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I came across this video recently. It’s from an interview with author and investor, Morgan Housel.

There’s lots of good advice and insight within the video, but there’s one minute that I think is absolute gold – not just for investors, but also for singers. I’ve time-stamped it for the most relevant minute, but here’s a paraphrased transcript for you:

“My strategy is to be average, but for an above average period of time. Not only will it achieve the goals that I have, but over a long period of time it will put me in the top 10%. Continue reading “Being Average for Above-Average Length of Time = Results”

I was having a conversation with a client this week about finding songs that sound good in their voice, and making them sound good. While we targeting songs specific to them, I wanted to try and collate my general thoughts on this into one article for them and others.

The Harsh Reality

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it.

Most people pick songs that are initially too hard for them.

What does ‘too hard’ mean? It’s much like someone trying to lift a weight that is too heavy for them. Sure, they might be able to force their body to lift the weight once or twice, or maybe make it feel OK once in each session. But in the long run it generally feels highly variable. Progress may also seem inconsistent, with a lot of two steps forward, three steps back moments.

In the same way, every song places it’s own unique demands on your voice. When those demands exceed your vocal capacity (i.e. what your voice can actually handle for sustained periods), you will encounter disappointment and frustration. Not every time, but often enough you can’t trust your voice.

This is generally a sign that the songs you are picking are outside of your capacity, at least at present. Continue reading “Making Songs Sound Good”

This topic is one that is discussed more or less every week in sessions. We do an exercise with a singer or work on a song, and the singer’s perception is wildly out of kilter with how it actually sounds.

Sometimes this is because they sang amazingly but the internal sensations seemed unusual. Other times they think they did a great job, and it really didn’t sound as good as they perceived it to be out front.

Why is this?

The voice is a tricky instrument to master, because it’s the only instrument in the world where the musician IS the instrument. The sound actually comes from inside our bodies. We hear not just the final sound out front, but we experience it with all the internal sensations as well.

It’s like being sat inside a piano as it’s being played. We are getting WAY more sound than the listeners. Some frequencies are accentuated more than the final sound, and some are diminished. It can be quite a difference compared to recording yourself and listening back. Continue reading “Your voice sounds different inside vs outside your head”

I had a discussion with a singer recently, regarding some issues they struggle with in their voice, and what they were looking to achieve.

In particular, this singer was struggling with the very basics of their voice. Yet they were frustrated that, after only a few months of vocal training, they weren’t just able to launch into Whitney Houston songs, without even warming up their voice beforehand – THAT’S an unrealistic expectation.

Many singers have these obscenely unrealistic expectations. These chiefly centre around:
a) what they think voices in general should be able to do
b) what they expect THEIR voice to be able to do
c) how much work it should take / how quickly they think they should be able to achieve such skill

Now, the obvious question that arises could well be “what makes their expectations so outlandish?“. Well, let me give you a look behind the scenes. If I give you a brief rundown on how voices actually function, what it takes to build a voice, and we are trying to do in sessions with clients, I think you’ll understand.

How the voice works (Abridged)

Basics
Your vocal folds are two flaps of muscle, mucus and ligament in your larynx (Adam’s apple). They generate all the sound you hear. To sing low notes they contract and thicken, to sing high notes they stretch and thin. At the base level, the ability to move smoothly from a shorter, more contracted state to a longer, more stretched state determines how smoothly one can traverse their range.

Next, the sound your vocal folds generate travels into your vocal tract. This is the portion of the throat between your larynx and your mouth, and is responsible for focusing and shaping all the generated sound into vowels. The more precisely one can shape the vocal tract into respective vowels, and the more smoothly that behaviour can be handled between vowels, the smoother one is able to sing across one’s range. Continue reading “Singers and Unrealistic Expectations”

Last week we were going over certain issues singers bring up with me. I gave two or three statements that are often posed, and here’s a few more:

“This song doesn’t even go that high, but I’m finding it tiring/straining to sing in THIS particular part”

“Why is it that this OTHER song has a much wider range, but this simple song seems to wreck me?”

“I’m struggling with THIS genre. Every song in it always seems so hard… what gives?”

These are yet more, all too common complaints I hear about people trying to sing some songs.

Per last week’s article, there are mechanical and musical reasons for why certain melodies and certain musical phrases are harder than others. The goal with this two parter is simple – the more of these you can remember and recognise, the easier it is to assess the songs you’re trying to tackle.

From there you can put songs in more favourable keys, or make changes that enable easy singing of the song. If nothing else, you won’t beat yourself up as much when a song kicks your butt.

Five more characteristics of difficult songs

Last week we covered our first five traits, and now we’re onto the second five. Like last time, I’ll discuss each briefly so you can grasp why these characteristics make songs tricky. Continue reading “What Makes Certain Songs Hard to Sing – Part 2”

I was speaking with a few clients this week about songs they find difficult to sing.

“I’m fine until the bridge/chorus/outro, then I’m knackered”
“It doesn’t seem particularly high, but I seem to struggle to hit the same notes I can in other songs”
“I can’t seem to find a key that makes this song singable – what’s going on?”

These are all common complaints I hear about people trying to sing some songs. In particular, certain songs and certain genres seem to hold much harder melodies for people to sing.

As it happens, there are mechanical and musical reasons for why certain melodies and intervals are harder to sing than others. There are characteristics that, once you learn what they are, you can scan for when listening to songs. Moreover, the more of these melodic characteristics a song possesses, the harder the song inherently becomes.

Characteristics of difficult songs

I’ve got ten traits in mind, but I’m going to start with the first five rather than let this run long. Some of these are “voice moves”, tricky things to ask your voice to do, and others relate to general hallmarks of what makes songs easier/harder to sing.

I’ll discuss each briefly so you can grasp why these characteristics make songs tricky. There are many others I can think of, but we’ll start here for you.

0. Key too high/too low/wrong for you
I go on so much about key choice, so I’m going to be brief here. If you are trying to sing a song in the wrong key for you – too high, too low, etc – the song will always be difficult so sing. The following points are to cover attributes within songs themselves, assuming that key choice isn’t an issue. Continue reading “What Makes Certain Songs Hard to Sing – Part 1”