Stevie Wonder – For Your Love

The last few weeks I’ve been listening to lots of Stevie Wonder – he is an absolute monster songwriter and vocalist. This one is particularly excellent. In particular, check out the epic key changes and effortless pure high notes towards the end. The man is unbelievable.

I should also point out that he is a long-time student and friend of Seth Riggs – if you want to know more about Seth and his contribution to the progression of vocal technique (trust me, it’s important!) then just click here.

Love it.

500 words or less: Stuck in a rut

Stuck in a musical rut?

Are you stuck in a rut? Just rehashing the same stuff over and over? Maybe it’s singing, guitar, piano, bass, whatever, you just feel like you are going over the same ground again and again…

Well, here’s my top tip for getting out of a rut:

Listen to something you’ve never listened to before

Why? Let me tell you why…

Something from nothing.

Music is a wonderful thing. It can take so many different forms, encompass so many different sounds, be expressed in so many different styles, be incredibly complex or ridiculously simple, pieces can be hours long or less than a minute. It can be created from nothing, and can feel like it becomes everything in a given moment. It really is a beautiful thing.

Those who are able to make their living from music are truly blessed. They get to make music and play around with it every day.

One thing that surprises me about a select number of musicians, professional and amateur alike, is their propensity to listen to just ONE style of music to the exclusion of all others. They might profess that they want to be the best at that one style, to shine out above everyone else operating in that genre… and I say that they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Products of our environment

We are all products of what we surround ourselves with. People, television, music, etc. This is reflected in our personalities and in our music. If all we do is listen to one particular style of music, then we will only regurgitate combinations of music that already exists. There is nothing wrong with listening to music we love, nothing wrong at all. But if all we do is indulge in the SAME stuff over and over, how can we ever expect to produce anything OTHER than the stuff we’re indulging in?

However, if we immerse ourselves in as many different styles of music as we can, we can take in new ideas, play around with undiscovered – or at least underutilised – combinations of sounds, and we can still further identify things we DON’T like and why… which means we can become more discerning with the music we make. All music is useful in some way. If you like it, learn how to play it, ask yourself why you like it. if you don’t like it, maybe learn how to play it, and ask yourself why you don’t like it. By doing this, you can expand your musical horizons and creativity. Why would you consciously limit yourself?

You want to get out of a rut? Ask someone to lend you the most quirky thing in their music collection, and listen to whole album. Ask yourself what did you like and why, and what didn’t you like and why. Try and incorporate ideas from this quirky stuff, and expand your horizons. If you’re a rocker, get some jazz. You a jazzer, get some country. You a bluegrass artist, get some opera in your ears…

Listen to something new today.

Adam Pascal – Pity The Child

Another great youtube video. This guy’s name is Adam Pascal, and you may recognise him from the movie ‘School of Rock’. He was the bassist of the band that fired Jack Black’s character. He is an excellent all-round vocalist and singer.

The top notes if I recall correctly are around C#5/D5, and the run up into them is tough, but very melodic.

Key Learning Point

I’ll be honest, as impressive as this sounds, it gets a bit shouty. It’s not the widest I’ve ever heard someone sing and by jove he’s doing something incredibly difficult… but does it sound good? If we stuck it down a minor third, I reckon he’d FEEL a lot better whilst singing, and it’d SOUND a lot better.

It doesn’t lack quality, but there is an easy way to MASSIVELY bump up the already existent quality in his voice. If he can make it sound that good in THAT key, how much better would it sound when he’s not working for EVERY note?

I know we harp on about that, but quality matters. It’s what makes the difference between great singers and “merely good” singers. It’s ALSO what makes the difference between singers who last 5 years and the ones who last 50 years.

Remember, put quality first and the rest will follow.

This is the Moment

Another quick post on some Youtube gold. This one is a rendition of a piece from the musical Jekyll and Hyde – ‘This is the Moment – performed beautifully by Joseph Mahowald. Check it out. The ending makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Beautiful.

Steve Balsamo

This is Steve Balsamo’s performance of ‘Gethsemane’ from Jesus Christ Superstar, and he does the mentalness of Ted Neeley’s original performance from the Jesus Christ Superstar film decades ago. I’d recommend watching the whole thing, but if you want to skip straight to the mentalness, shoot to 2m44s and you’ll get about 20 seconds run up into his prowess in full swing.

No, that is not falsetto, it’s head voice. You can hear he hits ‘that note’, then riffs (i.e. does some other notes in a musically cool and funky way) down back into chest voice in a fully connected way – if all the notes sound tonally even and connected together with no real tonal shift then it’s not falsetto.

But if you listen a little bit longer, as he’s ascending back up again, you can hear a noticeable shift into head voice. It’s still very impressive, but note that the illusion of one voice is damaged.

Learning points:

#1 – Half the range, twice the quality – While this is incredibly impressive, when you sit back and think objectively about the overall tone of his voice throughout, you can hear he is having to be incredibly light throughout in order to make sure he’s able to “get up there”. This means that although the high notes sound impressive, he’s compromised the whole of his vocal tone the rest of the song to get up there.

A phrase that is important to remember is that when it comes to longlasting voices, longlasting careers, and an audience that never gets tired of your voice, is to half the range to give twice the quality. So what if you hit crazy high notes, if your quality is compromised to do that, what was the point?

#2 – Technique does not equal listenability or success – This guy has done some incredible stuff here. But how many of you know his name? What about Michael Buble? Or Ed Sheeran? Almost all of you have heard their names. Their voices are lovely, but nowhere near as technical. What they are doing is almost pedestrian in comparison. Yet they fill stadiums and have millions of fans as well as critical commercial success. What gives? Music is not a competition. How much you can do with your voice is not as important as what choose to do with it. Being listenable is far more important than showing off a billion notes a second.

Now while this seems very similar to half the range, twice the quality, this is to point out that the real test you should always be sitting is “are you sounding good?”. Not “are you sounding impressive”. Impressive technique does exactly that for the first few seconds – it impresses. But what happens after that? Very few know about Steve Balsamo, yet Buble is a household name.

Make your first priority being listenable, and the rest will follow. Trust me on this.