The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Anyone have any tips for an aspiring singer? I've looked through all the archives, but there's really no solid advice. After some practice, I can finally hit the notes I intend to hit (sorry, people who heard my Mad City) but I can't seem to project or get the quaver out of my voice. I've tried sitting down, I've tried standing, but no matter what I do, I still waver on my pitch, and my vocals have no .. ooomph. I can't scream or yell, my voice just doesn't do that.

Anyone have any ideas that I could apply to get a smoother, more on-pitch vocal track? Bear in mind that I have no vocal training whatsoever.

Thanks,
Chris
-The Nutwalls-

This is gonna sound wierd, but the best advice I can give to a singer with no trainig is:
put you hand on your stomach and concentate on breathing to it. Put your hand on your chest and breathe as normal and feel which muscles are being used, then breathe again to your stomach and feel the diffence in muscle used, its your diagphram in your stomach that use want to utillise in your singing cos with practice it offers you great lung capacity and more air with which to project a strong and steady voice.
I was taught that in college, I did perfoming arts...but then if ya listen to my singing youd thing I skipped every class

Me$$iah is right. Powerhouse vocals come from air flow & how you manage that air flow. It's similar to letting air out of a balloon.... to get your sound there has to be good airflow. With a balloon, the opening has to be held tightly enough that it vibrates.... and also, if your vocal chords are too loose, more air will just sound, well, "airy".

You know the muscles you tighten in your abdomin if someone is about to punch you in the gut? Focus on expanding and contracting that.

A voice teacher (for $25) taught me this exercise to practice breathing:
Put your hand on your lower ribcage. Breath in, and focus on expanding the ribcage as much as you can. Expand, expand. Now breath out, but keep your ribcage expanded to the exact same place. Let out as much air as you can, but don't let your ribcage move.

To do that exercise, you'd absolutely have to use your diaphram to push the air out. It feels weird, but I think it helps train you which muscles to use.


The managing airflow thing is harder to describe, but it's, like, now that you've got all this airflow, you have to really use it. If your vocal chords are coming together too 'loosely' you won't really harness all that airflow you've got going on from your breathing.

The voice teacher (for another $25) taught me this next exercise to practice keeping my vocal chords in check:
Take a deep breath in. Now start to exhale, but then quickly cut off the air using your throat at the nape of your neck (right above the collarbone). This is where your vocal chords are, and now they are together nice and tight. Start to let out just the tiniest bit of sound (like you're 8 years old and you don't want to eat fried cow tongue and peas), keeping the vocal chords tight, and let out just a little more sound until it's more like your voice and finally swoop that directly into fire engine siren noises..... singing a loud "awwww" up and down your range, keeping the airflow going strong using your diaphram. Do this nice and loud so all your neighbors think you're a freak.

That exercise is supposed to help you get your vocal chords to stay nice and tight over the airflow. If you can make loud, well projected fire engine noises, you are capable of singing that loud & well projected.

I can fire engine siren up to a high A. I can't sing up to a high A yet, I've been kinda broke lately, and I think 'sounding pretty' is a much later lesson.

Messiah is right - learn to love your diaphram.
(an added bonus is that with diaphram control you can also stop hicccups instantly - a skill that every drinking man needs to learn)

Everyone can do it - we do it from birth. Listen to any baby (my daughter for example), they can scream all night and never lose their voice. Its just as we get older we for some reason get into the habit of breathing from our chest and not our diaphram.

also practice.

use a keyboard to record some sustained notes. Don't write a melody just use the sustain to cover four beats before changing to another note. At first you can do this in scale. Then when you feel comfortable with your ability to raise and lower your notation in order, start to mix it up. Just keep practicing this as well as the other information provided in this thread.

ALSO, sing whenever you can as practice...shower, to the radio, to other people's radio, to your favorite CDs, to anything you can. Get used to using your voice and you will eventually gain a lot more control over it. (I think JB gave this advice once.)

For the folks using pitch correction:

1) Lay down a track as best you can (pitch-correction friendly)
2) Apply pitch correction. Don't worry about the little artifacts that this can create
3) Then record the same part against the pitch-corrected track, doubling it. I find this is much easier now that you're doubling a pitch-corrected track. Mute this
4) Record another doubling track to the pitch-corrected one
5) Mute the pitch-corrected track and un-mute the first doubled track

Now you have a doubled vocal that is way on pitch, but still sounds natural since neither track is pitch-corrected. Of course this works with a single track as well. Or hell, an eight-part choral arrangement.

Stand up when you sing, and stand up STRAIGHT you slouching slacker. Position the microphone so that you HAVE to stand up or sit up straight, possibly with your head angled up just slightly.

Then BREAAAATHE. If you're all quavery and shit it means you're not breathing properly. Learn how to take a deep breath. That's what a lot of that diaphragm babble is really about-- filling your lungs with air and then PUSHING the air out. Do those sirens whoever it was suggested. Then do a bunch of long noises, just the same thing for a long time. Do them soft and do them loud. Do them slowly, do them quickly. It'll take you five minutes in the shower every day, and you'll get better pretty fast. It's like BowFlex.

Then examine the music you're about to sing. If you have trouble hitting pitches, play along on the keyboard like hoblit said. Practice the intervals you miss until you get them right. Back and forth pingpong the two notes until you land on each of them dead center 8/10 times.

If you're all weak and winded, that means you dunno where to take a breath-- mark breaths in the lyrics where you want to/have to take them. That way you've made an intelligent decision based on craft rather than physiology. A professional's sheet music has lots of pencil marks all over the place. Do what you have to do to get it right, because people don't respect a guy with clean music who can't sing or play for shit.

And do what Hoblit said I said to do. But stand up frikkin' straight while you do it. Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.

JB

Also:

Remember that you can only sing vowels.

Relax! Sing quiet and turn up your mic preamp. Don't push.

Try replacing most vowel sounds with an "aw" sound. Like when your doctor asks you to open up and say "aw". It's is weird, but it is true. Don't sing Love, sing Lawve.

Ken

Lotsa good info here. Thanks for potentially getting me back in the studio. 8)

Thanks all for the great tips, I'll definitely have to start practicing some of these. Hopefully I'll have some time soon to take a few lessons too.

-Nut #2

Odd tips I've picked up (vocals are hard):

Record alone. As isolated as possible. Where no one can hear you scream.

Don't close your nose. It's so tempting to close your nose because you sound kind of whiny to yourself. But it sounds much better to others.

Double tracking almost always makes you sound better.

Sing your song a capella to find the most comfortable key, then plan your instrument parts. Every time I decide on a key before I start writing (usually because I have some interesting guitar idea), the vocals suffer.

Don't worry too much about it. Trying to sound better than you think you do usually makes you sound worse (like closing your nose). The pop world is littered with people with odd voices who just commit to the song and go (perhaps even consider a bold pseudonym like "Bono Vox"). Try different styles, from cool Lou Reedy to screechy Kate Bushy.

Like good red wine, your voice changes character over time. Try recording at different times of the day, before and after meals, before and after drinking/smoking. I like to do a couple of loud takes that I throw away because a) it's good practice and it warms me up and b) I like my voice a little airy from a bit of fatigue.

Mic makes a difference. There you have to experiment and find the best sound. EQ, too. I've recently found that parametric EQ is a godsend for vocals.

Compress the sh*t out of your vocal track. Then noise-gate it. Fuck auto-tune. I like auto-tune, but it's not for making you a good singer. (Though I'm intrigued by roymond's idea in a "I'm Sitting in a Room" kind of way.

Drink water before and during. Dry mouth sounds suck.

Do stupid stuff like put the mic up high so you have to strain at it, or run around right before you sing (or during, like Byrne in "Drugs" from Fear of Music). Or build a fort out of pillows around the mic and put an afgan over your head. Try getting as close to the mic as possible, singing as softly as you can.

I'm rambling and swearing. Time to quit.

Find a keyboardist who can sing on key, and listen to them when they correct the fact that you're not hitting your note. When they give you the correct note, practice it so much you hear it in your sleep.

Find an overbearing sax player who thinks they know theory and how to sing and let the keyboardist show them they don't know what they think they know.

Listen to the keyboardist and laugh silently to yourself while you make funny faces at them while the sax player is oblivious to it all.

And now you know how to sing, and make your keyboardist blow coffee on their computer keyboard.

If I thought he was going to blow it on his music keyboard, I wouldn't have said a word.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

If the preceding post appears nonsensical and you are not me, do not be alarmed. Do not attempt to adjust your set. But, just to err on the side of caution, do not make any sudden movements.

Kids, this is what Nancy Reagan was talking about.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be sarcastic guitar players.

re: Breathing from Diaphragm.

Lay down on your side. Notice the way you're breathing, your shoulders do not rise. Your stomach is doing all the breathing. This is the way.
Developing more power in your vocals will come with practice once you are breathing correctly.
Miss Jenny has some good stuff in that department. But first, the breathing.

Finally, all those sleepless nights in worry and anxiety about quavering vocals are now not all wasted, as you focus on your breathing as you are lying on your side and then translate that to a standing up position.

Another reason to change breathing habits: people can develop heart problems because of improper chest breathing. Relaxation and meditation are good for you, as well.

Other things: The voice works better at the end of the day, after you've been talking, and it's warmed up. Like an old tube amp. Producers say never to record vocals in the morning. I agree.

Some plain green tea with lemon juice...good for relaxing the throat.

the best thing to do if wanting to improve on vocal skills is to go to a proffesioanl coach, theres no other way to really improve. seeking information on the web will simply not do.
Johnny from guitars101

john82 wrote:the best thing to do if wanting to improve on vocal skills is to go to a proffesioanl coach, theres no other way to really improve. seeking information on the web will simply not do.
Johnny from guitars101

That's just a stupid thing to say. I took vocal lessons before I came to SF, and if anyone remembers, my vocals were terrible. My teacher was nice, and I learned to breathe from the diaphragm, but it's a lot harder to sing rock-style vocals if you've practiced classically first.

ps - I don't think what I said matters because you're probably just a bot or something ... who else digs up posts like these just to say something like that?

john82 wrote:the best thing to do if wanting to improve on vocal skills is to go to a proffesioanl coach, theres no other way to really improve. seeking information on the web will simply not do.
Johnny from guitars101

Well, there is such a thing as self-taught. However, I would say that getting a teacher is more likely to lead to success than trying to teach yourself. But it's not the only way to really improve, and a teacher is not a guarantee. The *right* teacher, combined with your own motivation, is a guarantee.

Basic exercises can take you a long way, just by building strength in your body and focusing your mind on what you're doing. Not to mention practice. Practice practice practice.

However, most of the pros out there, the working pros and session musicians and broadway players-- they all take lessons. Bernadette Peters takes lessons. John Flansburg takes lessons. Pretty sure Yo Yo Ma has taken some lessons. There's no harm in taking lessons, and it's gonna cost you like $30 for an hour of good advice and somebody watching to make sure your position is correct. Like having a spotter when you're exercising-- gotta hold your arms right to get benefit from those curls, you know?

JB

Reïst wrote:who else digs up posts like these just to say something like that? :roll:

Well, I'm guessing he did it so he could include a link to his site, thus increasing it's rating in search engines. He's probably thrilled that people are quoting his post and including the link in their quote.

obscurity wrote: He's probably thrilled that people are quoting his post and including the link in their quote.

well i fixed half of that at least.

Here's another exercise along the same lines of what Hoblit suggested. Find a song you like to sing and pick a phrase. Play the first pitch of the phrase on a keyboard or guitar, whatever, then sing the phrase unaccompanied when you get to the last note play that on the piano, or whatever, and see if you match. People who tend to under-support will let their tonal center drift downward. If you can do this unaccompanied, your pitch will be stronger accompanied.

$30 + sounds like a lot for a voice lesson, but a couple could save you a lot of effort down the road, enough to make them worth your while.

Project-D wrote:$30 + sounds like a lot for a voice lesson, but a couple could save you a lot of effort down the road, enough to make them worth your while.

Well, you usually get what you pay for with this sort of thing. Anybody worth their salt will give you a little sit-down before you have to pay, so you can feel each other out. Lots of great performers make crappy teachers.

FWIW I wouldn't pay less than $30 for any instrumental lesson I was serious about. If I just wanted a guitarist friend to give me some pointers, and he wanted $10 for a half hour of strumming, then maybe. But I wouldn't make a habit of it.

Reïst wrote:it's a lot harder to sing rock-style vocals if you've practiced classically first.

I couldn't agree more, as this is something that still catches me from time to time. The technique is really different, which isn't that surprising. If you're looking for lessons, make sure your teacher knows how to teach the style you want to sing in.