Body Singing by Breck Alan

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What does Singing have in Common with Driving ?

December 14, 2016 by Breck Alan

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.  🙂

Filed Under: Singing Blog Tagged With: effective Vocal Technique, Learn to sing, Singing Blog

Rachel Platten Wildfire Tour: Part 1

May 8, 2016 by Breck Alan

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!!!!!!!

 

 

 

Filed Under: Singing Blog Tagged With: effective Vocal Technique, Singing Blog, vocal health

What building a studio has in common with building your voice

February 22, 2015 by Breck Alan

Custom Bass Trap in Voice Studio
Various Sound Panels
Building Custom Sound Panels For the Vocal Studio
Vocal Studio Sound Panel
Stretching Fabric Over Recording Studio Skylines

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

 

Filed Under: Singing Blog Tagged With: Artist Developement, Better voice, Learn to sing, Singing Blog

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