Beautiful Crazy - Luke Combs

michaelmusic

Hey Everyone,

My in-person lesson with Ken is coming up this Thursday at 3pmMST in Flagstaff, AZ! Can't wait!

Below is a recent video of me singing Beautiful Crazy by Luke Combs. What can I improve? Based on this video and other recent ones on my YouTube channel, could you let me know what I should ask Ken? Below is a list of my current questions.

Thank you!

https://youtube.com/shorts/tbAmM_pgbKY?feature=share

## Questions

- How can I sing with consistency? When singing live I revert to old habits. I think so much about pitch, vowel placement, playing guitar and performing that I don’t make eye contact with the audience. I just look down at my phone. Sometimes my voice feels weak, lacks confidence, and fatigues after 1 hour.
- Sing for longevity. At the end of a 3hr show my voice is tired (like 6/10) and more breathy.
- Am I using correct form?
- Check diaphragmatic support, vibrato, and vowel placements.
- Am I using glottal compression correctly?
- Better pitch. In singing pop, have my pitch snap to the note
- How can I produce distortion?
- Be able to produce beautiful high notes. I have done up to V3 of the course. Am I ready for V4? Be able to Sing C6 comfortably.
- How can I sing bright, full high notes?
- Improve playing guitar and singing at the same time:
- Play Songs: Maybe I’m Amazed, Long Train Runnin, Hard to Handle - Otis Redding, Speechless - Dan and Shay, Love Runs Out - OneRepublic,
- Play originals: Dance Together, Long Road
- How can I produce my own vocals?
- Play original song for Ken
- I feel like singing breathier with more reverb would be easier than singing brighter with less effects.
- What equipment? Currently have Scarlet Focusrite 2i2 and Neumman TLM103
- What plugins and post-processing should I use?
- Find my unique sound in today’s music. What can my own unique sound be
- Song examples: Don’t Forget Me - Dermot Kennedy, Waves - Fiji Blue, Nick Hakim
- How can I achieve my goal of having a large influence on music culture? Come up with strategy for becoming an original artist (write songs, post on SoundCloud, open for big name acts?, get on Spotify playlist)
- Is there anyone you could connect me with that is a bit further ahead on a similar path?
- What city should I move to for most music opportunities? Considering Austin, TX and Nashville, TN
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@guychan
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@Maarten
@kworam

GuyChan

Hi Michael. It's been a while. Hope you're doing great. It's always good to see toi there. I've not been around here for a little while.

Your lesson with Ken was last week, right? I guess that he gave a lot to chew on. I saw your question about distortion. Ken did a webinar a on that this month. Have you seen it?

The first thing I noticed in the dong you played was about consistency. When you sing, do you feel like you're "singing on a cushion of air"? Your sound seems a little throaty to me, and not enough floaty. If it's the case, it might result in having a flatter sound than what you could have, with more effort needed to work the voice. Do you feel any effort or tension in the throat at all ? When I sing, I like to have the feeling of adding sound to the air, and not adding air to the sound...

I did a small audio to have an idea:.



There is a cushion, a pillow of air surrounding the brightness of my sound. This pillow of air allows the vocal folds to relax and the throat to open. This releases tension and offers a better quality of sound, and also it requires less effort to work the voice, so you're gonna last longer. But at the same time, be careful not to add air. It's not about adding air, it's about letting the air do it's travel through the throat, while still mitigating the flow of it. You want that air to pass through the vocal folds to make them vibrate, but it doesn't end there. The air passes through the folds, travels through the throat, and then lands, sits, stops, or ends its travel in the soft palate/nasopharynx area, the "pocket" of placement. This allows the sound to resonate on his own with no unnecessary tension.

Once you let go that sensation and you get your voice/throat to feel free, you have to use your abdomen to make an even flow.

For your other questions, I'll say that it's totally normal to be tired after a 3h gig. Stamina is built over time. A very important thing is to not let tension build in your body, anywhere. Try your best to keep yourself loose and relaxed as long as you can, while still genuinely using the energy you need to sing.

For compression, make sure you have this pillow of air open throat sensation I told you, before you even try to use compression. As Ken said, you wanna compress at the base of the neck, not in the throat. Using this pillow of air will help you do that. You maintain the openness of the throat and compress at the same time. This will give you the sensation that you're compressing lower than your throat, but the sound, cushion of air is still there! This is where distortion comes from.

This is pretty much what I can give you my take on.

If I said anything wrong, please feel free to come and correct me. I'm willing to learn!

Hope this helps!

Florian

michaelmusic

Hello! Great to hear from you @GuyChan yes the concept you are communicating and the audio example you provided help to add clarity. After my lesson with Ken I have more breath support and better vowel placement that I believe will resolve this.

Ken mentioned with the singing technique I showed him I should be able to sing for 1 hour and then come back after a break stronger than before. I should have no issues singing 3hrs. When I sing live I end up resorting to old habits that wear on my voice.

I will share my vocal lesson with Ken here in the forum and tag you so you can see his feedback.