The High Performance Singer

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

A couple weeks ago I recorded some vocals for someone I recently began working with. The trackbed had some very slight misalignments between the drums and the rhythm guitar, because of some kind of side effect of a filter he had used during mixing. But I recorded the vocals anyway. I probably spent a total of three hours recording, between lead vox, lead vox double, harmony, harmony double, ad lib, and ad lib double. The problem was that after he cleaned up the mix and rem

Melisma, in music, is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as melismatic, as opposed to syllabic, where each syllable of text is matched to a single note. [ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melisma ] In current music, we hear a lot of melisma in the vocal styles of artists like Christina Aguilera and Beyonce. For example: Beyonce, Fever: The first 30 seconds especially, but also ar

In high school, my best friend and I planned the most exciting trip we could imagine: we were going to drive the six hours from Phoenix, where we lived, to Los Angeles to see our favorite artist play a concert. We had recently turned 16, so we could drive, and we felt free and excited. This was one of the first "dreams" I can remember getting really excited about. Well, of course our parents didn't go for the idea. Maybe it was just a concert and a trip, but it was the fir

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

Singing well takes work. Playing an instrument well takes work. Writing songs takes work. Honing stagecraft takes work. Pulling together a band, booking a band, creating buzz... You name it, whatever you do in music, ad however much you love doing it, there is also a part of it that involves WORK. To do WORK, you need MOTIVATION. Where does your motivation come from? From doing the work for yourself... AND doing it for someone else. Work for yourself... Of course, you must h

This week's post is an article from guest blogger Jim Dix. Jim is a Florida singer, trumpet player, and teacher. If you are in Florida and looking for voice or performance coaching, I recommend contacting him. To make a song live and breathe, speak the lyrics. Speak the lyrics of the song when learning a song (even if it’s your own original song) and check back in with this practice periodically. Speak them freely, as you would in a conversation. This puts the meaning of th

If you haven't written a song before, it might feel like something you just don't have the innate talent for. I know, because I wrote my first song about two years ago. Before that, I thought I simply was not a songwriter. And the nonlinear creative process was initially very hard to wrap my logical, software-developer, project-manager brain around. I kept looking for 1-2-3 steps! Sure, some people just seem to have fully-formed songs flowing out of them all the time. If

Are you dying to get into a band? Would you take a position with almost any band, as long as you could get on stage? Think carefully about your options... not all opportunities are the right ones! ... Recently, I met up with a musician friend I hadn't seen in a while. I'm keeping names secret to protect the innocent, so I'll call this person Daniel. Daniel used to play in several different bands at a time, some of them for joy and others just for the money (and most defini

This is the second of several articles dealing with what to do on a bad gig night. The first article, Gb-Db-Ab-SQUIRREL!, gave some ideas for what to do when you just can't focus, and your mind is like a dog that gets distracted by a squirrel. This article is about what to do when your energy level isn't high enough, or you can't keep up the energy level. What do you do when your energy level isn't up to task for your gig? When you manage to get your energy up for one song,

Two days ago I returned from a performance bootcamp in Nashville, run by Tom Jackson. Over the last 20 years he has coached tens of thousands of performers, from indie startups to top commercial artists like Taylor Swift. I have been following Tom for a while now, and I thought I understood what he meant by a "moment." You know, an emotional moment, where the audience connects with the performer. A poignant moment, an exciting moment, whatever. I was wrong. I didn't hav

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

I know at least one of you watches the Daily Show because of the squirrel reference. Kevin asked what to do if you are having a bad night. One of the types of bad nights he describes feels like this: "You're feeling disconnected -- like you are just not able to... SQUIRREL!! ... focus. Like your head is in a cloud." (The "squirrel" Daily Show reference is about how a dog's attention span to his master is undivided... only as long as there is no squirrel to chase. The show

What makes your band sound good at a gig? Great vocals? The band playing nice and tight after some productive rehearsals? Good room acoustics? The biggest baddest subwoofer in the city? Crispy clear highs? The perfect guitar tone? Yeah yeah yeah, these things all contribute. But there's one factor that will make or break you, regardless of anything else you do... The sound guy. (Or gal, rarely.) *From here on out I'm going to refer to sound "guys" rather than make

In last week's newsletter, I asked what YOU would like me to write about. A songwriter/producer in LA observed that in the studio, most singers tend to have more technical accuracy but less feel, and wanted to know how to retain the emotion of a song in the studio. Good question. I just went through this challenge while recording The Phoenix, The Flame, the full-length funk/rock CD with STAR (spontaneous thin air radio), in particular with the powerful ballad "One." In a

Which of these rules of the stage should NEVER be broken? Never turn your back to the audience Never apologize or recognize a mistake Never start a song over, or go back and fix any mistakes Never criticize or belittle the audience Never criticize or belittle yourself ... ... The main idea is to know the rules, so that you can choose your rare exceptions. Here are some exceptions I've seen, experienced, or heard about for most, but not all, of the rules above... Never turn y

Have you auditioned for a band and failed to get in? Have you auditioned for a lot of bands, and still not gotten into one? Do you know why? Today I'm going to talk about how to increase your chances of getting into a band. ... I'm going to start with a real example of how a most unlikely candidate got into a band: As many of you know, I recently joined a band, Guitar Villians. But not as a vocalist; as a keyboard player. This is my first gig as keyboard player. I play k