The High Performance Singer

How to Become a Great Singer when Auditory Learning is Not Your Style

Singing Emergency? The A Cappella Prescription Three weeks ago, I was sitting in a hotel room in Florida, languidly lounging with a cup of coffee and some well-earned Facebook time before needing to rouse myself to get ready for my friend’s wedding at 11 am. At 9:17, I received a text from the bride. “Soundman has a flat tire. Get warmed up.” Pop quiz, hot shots: what do you do? In case you’ve never met a frantic bride on her wedding morning, who has just been handed the

Well, that’s got to be a typo. Kristin is clearly on the hooch. She obviously intended to write an article on Breathing for Singing, but she got the title of her own blog wrong. Did I? Oh, did I? One day, I had a first lesson with a new student. I was having him vocalize on raspberries, an exercise most of my students claim that I employ as a special sort of sadistic torture against them. While I admit that I do in fact find their discomfort to be one of the exercise’s many

One day this past summer, I was sitting in a recording studio, there to consult on vocal technique for my student Jacob as he laid down tracks for his new EP. I was honored to be included in these sessions by his producer Cory, who brings some serious musical chops and pedigree to the table, so I was keeping my head down until I was needed – and eventually I was. Jacob was working on the verse of one his originals, and was singing a phrase that hovered in a pretty low range f

Wondering about differences in technique between classical and popular singing? Here's a specific real-life example. I'm a pop singer by nature. Yes, I still take voice lessons. In fact, among others, I take lessons from some of the other teachers at Performance High, Kristin Henry She is a more classically oriented teacher than I am (although, to be fair, she kills at funk and R&B too). In my lessons, we are working on the epic closing song for my debut set with Adrien

Sometimes people get confused about the difference between nasal resonance and singing with a nasal tone. You DO want some nasal resonance. Your sinuses are some of your vocal resonators. But you DON'T want to sound like you're singing through your nose. Here's a very quick tip to tell if you're singing through your nose: Hold your nose closed with your fingers, and then sing. If you sound mostly the same (except for consonants D, N, and M), then you are fine. If you soun

Expanding the ribcage gives you a bigger, and unpressurized tank of air to sing with - both of which are helpful. You don't want the weight of your lifted shoulders being pulled down by gravity to put pressure on your vocal cords. Instead, you want to get a low breath of air, expanding your ribcage like an umbrella opening. Some people can do lift their ribcage without having to "learn" how, but some people can't. So here's how to expand your ribcage for singing. Imagine

Several of my students are IT or biotech workers, graduate students, or office workers with high-stress jobs. Some of them have experimented with taking lessons on their lunch hour, after work, later in the evening, and on weekends. Most find that the calmer they are when they walk into the lesson, the more they get out of their lessons. So here are some things to consider when you schedule your voice lessons: - In the morning, many people find that the voice isn't as "read

Singers who can hear the fine nuances of other singers' voices can usually sing better themselves. If you don't feel like you know what to look for, or you don't feel like you have a good ear, don't worry. You can learn to listen better. Then you can use other singers' examples to make yourself a better singer. Here's how. First, here's a list of elements to listen for in other singers' voices. (This is not an exhaustive list; if you have other ideas, please comment!) Mel

"Secret" is such an abused marketing term that I hesitate to even use it. But it's accurate, because until you figure out how to use your voice easily and correctly, it may seem impossible to sing the way you want to sing. It's like there's an obstacle in front of you with no way past it. Then finally one day, you look back and you realize that you have scaled what seemed like an impossible wall. And, looking back, the wall was really not that big. You have figured out t

I've been sick, moving from one house to another, and gigging a lot lately. I apologize for letting last week week go by without a newsletter. This past Saturday, I completely lost my voice at a gig. I have rehearsal on Wednesday and another gig on Friday, so I need to get my voice back ASAP! So this week: How do you get your voice back when you've lost it due to overuse? (Not injury - that's a whole different topic I'm not qualified to deal with.) First of all, let me

When you sing any given pitch, you are producing sound not just on that pitch, but also different overtones as well. That's one reason why your voice sounds like a voice, not a pure computer-beep sine wave. Think about what happens if you change the EQ settings on your mixer or your stereo. Even though the notes sung reside within a relatively narrow EQ band, dropping just that band does not remove the voice from the track entirely. You can still hear something like an "ec

Have you ever done any high-intensity sports? I ran track and cross country in high school. When we would warm up for the afternoon workout, we'd start with an easy jog. Not a 100-meter sprint; not even a half-mile run. We would start with an easy jog around the football field. Why? You know why. The muscles have to warm up, get blood moving, and release and relax into movement. Have you ever skipped your warmup, like running too fast too soon? Say if you only have 3

Ready for a little basic vocal technique today? One of my favorite exercises, which functions as a warmup, troubleshooting, training, AND recovery exercise, is simply humming. But not just any kind of humming. It has to be done the right way. Here are two ways to think about humming: 1) Go "Hmmmm..." as if you are perplexed, trying to figure out the answer to a tough question. Bring the pitch up higher as if someone has just shed some new light on the subject and you are ex

Christmas is six weeks past, but I've used this technique three times in the last week with students, so I thought I would share it with all of you on the newsletter. You have probably heard many times that singing is all about breath support and airflow. And you may think you're singing with good breath support and airflow. But if you're getting tension in your neck and are unable to sing past a certain ceiling without "flipping" into the next higher register, you probably

According to Nashville live music producer Tom Jackson, communication is 15% what you say, 30% how you say it, and 55% how you look. That's very true, but you still can't neglect the 15% of what you say and 30% how you say it. That's half of your communication! And since a singer's job is to communicate, half of your job is to make sure that what you say is actually understood. The sound engineer can only do so much to help the audience hear you clearly. Garbage in, garbag

Do you feel power in your chest voice, but tightness and a lack of agility as you sing higher? Do you feel freedom and flexibility in your head voice, but lack that power and resonance you get in chest voice? "Split" your voice and you can combine the freedom of head voice with the depth of chest voice. ... Here's what I mean by splitting your voice. Imagine a glowing ball about the size of a golf ball or cue ball. Now imagine this glowing ball is your voice. (Did you see T

Last week I wrote about singing harmonies on the fly. This week's article is about singing harmonies when you actually have time to plan them out. If you haven't read last week's article, and you find terminology in this week's article confusing, you might want to revisit last week's article before reading this one. ... Planning out harmonies allows you to get into the kinds of harmonies I really love - the ones that are a bit unexpected because they aren't just chord triads

In a number of private, group, and full-band sessions lately, this question has come up: How do you sing harmonies? First, let's make sure we are on the same page with a couple of terms. I'm defining them in my own lay terms here, but click on the terms to go to their definition on Wikipedia if you wish. Melody is the most prominent succession of lead notes (vocal or instrumental) in a song. It's what you sing when you sing along just about any song. Harmony is a set of

When you sing high notes in a pure floaty head voice, are they cloudy or are they clear? A cloudy note has a sound of air turbulence or static. It doesn't have that nice bell-like resonance. A clear note has none of that hissy sound of extra air in the air/sound mix. It resonates beautifully, giving you two or three times the volume with no additional effort. If you have been trying to clear up your high notes without success, here's a quick and weird shortcut to clearing