Studio Singing & Vocal Technique

As a singer, one of the biggest allies in your singing career will be your ability to perform well and do it with consistency in the studio. I can tell you that one of the biggest downfalls to most singers is their inability to be consistent with a broad range of singing styles while singing in the studio.  It’s one thing to sit behind the piano with friends, and an entirely different thing to sing behind the mic in the studio where every nuance and tonal inflection is heard.

 

So how do studio singers who’ve been doing this professionally for years, get to that point of consistency, and how do they get the paying gigs and get called on in the first place?  Those are great questions, and I will take the remaining time in this article to capitalize on concepts that most singers would likely embrace as the truth and realistic in answering them.

 

To begin with, singing in the studio and singing live in front of a crowd are two totally separate singing techniques and usually unequaled levels of singing expertise.  It’s one thing to sing in front of a crowd where audibility of your vocals is not the main concern, but the overall groove and image is.  Understanding the words on stage may or may not be a concern, but to the studio and session singer, it’s everything.  You see there are marked differences in the ways that each of these singers takes their singing ability to the stage.  You will find that many if not most singers don’t do both well.  The singer who is great on stage in front of a large audience is usually not that convincing or lyrics that easily understood in the studio.  That’s why jingle singers are paid such good money.  It’s not easy to sing a commercial full throttle and not sound “ricky ticky” doing it with words that are easily understood.

 

So how do session singers get that consistency in the studio?  Well, years of experience are one answer, but the other part of the answer is in how they practice.  How serious are you in your dream of becoming a studio singer?  In your desires to becoming a studio singer, you must commit to consistency, be easy to work with, and available.  You might already have availability and easy to work with in the bag, but you’re still having problems with the consistency part.  Let’s look at a few ideas that might help.

 

Finding a good vocal coach, that truly understands studio and jingle singing, is hard to find.  Most, have preconceived notions and teaching ideas and attribute everything to a breathing technique of some kind.  I’ll tell you the truth.  There are fantastic singers who breathe in a number of different styles, yet they are consistent as the day is long.  Now I’m not suggesting that there aren’t better or proper breathing techniques out there, I am suggesting that many if not most vocal teachers, teach from a textbook style and not from a “I’m going to figure out your strengths and abilities and zero in on a workable and credible game plan that outlines a singing technique career pathway for longevity,” style.  There’s a big difference.  The teacher who teaches out of a textbook and the teacher who is already been out there with success under their belt, no matter what business or job, has my attention and certainly should have yours.  Find a credible and reputable singing coach.

 

You will want to practice your singing in the shower, the car and even in a closet or close up to a wall where you can hear what you’re singing.  Ultimately, being able to record your voice, even onto a cheap cassette or into the computer to hear your progress or areas that you immediately recognize needing improvement, is the best way to go.  This alone, if you take time out on a regular basis, will improve your singing far beyond what most vocal coaches can or claim they can do.  Because of your vested interest and now your ability to hear and figure out what needs to be changed and corrected, will be the igniting factor in your singing career and goals of consistency. Certainly don’t ignore or reject the notion of finding a qualified vocal coach, but understand that America was founded on entreprenualism and not the textbook way of doing things and this includes your singing career as well.  A good vocal coach will recognize and ultimately push you in the right direction as well by hearing and giving you exercises to correct singing deficiencies.

 

Get connected with session singers, and perhaps even try to take vocal coaching lessons from one of them.  You will have to flexible as their session work will not always be easy to predict, but well worth any inconvenience.  This will increase your odds of obtaining session work, and now you will be working with an individual, like we just mentioned, who is actively in the business and so pure textbook teaching will most likely not be in their philosophy and thinking. 

 

Lastly, maintain a good attitude and an easy to deal with personality.  Singers and producers like individuals who are not only fun, but they’re easy to deal with and who always come to the session with an uplifting spirit.

How to Protect Your Voice: For Singers

It is important as a singer that you maintain your vocal chords, otherwise your voice will suffer. There are simple exercises to maintain a high range in your voice and there are secret ingredients to drink prior to singing that will protect your vocal chords. And lastly some good old fashion common sense is also in order here. After straining the voice for a few hours without any proper rest, training exercises, or secret ingredients you will start to literally wreck your voice. Usually you will lose your voice, it will start to sound hoarse, you'll get a sore throat, and or pain while talking. This is the aftermath of poor maintenance of your vocal chords.

First off anyone that has had some basic vocal training will learn some silly exercises that will keep your vocal range high and in good shape. The vocal teacher I had who was actually a professional Opera singer had me say "Meow meow meow meow meow," up unto the highest notes I could reach.

Yes you'll sound and feel like an idiot, but that's why you'll do it in private; and yes it really does work. That's a great exercise for keeping the range up way high and preparing for some vocal gymnastics on stage.

Next off there is a basic recipe that is excellent for your voice. Mix these two main ingredients together with water to maintain and protect your voice. Add honey and lemon into water and drink during singing breaks. These two ingredients act as a protect-ant for your throat.

Third, the most obvious but most overlooked fact about singing and your voice is you must take a break after singing for a long time. If you sing non-stop hour after hour without any time to catch your breath and just be quiet you may really strain your voice. For one thing when your voice gets more tired taper off a bit, sing with a lower pitch and don't overdo it as much.

They key thing is to pace yourself throughout a performance giving out effort, but in measured bursts of singing and vocals. Breathing deeply, pacing one-self, and taking breaks, will all help a singer to preserve their voice, so they can perform well for a show.

And lastly a personal note from experience; no matter what you're doing never strain yourself, if your voice and your energy are tapering off then pull back from the high energy performances. I have learned the hard way straining and singing for recordings and microphone tests. I suffered greatly, with a hoarse voice and a sore throat. Be smart and try out my tips and you'll keep your voice and feel much better.

Food for Singers: The Diet For Divas

How do you feed a singing voice? What do you eat? When do you eat? What foods should you avoid?

For a singer, eating right is a balancing act.

Food is fuel, and you need enough fuel to get through your show. But too much food could make you lethargic on stage, and the wrong kind of food could irritate your throat, ruining your performance.

So you have to juggle everything that you know about nutrition… with everything you know about your own body. This photo is by She Knows Health & Fitness, a good resource for health tips.

When people travel to far-off places, they usually relax their diets and enjoy the local cuisine. But singers do not have the same luxury. When we travel to Rome or Tokyo for an opera gig, we have to think about how the food will affect the voice.

5 BEST FOODS FOR SINGING

1. Water - Dehydration is a singer’s worst nightmare. Dry vocal cords are less flexible and more susceptible to damage.  But don’t wait until the last minute to get a drink! The vocal folds are one of the last places in the body to get hydrated. So you can’t moisten your throat (from the inside) until you have consumed enough water to hydrate all of your vital organs. The singers in my survey reported drinking up to a gallon of water on the day before a performance. They drink more water as soon as they wake up the next morning. And they keep a couple of water bottles backstage during the performance.

2. Veggies & Fruit – Singers pile their plates full of green leafy vegetables. These help the body shed toxins and fight diseases. For optimal vocal performance, Aaron Lim, author of Your Personal Singing Guide, recommends fruits and vegetables rich in Vitamins A, C & E. One of the singers in my survey is a vegan and she selects raw foods packed with nutritional value; before singing, she drinks a green smoothie with kale or chard, juicy fruit, flax seeds, dates and water.

Fermented vegetables, like sauerkraut and kimchi, are cancer-fighting, mood-improving, probiotic superfoods! But wait until after your performance to indulge your saurkraut habit, because salty foods absorb water.

3. Protein -  Just like athletes, singers need protein to maintain their strength and stamina. Many singers like fish and poultry, because they are high in protein but low in fat. But a couple of the singers in my survey reported needing iron-rich red meats on the day before a performance. Vegetarian singers prefer protein shakes and energy bars.

4. Small “Combo” Meals - Many singers eat a small meal about two hours before the curtain goes up. They can’t afford to get dizzy onstage, so they avoid sugary and starchy foods that could spike their blood sugar. Instead, the singers in my survey picked foods with a low glycemic index. They also balanced their proteins and carbs.  Favorite meals included salmon and salad, eggs and toast, or chicken and rice.

5. Vocal “Lubricants”- Food and water never come in direct contact with the vocal cords. But there are some snacks that stimulate saliva production, bringing relief to singers who suffer from “dry mouth.”  These include apples, lemons, hard candy and ginger tea.  If you’re feeling hoarse or scratchy, a spoonful of honey will soothe your throat and fight off bacteria.

5 WORST FOODS FOR SINGING

1. Alcohol - Many people only sing in public if they’re tipsy, but opera singers finally stop singing when they drink.  Here’s why: alcohol causes the tissues in the larynx to swell, reducing vocal control.

2. Heavy Foods – Singers avoid fatty foods, greasy foods, and anything that might give them gas. Remember that food is fuel, but don’t overtank! Singing depends on good breath management. If you eat too much, your digestive system will slow down and your abdominal muscles will relax and you’ll find it harder to support your air.

3. Caffeine - Caffeinated drinks steal moisture from the body. Also remember that caffeine is a real drug and it can hype you up. Performing is exciting enough by itself; you don’t want to flood your body with caffeine and adrenaline.

4. Spicy Foods – Garlic and other spices are fantastic for the immune system, but they are hard on the vocal folds. They can also irritate the stomach, causing acid reflux. You’ll also want to avoid foods with nuts or small particles that could get lodged in your throat.

5. Milk – Dairy products have been linked to sinus infections.   To a singer, there is nothing worse than having a raging infection in the ears, nose and throat. For many years, we were taught that drinking milk actually produced phlegm.  This turns out to be a myth, and yet some singers do get congested when they use milk products.

It’s best not to be too neurotic about what you eat. Anxiety does not help you sing better. But clearly, food plays an important role in the singer’s life.  If you want to stay in peak vocal condition, you need to choose your meals wisely.

Vocal Tips For Performers

Ear Training

Is your musical brain "wired" backwards?

Our brains naturally navigate towards what we assume is the easiest way to accomplish any given task. But what if I told you that what might seem easiest right now might actually crippling your musical efforts in the long term? And that you might actually be damaging your efforts to learn music?

If you struggle to learn music, if you can't hear music you've never played or heard in your "mind's ear," if you can't recognize essential harmonies, then you're missing the most crucial aspect of learning music: ear training. This is the key to learning to play piano by ear.

"Listening comprehension"

Ear training is literally the "listening comprehension" of music. It is without a doubt the single most neglected aspect of music training today. Many teachers fail to systematically train the ear at all, assuming that training the eyes to learn to read music and the fingers to play are sufficient.

Yet since music is sound, ear training ought to be the first and foremost task of any developing musician. This ought to be self-evident. Just as the painter must develop the most acute visual perception and the gourmet chef a refined taste, so must the musician develop acute aural sensitivity.

"Opening" the ears

Our first essential task as students of music is to "open" our ears. This implies learning how listen to music we hear as well as listening to ourselves as we play. This latter aspect of ear training is unquestionably one of the most difficult tasks for the developing musician. It can take many years to synthesize one's inner conceptions with the sounds we're actually producing. In other words, until we're very advanced musicians, the sounds we think we're making simply aren't the ones other people are hearing. (This aspect of playing music obviously has very much to do with technique, which must at all times be married to the ear.) Simply recording ourselves and playing it back will reveal how disparate what we think we're playing and what we're actually playing can be.

The second aspect of ear training is recognizing what we are hearing, just as we recognize objects we see. It is not necessary for a listener to recognize with scientific precision everything he or she hears. It is, however, necessary for us musicians to thoroughly understand the compositional material of every piece we play, just as actors must understand language. Meaning lies behind and between the notes, and it's our job to communicate that meaning. It's impossible to communicate musical meaning if we don't understand the basic vocabulary.

Playing music without this essential ear training would be like trying to speak a foreign language without understanding the words. You could learn by rote—it's indeed possible to learn how to press the right keys in the right sequence simply by repetition, but if you don't understand the actual "words"—the notes, intervals and harmonies, you're merely exercising your fingers. Your fingers are learning, but not your ears. This "muscle memory," as it's popularly called, is infamously unreliable. It's guaranteed to give you serious performance anxiety, and it's a practical 100 percent guarantee (no money back!) that you'll blank out right when you most depend on it.

Tragically, most pianists play like this. They learn entire fugues this way and then have panic attacks when they attempt them in front of others, and memory slips abound. If you're in the habit of practicing like this, the time to break this habit is immediately. Every time you practice with a disengaged ear you will be reinforcing the very habit you're trying to break. Hence, you will actually be doing harm to your musicianship. The more you work improperly, the harder it will be to create retroactively that ever-critical ear-finger connection.

"Hear" with your eyes and "see" with your ears

Your goal is to learn to "hear" with your eyes and "see" with your ears. Your fingers must be guided at all times by your inner ear. We shouldn't hear because we play, rather we play because we hear. In other words, we don't hear a note simply because we happen to have struck the right key, we strike the right key because we hear the right note in our mind's ear. This is the essence of getting the mind ahead of the fingers, and this is the ultimate goal of ear training.

The first aspect of this goal is technical: Your inner sound concept must always direct your fingers; that is the aim of technique.

The second aspect deals with pitch and harmony. Your understanding of harmony must be so ingrained that your ear seemingly automatically tells your fingers which notes to play.

If your ear isn't guiding your fingers in this manner, you're on very dangerous territory indeed. Your musical work isn't based on real musicianship; rather, you're "simulating" playing the piano. Recall the language example: It's possible to learn to type the right letters of words and sentences in succession, but in the long run it's infinitely superior, not to mention vastly more enjoyable, to actually know the language. Then you can say anything with ease.

Methods

This is the problem with so many "quick and easy" piano methods nowadays, and this is why they fail to create authentic musicians in the long run. They cater to the instant gratification mentality, lazy students fall prey to them, show modest progress at the beginning and later invariably give up in frustration.

Even advanced music students face this problem, since ear training is no longer an integral part of all aspects of music education, but is rather relegated to only a few semesters in a separate course that has no relation to music students' "core" instrumental work. This reveals a gaping hole in their musical education. And it's not the students' fault, it's that of the music educational system. In most cases ear training is never even mentioned until the student enters a conservatory or university program, and then most of class time must be spent on remedial work that should have begun with the very first lesson. How embarrassing that the final exam so often consists of the identical material to the entry exam, only played faster!

The good news...

The good news is that there's a solution to this problem, and a very large part of that solution is proper ear training. The bad news is that it takes considerable mental effort, and lazy minds would prefer to just exercise their fingers and hope for the best. The effects of this "malpractice" rear their heads at all the wrong times: when it really counts. The deficiencies can be embarrassing. I've encountered graduates of well-known conservatories who could, after much diligent practice, perform extremely difficult pieces but who could not distinguish a major third from a minor third by ear. They learned to learn primarily with their fingers rather than their ears.

What's wonderful about training the ear properly in this manner is that the work is largely cumulative. In the beginning it will require great effort, like running a mile for the first time. Like athletic training, with regular practice you'll develop quickly and will come to enjoy each further step. Yet, also like athletic training, it requires regular practice. The body operates according to a strict "use it or lose it" principle. Ear training therefore needs to be a part of your daily practice regimen.

How to test your ear

A simple test to see whether you're learning primarily with your ears or merely with your fingers is to transpose your music (without the aid of the score, of course). Obviously, extremely technically difficult pieces such as etudes don't lend themselves to this sort of ear training, but slower pieces do. Fortunately for us, it's the slower pieces that tend to give us memory trouble since we're unable to play them on "autopilot"; that is, our muscles don't readily take over.

It's also best to use practice pieces rather than performance pieces for transposing, at least at the beginning. Béla Bartók'sMikrokosmos is absolutely ideal for this work, especially since it's so full of surprises. When working with this material it's essential to stay very alert for unexpected notes—you can't simply play notes within a conventional scale or chord.

Another simple but powerful method of ear training is to sing each voice in all pieces you play. This is an especially useful method of testing whether you're really hearing everything. In most cases, students hear only the melody and bass. They tend to have only a vague impression of the vital middle voices and hence the piece as a whole. This accounts for much of their high degree of uncertainty, difficulty memorizing and performance anxiety. Sing each and every note without the aid of the piano, making sure you're staying absolutely on pitch. The piano is used only to give a starting note and to periodically check your pitch. While tedious at first, this method of basic ear training will ensure that you're truly hearing everything and will give you far greater security so that you can concentrate not on playing the right notes but on expressing the music.

If you're using music such as Mikrokosmos, which I highly recommend, be absolutely certain you don't "cheat" and merely sight-read new pieces at the piano! All the ear training value, hidden in the many unexpected melodic turns, is lost forever the moment you press the keys to hear the correct pitch. You only have one chance to do it per piece! Remember, this is exactly the habit we're seeking to correct—the goal is to create an accurate inner musical impression rather than rely on external auditory feedback.

This, by the way, is why Beethoven (and Gabriel Fauré, as is less known) could go on composing music in the face of deafness. Thanks to their impeccable ear training and musicianship, they indeed heard every note.

Singing Technique And Projection Tricks

Would you like to be able to project your voice further and more powerfully? If so, read on...

Did you know that an opera singer can project over an entire audience, but if a normal person yelled at the top of their lungs, they wouldn’t be heard?

Why is this?

And how can you use this to improve your voice?

Is there a special technique that these singers use to project their voices in this devastating fashion?

Indeed there is.

It has everything to do with their use of vocal resonance.

With this understanding you will be in a much better position to project your voice further and louder than you can imagine.

Vocal resonance is simply the way your sound waves bounce around inside your facial structure to amplify the sound.

So when you sing a note, the initial sound wave is created as air pushes through your vocal chords.

After this initial sound wave has been created, it moves up through your throat, mouth, and nasal cavity. As the sound wave “bounces around” in these acoustic cavities, it is transformed into the note that the listener hears.

If you can learn to balance your vocal resonance or balance the proportion of the way the sound is spread through these cavities, your tone will be superb.

But How Does This Help You To Project Your Voice?

Well, the first important point I wanted to make is this.

When you project your voice, your vocal resonance must be balanced.

A big mistake that many singers make, is they “yell” instead of singing when they want to project their voice. When you do this, your vocal resonance becomes unbalanced and it sounds “shouty” and “impure”

Instead you need to learn to balance your voice at lower levels. And then as you master your voice at this quieter level you can then send a little more air pressure through, and your voice will stay balanced and pure, while projecting further.

Really, being able to sing loud and powerfully, it’s a matter of becoming an expert of your voice at a medium volume, and then simply increasing the intensity. So when you are singing loudly, you are singing from the same posture and place as when you are singing quieter.

What About The Opera Singers?

Ok, let me clear up how I said that opera singers can sing over an orchestra.

There is a special technique that allows you to shape your throat in a way that produces a few “extra” frequencies when you sing. This extra frequency content is known as a “singers formant frequency”.

For all you audio buffs out there, the frequency is in the range of 3000hertz.

Here’s how it works.

When an orchestra plays, all the instruments create sounds that have frequencies within a certain range. Most of the information lies below the 800hertz range.

As you’ve just learned though, by shaping the throat, singers can actually produce sound waves at 3000hertz. Since this frequency is much higher than the 800hertz that the orchestra can produce, this frequency is clearly heard in the audience.

This next bit is quite phenomenal and interesting…

Because the audience can clearly hear the “singer’s formant frequency”, they are able to “imagine” the other parts of the singers voice that are actually being masked by the instruments in the orchestra.

Isn't that remarkable?

This phenomenon has not yet explained by science, yet it is easy to observe. All you need to do is watch an opera singer project over an orchestra!

How Can You Apply This To Your Singing?

Despite the singer’s formant being useful when singing with an orchestra, I don’t believe it is entirely necessary.

Trying to change the shape of your throat is actually encouraging your swallowing muscles to engage-the muscles that cause singing tension and make singing miserable.

Also…

In any other style, you don’t need this extra frequency content in your voice.

Take for example, you sing in a rock band. The “singers formant” is no use in this situation. You see, the instruments in a rock band will produce frequencies in the same range as the singers formant, so it won’t allow you to project any more than before.

I feel the best thing to do is develop a singing voice that is technically correct. With this foundation you will eventually be able to sing as loud as you could ever want. Also you’re tone will remain balanced and sweet. This is the best way to approach improving your singing technique and projection.

Learning to sing this way is all about training the muscles that coordinate your vocal chords. These muscles, the “inner” larynx muscles, are the vital key to developing an incredible voice.

You can get exercises that will train these muscles, so they become highly coordinated and build strength. Once you do this, you will be able to get volume that will shake a large hall, plus the benefit of being able to sing in a completely relaxed manner.

They are incredibly effective, and the other thing is…

It’s impossible to build extra strength and projection into your voice from an incorrect foundation. If your voice is not operating in a “correct” way, you will forever be straining and forcing your voice for that extra volume. This will only leave you with sore throats and a dislike for singing!

Instead, develop a correct foundation with your voice. And then use this foundation to develop amazing power and projection.

Voice Training Improves The Quality Of Voice

Voice training is a procedure of instructing singers as how to improve their singing skills and how to develop their voices taking a proper care. It is quite essential to train a singer especially when the singer has to give the performance on a stage or in a program. Vocal coaches that give the training are highly experienced either in the field of singing itself or in other music related areas. In the second case, the coach can also be a person, say, a guitarist who has accompanied singers for many numbers of years and mastered in the techniques with the enormous experience that he has amassed. Though it is very rare, but at times the voice coach is also a person who does not have any knowledge in music and related spheres but has incomparable medical knowledge about the vocal chords and throat.

Vocal singing training trains the singers to sing following certain vocal techniques. The vocal technique is a process of effectively combining the various physical processes of singing which include respiration, resonation, phonation and articulation. Though singing doesn’t require much muscle strength, it requires a very high level of muscle coordination. This can be gained with regular and systematic practice of both songs and vocal exercises. The various vocal exercises include warming up the voice, increasing the range of the voice, lining up the vice horizontally and vertically, and the acquisition of techniques such as staccato, legato, rapid figurations, singing wide interval with ease, control of dynamics, singing trills, melismas and learning the correction of various vocal faults. Vocal coaches teach the singers how to make the proper use of their voices. Voice training is thus a careful and proper training to brighten the skills of a singer.

The important aim of vocal singing training is to enable the singers sing at the original vocal range without any disrupting change in the quality of the voice. Hence, the vocal coaches, in order to help the singers to achieve the above mentioned goal with the effective coordination of all the physical processes involved in singing.