Category: Artists

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Sounding your best: Optimising songs for your voice

There’s a quote attributed (incorrectly) to Albert Einstein:

“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live the rest of its life thinking it’s stupid.”

While Einstein appears not to have been the one to coin this phrase, and while this quote can often be misapplied, the underlying sentiment is an important one when it comes to getting the best out of your voice.

Make sure the song itself is not leading your voice astray

When we sing songs we are judging both our version of the song, but also our voice. Which means that if the song doesn’t best suit our voice, we will forever be disappointed in what we can do.

Perfect song choice is so case-by-case that it’s hard to give generalised advice, so I won’t try to. However, almost any song can be adjusted to work better in someone’s particular voice. Often the difference between sounding awful, decent, or even great, is just down to key choice. Even subtle key change can radically transform how the song feels to sing.

But a key that’s too high/too low (often by even just one semitone), will often leave us disheartened and frustrated by how “off” our voices feel and sound. This is especially true for those who sing in bands, where key choice is imposed upon them. And very often in bands, other musicians simply don’t appreciate how critically important key choice is can be. Continue reading “Sounding your best: Optimising songs for your voice”

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Shouting Masquerading As Singing: Reasons why so many singers are just yelling

DISCLAIMER: This article is not simply going to be another example of an old man yelling at a cloud.
Old man yells at cloud

It’s also not going to be a discussion around me staring into the middle distance and yearning for the “good ol’ days“.

But I will put it bluntly

There is an epidemic of shouting masquerading as singing, at least to my mind and my ear. And today I want to talk about why.

Over the years
To begin with, I’ve lost count of the number of events where every singer was just yelling their guts out. I’ve even seen singers step away from the microphone to show how loudly they can bellow their lyrics – it’s part of their performance piece. I’ve seen performers get gigs for not much more reason than they can belt notes louder than their peers. I’ve even been singing as part of a group, where when someone starts yelling their part, people think that equates to a more emotional performance.

What exactly is causing this? And what are the highest quality singers actually doing that sets them apart from some that might be accused of yelling?

Before we judge such singers too harshly…
… are there reasons behind why many resort to yelling? Are there tripwires that cause some singers to miss out on the path to higher quality?

I’m not for a second looking to justify or exonerate bad singing, but I also want to be clear that the voice has its complications. It would therefore be remiss to not discuss some of the physiological factors at play in this trend. Continue reading “Shouting Masquerading As Singing: Reasons why so many singers are just yelling”

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Recording vs Live Performance – Which is harder?

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years on recording. I’ve spent time recording tracks, mixing them, and making them sound as good as possible. It’s a skill in and of itself that I can constantly improve at…

… but when it comes to recording your own voice vs doing a live performance, which is harder, and which is easier?

Well, it’s not that simple. There’s pros and cons each way. Let’s have a look at them in turn: Continue reading “Recording vs Live Performance – Which is harder?”

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How different is your singing from your speaking voice?

One of the key principles that our technique is built on is using the natural calibration of your speaking voice (i.e. chest voice) as a roadmap to build our singing voice. The greater the deviation from our speaking voice co-ordination/calibration (evidenced by a different sound), the greater the level of issues singers tend to encounter.

Such issues can be physical, acoustic, and/or psychological. Let’s get into the first one now… Continue reading “How different is your singing from your speaking voice?”

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How to sing when recording?

I received an email this week asking about how to sing when recording. I’ve re-parsed the sentences in the email so that the questions flow for the purposes of this article.

“Hi Mark,

Do you have any articles [or advice] on how to sing when recording? I feel like my recorded voice sounds both harsh and dull.

I wonder whether I sing too forcefully to try and get emotional intensity. Do I need to improve my loud singing? Or is it about singing differently when recording?

When I listen to my favourite artists’ recordings they sound alive, intense and still have nice higher resonances going on. Would getting a mic that can deal with louder singing help with not losing the higher resonances?”

What can we do?

Sorry to hear you’re having trouble with your vocal recordings. I happen to spend a lot of time recording and working on this stuff, so let’s dive into it… Continue reading “How to sing when recording?”

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Different bridging strategies

To sing well, we must learn to move from chest voice into head voice and be able to dance back and forth without difficulty. To be even more precise, we must learn to transition across multiple passagio/bridges, and to tonally match the bottom to the top and vice versa.

Although there is a particular pathway to achieve this, the exact nuances of the bridging process as felt by each singer can be a little different. And even within those nuanced routes, there are different strategies that are employable by even the same singer to colour the sound in different ways, whilst still being within the realm of technically correct and aesthetically beautiful singing. Continue reading “Different bridging strategies”