feature, particularly in strong daylight, you get some INCREDIBLE quality video for a mobile device.

Instant upload…
What’s even better is that if you have the Youtube app on your phone, when you finish recording a video you can click the ‘share’ button, and you will be given to directly share and immediately upload that video to your own Youtube channel.

This means that anytime you fancy recording a video you can hit record, then click upload – and it’s done! That level of convenience is unmatched by any other device other than mobile phones at the moment, and the iPhone is ahead of the competition in my opinion. Of course your own phone might do this, but you’d need to test it to see how good it is. Technology is improving all the time, but in my opinion the iPhone is presently the number one choice for convenience and quality.

As the iPhone has a pretty awesome microphone (albeit fragile and overly sensitive to loud pops and bangs, but you can easily learn how to work around this), and a pretty decent camera (particularly when in good light), it’s exceedingly hard to beat this option if you already have an iPhone.

A little tip for home made music videos…
This is a cool one.

Because so many people have iPhones, the great thing is that you can use your friends to make multi-angle videos. E.g. you’re all out at a karaoke event or just singing at home… you each use your iPhone to record someone singing at the same time, then share the videos together. You can edit them together to create a really dynamic and engaging multi-angle video shoot for absolutely nothing…. crowd-sharing at its finest!

One other thing…
You CAN get microphone modules to plug into the bottom of the iPhone and provide higher quality microphone input (e.g. Rode microphones offer something like this)… but at this stage I think just ONE device is the best route to send an inexperienced singer down, particularly if they want todo their own Youtube channel.

My suggestion

Use the iPhone if you’ve got it. Either way, play with your own phone’s video and recording function. The iPhone reeeeally hard to beat it for how functional and easy to use it is. If they already have one it’s a no brainer. If they DON’T, then the Zoom Q2HD would be a good start. If they start doing small gigs then the Q4 or Sony MV1 would be the next step up.

Hope that helps! Look forward to catching you again sometime soon.

Learn More: Related Articles

If you want to learn more about recording, you can find out more by visiting these related articles:
Recorded vs Live Performance: Which is harder?
Recording Studio on a Budget
How to Sing When Recording
Vocal Comping to Get the Best Vocal Take
Live vs Recorded Vocals: Our own double standards
Five Common Vocal Misconceptions (check number 5)

Sam Smith How Will I Know

Another voice coach in the US brought my attention to Sam Smith How Will I Know cover, i.e. this awesome song – check it out!

Listen to the quality in the voice.

Sure he goes intentionally light towards the top end of his voice, but listen to how it serves the song. There’s the odd two-to-three note riffs, but nothing ostentatious… it’s ALL about the song… and this is rare in today’s world.

Sit back, relax, and let Sam’s dulcet tones soothe your savage beast!

Sam Smith How Will I Know

NOTE: As an aside, this is a GREAT example of a singer who perhaps bucks today’s current trends of singers needing to sound as LOUD and as POWERFUL as possible. Sam has a fantastic voice, but not because his instrument is hyper-developed in terms of volume, power, riffability, etc, but because he has spent time FINDING his voice. He has worked on the weaknesses, capitalised on his strengths, and his instrument is unlike anyone else’s… i.e. his Unique Selling Point IS that he isn’t the same as the current crop of singers.

How awesome is that?! This is a mainstream artist strutting his stuff in a way that is counter to everything we see on the current roster of international singing superstars… so don’t discount your voice just because you don’t sound like singer X – celebrate what you have, build on your strengths and learn to fix your weaknesses, and see how you could have a voice that is as unique and loveable as Sam’s…

Just some food for thought!

(for those who the embedding doesn’t work – here’s a direct link)

Making Priorities: 4 Steps to Big Changes

Making priorities: we all suck at it, and here’s why

Firstly, I owe you all an apology. It’s been verrry quiet on my blog in the last 2 months.

Why? Because my wife (Sarah) and I had our very first child in that time. Our beautiful daughter Isla was born on May 3, 2014, 9 lbs 15 oz, and she is an utter dreamboat.

Isla and Sarah

Secondly, I want to say that… frankly, I’m not sorry at all. Why? Because of today’s topic: priorities.

I want every single one of you to feel the POWER that having priorities has on your life and your productivity and view your life and activities differently.

We made this decision a long time ago…

My wife and I knew we wanted kids from when we started dating. We discussed it and knew it was something we both wanted for the future. We kept discussing it every so often to decide whether we wanted to take action now or later. Eventually, we decided in late 2012 that in 2013 we were to move towards having kids. We knew we were officially pregnant from August 2013. This resulted in our daughter Isla being born in May of 2014. And now our priority is to spend as much time as possible together with Isla. It’s that simple. So I’ve taken a lot of time off to look after Sarah recovering from labour, and I’ve taken extra holiday time within the first 8 weeks just to spend time with them both.

It’s because of this, I haven’t got round to doing a recent blog post. And I ain’t even remotely sorry, because I made my family a priority and this COMPLETELY changes and defines my daily activities.

Are you wasting your time?

How many times do we keep getting dragged into activities that are not congruent with our life goals? The student that has an exam that allegedly matters to them, yet you spend their days procrastinating and their evenings at parties. The lawyer that says their family matters yet they work long hours and nights away for the sake of supporting their family, yet they are never around. The musician that insists music is their passion but they are constantly out socialising and never practicing.

Do you see how their actions are totally incongruent with their alleged goals? It’s easy to laugh it off, but when you consider how far they are away from their goals and how easy it is to go nowhere fast, it’s not that amusing… and when you realise that every single one of us is doing stuff that is actually STOPPING US FROM ACHIEVING OUR PRIORITIES, it suddenly stops being a laughing matter.

What are your priorities?

Step 1: THE QUALITATIVE Consider the qualitative goals and priorities you have for your life. What stuff are you looking to achieve? Write them down. Seriously write them down!

Step 2: THE QUANTITATIVE Now, if those are your priorities, what activities MUST you be doing in a week to ensure you achieve them (e.g. if you’re a musician, PRACTICE and STUDY should be a regular and essential part of your week… otherwise you’re just kidding yourself). Write them down. Seriously, write those bloody things down!

Step 3: THE IMPLEMENTATION Put these activities in your diary. If you don’t put them in the diary, they won’t get done. Simple as that. If you put those activities in your diary, and give the most important activities the best parts of your day, you will start to see BIG results and changes in the areas you want to change. If you don’t, you won’t. Again, it’s that simple.

Step 4: THE PRUNING Theoretically this is optional, but in reality it’s essential. Look at your existing diary, and consider what you are doing that is getting in the way of your goals. E.g. If you’re a workaholic, staying late at the office is not congruent to a good family life. Just factoring in 1 hour on a Saturday morning won’t be enough. So find out what is getting in the way, and cross it out of your diary.

When you go through this process of focusing on your priorities, and making sure your behaviour and daily activities are 100% in line with those goals, you will start to see BIG changes… and you’ll also feel totally unashamed and unapologetic (like the top of the blog post!) when you spend your time moving towards your goals.

Stop wasting your time and start seeing your priorities become a reality…

This was meant to be a fun post but with a simultaneously serious exercise for all of you here today. I seriously hope you can see the power in reassessing your daily activities, and really making whatever your goals are your #1 priority.

Best of luck!