Tag: mix voice

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Creating a great Mix: Tone-matching

Creating a great Mix: Tone-matching in another musical world

In the guitar world, tube amplifiers (the very first kind of amps for guitar that were ever created) have been the sought after tone machines for guitarists.

The issues with valve/tube amps are that they are heavy, too loud when delivering a great tone, require increasingly expensive maintenance, etc. As such, despite sounding great, with the advent of digital technology being so powerful now, people have long been trying to recreate the sound of tube amplifiers in digital products – these are often referred to as ‘modellers’ as they are trying to recreate a working digital model of an existing amplifier. The advantage of this is that the devices are much smaller, work at any volume level, and virtually no maintenance costs.

Nowadays there are products that can do live tone-matching with an existing tube amplifier. What this entails is that the modelling system is hooked up to an existing amplifier and it runs various listening diagnostics to the amplifier to try and mimic the amp as closely as possible, in terms of tone, feel, etc.

This is super-important that the digital model not just sound the same as the original amp, but that the model FEELS the same as the original, as the closer all those factors are to the original, the less of a discrepancy there is in the digital model from the original amp… thus rather than creating something that elicits the response of “oh, that’s a convincing copy”… people are left completely unaware they are even listening to something other than the original – the tone-matched model and the original amp sound become essentially one and the same thing.

What has this got to do with singing?

We’ve talked a lot about chest voice in previous articles (because a solid established TRUE chest voice is of critical importance in building a voice).

Take this tone-matching analogy in guitar amps. What they are trying to do is take something that sounds a beautiful way NATURALLY, and try to emulate that in a domain that does NOT naturally sound that way. It does so incrementally and repeat efforts to tone-match helps refine that sound.

In the same way, once the true chest voice of a given singer is established in that singer, we have the “original” sound that we are looking to recreate everywhere in the voice. Our goal is therefore to tone-match that sound as we develop the functional ability to move through the rest of our voice and our bridges. We develop functional ability to move through the voice first, but increasingly tone-match note by note from chest through the start of the bridge and upwards, making sure that each ascending note matches the one before it, both in terms of tone and feel (and certainly control of volume, though that takes time). If even one note is not matched to the extent given above, the consistency of the mix is lost.

The better the tone-match as we progress through the voice, the better the sound… AND the feel. For everyone involved as well! For the singer, for the audience, for everyone. Once you can start to tone-match your upper register to your true chest voice, high notes stop SOUNDING or even feeling that high. Of course their pitches are still high in an absolute sense, but the lack of reach, the evenness of timbre, the fact that the notes still sound like chest means we are psychologically trained to recognise the sound as chest and therefore we “feel” like those notes are in a comfortable range (as both singers and listeners).

This is huge

THIS is one key attribute of developing a great mix. Once the chest voice is established appropriately, tone-matching that quality throughout the range is what breeds a solid, powerful and expressive, mix. And few ever take the time to get that granular about their voice and any mix that may be established.

Any questions? Probably, as it’s quite a complex topic that I’ve tried to boil down into a simple analogy. But if you do have them, just post them below and I’ll be happy to update this article or chip in.

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Mix Voice Exercises – The Texture of Chest and Head

One of the things I’m asked a lot is how mix voice works, and what mix voice exercises people can do to improve their voice. It’s hard to describe, it’s far easier to demonstrate… but while demonstration makes people go ‘ahh, that’s how it sounds’, it doesn’t go quite far enough to explaining what they are trying to achieve in their own voice on a level other than ‘well, it’s a blend of the two’.

In today’s blog post, I wanted to talk a bit more about the nature of the blend and the balance of that mix, and talk about some mix voice exercises that can help with this.

And I’m going to do that by referring to what I’ve been discussing as quality or ‘texture’ of the two respective registers of the voice.

Head Voice

This is regularly step 1 in introducing people to mix, generally because many don’t quite grasp what their head voice is or sounds like. In isolation, it’s a light, bright, vibrant sound, but not necessarily much to write home about (specifically in isolation). Particularly for chestier singers, this is a key introduction to ‘meet your head voice, this is how it sounds’.

We then progress them from working almost exclusively in chest voice to introducing a little bit more of that ‘texture’ of head voice into their voice. This extends range and adds a wonderful sheen (at the very least) to the top of chest voice as that light bright sound when mixed in with the quality of chest voice gives that wonderful balance.

Chest Voice

An under-discussed topic is the quality or texture of chest voice. Sure, for light-chested singers, we spend time establishing chest voice, but rarely are we actively LISTENING to the quality that chest voice brings. To my ears, chest voice in isolation is very raw, almost reminiscent (to my ears and brain) of velcro coming apart, at least when done to an extreme.

But one of the issues I’ve seen with many mix-voice specific techniques is the over-emphasis of moving towards head voice, and an absence of discussion on the fact that chest voice must also be present. This chest voice texture ALSO needs to be blended into head voice. So often we talk about bringing that head voice quality to the range we refer to as chest voice, but rarely do we talk about bringing the quality of chest voice up into the range we refer to as head voice.

And this is CRITICAL for creating a convincing and effortless mix.

The Blend of The Two

Once you start identifying those two textures of chest voice and head voice, and thinking about whether the two are present in appropriate amounts, it allows the following to occur in singers who are already mixing, but could be strengthening and balancing their mix better:

Singers who sing with an overly weighty mix suddenly start to recognise they are not ushering in sufficient head voice quality into their voice, and adjust this accordingly with mix voice exercises.

Singers who sing with an overly light mix suddenly start to recognise they are not maintaining sufficient quality of chest voice in their voice, and can begin to adjust this accordingly.

It should be stated that this is not a quick-fix. It’s not a *trick* or a silver-bullet mix voice exercise that can suddenly fix someone’s voice, it’s more of a mental concept that can allow singers to recognise the importance of allowing the texture of BOTH registers of their voice to be present in all areas of their range. I’ve found it tremendously effective in my own voice, as well as in my students’ voices. Remember, your mix needs BOTH chest voice and head voice present in appropriate amounts to constitute a strong sound.