Category: Artists

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What is your musical diet? What are you consuming?

This week I want to ask you ‘what is your musical diet?’ A Youtube creator I follow called Rick Beato put this great video out last week on ‘Has every song been written?’ commenting on the fleet of lawsuits that artists are firing at each other over copying songs.

Now while he sets out to discuss the nature of this, it’s the last few minutes of the video (I’ve timestamped the video to start from this point) that I wanted to share with you. And that is in relation to musical diet…

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Live vs Recorded – Our own double standards

As I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the recording realm and inherently comparing live vs recorded vocals. I have pretty good pitch, but even I notice how unforgiving it is to hear your own recorded vocal back. We might only be talking about just one or two notes in a 3 minute difficult performance that are off, but they can completely change the perception of a vocal take being good vs bad.

Here’s a basic test for you to see what I mean. Here is a clip of an incredibly consistent and incredible live singer – Peabo Bryson. I go on about him because he is excellent. He is often held up by recording engineers and producers as being a “one take wonder”, where he can just record a single take and it’s basically perfect. Continue reading “Live vs Recorded – Our own double standards”

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Andrea Bocelli & Celine Dion – The Prayer

I’ve been asked to sing this song at a friend’s wedding at the beginning of the summer, and it’s an Andrea Bocelli piece. I’ve been getting acquainted with it this week during some downtime over Easter. I thought you might like to have a listen to the original version and see what I’m up against.

Now my friend’s favourite version is actually the version with Andrea Bocelli and Katherine Jenkins, but this one is in the key we’ll be doing the actual piece in (and a better quality recording)

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Performance Tip #2: Have a specific WHERE and a WHO (Rhonda Carlson Workshop)

Reading time: 3 minutes

In the first performance article we talked about Rhonda Carlson’s advice on having/creating a backstory to whatever song you are going to sing. The more detailed and personally invested you can make the character singing the song, the easier it is to inhabit that story and sell it… but to sell it, you can’t sell it to a blank wall, or even an arbitrary personality. You’ve got to sing the song to an ACTUAL person, ideally in an actual place.
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Pavarotti demonstrates covered sound

In the classical world there is this idea of the “covered” sound, and in a video I’ve linked below, Pavarotti demonstrates covered sound.

What this broadly translates to is a sound where the brashness of chest voice is rounded off as the voice ascends, to create a deep and powerful sound, but with appropriate darkness and brightness therein. The easiest way to demonstrates this is with a clip, and who better to demonstrate than Pavarotti himself!
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Fritz Wunderlich

If you have never heard of Fritz Wunderlich, well, you’re not alone as many have not. He is an unsung superstar of his generation, with his life being tragically cut short when he fell down a flight on stairs whilst on a hunting trip in 1966. His renditions of many tracks are now largely considered to be the defining version of those tracks.

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