Sounding your best: Optimising songs for your voice

There’s a quote attributed (incorrectly) to Albert Einstein:

“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live the rest of its life thinking it’s stupid.”

While Einstein appears not to have been the one to coin this phrase, and while this quote can often be misapplied, the underlying sentiment is an important one when it comes to getting the best out of your voice.

Make sure the song itself is not leading your voice astray

When we sing songs we are judging both our version of the song, but also our voice. Which means that if the song doesn’t best suit our voice, we will forever be disappointed in what we can do.

Perfect song choice is so case-by-case that it’s hard to give generalised advice, so I won’t try to. However, almost any song can be adjusted to work better in someone’s particular voice. Often the difference between sounding awful, decent, or even great, is just down to key choice. Even subtle key change can radically transform how the song feels to sing.

But a key that’s too high/too low (often by even just one semitone), will often leave us disheartened and frustrated by how “off” our voices feel and sound. This is especially true for those who sing in bands, where key choice is imposed upon them. And very often in bands, other musicians simply don’t appreciate how critically important key choice is can be. Continue reading “Sounding your best: Optimising songs for your voice”