Category: Singing Lesson Insights

This was a topic I covered with a client recently, so I wanted to share the discussion with you here.

With some singers, if I add even half an octave of range to their voice, they naturally sing into that range as a matter of course. But with other singers, I can add an octave of useable range, but they sing more or less exactly where they did before. Why would this be? Does this imply there’s more to singing high than JUST range extension?

The short answer is ‘yes’. Here’s the longer version.

Brief Summary

The way the technique I teach works is this: by improving someone’s vocal function, the automatic by-product is extending range, better tone, stamina, etc.

Here’s a brief summary of what I mean by good vocal function, so that you don’t need to read a myriad of other articles I’ve written on this:
– To sing low notes the vocal folds need to contract and thicken; and to sing high notes they need to stretch and thin.
– The vocal tract also needs to shape the vowels precisely to enable good interaction between the folds and the tract.
– The more precisely and smoothly these two aspects are co-ordinated by a singer, the more range/tone/stamina arise as a natural result.

There’s a little more to it than that, but this covers the basic underpinnings. Continue reading “Why some never learn to sing higher, even if they increase their range”

This topic is one that is discussed more or less every week in sessions. We do an exercise with a singer or work on a song, and the singer’s perception is wildly out of kilter with how it actually sounds.

Sometimes this is because they sang amazingly but the internal sensations seemed unusual. Other times they think they did a great job, and it really didn’t sound as good as they perceived it to be out front.

Why is this?

The voice is a tricky instrument to master, because it’s the only instrument in the world where the musician IS the instrument. The sound actually comes from inside our bodies. We hear not just the final sound out front, but we experience it with all the internal sensations as well.

It’s like being sat inside a piano as it’s being played. We are getting WAY more sound than the listeners. Some frequencies are accentuated more than the final sound, and some are diminished. It can be quite a difference compared to recording yourself and listening back. Continue reading “Your voice sounds different inside vs outside your head”

If you have ever tried singing your favourite songs, you’ve probably recognised that some are harder than others. You may have even found that some have near identical range, and yet some feel utterly unachievable. Why should this be?

I regularly speak with clients about such songs they find difficult to sing. Comments come up like:

“I’m fine until the bridge/chorus/outro, then I’m knackered”
“It doesn’t seem particularly high, but I seem to struggle to hit the same notes I can in other songs”
“I can’t seem to find a key that makes this song singable – what’s going on?”

These are all common complaints I hear about people trying to sing some songs. In particular, certain songs and certain genres seem to hold much harder melodies for people to sing.

As it happens, there are mechanical and musical reasons for why certain melodies and intervals are harder to sing than others. There are characteristics that, once you learn what they are, you can scan for when listening to songs. Moreover, the more of these melodic characteristics a song possesses, the harder the song inherently becomes.

Characteristics of difficult songs

I’ve got ten traits in mind. Some of these are “voice moves”, tricky things to ask your voice to do, and others relate to general hallmarks of what makes songs easier/harder to sing.

I’ll discuss each briefly so you can grasp why these characteristics make songs tricky. There are many others I can think of, but we’ll start here for you.

0. Key too high/too low/wrong for you
I go on so much about key choice, so I’m going to be brief here. If you are trying to sing a song in the wrong key for you – too high, too low, etc – the song will always be difficult so sing. The following points are to cover attributes within songs themselves, assuming that key choice isn’t an issue. Continue reading “What Makes Certain Songs Hard to Sing”