Body Singing by Breck Alan

Nashville and Online Vocal Coach

Why it’s crucial to budget ahead of time for vocal production

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Are you working on a new album?

With all of the expenses associated with music production, singers often forget one of the most important budget items.

I would say a huge percentage of what I do is vocal production. Either months, weeks, days, or hours ahead of time, singers contact me to work on songs they’re about to record or perform, or both.

The idea is to go through songs and find ways they can be improved, either technically, artistically or both.

This can produce some very tangible and desirable improvements. We sometimes get in a groove that doesn’t want to budge, and sometime it takes an outside force to help us see the way over to something freer, more powerful, more communicative, or all of the above.

I don’t have an agenda for singers and want to help in any way I can, but I will say that the further ahead of time you can go through the process of examining, adjusting and rehearsing changes the better. In many cases I can demonstrate some desirable changes that aren’t necessarily going to be possible immediately. You’d like time to work through the techniques involved to reach these changes and be natural and genuine with them.

We want to be in a place where our intention guides our singing, but there are times we have to lock ourselves in a room with some new ideas and approaches and make them our own. There might be some struggle involved in that process and even though certain types of energetic struggles can be desirable in performing, fighting technique, is rarely attractive.

Waiting until the day of recording and having a producer start requesting difficult changes in your singing is more than likely only going to cause frustration, and we’ll hear that in the song.

So do yourself a favor, and budget some time and money ahead of time to do some Vocal Production for your project. Working with someone that has years of experience and some technical skills to teach you the steps to attain your goals, will prove invaluable not just for this project, but will leave you at a higher level of expertise for the next project and the performances of the material you’re about to record.

Here’s to thinking ahead.

Have fun,

Breck Alan

Hum The Mood

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Voice Expression

Does your tone Stand out as unique?

Can you hear the mood and emotion in your singing tone? 

Does your singing tone match the emotional content you’re trying to convey, or is it just kind of…always the same?

Or is it some image of singing you’ve always had that works for some things but not for others?

Or does it sound too close to your favorite singer?

Sometimes we expect a perfect answer to our questions but sometimes the answer is really in the pursuit.

What if by exploring the idea of trying to get your singing tone to match your emotion, you actually just started listening to yourself in a different way?

Singing is playing music, and acting?

And playing music can be very absorbing and powerful.  What if we embraced that absorbing feeling and tried to swim in the tone we were singing?

As I like to say, “Singing is Acting.”  And to act well, one needs to tap into emotional content.  And since your vehicle for conveying emotional content is your voice, what part of it could possibly be more poignant than your tone and tonal variations?  What part of it could possibly be more unique to you?  That is, if you’ve tapped into your own unique brand of tone.

How to improve your singing tone

There are some very specific and technical realities that effect tone.  And until a singer pursues some of these technical pursuits, they are often bereft of any real ability to effect or change their tone in any unique manner.

For example, singers need a clear understanding of direction of tone.  If you know what up and down are, and how they effect the tone and color of your singing, then you have somewhere to go when trying to alter that tone to match the mood and attitude of what you’re singing.

Anyone who has pursued “The Art of Body Singing” knows that it is loaded with tons of great lessons about adjusting tone.

But along the way of of the technical, I always try to encourage singers to spend time lost in the more abstract side of feeling the music.  Because at the end of the day, that’s what we’d really like to communicate isn’t it?  Emotions, not techniques.

So remember to spend some time as you’re warming up your voice,  after you’ve warmed up you voice, as you’re practicing the songs in your set, and as you’re just letting go and singing wildly like a child, to tap into the emotion of your tone and enjoy the swim.

And as a daily reminder, tap into the most simple form of this exercise by “Humming the Mood.”  This becomes more of an inner ear listening practice than anything else.

Remember not to push, or worry about size and volume, but instead just listen to the “character” and mood of the tone as you Hum along to life.  It will help keep you tuned into what you’re really trying to convey as a singer in the first place……..”emotional content.”

Have fun,

Breck

Let the the Power of Inspiration in Performance be Stronger than Distractions and Mistakes

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If we teach ourselves to recover immediately and stay on course with the power of inspiration, verses the crippling nature of self consciousness, we are fulfilling our obligation to be our best, and inspire those listening to us to reach for great things.

Listeners want to be lifted.

Distractions, such as mistakes, poor sound quality, visual incongruities, etc.  minimize the impact.

We don’t always have complete control over all of those factors, but if we can keep our poise, and rise up through the unpredictable, we are demonstrating the true nature of perfection.  (Which is always there wanting to be heard, seen and felt!)

Define that which can be controlled.  Practice it until your spirit can be freed from the confines of over-awareness.

Let inspiration guide your performance.  Your audience will feel that a lot more than they’ll be aware of any short comings that might arise.

Top 5 Reasons to Fix Singing Mistakes

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Top 5 Reasons  to Fix Singing Mistakes

5.  To sound professional

4.  To compete in the competitive music business

3.  To make more money

2.  To impress the world with our abilities

1.  To limit the distractions from the magic and perfection that already exists in all of us……….

Because that’s really what a mistake is….a distraction.  Not just to the listener, but to you, the performer. One of my favorite expressions is, the two most important notes in music are….the first note, and the first note after a mistake. So don’t be distracted by your mistake!  Mistakes, are not the point.  And even when you make mistakes, don’t make it the focus.  Move on, keep reaching for the beauty, and make that the point, the whole experience will be so much better for us and the listener. 

What does Singing have in Common with Driving ?

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On the Old Ludwig Kit at Snacky Time Studios Nashville

On the Old Ludwig Kit at Snacky Time Studios Nashville

 

 

Everyone thinks that the drivers in their town are the worst.  I hear that all of the time from people all over the place.

So assuming people can get better at driving how would they go about doing it?

There’s been a common myth associated with singing for as long as I can remember, which is, all you need to do is sing a lot and you’ll get better.  It’s been my experience with singers that this is not necessarily so.  Have you ever heard a singer multiple times that has some obvious weaknesses that never seem to go away?  In fact they often get worse.  Then there goes the theory of just doing something over and over will make you better.

Now apply that same theory to driving a car.  Most of the people that freak you out on the road with their less than great driving skills, probably drive every day.  In fact many of them probably drive at least a couple hours a day.  And they’re still bad at it.  Why is this?

Because, as one of my favorite saying goes, “practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.”  If you keep doing the same bad habits over and over, you’ll basically just get really good at those bad habits.  And the longer it will take to reverse them.

Every musician secretly wants to be a drummer and I hacked away at drums for several years.  I’ve always been obsessed with them for years and wanted badly to actually be good at it.  Someone once suggested to me that all I needed to do was play along with songs I liked and I’d get good.  Well……..not exactly.  I certainly learned some things and got past the initial obstacles of what it is to have four limbs doing separate things.  I even thought at times that I was getting pretty good, because it felt so right when I was playing along to a song I liked.  But then I would record myself playing over a song, listen back and wonder, “who is that guy drumming, and how can he be that bad at it.”  So finally I bit the bullet, bought some drumming books, took some lessons, practiced with a metronome, and saw things take a whole new form as something that actually sounded like a real drummer.  And I’m having more fun with it than ever. The better I get, the easier it becomes to get even better and open up new possibilities.

Like most thing in life, you have to step outside of yourself, figure out what isn’t working, make a plan of how to address those things, roll up your sleeves, then go back in and and get to work.  And repeat that process as much as you can stand it.

Now only if most drivers could see a video of themselves scaring everyone on the road silly with their crazy and dangerous driving habits, then maybe they’d make some efforts to get better at it.

And as a singer, you have the power to see progress happen, and it takes not just practice, but intelligent practice.  Learn “what to learn,” so that your time is well spent and will take you where you’d actually like to go as a singer, and not just someone that resigns themselves to their limitations.

So…….what do Singing and driving have in common?  That you can do something everyday of your life, and not necessarily get better.  Unless you make a concerted effort to actually see improvement.

Happy driving.  And happy singing.  And if you sing while you drive, keep your eyes on the road.  🙂

Rachel Platten Wildfire Tour: Part 2

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The mighty upright!!! Formerly owned by Nashville session player Chris Tuttle.

Rachel Platten Wildfire Tour:   Part  2  (The effort required to prepare for a Tour)

Rachel and her team flew me out to LA the 3rd week of Feb to sit in on rehearsals for 3 days and help coach Rachel during her full set to get the highest level of vocals and maintain the vocal health we’d been regaining (via many Skype and some live sessions) over the previous months.  Rehearsals were held at the world famous SIR Studios in Hollywood.  SIR is like walking around a Rock and Roll Museum. Halls of guitars, basses, amps, drums, horns and assorted other instruments in glass cases winding through a space with several rehearsal studios that have been home to God only knows how many Rock legends preparing for tours and recording sessions.

Rachel had been gearing up for this tour for almost a year by traveling all over the world promoting Fight Song.  Putting together a big show for a hit record is no small undertaking, and I applaud Rachel, her band  (Chris Anderson, Craig Meyer and Rebecca Haviland), her personal assistant Clarissa Savage, her manager Ben Singer, and the rest of her team for really stepping up to the plate.

On top of getting the full set together to promote the release of the Wildfire CD, Rachel had been gearing up to ad a lot of dance choreography to the show.  She was working with Paul Kirkland on choreographing dance moves and stage direction for the tour.  She was loving that aspect of the show and you could tell.  She’d been telling me for weeks how much she was enjoying dancing.  The only drawback was, that while learning some fairly difficult dance moves, she was still attempting to sing full out.  It was important to find a method that would allow her to practice the new moves and not tire her voice out.   The microphone was placed by the keyboard.  The songs where Rachel sang and played keyboards at the same time needed to be slightly altered so that she could focus a bit more on the vocals.  This is the beauty of playing with a great band, they can pick up the slack and give the singer some more freedom.  But when Rachel stepped away from the keys and worked the stage she had her hands full with the new dance moves.

As the days wore on, it was clear that Rachel’s mind was often on the choreography and her voice was getting tired.  We were very intent on her not hurting her voice, so we worked together on a few techniques that would allow her to practice the dance moves and not cause any wear and tear to a voice that was basically working 7 days a week.  I won’t go into giant details here, but it’s very important to have the ability to work through vocal material at a variety of energy and projection levels.  With material that covers a lot of vocal range, this can be easier said than done.  So sometimes learning to practice at less demanding levels requires a fair amount of practice in and of itself.  Well fortunately, Rachel and I have worked together for many years and can communicate through a myriad of possible singing techniques.  We would switch it up quite a bit to keep it effective.  A couple things we’d alternate into the equation were using tongue rolls and lips rolls with the melodies of the songs during the choreography.  If you’ve checked out any of my study material, you’ll see that I’m very specific about how to do those exercises, so suffice it to say, if you’re pushing through those exercises, they won’t actually help you avoid the strain we’re looking to alleviate.

This tour was very well planned and lots of great people were involved in putting it together and making it great.  Something Rachel is great at, is listening to the ideas and opinions of everyone involved and trying out several options to reach the very highest level possible.  Something to take into mind is how much energy it costs to try out every option you can.  To literally try the suggestions from those involved takes time and lots of effort.  It’s a testament to what it takes to do things at the very highest level.  Not a small feat.

And smack dab in the middle of rehearsals, her publicity department had scheduled a run of about 5 consecutive interviews.    This took a huge tole on her energy and rehearsal momentum.  It’s hard to switch gears so many times a day and still have any focus left.  Rachel had over worked the day before the interviews and even after a full day of band rehearsal, had stayed late and practiced more dance moves.  Unfortunately she kept singing through this extended stay at a very high energy level, and tired herself and her voice out.  After the second interview you could hear the fatigue in her voice and we needed to find a secluded place in the rehearsal facility and get her voice back to a healthy place.  There we were, out on the loading dock of Sir studios doing some vocal recovery techniques to get her voice centered and back in the right place to continue the day.   Once we got her voice back in alignment, the rest of that day, and the rest of the rehearsals went awesome.

Rachel is very strong, and very disciplined, and in the end always pulls it off.

Tune in next time for Part Three of the Wildfire tour.

Rachel Platten Wildfire Tour: Part 1

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Rachel Platten Tweet 1

The last several months have been very exciting.  ….

As some may know, I’ve worked with Rachel Platten since 2003 starting in NYC when she was an up and coming singer and performer.  We’d had a couple years where we hadn’t seen much of each other, as I moved to Nashville, and she was touring a lot.  Then early last summer she contacted me to tackle a vocal health issue she was having from the relentless schedule she was on.  Even though Rachel and I had worked for years to get her vocal habits up to the task of handling her very spirited singing, her whirlwind career had made it hard for her to warm up consistently enough show after show, and the wear and tear had led to the bad news that every singer is very afraid to hear, that she’d gotten vocal nodules.  She’d been told she’d need surgery and months of vocal rest to cure them.  I disagreed with that diagnosis and knew that with some work and patience we could not only heal them them naturally, but make sure they wouldn’t return.  And that’s exactly what we did.  And we did it without loosing any valuable promotion time, which is exactly what Rachel was doing for months after her first hit single “Fight Song” was released.  She was touring the world doing just about every promo radio spot and daytime TV show you can imagine, including The Today Show, Good Morning America, Ellen, The View, …etc.

We would work together via FaceTime and some in person sessions several times a week.  I would use several different vocal rehabilitation techniques, and warm her voice up before most shows, (which was often at a ridiculously early hour for yours truly).  We would run through all of the trouble spots in her set and use all of the great communication we’d created from working for so long together, to focus on techniques that would work better in the various live performance situations she was in almost daily.

That hard work and diligence paid off.  Her damaged voice kept getting healthier and healthier.

Rachel was such a trouper through all of this and an absolute inspiration to work with.  Working more often than not, seven days a week and doing high pressure, one to three song performances on far less sleep or rest than most people require, she stood strong and really won over myriads of fans.

But we had to keep the big picture in mind, and continue to get her voice healthy and strong enough to handle the full sets that would be coming up on her tour. The big difference was, that for months she’d been traveling around for promotional shows only doing one to a few songs at a time.  Now we were back to making sure she could do the long sets without hurting herself.  If you’ve listened to any Rachel Platten songs, you know she sings very dynamically and almost all of her songs cover her full singing range.  There aren’t a lot of resting spots in Rachel’s set.

Rachel is a very disciplined person, but it’s easy once you start feeling really centered in your voice, to think that it can handle a little less maintenance.  Let’s just say, I’ve gotten her back to a full “warm up” regimen.  So during several months of her Fight Song and Stand by You promotional tour, Rachel and I chipped away at healing her voice and getting her ready for her upcoming Tour to promote her very successful major label debut “Wildfire” released by Sony Music Entertainment.

I feel like the the whole thing really started coming together a few weeks prior to Tour rehearsals, when Rachel got the great news from her ENT that the vocal nodules she’d been diagnosed with several months earlier were completely healed.

This was of course, outstanding news and we were excited to jump into rehearsals and get Rachel on the tour bus.

Tune back in for Parts 2 & 3 of this blog for some some cool deets on what went into the whole Wildfire rehearsal and tour production………COMING SOON!!!!!!!

 

 

 

The Joys of Working with Rachel Platten

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Seems that everything in life goes in circles.  In 2003ish I started working with a young singer in NYC named Rachel Platten.  She was a very ambitious, hard working aspiring singer doing that NYC thing of holding down a couple part time jobs to support her budding music career, and playing shows every chance she got.  We worked together regularly for 5 years on bringing her voice up to a truly amazing level.  Then over the next few years we worked off and on (as she was often touring) on keeping her voice in shape, as well as doing a lot of co-writing and recording.  Then there a were a few years where we didn’t see each other much as she was touring and I was busy writing, recording and producing a lot, and then eventually moving to Nashville.

Then in late spring of this year as we were texting hellos to each other she told me of some vocal health issues she was having.  She was excited about having a new Hit Song (Fight Song) but her grueling tour schedule and over busy life had gotten her a bit off track with all of the healthy habits we’d gotten her accustomed to over the years, and she’d developed a vocal disorder.  Her management had of course sent her to several specialists in LA, but she wasn’t cured and was still struggling.  So needless to say I was very glad to get back on board and get her voice back up to snuff.  Fast forward about 4 months now, and she’s virtually trouble free, out of pain and singing better than ever.  We’ve been doing Skype lessons now for the last few months anywhere from once to three times a week.  I’ve been warming her up before a lot of concerts and several important daytime shows including The View, The Today Show, Good Morning America and the Teen Choice Awards.  We’ll be posting some fun videos of those sessions soon.  It’s kind of entertaining to see someone warming up their voice with a crew putting make-up on her.

It’s so fun to work with a singer that has explored and practiced enough actual technique, that making adjustments during warm ups and practice sessions is like making fine tuning adjustments to a beautiful instrument.

Rachel performed in October this year at the Country Music Hall of Fame IEBA showcase.  She was sharing the bill with some great artists including Jennifer Nettles, The Jacksons, G Love, Howard Jones, Blood Sweat and Tears and several more wonderful Acts.

When we were back stage warming her up before the show, the rest of her band were in the room watching us.  Their reaction when we were done was great.  There were a lot of OMG’s and “that was awesome” being thrown around.  “You guys are so fun to watch working together, your rapport is amazing.”  “You can hear the changes taking place as the warm up progresses like magic.”  “The way you communicate together is so seamless and almost telepathic.”  It was fun to have the musicians she plays with all the time witness that exchange.  And it is of course very rewarding for me to be able make such a positive effect on someone at Rachel’s level.  But the adjustments I was making during that warm up were very specific and technical adjustments.  It’s just that we’ve already done all of the tedious work and practice ahead of time, so that we can now reap the rewards of using all the cool whistles and bells that good vocal mechanics have to offer.   And we get to do it in such a way that makes the warm up fun and incredibly efficient and productive.  So that by the time we get to where the voice is moving easily to all of the nooks and cranny’s involved in singing, we can get away from the mechanical focus and start directing everything towards the performance head space.  That space where intention and emotions lead the way, not the brain.  Which is awesome, because Rachel has amazing performance instincts, and the last thing you want to get in the way of a great performance is a voice issue.

So, if there’s a moral to this story it’s “practice the nuts and bolts” of singing, so that that the mechanics involved in voice can help you rather than hinder you.

Sing well,

Breck Alan

Sturgill Simpson – It’s great to get inspired

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sturgill-simpson-headerI was recently exposed to one of the coolest singers I’ve heard in a long time, Sturgill Simpson.  I was listening to some bands at The Basement on South 8th in Nashville when in-between sets I heard some music that really caught my attention.  It was immediately familiar, and yet I new that it was new.

It had this very early 70’s  country music vibe, yet it was very fresh and current and the songwriting was actually pretty edgy.  I immediately loved it.

I’ve since spent a lot of time listening to various Sturgill Simpson recordings and I’ve definitely become a fan, and am excited to be inspired by a new discovery.

It seems that Sturgill has been making the rounds lately, playing everything from The Dave Letterman Show to The Grande Ole Opry.  I actually got to see the Opry show, and the only downside was that he only got to play two songs.  His live energy was great, and I look forward to seeing more shows.

There are a lot of very good singers in the world but it’s rare to hear someone that is truly captivating.  Someone that can just pull you in from the energy and emotion radiating through their voice alone, with no need for glitter and gloss.  Sturgill Simpson has a voice that is organic, rootsy, honest and delivered with amazing vocal clarity and a powerful rich, deep tone.  It’s like listening to a strange mix of Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard, with a dose of the songwriting spirit of Kris Kristofferson thrown in.  And yet it’s completely unique and belongs entirely to Sturgill.

If you’re working on some of the aspects that make Sturgill’s voice so cool, check out some of the free vocal technique video lessons listed below.

Check him out and feel free to share any singers that have inspired you lately and why you find them interesting.

Free Voice Lesson Videos:

Natural Diction
Projection
Power
Great tone

What building a studio has in common with building your voice

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I just want to plug in some mics and start recording.  I haven’t hit the record button in over a year since I took down my studio in NYC.  Without my own personal studio, I feel like I’m stranded on a deserted island.  Does that feeling seem familiar?  I just want to be able to sing well?  I just want to be performing now?  Believe me, I get it.

Over a year ago I packed up my studio in NYC, moved to Nashville, put the studio in storage and started on the journey of building a house with studio in it.  I was planning on remodeling a little house I bought and building something out back for the recording studio.  Well……the house was just too far gone, so I knocked it down and started over.  How hard could it be?  It’s a pretty intense project, I’m here to say.  A house that was supposed to take less than 5 months to build took almost a year.  So I got very far behind my goals.

I put in an incredible amount of time and energy, not to mention life’s savings, just getting the house finished.  So, what did that leave me when I could finally move in?  I had an empty studio space.  What to do then?  I have to tell ya, it was all I could do to stop myself from just grabbing my gear and sound treatment materials out of storage, throw everything up in a couple weeks and just get to work recording, writing and teaching.

And the rewards would have been immediate.  But the results?  Well lets just say, they would have been less than I know they could be, and far less the kind of quality I’m shooting for.  After having four different studios in NYC over 11 years, I know a lot of the pitfalls with a recording environment.  They say “God’s in the details,” and that is so often true.

So here I am, over three months since I moved into the house, and I’m still working on the studio construction and assembly.  My gear is still in storage, and I’m just trying to get the tracking and control rooms built correctly before I tackle the the huge job of getting my equipment and re-wiring for this space.  I’m hoping I can remember how to plug in all those whacky interfaces that are involved in a serious recording rig these days.

So yes, I’m now way behind schedule.  And I’m very, very tired.  Weeks go by and all I do is build things and install things and wonder if I’ll ever get this thing done.  But in the back of my mind I know something that rings true.  I’m bringing all of the experience I have from the previous four studios I had in NYC and infusing that into this space.  I’m spending the extra time on the front end, so that this wonderful space will be as great as it can be, and I’ll love the work I do in it.  I know enough to know that If I’d just listened to my tired voice, and thrown everything together when I first moved in, that I’d end up being very frustrated with a lot of the results.  Because I’m solving so many issues ahead of time, my focus can be spent in more creative ways with far better results than from a mediocre recording space.

What does this have to do with building a voice?  Or anything else?  It’s exactly the same thing.  The time you spend assembling things correctly on the front end will save you years of frustration in the future.  Remember “The Art of Body Singing” credo:  The voice is an instrument, assembly required.  For those extra 100 miles in the beginning, you’ll get years of service.

So remember, when something seems horribly tedious and requires a lot of inner strength, you might just be in the right place.  Please share some comments with us about some grueling task in singing (or otherwise), that you feel really paid off.

So…..I’m off to build stuff.

Until next time,

Breck