So classy. Love this era of music. All about telling the story, quality first.
Peabo Bryson – Show and Tell
Peabo Bryson is a monster vocalist who I believe still performs regularly out in Vegas.
He studied/studies with Seth Riggs and has an incredible instrument. Very full and very intense, and even when he bends the rules he’s not bending them that much – he tends to sing fairly emotive ballads and the like, but even if you’re not into that kind of music, it’s well worth checking out to hear what this guy can turn out. It’s awesome.
Rival Sons Burn Down Los Angeles – Live Performance
Hey folks
Here’s one of my favourite bands. They are a proper old school hard rock band called ‘Rival Sons’. I’ve blogged about them before, but this is to illustrate a particular point.
Watch the video below. It’s essentially just recorded “in the room”. There is some mixing that has gone on (as evidenced by the comments on the Youtube page), but it is essentially just recorded straight to disk.
What’s so impressive about that? LISTEN to it. Listen to how tight the whole performance is. Note and timing perfect. It’s incredibly close to the album version.
Why should you find that amazing? Very few bands are capable of delivering what they do on albums in the real world. There’s almost always shortcuts taken in the studio to make the album sound cool, but that aren’t replicable live.
THIS (in my opinion) is a really high standard of live performance, and if you are a live performer, you would do well to aspire to THAT level of professionalism.
But even if you’re not performing live (well, even if you are!) above all, enjoy the track!
It all starts and ends with chest voice, part 2
In part 1, we discussed how, when it comes to building a voice properly, it starts and ends with chest voice.
We summarised how this is true sonically, technically AND psychologically. We then discussed the first one – the sonic comparison – in depth.
This week, we’ll be looking at the second one:
2. “It all starts and ends with chest voice… technically”
What does this mean?
We’ve already identified in part 1, that every audience member (as well as every singer) is comparing whatever tone they are hearing to whether it sounds like the singer’s normal voice (their chest voice). Sonically, chest voice matters.
But if you work this backwards, what does this mean for the SINGER? What MUST be happening inside their voice to create that texture of THEIR voice, their chest voice, out front to everyone else?
To do that, we need to start with considering what is happening in the simplest case – what is happening in chest voice.
The Simplest Case
To sing high notes the vocal cords stretch and thin, and to sing low notes they contract and thicken. When in chest voice, the muscle that is dominant in activity is the thyroarytenoid muscle, the TA muscle for short.
This means that when we are singing in chest voice, the dominant component of the tone you are hearing is contributed by the activity of the TA muscle. You could even consider that (in its rawest state) you are “hearing” the tone imparted by the TA muscle (this isn’t strictly true or 100% accurate, but bear with me – it’s to serve a point).
With that flawed analogy in mind
If a singer, when singing high, could keep the exact even-ness of co-ordination as they have in chest voice (even when they are not!), then the audience would have no idea whatsoever that a shift has occurred! When you hear chest voice, you are predominantly hearing the contraction of the cords as provided by the TA muscle. If you can preserve this contraction as you ascend, you are therefore preserving the same tone this contraction provides… which means that irrespective of where you are, your tone remains the same throughout. Isn’t that incredible?!
Now, while this description is leaving out a few things that need to happen in tandem, this is still a critical component of singing well. This approach requires constant and appropriate engagement of the TA muscle to do this, not faltering and losing contraction, nor getting overactive and resulting in strain.
So why is this so difficult? Why can’t I just take chest voice up with me?
The million dollar question. The issue that most encounter is that it is HARD to take that much contraction up into the upper registers without just straining. We need another component (release) for this to happen without straining or just yanking chest voice up with us (for more on this, please see this article on Contraction and release).
It all starts and ends with chest voice, technically
The take-home message here is this – everything you hear in your voice can be traced back to functional behaviour of the voice. When you hear a singer that sounds amazing up high, as if they’ve never left chest voice, you are hearing a congruency in the function of their voice (an evenness in control of the muscles themselves) that automatically translates to a congruency in the TONE of their voice.
Contraction and Release
OK, this one is going to be a little different.
DISCLAIMER:
What is about to follow builds on concepts of bridging, registration, and the tendencies that different singers have. If these terms are unfamiliar to you, or if you’ve not read the various articles on my site on bridges and the various vocal tendencies, please do have a search for these before continuing.
With that disclaimer done, let’s dive in.
The trouble with just EXCLUSIVELY registrating a voice…
One of the most amazing things about the technique we use in sessions is that it respects the idea of bridges or passageways in the voice. These passages connect different register in the voice (chest to head, super head, whistle register, etc). When a voice is able to navigate these without strain or loss of connection, we can say that this voice is “registrated” or is registrating well. The voice (and singer) is able to transition through each of these registers unimpinged by strain or by letting go into a lighter inconsistent sound.
The trouble with this approach is that many singers think that just the ability to move smoothly through the registers of their voices automatically makes them great singers. And I would have definitely been one of them in the past. BUT! The act of smooth registration is only a fraction of the battle… it starts the journey, and will always remain critical, but the rest of the journey involves the incredibly fine balance of contraction and release.
Here’s a way to break it down.
Contraction
To sing high notes the vocal cords need to stretch and thin. To sing low notes they need to contract and thicken. There is therefore a level of contraction in the cords that contributes towards the perceived tone generated by them. We need this contraction.
With the pull/high layrnx tendency, there is an overactivity in muscular contraction. Sometimes extrinsic (outside the vocal cords, e.g. surrounding muscular) but often within the larynx (e.g. the vocal cords and operational musculature themselves). Contraction is necessary, but too much causes stress and strain, and is bad.
With the light/no chest tendency, there is an an underactivity in muscular contraction. Excess contraction isn’t good, but neither is an underactive level of contraction. Too much is bad, too little is bad too.
With the flip/falsetto tendency, there is an inconsistency in muscular contraction. As before, excess is bad, too little is bad, and an inconsistent amount isn’t helpful either. Too much is bad, too little is bad, aaaaand inconsistent amounts are bad as well.
So we need the right amount of contraction in the cords?
Yes… but it’s a little bit more complex than even that.
Release
Release is the idea of a voice being free to access different registers. E.g. rather than reaching a Bb through the second bridge but holding onto a little bit too much of the passage before, the singer reaches it with no strain and no holding onto what went before. This CAN sound overly heady (in this example) but the sound is clearly heard to be free of strain and manipulation. This is good, for establishing initial ease of registration.
This idea of release is key for accessing upper registers and blending the voice. It’s a key component in registration… initially, and at every stage of development. We should ALWAYS be releasing into the next register of our voice, not pulling or straining. Release, like contraction, is necessary.
In the pull/high layrnx tendency, there is an insufficient amount of release. This is evident from our description above. Too little is obviously bad.
In the light/no chest tendency, there is too much release, hitting head voice too early (though slightly different due to the nature of underactive contraction – but this is helpful for our point). Too little release is bad, too much release isn’t great either.
In the flip/falsetto tendency, there is an inconsistent level of release. There may be no strain during the flip, but it is a sign of lack of co-ordination. Too little release is bad, too much release is bad, aaaaand an inconsistent amount is also bad.
So we need JUST the right of each… what IS that right amount?
To answer that, we need to revisit something we’ve talked about before.
Comparison with chest voice
In my post about singing starting and ending with chest voice, everyone (no matter how trained they are in singing) is comparing the sound of your voice up high (or anywhere else) to the sound of your natural speaking voice. That’s just the reality of it. Ergo, when they hear you singing high, they want to hear something congruent with chest voice.
But we can’t make it sound exactly like chest voice, because we need release into the upper registers… to do otherwise would just be straining and have insufficient release.
But we also can’t just completely release, because that would just be incredibly heady and incongruent with chest voice… to do so would be too light and have insufficent contraction.
Do you see?
We need BOTH. In a measure that balances one against the other. More than just merely “balanced” enough to registrate, or even just to feel like we can hit all the notes, we are talking about finding out how MUCH contraction the chest register on its own can deliver (forte, loud singing), and then making sure we can accompany a congruent amount of contraction in the upper registers… WITH the necessary amount of release to complement that level of contraction.
We need to know we can achieve that level of contraction everywhere in the voice, but once we are in the upper registers, a greater amount of release is progressively required to enable those notes to be sung well. Both parts must be there in appropriate (but not necessarily equal) measure. It’s not a one-size-fits-all balance, it’s unique to each voice.
NOTE: Not that we should always be singing super-loud, but it’s this multi-dimensional approach to bridging and registrating the voice that is needed to REEEEALLY build a voice.
In short…
…bridging is only half the battle. Bridging AT volume is the next part. This requires appropriate parts contraction AND release for any given voice, in order to give the voice access to all of it’s registers in a congruent way that the singer can also engage with.
Wipe the sweat off your brow!
I KNOW this is heavy stuff folks, but it’s something that once you “get”, you’ll be amazed you didn’t think like this before.
Function before sound, every time
This week I want to talk about the importance of function over sound when it comes to building a great singing voice.
I’ve had some new clients start recently. One of these clients received classical repertoire voice training at a very young age for a long time, and she has a lovely voice.
One of the challenges with classically focused training that ALSO moves to repertoire too soon, is that they place sound over function, rather than prioritise function over sound.
What do I mean by ‘function over sound’?
It means that tutors of a repertoire focused approach take whatever sound the student is generating, and (by hook or by crook) try to alter the sound to fit the repertoire. This might seem logical, but it is a flawed approach.
This approach is massively flawed because it is merely trying to hide and disguise flaws rather than truly improving the voice. Think of it like someone who is overweight and out of shape going to a personal trainer, and the personal trainer doesn’t get them to do exercises to alter their physique or musculature, or look at their diet to prevent future weight gains, but instead gets them just doing the muscles that people can see (biceps and abs) and running to get fitted clothes that hide the issues rather than solving them.
This seems rewarding at first, because your physique or in our case – your sound – “seems” to change, but it’s not a short cut, it’s a cul-de-sac.
Function must come first.
When you start to prioritise the FUNCTION of the voice, of the vocal cords and vocal apparatus that generates the sound (even when it sounds CRAP!), it can feel slow at first. Often when I work on this with singers, to them it can feel I’m asking for them to shelve everything that makes their voice “them”, and this is undeniably hard to get on board with.
However, by focusing on correct function, your voice BECOMES your true voice, the one you use everyday and have no issues expressing with. It results in the whole instrument functioning better, which improves range, tone, control, facility, flexibility, breath control, endurance, robustness, and a LOT more, but it might mean getting off your old path.
Styling too soon is a vocal dead-end.
Repertoire will only direct you down a certain path, and does not innately encourage vocal development. If the song is absolutely within your current capacity then we should absolutely be installing ourself into those songs. But far too often people try to force themselves into a song that is unattainable with their present capacity.
You will feel like you can push a bit further forward, but you can never bust through a wall. To put function first may feel like a step backward, but it is just ONE step back, out of the cul-de-sac, and onto the road that will take you further along your vocal development.
Learn More: Related Articles
If you’d like to learn more about what good vocal function involves, check out these related articles:
My Vocal Warmup and Practice Routine
What makes a song “feel” high?
Tongue Tension: How to spot it and fix it
5 Reasons Sleep Helps Boost Your Singing
A Key to Great Singing: Hyper-function vs Relaxation