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One of the biggest (fallacious) objections I have encountered against formal voice training, is that it is formulaic and limits artistry. This objection is one I tend not to hear too much these days, but I used to.

Usually it was overly set-in-their-ways artists/aspiring artists, and they’d want my help, but they would be unwilling to change anything about what they were doing.

They would want more range and power, but they’d be unwilling to adjust their present approach. They’d want me to solve the vocal fatigue and damage they were encountering, but they would be unwilling to change even one iota in what they were doing.

I’m sure you can see why this is a foolish path to take. In the words of Henry Ford, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

Humour me though. For a moment, let’s argue their corner. The way vocal technique works is that it accepts there is a particular way the voice is meant to work. The vocal folds and vocal tract have an optimal way of working, and this is the same for all voices, glossing over minute variations between different voices.

Surely then, this would mean that as we train our voices, then trained voices should end up all sounding the same as each other? If we train voices to all work “that one way“, then all voices would sound start to sound identical? If this were the case, then it would stand to reason that one would want to avoid formal vocal training to avoid this overly homogenised result? Continue reading “How Voice Training Reveals Your Artistry”

Like many people across the UK today, I woke up a little groggy at my usual wake up time. Why? Because the clocks had changed. This meant that my usual wake up time of around 6am was actually the equivalent of an hour earlier than normal – so 5am.

And boy, did my voice FEEL like a 5am morning voice.

What is morning voice? What causes it?

The short version is fairly understandable. No one expects to be able to wake up and be able to ask their body to be on top form IMMEDIATELY, right? No one can do a personal best in running or the gym upon waking. Our voices are no different.

We grasp that our body needs a little time to wake up from sleep. This is partly biological, and partly neurological. Our body has to do certain things to get us to sleep, do body “house-keeping” while we sleep, and then it needs to pack all that away as we wake up.

There’s a myriad of factors that can come into play, including some more serious health issues, but let’s cover the four most common things that most of us can recognise in our voices: Continue reading “Morning Voice”

Many people who come to me for sessions, often come with a very clearly defined self-given label for what kind of singer they are.

“I’m a weighty contralto with a light top”

“I’m a super-light tenor with an airy flip”

“I’m a hard-rock singer with high-octane vocals”

And 99% of the time, they are not any of those things. Let me explain why, and start with a simple caution that every singer eventually has to learn for themselves.

Rule 1: Don’t rush to definitions

It’s all too common to want to know “but what AM I?!“. We all want a handle, something that makes the intangible seem more tangible, and to get a grip on what we should or shouldn’t be doing. It’s an understandable desire.

In turn, when one knows they’ve got a long way to go, it only seems logical to start with whatever we presently have. We look at what we can presently do, and what we can’t, and extrapolate from there. But here’s the problem: what each of us has at the start of our vocal journeys is so fledgling, so minute, it often doesn’t give anywhere near enough of an indication as to what the voice will be with even a modicum of training. Continue reading “What kind of singer am I?”

Last time I wrote about how some songs are more favourable than others to sing. I also mentioned the three I suggest the most for clients to help begin to figure their voice out.

I’ve also written previously about unsingable songs. But this time I thought it might be helpful to give some examples of songs that may well be singable, but are really not that helpful for developing and figuring out your voice.

One way to categorise such songs are as wide-range songs, narrow-range songs, and sudden range-jump songs.

Wide-range songs – All I Want For Christmas

Now, I have clients who sing this song, and sing it well… but I also meet a lot of singers who attempt this way too early in their development, and to say they butcher it is an understatement. Continue reading “The Least Helpful Songs for Working on Your Voice”

When people first start, we have to start building their voice from the ground up. This is true no matter how long someone has been singing, or how advanced the material they want to sing happens to be.

Once we have a reasonable technical foundation laid down, we can start to deploy that newly built facility on song.

One of the hardest things to grasp is that not all songs are equally favourable for the voice. Three songs could have the same notes and same range, but the nature of the melody is such that one may feel exceptionally easy to sing, another a bit more difficult, and another may seem impossible. I’m sure you may have even experienced this ponderance first hand…

“This song goes EXACTLY as high as this other song which I’m doing so well on, yet I feel like I’m killing myself trying to sing it… what on earth is going on?”

How easy/hard a note in song is depends on many things: what was the note before, what was the note after, how fast or slow is the piece, how intense are you singing, how staccato or legato is the piece, etc.

It means that some melodies are extremely favourable for the voice, and others less so. It then follows that there are some songs that are amazingly favourable for the voice, and provide a fun playground to start to build your voice and figure out how it works.

With that in mind, I’m going to share the THREE songs I suggest most often, for male singers and for female singers: Continue reading “Three Great Songs to Figure Out Your Voice”

Several years ago, I read the book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell. This book is on the idea that for the areas we are each experienced in, often the first reaction is pretty correct. But for areas we are less experienced in, our first reaction is often not correct, and is missing a lot of nuance.

In one of the chapters they discuss the history of the Pepsi vs Coke taste test.

The Pepsi Challenge

Now, for those of you too young to remember, once upon a time Coca Cola was about the only game in town. Then Pepsi came on the scene.

What Pepsi was known for was the “Pepsi Taste Test”. This was (surprise surprise) a taste test, where participants blindly tasted Coke and Pepsi, and had to say which one they preferred. The overwhelming result of this was that people seemed to prefer the taste of Pepsi in these blind tests. 

As the results of the taste tests became more and more widely known, it was expected that Pepsi would overtake Coca Cola as the most bought soft drink.

Yet that day never actually arrived. Despite all the taste tests saying otherwise, the market buys far more Coca Cola than Pepsi. This means that despite all the taste tests saying more people prefer Pepsi, reality says more people actually prefer Coca Cola. Continue reading “Pepsi vs Coke Taste Test, and Singing”