Today I want to talk about open strings and the voice… but first, I want to ask you…
Have you ever heard country music?
A vast swathe of country music – both vintage and modern – is guitar driven. And a lot of the great players (Brad Paisley, Brent Mason, etc) define the sound of guitar. If you’ve never heard some of these guys, go check em out.
Why Country Music?
Well, within country music there are a number of idiosyncratic riffs and sounds (i.e. signature sounds) that we recognise as being distinctly “country” sounding. One of the things that is responsible for this is the use of the “open strings” of a guitar.
What are open strings?
Open strings are strings that are just plucked by the player without them pressing the string down on any one fret, i.e. the strings are essentially just plucked and left to vibrate. This allows country players to do quite complicated sounding riffs that are essentially switching quickly from a fretted note (i.e, pressing the string) to an open note (i.e. not pressing the string). Good players use this to create flurries of notes that sound impossible… but are actually relatively straight-forward because of the way the instrument is tuned and built…
NOTE: The reason the above bits are in bold is because this is EXTREMELY relevant to the rest of this article
Here’s the rub…
While I’ve just said what sounds impossible is relatively straightforward to do, this is really only true within the keys that just happen to share those open strings… As such, if you try and pull off that complicated sounding riff in ANOTHER key that DOESN’T use those open strings… my oh my you are in for a world of pain. Essentially what once sounded impossible but is in fact easy, then ACTUALLY becomes impossible/near-impossible, because you are no longer able to switch easily from a fretted note to an unfretted note… you’re having to fret EVERYTHING…
Trust me when I say that clever utilisation of open strings is a feature of guitars that makes certain kinds of riffs only really possible in certain keys for given instruments, because of the way it’s tuned and how it uses certain strings.
Why do I bring this up?
Because the voice is verrry similar.
Certain melodies, riffs and musical ideas will seem very easy in some keys (relative to your bridges, i.e. the way your voice is built), and seem impossible in other keys… and the intervals and the melody itself hasn’t changed (other than key).
And still further, just changing the key by one semitone will close down some opportunities, and open up other avenues of possibility for the melody/riffing, etc. It’s a constant balancing act.
Why is this?
Well, it’s very similar to the guitar analogy.
If you choose to work WITH the instrument, i.e. take advantage of it’s little idiosyncrasies, taking care to understand and go WITH those qualities rather than work against them, then you will find things a LOT easier… and seemingly impossible sounds become easy enough to pull off. That’s not to say “effortless”, but more natural and co-ordinated (certainly with training).
BUT!! If you INSIST on forcing the voice to do what you intellectually think SHOULD be fine and doable (like insisting that open string guitar riffs should be playable in any key), rather than noticing how things feel and what your voice is telling you will work, then you will find yourself extremely frustrated. This is very much the amateur/non-singer approach, who just tries to wrangle the voice into submission, rather than recognising it’s an instrument in it’s own right… I can say this with a tinge of embarrassment because I definitely USED to be one of those singers.
There’s a lot above to take in, so here’s the take-home message.
“Work WITH your voice, not against it”
Remember that keys matter, and your voice is an instrument that needs to be respected and understood in the way you must learn and understand any other instrument. Above all, don’t force things to happen when you can clearly hear they aren’t.
Have an experiment, and have a ponder! I hope you’ll find something new and useful come out of this, and that you’ll start to hear the quality in your voice increase as a result.