Question for working cover band singers

HillbillySean

Hi...I've been singing for about 10 years in various original bands. About 6 months ago I got sick of playing to empty rooms and I decided to start up a country cover band. Its been a long road of trying out a million clowns from Craigslist but finally have a line up of pro-level players. Our practices are about 3 hours and I'm starting to notice that my voice is starting to kind of warble out towards the end of practice. Its freaking me out a bit as I'm expecting that within a few months I'm going to be doing 4 hour gigs at least once a week, probably more. Since starting this program about 2 months ago, my range has increased in a major way but my stamina isnt getting better. I'm on level 3 and have not started the stamina workouts yet because just the regular level 3 stuff is challenging enough. I sing about 4-6 hours a day between Ken workouts and repetoir practice. So I'd be interested in hearing from other singers that are working in cover bands and how they handled the major load without getting blown out by the end of the gig. Also any particular exercises that you noticed were really good at increasing endurance?

My thoughts are:
1. Patience....I keep reading this everywhere here, I know I've got a long way to go on this program
2. Managing the setlist so that the tougher songs arent back to back(that's tough for the last set of the night when you want to bring out most of your heavier upbeat songs)
3. Make sure I've got diaphramtic support dialed in
4. Glottal compression...sending less air
5. Lots of water

Klaus_T

hi Sean, just a thought, if you are on level 3 already after two months, maybe you brushed over some parts too quickly? no offence, I just say it because you mention it ("patience"). because support and compression are concepts that you won't master over night, and they are probably crucial for pulling off this 4-hour set safely

what songs are you playing (especially the heavier ones)? maybe you can also lower the key on some of them to at least make it a bit less challenging?

pretty cool that you dedicate 4-6 hours a day to singing btw

HillbillySean

Thanks for the comments Klaus. Yea I knew I was going to get beat up here for moving fast. I got to the point quickly where Vol 1 and Vol 2 were really easy and I followed the guidelines in the manual on when to move up. I still go back and do Vol 2 as a warm up on days that I have full band rehearsal and I am rewatching the videos from the volumes all the time. Vol 3 is much more challenging, I am sure I will be here for quite a while. I'm taking these exercises really slowly and breaking them down on my own to make sure I'm hitting the exercise correctly.

We're doing some Mavericks tunes that are on the high end of my range(Born to Be Blue, All You Ever Do is Bring me Down), and Justin Moore's How I Got to Be this Way has some tougher parts towards the end. I can nail all of those easily if I'm just starting up but if I put those at the end of practice I'm definitely warbling. Neon Moon is another one that starts to fall apart if its later in the practice. I'm not a huge fan of dropping a key of a song as I feel like it really doesnt sound the same but we did bring down the Justin Moore song by half a step.

Wigs

I think your best bet right now to see if you are applying the program correctly would be to upload your scales. Since this is the public area of the forum I can't go into much detail about the course itself but duck into the student areas and check out some scales from others to get an idea of what we would look for 🙂

Klaus_T

cool thanks I will check out the songs you mentioned!
I agree with @Wigs, the scales are the best way to know if you're on the right track. if you need assistance with how to do the scales for evaluation, you can also PM me

the value of this forum as part of the course cannot be overstated. i sometimes get paranoid if i skipped posting for a while, because then I am afraid of ingraining bad habits

MikeyParent

" I sing about 4-6 hours a day between Ken workouts and repetoir practice. "

I think this is the likely problem. Vocal fatigue is setting in and you may not be giving your voice enough time to recover if you singing THIS much, this often.