What is Eivor doing with her voice?
AaralynShiri
2.0 PRO Posts: 30
Hello!
I am new to building my chest voice! I've just been singing really high, on my own, for the last 10 years, but just decided to get serious about my voice recently. So I feel I have overdeveloped my head voice, and now I'm trying to figure out my different ranges and how to incorporate everything, with the help of this course.
I like the sound of Eivor's voice in this video - is she using a combo of chest voice, mixed voice and head voice at times (aside from the throat singing). Or primarily head voice? Also her voice sounds like it has a lot of air to it sometimes. I do enjoy my upper register and singing more ethereal/mystical type music, but I don't have much going on in my middle/lower registers, so hoping to develop more color and flexibility. I want to do things safely for my voice, though, and she is singing with a lot of closed tones - is that harmful at all if good support is maintained?
Thank you! ~Aaralyn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpiFmZLICgM
I am new to building my chest voice! I've just been singing really high, on my own, for the last 10 years, but just decided to get serious about my voice recently. So I feel I have overdeveloped my head voice, and now I'm trying to figure out my different ranges and how to incorporate everything, with the help of this course.
I like the sound of Eivor's voice in this video - is she using a combo of chest voice, mixed voice and head voice at times (aside from the throat singing). Or primarily head voice? Also her voice sounds like it has a lot of air to it sometimes. I do enjoy my upper register and singing more ethereal/mystical type music, but I don't have much going on in my middle/lower registers, so hoping to develop more color and flexibility. I want to do things safely for my voice, though, and she is singing with a lot of closed tones - is that harmful at all if good support is maintained?
Thank you! ~Aaralyn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpiFmZLICgM
Comments
in the "normal" parts she is sing in chest and head voice. In the very low part she is singing in her "fry" register. This is the lowest register (below of our modal register, like we call it in medicine). Normally that is not very useful for singing songs.
Doc
Ok, that said I think the breathy sound that she is doing is an artistic choice on her part. I love Celtic and was first introduced to it through Enya and then picked up some more through Dead Can Dance. Honestly I think that a cleaner sound would be better artistically, but you can get away with this. You have to be careful doing it because like I said she is using a TON of air to achieve the sound. One of the reasons that she is able to get away with this is that she is low volume and not belting. This lessens the strain on her chords. You need to make sure that you are also doing this. DO NOT belt at all like this, it is dangerous. Now, in my opinion, how to get the breathy sound artistically in a safer manner. First find the threshold of how much air you actually need to achieve the sound. Try to get the least amount of air possible. You will need to experiment with this to find it. Make sure you are drinking a lot of water and taking breaks as you are doing this. Then record and listen back to what you are doing so that you can determine when your mind is most focused on the breathiness of the sound. Cut back to normal (good) support during periods when your mind is NOT focused on the breathiness to fool your audience into believing that you are using a lot of air when you are not. This is going to be tricky and once again you are going to need to experiment. I am pretty sure that you will be able to employ the breathy sound strategically so that you aren't always using it. Also when you are moving into your head voice the breathiness isn't really going to come across, so go clean on these parts. Doing these things I believe will allow you to achieve this sound safely. Just remember if you are doing a song or songs like this that you are drinking a lot of water and staying hydrated. Pay attention to your body especially at first and make sure that if you are feeling hoarse that you stop and wait for recovery. Then determine what caused the hoarseness, and correct it.
Good luck ... cool song.
One: is using chest on the lower notes and mix as she moves up. She is mostly chest mix across her range.
Two: is using almost entirely mix except for the one high note she flips into head. Her support isn't really good either, but it isn't as bad as three.
Three: is using all head voice, and gawd does she have bad support.
Four: is using mostly chest and doesn't really try to mix until the higher notes for her.
It is very common for singers to use improper support. This song does not call for any kind of breathiness and in fact sounds best if the sound is very clean and tight, from solid support. I want to point out though that these singers sound very good. Their pitch is spot on and their tone is beautiful. It is important to understand the role that support plays in singing and it isn't what most people think it is.
One other thing that is important to note is where the singer's voice is either chest head or mix, can be an artistic consideration. Though often enough there are poorly trained singers and they working with all that they have. They don't get the option to choose which voice they are using, because they are one trick ponies. Girl number two is in this camp.
Deva Premal - starts singing around 25 seconds in
Snatam Kaur
Jai Jagdeesh
And then here is me trying to sing like them vs trying to sing with the chest voice
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1syeOJluPcVUHKS_EmTAgvnuq73htyCqZ
So I think the first video is the one of interest. The last two videos you posted are straight forward open throat technique. I find them to be very similar to choir solos. Definitely this course is going to give you the tools to emulate there sound. For me artistically the sound doesn't have impact. I think that it the singer is using their charisma to carry the emotion.
... but the first video. Like I have mentioned I like the Celtic sound. So what she is using is a type of technique, that you won't learn in this course. Please don't take this as, I get to throw out all of the fundamentals and do this new technique. Nope fundamentals are still applicable. You will see from the video that I link which ones those are but not all of the things that we learn in KTVA are applicable to this technique. The sound that the woman is producing is a very very resonant sound. She isn't using the full technique in what she is doing but a mixed hybrid. That technique is called throat singing. It is very common in native cultures and is most famously used by Mongolians. It is an easy technique to learn, but creating the hybrid can be a bit tricky. Here is the video of multiple women using this technique. Pay close attention to the German woman using it. She is using it in it's more pure conceptual form which is essentially two note singing.
I decided to link this video too, so that you can see conceptually where this sound is coming from.