The High Performance Singer

On the way to Saturday's gig, my car suddenly stalled on the freeway. In the second-to-left lane. In what was already bumper-to-bumper downtown traffic, before my stall caused several miles of stopped traffic behind me. And... I had the mixing board and cables we were going to use! Even with a call to 911, the police took about 45 minutes to reach me and tow me off the freeway. And it took my poor bandmate the same amount of time to slog through traffic to pick up the PA

Yesterday I worked with a student who sang a song with a chorus consisting of the same line repeated four times with the same melody. It sounded the same each time: a descending melody of "I'm fallin', I'm fallin', I'm fallin', I'm fallin' in love with you." While she could sing it technically just fine, it lacked punch and emotion. Why? ... Think about how many different meanings can be expressed with the same exact words. Take, for example, the phrase, "That's great." H

Guitarists and bassists talk about the attack of a note - the amount of force and decisiveness with which a note is initiated. Yet again, vocalists can learn lessons from other instruments. Today's tip is a simple one regarding the attack of your words. In general, don't attack your words too hard. What does this mean? And how do you fix it if you are doing it? Easiest for me to give you a audio example where the attacks on the words are too hard. Listen to the first of

First, train your voice. Second, forget the training. Then, repeat the cycle... again and again. Why? Because if all you do is focus on technique, you won't ever connect with the art! If you're thinking about how to place and shape your vowels, how to breathe, your intonation, or correct diction, you're most certainly not feeling the song. You may give the impression you're singing the song "from the outside" - rather than the song emerging naturally and emotionally from y

Are you in a band just because you want to be in a band? Congratulations: Not everyone gets to be in a band! But beware: Being in just any band - or staying in longer than you should - is not always a good thing. There is always an opportunity cost. Every hour you spend preparing for, traveling with, rehearsing with, gigging with, and stressing out about your band is an hour you can't spend on anything else in your life. Whether you're in a band now, are between bands,

Last week, I took my first waterski set of the season. (Yeah, late start!) I started at a really easy speed because it's been seven years since I competed, and I haven't been training much. I completed two beautiful, easy passes through the course at that speed. So I increased to the next speed and ran a couple more passes. They were easy too. So I increased the speed again, now at the maximum speed for women (34mph), and those passes were still so simple, smooth, and c

Last weekend I spent with Rene Marie, jazz singer, at a workshop she ran for a few women looking to access more emotion in their singing. Many pearls of wisdom came out during the 17 hours we all spent together, but here's just one I'd like to share today: A single song can help you find your voice. Find one song that you really connect with. One song that moves you. One song that opens the door for you. It might be old, it might be new... it might be from your teenage year

Everyone gets nervous during auditions, right? They're like job interviews! You're trying to do, be, act, and play your best, trying to make a great impression. You hope they accept you. You hope you're good enough to meet their standards. You want to sing or play better than the other people who have auditioned, so that they pick YOU. Basically, they have an opportunity you want... and they are the gatekeepers deciding whether or not you're going to get it. This kind o

Bear with me on this one! It's really simple and helpful, even though it may sound silly. Have you found that you just can't "get" how you're supposed to breathe for singing? You've read about "diaphragm this" and "floating ribs" that, but it just doesn't feel right unless you fill your chest and raise your shoulders? You're used to breathing a certain way - after all, you've been doing it this way for years or decades - and when you try to breathe only into your belly, yo

What are consonants, but a necessary evil between vowels? I mean really, what kind of sounds do you think you should spend most of your time singing? Option 1: fff, sss, ssh, puh, kuh, guh, lll, vvv, zzz, ck, sst.... or Option 2: ah, eh, ee, oh, oo, uh, ih Yeah. You're really singing when you're producing vowels. Vowels are where you can develop resonance, volume, projection, good tone, balanced placement, and all the other great stuff mentioned in other tips. The

You know the feeling of meeting someone new, and feeling almost comfortable with her, but not quite? You can't put your finger on it. She's polite, friendly, even talkative. She tells entertaining stories. She offers you a drink, and makes you laugh. But something isn't quite right. Nothing you can pick out and hold up as egotistical, subversive, manipulative. Nothing rude, obviously false, or annoying. But still, you just can't quite settle in and feel comfortable. Be

Ever listen to ska or reggae? Have you noticed the prominence of the upbeat, usually played by guitar, or keys? (The upbeat is the beat that's normally not prominent - the beat when, if you're tapping your toes, your toes would be up. For example, if you count 1-2-3-4 in a pop or rock song, the 1 and 3 are usually stronger, and the 2 and 4 are less prominent. Divide the time into divisions half as long, and then you have "1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and," where 1-2-3-4 are stronge

I went to a bodybuilding competition a few years ago. One of my husband's friends was competing in the Masters category - that is, the over-50 age group. I don't have to tell you he has one helluva good looking 50-plus-year-old body. I think he won his category. Where was I? Oh yeah... There were some celebrity weightlifters strutting around, too. If you've ever opened a musclemag, you know what these guys look like. The ones who eat a dozen egg whites for the first of s

Imagine you're back in your first apartment. (Or, just look around, if that's where you're living now.) Do you ever dust? Are there holes in the couch? Empty pizza boxes? Unmade bed? Have you done anything at all to decorate? What if your dream date called you and wanted to swing by in a half hour to pick you up for a night out? Would you have time to make the place look presentable? Or would you wish that you had kept it looking at least decent all this time? You c

Open mic nights and jam sessions are a great way to get stage time and to meet other musicians - perhaps musicians who are looking for someone just like you for their project! Here are three things to keep in mind, to avoid wasting your time and the opportunity: 1) Before you go, find out: Is it an "open mic night," where you're expected to accompany yourself, or a "jam session," where there should be a more or less full band and people will be swapping out on all instrum

I've always believed that singing even just a little bit each day is better than singing only a couple times a week for a long time. This certainly felt true when I was learning to play drums and guitar: if I practiced even 15 or 20 minutes in a day, I could feel an improvement the next day. This is because of how the brain turns short-term experiences into long-term memory overnight. Recently, though, I have changed my mind about the benefits of singing for just 15-20 min

I went for a run/walk along Boulder Creek yesterday. First springlike day I've seen around here this year. People were out playing chess in the grass, feeding ducks, tossing sticks into the creek for their Retrievers to... retrieve. Up just past the kayak course on the west end of town, I saw something strange: cairn-like piles of rocks within the creek. Tons of them. 30 or more precariously balanced piles of four, five, six, or more rocks. Some of them looked impossibl

Last week I wrote about how to avoid getting caught in your chest voice by learning to identify tension sooner than you used to, using an octave scale down, then up. This week is about keeping a fuller, stronger voice, but without yelling. Yelling is an unpleasant, strained, tense way of making loud noise on a high pitch in your range. Yelling doesn't have very many high frequencies or nasal resonance, so it sounds bottom-heavy even though the pitch is high. In this techniqu

You probably know how it feels - you're singing higher and higher, and your throat is getting tighter and tighter, and you feel like you're going to break unless you push harder and harder to hold it all together. You wish you could figure out how to sing in your chest voice without straining. But you're used to "pulling up" your chest voice. You don't want to sing like this. It simply doesn't sound good. Yes, you CAN bring a full voice up high, but don't do it by yelling

Have you ever gone mountain biking on a warm spring day? When the mud has dried into hard deep ruts? Have you ever gotten stuck in one of them? Yep, so have I. What happens when you've been in a rut too long? You fall over. Why? Your trajectory needs to adjust bit by bit as you move along your path, but when you're in a rut, you're fixed in place and can't make these little compensatory moves. Sooner or later, you simply can't stay in that fixed path. Your internal