questions about vocals

[Freyja]

i was wondering if there are any experienced vocalists out there who can help me with some questions:
first one is, i have been told i need to annunciate ,
are there any exercises i can do to improve my diction?
second one is, are there any exercises that i can do to help me project my voice?
there are is no place to take singing lessons where i live, so i resort to just singing along with cds for practice.

if anyone has time they can hear my voice at www.polarismusic.net
i would very much welcome any constructive criticism, or if anyone has any pointers they can give me, it would be appreciated.

 

[Katalepsy]

I'm not really an "experienced" vocalist, but I might be able to help a little bit...
First, did you mean enunciate? Because annunciate just means to announce, which is pretty much the same as projecting your voice, whereas enunciate means to pronounce, and speak clearly (slurred speach is a bad thing). Vocal projection comes more from higher confidence than anything else. You need to be comfortable with your voice, and don't be afraid of screwing up or something. Even some of the best vocalists in prog metal screw up from time to time. You also need to know what kind of range you have, bass, baritone, tenor, alto, soprano. Sometimes people have a combination of the high end of one and low end of another, such as the high end of tenor and the low end of alto. You may want someone else to explain vocal range to you, cuz I'm still a novice. But anyways, the wider your range, the easier it will be to project your voice clearly.

So just remember these few things:
1. Take language classes to help your ability to enunciate (if that is what you meant)
2. Be confident, don't be afraid of your own voice!
3. Know your range/limits
4. Practice scales using solfege (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do, and the accidentals in minor keys...Believe me, it helps!)

If it helps at all, you can go download guitar pro (www.guitar-pro.com) and put scales in it and practice that way, it has helped me a little bit.

Good luck!

 

[OfSinsAndShred]

Katalepsy has a lot of good points, ESPECIALLY the solfege. Join a choir at a church or something, too - you'd have no idea how much that can help.

Make sure to leave the throat muscles relaxed - this can really hurt your pitch if you tense them up... all the breath should come from the diaphragm.

These are just the few things I've picked up, I'm not much of a singer, but when I do sing I try to do it somewhat correctly. And that "Pro Secrets of Heavy Rock Singing" book that James Labrie and Geoff Tate and a bunch of people were in is really cool. I got it for my band's singer and it helped him a lot. It's on Amazon and stuff, you might want to check it out.

 

[Freyja]

thanks for the help, i'll try some of those sugesstions. i never knew about the pro secrets of heavy rock singing book, but im gonna check it out.

 

[SyXified]

I'm no pro singer, but a few pros have mentioned to me that there are certain ways of pronouncing especially vowel sounds that makes them clearer and sound better tonally. like, people rarely make a very sharp A sound, and instead do a much smoother auhh to sound clearer. I only know a few, and I can't really explain those in typing well, but most vocal coachs know them. I bet there are audio cds for sale that teach things like that as well.

 

[The_Accolade]

where DO you live?

 

[Freyja]

i live in Newbedford M.A, its really not that there is no place to take lessons, but more that i cant afford to. i was thinking about the church choir, but im a little aprehensive about that idea, because i was raised pagan. i dont know if they would let me.

 

[SevenString]

Yeah, enuncuation is critical in communicating with the audience, especially first-time listeners to your music.

Most of my favorite singers (Allen, Lande, etc.) have such clear diction that you don't need a lyric sheet to figure out what's going on in the songs. But I learned MY obsession with enunciation by listening to the late Carl Albert from Vicious Rumors. That guy's singing was always crystal clear where lyrics were concerned.

Also, the previously posted advice regarding the relaxed throat is absolutely dead on. A good way to practice this is to lay down on your back, relax your entire body, and sing your scales and other excercises. This forces you to NOT tense up when singing the higher notes. Although you should STILL use proper breathing through the diaphram, even when laying down.

Speaking of relaxation and higher notes, a singer should strive for a technique that makes the actual pitch somewhat irrelevant. In other words, the distinctions of "low" and "high" notes can make a singer mentally and physically tense up when it comes to the challenging passages of the music. Eventually, you want "low" and "high" to be replaced with a concept of note placement, or resonance. Then it's all just "singing", and live performance becomes fun and relaxing, instead of a constant worry as to whether you're going to do well or not.

A very low note resonates in the chest, whereas a very high note resonates in the head, and the resonance, or placement of notes in between the extremes moves with the pitch of the notes. In extreme cases, metal singers get the resonance to travel all the way to the face. This is sometimes called "singing from the mask". It's a fairly difficult technique to master, but singers like James Labrie do this regularly.

Anyway, the bottom line is that your throat should feel as relaxed singing a high note as it does singing a low note. These days, I'm doing gigs where I'm singing 4 or 5 sets a night, and because of these techniques, I know I'm good for the whole night, and actually get better as the night goes on.

That's not to say that your throat won't feel slightly different on different notes. But there are also some fundementals that one should work on to make sure that the bridge between "chest voice" and "head voice" are fairly seamless. There is too much material regarding this to go into any detail here, but this is critical to any success at metal singing. A strong "head voice" that is lightly supported by larynx muscles normally used for the "chest voice" is where the "money shot" is, at least for male singers. That, and the smooth transition between full chest and that state.

But again, these techniques should be divorced in your mind from the concepts of "low" and "high". Ideally, you want to get to the point where you can use a "lighter" or "darker" interpretation of any given note, and smoothly transition between those states.

For instance, Roy Khan does this all the time, and Russ Allen can do at least three vocal interpretations of any given note: a light, airy sound in a head voice that verges on falsetto, a tight, steve walsh kansas type sound, and an open throated raspy belting tone. Just listen to the song "The Odyssey" for prime examples of ALL of these sounds. The cool thing is, he seems to be able to mix and match the weightings of various vocal tones to produce even more variety.

Anyway, I hope some of this is usefull. And drink LOTS of water!

 

[Freyja]

thank you sevenstring, that was very informative, now i have lots of exercises to help my voice