Singing Course
So anyone that knows me. I sing... a lot. But my singing is mostly average. I find I often get moisture in the lungs, probably from being overweight and the impact this has on the heart. So I have to deal with a few issues. I hope to use this article to record my work as I go and keep me aware of whatever the last thing I was doing when I come back to the course. I find blogging helps me keep focused somehow and I like to be open with people about myself so I might as well publish the results.
Why? What's the Application?
For the most part I just love singing and I love self-improvement, so why not? But other than the odd bit of karaoke, why might I seek out a course like this? Anyone who has seen me in drag, knows I work singing into my entertainment so there is an immediate use of this course! My voice is pretty good for a voice that isn't coached, but it really isn't at its full potential. Luckily for drag you don't need to have voice that is a dead ringer for Shirley Bassey. So it has worked a little bit, but no-one wants to hear someone who is shit.
My voice does need a lot of work. For a long time I have wanted to pay for vocal coaching, but I decided before I fork out a lot of money I would try and see what I can do with a reasonably cheap course first.
What Course?
I picked a rock singing course from Udemy because I am particularly interested in techniques such a vocal fry and shouts that are more common place in rock singing. Sadly so far the course doesn't seem that great, but it at least gives me something to work on and investigate each time and comes with exercises so I will try to withhold judgement until the end, but for now I will not mention the name of the course.
Regular Practice
Once again this is another exercise that needs to be practised a lot. In fact the course has a section called train like an athlete. So I guess this would precede my training for 5k which in turn precedes any kungfu training.
Voice Range
I find it hard to identify my "Fach" or vocal range. There are 25 different fachs to compare to and I don't know them all. Very often my range, which I estimate to be around G3-E6 undeveloped, allows me to cover quite a few of them including: Bass (using low techniques), Baritone (using low technique), Tenor (easy), and Soprano (using resonance). I can also hit most of contralto and contratenor, but the practice pushes me into head voice. Tenor seems to be the most comfortable for me.
Stretch the Voice
Techniques for lower voice. Working with your growl, fry and subharmonic register, according to this video. Having practiced these techniques I think I need to practise them regularly to smooth it out.
To go higher and still sing with power you need to use a belting technique. Often this can be achieved by using a resonance chamber behind the nose. Unfortunately the Youtube artist, Felicia Ricci has removed most of her videos from when she was teaching belting, but I was able to find this one below where she talks about using the resonance chamber.
When I was going through her videos there was one where she helped people find the voice by saying "Nya" in a whiney child voice. (If you listen and emulate the sound from this video of the most annoying sound in the world. Then you will feel where this sound occurs.) This sound causes a vibration behind the nose. If you then try to combine this with a voice that vibrates in the chest to get rid of the nasal quality then you can use it for loud and high pitched piercing notes.
Mixed Voice
The interesting part of doing singing courses is that you really need to learn the human anatomy that is involved so you can train each muscle in isolation to allow for better singing and use all the chambers inside the body to create a resonant sound.
What is a resonant sound?
In physics resonance is where identical waves begin to overlap creating a more powerful wave. For example bridges have a natural frequency they vibrate at. That vibration is a bit like a really fast swing moving backwards and forwards. Now if you always push a swing as it moves away from you, you get a greater and greater swing movement. In some cases with bridges the wind has had that affect of pushing the vibration in a similar way and just increasing the vibration over and over.
A similar affect is created when a glass which vibrates as a natural frequency has someone sing the frequency at it which increases the glasses vibration until it vibrates so much that it can no longer hold itself together.
In singing there are different sounds created by causing resonance to occur within different air chambers within the body. Chest voice is the sound of singing when resonance occurs within the chest. Head voice uses the huge nasal cavity to create resonance. Now these different places have a different range of notes they an produce known as a vocal register. I used to think falsetto was the same thing as head voice but it is actually more open and airy with less vocal chord vibration as a result. This is a vocal mode rather than a register because it is about which parts are used rather than the range achieved (other modes include vocal fry and whistle).
With a good amount of effort you can blend these different registers together so that you can move from one voice to another seamlessly to create a single overall range. To help this process it is often worth working on the mixed voice which is the point where you are using both nasal resonance and chest resonance at the same time. This allows for an easier cross over between different registers.
One of the major issues I am hitting is that for years I have always had a lot of mucus around larynx. I will need to see if regular irrigation of the ENT passages helps.
30th Jan - more to come
Graeme