hey wanna hear me sing??/ [Archive] - Voice Acting Alliance Forums

Saren

12-19-2004, 09:27 PM

(Only commenting on your 'Oh Holy Night' clip)

First of all, it's difficult to give an accurate critique when the sound quality is so bad, as Crimson noted.

You have a very strong voice. That said, you need to learn how to use it. What you're doing now is belting without any technique, which happens to be really bad for your voice. When you belt improperly, you're using a limited area of your vocal cords in a very forced way. Over time, continuing to belt improperly causes thickening of the vocal folds and loss of range and flexibility, not to mention stuff like nodules on the vocal cords. I'm not opposed to belting - if it is done properly it is a powerful way of singing and sounds fantastic. (Of course, it can also sound good if done improperly - Idina Menzel, for example (star of RENT and Wicked, among other musicals) has a wonderful belt sound, but it's apparent that she's damaging her voice.) But unless you've been trained in good belt technique by a good voice teacher, it's a risky endeavor.

Proper belt singing is also not shouting. There are places (one is around 00:50 "fall on your knees...oh night divine") where you stop singing and start shouting, mostly when you attempt the higher notes. Your voice is not designed to belt in that higher range. High tones are achieved through elongated and stretched vocal cords, whereas low tones are achieved through relaxed, thickened vocal cords. It causes your voice a lot of unnatural stress to try to sing high tones with the cordal placement for low tones and it rarely sounds good (it just sounds like shouting.)

You need to learn how to use your mix or 'passagio.' This is an area where both of your 'voices' (head and chest) overlap and if placed in a certain way, can sound very much like a belt without actually being a belt and you can achieve the same sort of sound for your higher tones without strain.

Another reason why it sounds like shouting: you have very little resonance, or none at all. As my voice teacher explains it: "When you sing, you should feel as if each note is ringing in the air." You can also notice slight vibrations in different parts of your face or head when you sing if your singing is resonant. Basically, it's all about making the tone 'spin' in the air as opposed to just shoving it out with your throat. Without resonance, the voice sounds dull, flat, or shrill.

You need to work on your breath support, too. Take deep breaths from your diaphragm, not shallow ones from your mouth. This will help you reach the high notes and stop going off-key (which you do a lot, especially in your 'riffs') Right now it sounds like you're probably taking in a decent amount of breath but you're letting it all out on your first few notes without using it to support your voice.

And last but not least: Vowel placement. When you sing words, you often don't pronounce them the same as you would when you're speaking. For example, the word "love" - when you say it, you probably pronounce it something like "Luhv." But when you sing, your voice can't resonate on an "uh" sound, so you sing on an "ah" vowel instead, and pronounce the word "Lahv." To the audience, it sounds the same as "Love", but makes all the difference to your voice. Diphthongs are also not sung the way you would speak them. (Diphthongs are sounds which consist of a glide from one vowel to another, like in the word "staple" - it sounds like "stay-eepl" if you slow it down.) When you sing a word with a diphthong in it, you don't sing that glide. Your most obviously example of this is your last word: "Divine." You sing "Dee-vai-eeen." The sound "ai" (said like "eye") is not a sound that can be sung on, especially during an extended note. As for the "EEN" part at the end...you do not accentuate that dipthong when you speak, so there is no reason to sing it. You've got the first part of the word placed right, you should sing on an "ee" vowel sound for the "Di-" part of the word since you can't sing on an "ih." But the second part should be sung as "Vahn," not "Vai-eeeen." That sounds awkward and just plain wrong.

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It's great that you're singing, singing is awesome ^^ But if you're serious about singing and don't want to damage your voice, get a reputable voice teacher. Please. (Also, a general rule of thumb: Don't do anything that hurts. If you feel vocal stress or pain after you sing, you're doing something wrong.)

And I should also add...Vocal advice online is no substitute for proper training. No one can teach you how to sing over the internet. Not even me ;P

(I recommend www.fredsilver.org/auddoc5.ivnu&hl=en&lr=&strip=1]this (http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Z0gF92Di2C0J:[url) article[/url] by Fred Silver to anyone who wants to read up on belting. It seems to have been taken off the site but luckily Google's cache of it remains.)