Tag: singing lessons nottingham

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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.

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Dean Bowman – Mighty, Mighty People of the Sun

This guy is a MONSTER vocalist. He normally sings with progressive funk band the ‘Screaming Headless Torsoes’, but in this video he’s singing with the Charlie Hunter Quarter.

It’s seriously funky, and there’s some mental vocal stylings throughout. If you want to hear the rules get bent, broken, and sometimes even thrown out completely, check out Dean.

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Uptown Funk – Mark Ronson

Uptown Funk

Another AWESOME funk-laden masterpiece – Uptown Funk – from the master mixer Mark Ronson and legendary voice smith Bruno Mars. Things have been pretty quiet from Bruno in the intervening year since the amazing Superbowl half time show from Mr Mars, so it was great to hear him back.


(or click here to open in another window)

It’s so much like James Brown it’s unreal. 100% up to date, but also so retro – I love it. Check it out on repeat like I did

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How Long Does It Take To Learn To Sing Well?

I often get asked ‘How Long Does it Take To Learn To Sing Well?’… the answer is not just simply ‘how long is a piece of string?’, but it is dependent on your goals and many other factors.

So rather than answer the question of ‘how long does it take to learn to sing well’, I want to talk about how long it takes to become exceptional at something. I want to do this to cast light on how long it takes to learn to do anything, but also to help readers realise it’s a long process to become truly great at something.

Time waits for no man…

In today’s culture, we are often confronted by *successful* people around the world aged 21 or under. Having titles like ‘The Top 100 Most Influential Teens’ on magazines doesn’t help with this. Seeing ‘The Top 10 Richest Under-21s’, or how the pop-chart is populated by people who are all under the age of 25 or even 21 depending which week you are talking about, really doesn’t help with this.

And I think this is a fundamentally flawed world-view, because it propagates the cultural lie that the prime age for achieving success is somewhere between 18-25… and that if you miss *success* or critical acclaim in that period of your life, you have failed. If you haven’t learned to do something to an exceptionally high standard by the time you are 26, you may as well give up.

This is a flawed world-view, and fundamentally untrue.

How can I say this? I refer to exhibit A…

Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci is one of THE defining men of the last millennium. He is credited with countless paintings, inventions, great artworks and had one of the greatest minds not just of his generation, but of the last 1000 years. He truly was what is known as a ‘polymath’, someone who is exceptionally clever to the point of genius, and to be such a genius across multiple disciplines.

Now, for the gut punch. Da Vinci was not known by the world for ANY level of success until he was 46. That’s right. 46. Not 40. Not 30. Not 20. Not 18. Forty. Freaking. Six.

Bear in mind that people regularly died of illness and disease by the time they were 40 at the time Da Vinci was alive, so to not have accomplished anything of note by the time you were 30 could easily have been interpreted as a sign of *nothing will ever happen for me*, and in a far more severe way than we could ever comprehend in the Western world today where we regularly live to 70 years old and then some.

If you fancy an interesting read, go and find a biography of Da Vinci – you will be ASTOUNDED by how much of a failure in terms of critical acclaim he was for much of his life.

This is also consistent with another bit of information that is worth discussing…

The 10,000 hour rule

In multiple books, there is referenced something called the 10,000 hour rule. Without going into extreme depth on this, what this means is that experts in their field are generally found to have become experts by spending a minimum of 10,000 hours of focused practice on their chosen discipline. Studies in specific areas known to be truly difficult have found that there is no-one who becomes known as an expert in a given area who managed to get there without spending that requisite time focusing their mind on that task. Violinists, chess players, songwriters (namely, the Beatles) all got there through an incredible amount of hard work.

Let’s do the maths on that…

5 hours a day for a year, accounting for holidays, sick days etc, generally equates to about 1000 hours of workable time per year. That means to acquire 10,000 hours of focused practice, one should generally expect to spend about 10 years on a given task to be considered an expert in their ability. Obviously, if you work to spend more hours on a task, you will get there quicker, but it must be quality practice.

Either way, we are talking about YEARS of focus and determination to get to that level. Not ‘6 months and I STILL haven’t been successful’, or ‘2 years and I STILL haven’t got a record deal’… we are talking YEARS. In Da Vinci’s case, we are talking DECADES of dedication to his chosen craft (or crafts, even).

The Slow Road

We are surrounded by a ‘fast-food’ culture. Where stuff happens fast, and NOW. People don’t like waiting for things. Even movies are now ‘on-demand’. Amazon offer guaranteed next day delivery. Food shops are 24/7.

I’m not saying that you need to spend 10,000 hours in to learn how to sing. You can become a good singer pretty quickly with the right work. But the better you want to be, the loftier your goals, the longer it takes. The reality is, the road to success in ANYTHING is slow going. There may be moments where you speed up, moments where you slow down, but there is no substitute for putting in the time.

For those of you feeling a bit down at the moment…

… maybe you feel like you are getting nowhere, take a moment. Consider how old you are. Consider how long you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing. Consider how focused you have been on the task. Then realise that the road IS MEANT to be slow. It’s never been fast. The idea that you can become an expert in something within 2 hours of trying it for the first time is a cultural lie that we are led to believe.

Lasting ability is worth pursuing, but it does take time. It comes slow. It takes time, dedication, constantly renewed focus, and – I would say – an inner peace that this is the way it must be. Take heart, and keep going!