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In part 1, we discussed how the voice is made up of various registers, connected by transition points we call bridges. Each have their own colour, sound and feel. But learning about the idiosyncrasies of the voice is hard without some context to place it in. So let’s consider some other instruments first.

In part 2, we identified how every instrument has it’s own idiosyncrasies. We looked at piano and guitar, and how each has their own rules/ins and outs that need to be learned over a lifetime of playing the instrument.

For part 3, let’s look at how this relates to the voice. Continue reading “The Colours of the Voice: How and why different registers have their own sound and feel (part 3 of 3)”

In part 1, we discussed how the voice is made up of various registers, connected by transition points we call bridges. Each have their own colour, sound and feel. But learning about the idiosyncrasies of the voice is hard without some context to place it in. So let’s consider some other instruments first.

 

Part 2: Instrument idiosyncrasies

Every instrument has it’s own idiosyncrasies. Things they do well, and things they don’t. There are always quirks that you need to learn to exploit each instrument fully.

EXAMPLE 1: The Piano

Consider the piano. Up high on the piano, one can play a very dense chord with a LOT of notes very close to each other, and it will sound good. But do the same thing down low, it’s a disgusting mess. Why is this? Continue reading “The Colours of the Voice: How and why different registers have their own sound and feel (part 2 of 3)”

I’ve been trying to write about this for some time, but it’s not easy.

Firstly, it’s a fairly abstract topic.

Secondly, so much of singing well is sensory as well as sonic. As such, trying to get less experienced singers to recognise descriptions of what higher registers should feel like without said singers having experienced it themselves, is a somewhat futile endeavour. The discussion inevitably becomes more academic than instructive.

Thirdly, it’s sufficiently complex enough that it isn’t easy to provide a concise explanation for.

Nevertheless, the idea that different parts of the voice have their own distinct qualities and ‘colours’ to them is evident when you listen to great singers. Whether that’s great classical singers, pop singers, rock singers, musical theatre, etc.

The objective of this article is to help people appreciate this as a concept, and also to understand the idiosyncrasies of the various registers of the voice. To do this, and to make sure the structure of this longer articles is clear, I’ve split the explanation into three parts:

Part 1: How the voice is built – We’ll do a quick tour of how the voice is built and works, to provide context for later explanations.

Part 2: Instrument Idiosyncrasies – Before diving into discussing the voice, we’ll illustrate the same principles by referring to other more easily discussed instruments, e.g. how they work, how they like to played, what works well/what doesn’t, etc.

Part 3: Idiosyncrasies of the Voice – At this stage, we should have enough context and illustrations of the principles we are seeking to discuss, and we can grasp how these relate to the voice.

Feel free to visit these part by part rather than trying to digest it in one go. Either way, let’s get started with part 1.

 

Part 1: How the voice is built

You can read a more fully-featured discussion on the way the voice works here. For now, let’s do a whistle-stop tour.

At the bottom end of our instrument, is what many refer to as chest voice. This is the lowest and darkest sounding register of the voice.

The top end of the voice is, broadly speaking, referred to as head voice.

The chief transition point from chest to head voice occurs in different places for men vs women, but it must nevertheless occur. In our nomenclature, we call this the first bridge (also known as the first passage (passagio), etc).

There are other bridges (read: transition points from one register to another), lying within what we would call head voice. There is a second bridge, a third bridge, a fourth bridge, etc.

These occur at distinct points roughly every half octave, but the first and second bridges are by far the most well-observed aspects in the history of vocal pedagogy.

Who should learn to deal with their first bridge?

Honestly, everyone should. Here’s why. Continue reading “The Colours of the Voice: How and why different registers have their own sound and feel (part 1 of 3)”

Over the years I’ve noticed that some singers seem to progress much faster than others. Sometimes this is down to the variations between individuals bodies/voices, and their practice routine. But often I’ve noticed this is down to the kind of material they spend most of their time singing.

All genres have idiosyncrasies that generate bad habits, if left unchecked. Whether it’s rock, musical theatre, indie, RnB, etc, all these genres make certain demands of singers and their voices. This in turn starts to create bad habits that usually become invisible to the singer, but are eminently obvious as soon as we look beneath the surface.

Sometimes these habits are horrendous, sometimes they are oh-so-subtle, but in most cases they have become near enough invisible to the singer, so they don’t even realise they are doing it. In such cases, the habit has become background noise. It interferes with their ability to control their instrument, yet they cannot see the wood for the trees.

The habits can become invisible

The automatic nature of in-built habits mean one simply can’t hear it when they are manipulating the sound, or when a change in approach occurs in the beginning/middle/end of a phrase. Furthermore, it is then very hard to manually override that behaviour, even when one “knows” they should be doing things differently.

It can often feel like beating your head off a brick wall. Phrases like “I’m finding it hard to commit to that note” or “I’m struggling to NOT do what I was doing before” are very common responses to hearing these issues.

Here are some examples of common habit groupings that different genre singers tend to acquire over the years:

1. ‘Yellers’

In this article I talk about the reasons for why so many singers either yell or flip in order to achieve higher notes. Neither strategy is optimal or healthy long-term for singers (nor does it sound particularly good), but certain genres will “self-select” which approach is musically most appropriate/least offensive for certain singers.

In the main, less vocally skilled singers often choose to yell higher notes when singing in genres that require more intense sounds. This involves opening the vocal tract extremely wide like a megaphone, to attempt to not lose perceived power on the top. For example, rock singers are well known for yelling top notes. Certain indie-pop bands and their singers do similar things, though often to a lesser extent than rock.

HINT: When you see veins pop on the neck, head thrown back and/or mouth open very wide, that’s a very strong visual indicator of people selecting this approach.

Some attempting gospel music or more intense soul sounds will often do likewise at the upper end of their range.

Musical theatre is another one that is problematic for just yelling top notes. The perception of what constitutes a good ‘belt’ has shifted a lot over the decades, to the point that more modern musical theatre performances sound exceedingly yell-y on the top end. However, this is often far more disguised than in rock/indie-pop, simply because the bulk of musical theatre songs are so much more lyrical and spoken, plus a strong vibrato. As such singers, still have to craft their “yelling” a little more than alternative genres.

If you have sung a lot in these genres, it may feel hard to control your instrument at the top end. The automatic desire that has been built-in as invisible habit will mean you have a propensity to widen enormously as you reach higher notes. Instead, we’ve got to slowly show your instrument that it doesn’t need to resort to that emergency strategy, that there’s a better way… but it does take time to chip away at that habit/muscle memory to make the new approach our new automatic reflex.

2. Flippers

As per example 1, the inherent difficulty in singing means people will often revert to yelling or flipping to make higher notes.

RnB, hip-hop, lighter pop, all involve stylistic lighter, almost falsetto sounding high notes on the top end. E.g. Justin Timberlake, Pharrell, D’Angelo.

The yelling approach tends not to be a pleasing sound for this genre. Ergo, singers in this genre tend to go the opposite way. When things get more intense at the upper end of their voice, they resort to singing very softly/lightly. This is generally to avoid discomfort AND to deliver a sound more appropriate to the genre. This is certainly a less damaging strategy in the long run, but for men especially, it is a fairly emasculating way to sing everything.

These singers tend to realise they are being light, but this colours their view of what “heavier” singing is. As such, they often struggle to increase the intensity in their voice in a controlled way, as their body’s automatic reaction is to lighten up.

Jekyll/Hyde
Some singers have a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde thing going on, and do both yelling and flipping, just at different points. Just because a singer can yell OR flip in the upper part of their range doesn’t mean they don’t have these issues – it generally means they have both.

The challenge is to exert control over one’s instrument so that intense sounds and lighter sounds are connected through a similar approach. Singers who have both of these habits often find it very hard to not flip-flop between them, and that middle ground of controlled intensity can feel very elusive.

3. Manglers

There have always been singers that sound a bit odd or that are less intelligible, e.g. Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, etc. But since singers like Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Adele, plus male singers like Passenger, or the lead singer of Kings of Leon, mangled vocal sounds have (in my opinion) never been more in-vogue.

In the pursuit of being recognised as having a “unique sound“, singers are increasingly choosing to mangle the proverbial **** out of words. For some, it’s almost a spasmodic approach to singing lyrics, just to make it sound ‘different’.

Acoustic singer-songwriters are notorious for this, especially as they are trying to make ‘one voice and a guitar’ sound distinctive and different from others. Certain modern RnB, soul and indie singers do similarly.

Such singers drift so far from what their voice ACTUALLY sounds like, it becomes the vocal equivalent of body dysmorphia. They cannot recognise that they don’t sound like themselves, and that is hard to unpick.

We need to reintroduce themselves to their own voice, but also to teach them how to develop consistency and control over their voice. We are not just starting from scratch, but trying to unpick the randomised and erratic approach they typically adopt.

Conclusion: It’s not just you

In short, every genre breeds habits to one degree or another. That’s what voice exercises are for. To build the voice to have a solid home-base, such that the inevitable demands of songs don’t derail our voices or knock them into a cocked hat. So don’t worry, it’s not just you. And, yes, while it can be difficult or frustrating, it is far from hopeless!

99% of people start in one of these groupings, to one degree or another. There’s a rare 1% doing a lot right, with whom we can just crack on, but that isn’t the case for the majority. We all have things to learn and things to unpick. Half the battle is knowing that we have an issue, and keeping a keen eye out for it as we develop our voices.

If that’s something you’d like to look at fixing in your own voice, you can book in a session with me via our booking form.

Many of you reading this will have likely tried recording your own vocals. You’ll likely have a microphone like the Shure SM58 or Rode M1, or perhaps you have a more typical condenser microphone. Or maybe you’re just recording on your phone and listening back.

Either way, the usual first experience that people have when recording is “do I really sound like that?!”

The second set of experiences that people have (once they get over the first reaction) is typically along the lines of “hmmm, getting a good sound is harder than I thought“.

Real world vs Digital world

One of the things that’s odd about recording is that it is taking something that we typically hear naturally in the real world, and translating it to the artifical digital domain – i.e. the computer. Then when we listen back, we listen back via an artificial system of reproduction (speakers).

The way a microphone works is via a thin layer of material (called a diaphragm) that vibrates as it receives sound, and a secondary mechanism coupled therewith turns that diaphragm vibration into an electrical signal that exactly represents the soundwave as it was received at the diaphragm.

Your ear works in much the same way. Our eardrum is that thin layer of material that vibrates as it receives sound, and a secondary mechanism (cochlear) translates that into signals to go to the brain.

The thing that makes the human system different is that there is a brain directly involved to translate and make sense of the signals for us. Here’s how that matters Continue reading “Recording Yourself: Why you sound different, and how the pros fix this”