Voice/Tone/etc

[LindaW]

Is one's voice tone, one's tone? To my ears, I hear "Jewish Girl Shrill" (my apologies to all Jewish Girls who aren't shrill), not near "The Nanny" though thank-you-very-much. I can sing on-key with no problem, just hearing an 'edge'. I do get some nice complements though, including from kids who tend to tell you to your face if you suck or not. LOL. I've taken a few voice lessons but the teachers around here tend to be chasing their own careers and are thus unreliable. I'm considering an online course at the Berklee School of Music since I'm up in Boston enough to interact with teachers off-line as well as on.

Anyone here take voice and see a marked improvement in tone?

[rmyAddison]

Nice to see you posting outside of the Dock, music is a much nicer environment.

I don't like my voice, to me serviceable at best, but I do make the effort to make it the best it can be, and I get booked and paid. To me it's all the components; presentation, voice, playing, song selection, audience interaction, etc.

I took a songwriting workshop from Pat Pattsion of Berklee last summer, it was amazing, and I'm sure the voice classes (we got a mini sampler from Kathy Mattea) are excellent too. I highly recommend Berklee courses.

To me an invaluable tool is recording yourself to hear how you sound "outside your head", i.e to others, then using that to make improvements: get your voice out of your nose/sinuses, proper breathing, finding your natural range. I hate the early recordings of my songs, but I can hear the improvement each version as I work on things, recording is priceless to me as a learning tool.

I would love to hear your music, please post something. Good Luck with your music.

[Brew]

I hate my voice and would much rather have my bud do all the solo work. I'm fine with harmonizing but I've heard myself on our CD's and it ain't good.
I will say though that the more I sing the stronger my voice becomes and seems to help me hold my pitch better.
I think the only songs I do ok on are the Neil Young and Tom Petty songs we do..

[Buck62]

To a degree, tone can be changed, so can range. It's a matter of learning to control your vocal chords and the inner shape of your throat (for lack of a better explanation) where the "tone" of your voice comes from. My voice is somewhat nasal, but I've learned to work around it by excercising better control over the years, allowing me to go anywhere from bass notes to the upper ranges by employing falsetto.

I was lucky enough to figure out on my own how to do it, but it also takes a lot of practice to get the most out of it. What helped me the most was singing Karaoke. I would always challenge myself to sing to extremes. I can go from singing the bass vocal in the song "Couldn't Get It Right" by the Climax Blues Band to knocking out Ann Wilson's vocal in Heart's "Magic Man."

Now, I'm not talking about adding perfect vibrato and sustaining the notes forever with these songs, only the original artist or a pro can do that properly and with relative ease. But I believe it's more likely that anyone who's not "pitch challenged" can do it what I'm doing.

The only way I can describe it is to imagine you have something like a golf ball in your throat (Disclaimer: DO NOT actually put one in there, just imagine it!). If you were to use the muscles in your throat to open up and let the imaginary ball drop further down your throat, you're voice's tone will drop. If you you did the opposite and constrict the bottom of your throat to push the imaginary ball upward, you'll be able to change your tone to a higher range. You can employ other variations by practicing how you shape your throat. This is the basic technique I use to copy other people's vocals or singing style.

I'm sorry for the poor description, but it's the best I can do to explain it. I usually use the afformentioned technique to do my own harmonies and alter my voice for a particular vocal style. If you want to hear an example of what I'm doing, here's a few songs my partner and I did where I'm doing all the vocals, including acapella 3-part harmony on the first song. I also do a bass and falsetto "octaves" on the second song and a high harmony on the thrid song. Make sure you have your speakers on before you click the link, because the acapella part starts right away.

http://www.isound.com/mac_brothers


Hope this helps!


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[LindaW]

Thanks for all your replies and especially thanks for the Berklee information. Seems like a great idea then!

I think I can do the golf ball thing...must try. It does make sense though. I think I need to try picking and singing standing up as well. I'm probably crunching my diaphragm due to bad posture when I sit.

I've heard Jewel won't listen to her own recordings so we all must be somewhat sensitive!!

L.