Body Singing by Breck Alan

Nashville and Online Vocal Coach

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.  🙂

How to Learn Scream Vocals

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How to do Scream Vocals without hurting yourself.

The Question From John H.  Buffalo NY……….is……..
I was trained with a classical background. My teachers always taught me to sing with a clean tone, and stressed that singing with a throaty or growly tone would cause permanent damage to my throat. However I find this limiting when I try to sing certain styles of music that seem to require a more guttural feel. Can I get the gravelly/throaty/screamy tone that some singers get without damaging my voice?

The stock answer to the growly or throaty tone question is that it’s only achievable if the singer is born with a speaking voice that has the same growly or throaty quality. I however do not subscribe to this stock theory. I refer to this throaty tone as throat resonance and seeing this tone as resonance is the key to safely learning how to add this color to your palette.

There are gillions of examples of singers out there that have successfully navigated the “Edgy tone” and had long and fruitful careers. The key is as with all singing that it must be accomplished without excess pressure on the vocal cords. It is not screaming!! In fact if you pay attention to singers that use the edgier tones correctly you’ll hear that most of them are not excessively loud. The throat tone projects very well as does Nasal resonance, but that is not synonymous with screaming. It is the projection of this resonance (and the illusion of screaming) that makes it so appealing for more aggressive music. It carries well over other instruments.

Placement is the key to this as with all resonance.  The first focus of placement as with all healthy and good sounding singing is to “anchor” your tone.  This refers to the age old voice term “singing over the throat.”  What this means is that the beginning of all resonance is at the top back of your mouth where your uvula hangs down.  Once the vocal cords produce the initial pitch and tone then the sound must initially vibrate at this spot in your body before being magnified and colored by additional resonance from your nasal passage, mouth, chest and throat.  When you’re good at anchoring your tone and can produce a non-airy clean tone without strain and harshness then you are in a position to re-direct your resonance back into your throat and attach the growly throat resonance to your tone.  Direction of resonance is a multi step learning process that cannot be covered in a single magazine article.   There are many techniques I use to teach singers to direct their resonance from their brightest nasal resonance down to their deepest chest resonance and all points in between.  Once a singer is good at going from one direction in resonance to the next then they must learn to work in both directions at the same time.  Meaning attaching the bright resonance to the deep resonance so we can hear them both at the same time.  That is the same thing that must be done with attaching some throat resonance to a solid well-anchored clean tone.  It’s a bit of walking and chewing gum but if you’re patient with the steps then you’ll be able to put them together in time.
Practice in your middle lower range first, feeling what it feels like to direct the resonance up and down from your chest to your nasal passage. Doing this can best be described as going from a yawny low larynx sound “umb” for the chest sound up to a buzzy eeee sound for the bright nasal tone.  Be as gentle and quiet as you can and really work on doing all of these placements with a non-airy tone. When you are good at this and have spent enough time to understand how to blend these resonance’s well and move them at will, then you are ready to begin gently trying to direct resonance into your soft palate and throat area. There is a mild compression (slight constriction in the throat that goes against everything we first teach a singer) involved in this maneuver but it must not create excess pressure in the throat. Finesse. This is the safest type of throat resonance but it is not to be used until there is an effortless quality to it. That comes with careful practice. You must also be well warmed up before you even begin playing with it.
The other type of throat resonance often heard is of the glottal fry nature. These are the edges of the vocal cords creating the buzzy resonance. This is often used by singers to get that smoky kind of rasp.  This one is more associated with a slightly airy tone.  You should allow this one come more or less on it’s own to you when experimenting with resonance.  This can be successful for some but dangerous when a singer using this tone tries to amplify it too much. They end up pushing through the throat and invariable cause vocal health problems. The earlier mentioned non-airy type of throat resonance is far more desirable for high projection instances. In conclusion, growly/throaty/screamy tone is a learnable technique, but takes a lot of skill and patience. If it hurts, you are doing it wrong.

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!!!!!!!

 

 

 

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