ex-tone deaf introducing himself
Hello, I'm a 34 year old male from Finland
Here's something little about my background. My musical hobby started around 10 years ago. I was pretty much tone deaf (self-diagnosis) and I couldn't even hum the simplest songs (eg. Mary had a little lamb). Since then I have improved quite a lot and now learning songs is much easier. Of course I still need to improve my ear and rhythm but at least now I can hear the notes and play them on the guitar and do some simple harmonizing.
I know there are lot of aspects where I need improvement, but the lack of the higher chest register is the one which troubles me most. I think one of the reasons why my progression has been slow is that I need to transpose almost every song for more comfortable range (G2-D4) and there aren't many mainstream pop songs in that range. I have learnt to use head voice, but the tone is not clear until A4-D5. Mixed voice is something I've never comprehended and I think that I lack that "register".
Here's a short sample of my singing which I just recorded.
http://soundcloud.com/tonike/half-away-the-world/s-nRnkl
I watched the first volume few times and then I started doing the audio workout. Connecting the voice is very difficult for me and I would be glad to get some tips how to achieve consistent sound throughout the exercise. Maybe some cord closure tips? I know it's pitchy and I will concentrate on that.
After reading some of the posts in this forum I came into a conclusion that I need to focus on training the cord closure (bright "ae" vowel, like in "ant"). However I will also train separately chest voice stretching with vowel modifications. What do you think?
P.S. There is some kind of Kraken eating my posts every time I try to edit it.
P.S.S. How does the soundcloud embed work. Seems like forum doesn't support straight embedding using BB-codes.
Here's something little about my background. My musical hobby started around 10 years ago. I was pretty much tone deaf (self-diagnosis) and I couldn't even hum the simplest songs (eg. Mary had a little lamb). Since then I have improved quite a lot and now learning songs is much easier. Of course I still need to improve my ear and rhythm but at least now I can hear the notes and play them on the guitar and do some simple harmonizing.
I know there are lot of aspects where I need improvement, but the lack of the higher chest register is the one which troubles me most. I think one of the reasons why my progression has been slow is that I need to transpose almost every song for more comfortable range (G2-D4) and there aren't many mainstream pop songs in that range. I have learnt to use head voice, but the tone is not clear until A4-D5. Mixed voice is something I've never comprehended and I think that I lack that "register".
Here's a short sample of my singing which I just recorded.
http://soundcloud.com/tonike/half-away-the-world/s-nRnkl
I watched the first volume few times and then I started doing the audio workout. Connecting the voice is very difficult for me and I would be glad to get some tips how to achieve consistent sound throughout the exercise. Maybe some cord closure tips? I know it's pitchy and I will concentrate on that.
After reading some of the posts in this forum I came into a conclusion that I need to focus on training the cord closure (bright "ae" vowel, like in "ant"). However I will also train separately chest voice stretching with vowel modifications. What do you think?
P.S. There is some kind of Kraken eating my posts every time I try to edit it.
P.S.S. How does the soundcloud embed work. Seems like forum doesn't support straight embedding using BB-codes.
Comments
Key points to help you:
Keep doing the lah exercise as light as you are doing it now i.e. Don't be tempted to push to get the chest sound in on your bridge ... the required cord closure with better tone develop while doing the exercises lightly. After a while you will become more aware of the subtle nature of things. Vowel mods will be something that you'll note becoming a requirement to maintain the buzz of good cord closure through your bridge. I found that once I homed in on the bright ping (after improving cord closure) I was able to learn to do the mods to maintain the bright ping. Once you get there, you'll begin to have even more AHA moments like the subtle feeling of the sound coming from your solar plexus rather than your mouth. Holding back the air will become another thing you notice improves your tone and give better control of your passaggio.
A lot to learn but well worth it. Again, welcome.
I've read some of your posts and listened to your samples and they are very encouraging. I especially liked the "bad company". I hope I will be able to do that in near future.
I think I've been able to bridge my voice without yodels few years, but the tone has always been very weak and I didn't know how to improve it. I've done these kind of scales for few years, which has helped me with the pitch but not correctly to improve the mid-voice.
I can "sing" E4 but not in every song and I don't like the tone. I've been training support for about a year now and it has helped to get the idea of the support.
You're doing really well with your light bridging. It just takes time to gradually increase the girth of it to bring in more chesty sound.