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.
How to spot these demands
Most people just look at how high does a song go, and how low does it go. This is a very one-dimensional way to view the challenge of songs. If absolute range was all there was, then it becomes confusing why a certain song doesn’t sound good or feel good one day to the next, when they know they can sing as high as the song seems to go.
There are many other parameters at play. There’s dynamic intensity, melodic intensity, the workload of the song, as well as how long does the song require you to stay in tricky parts of the voice. I wrote an article a while ago about what attributes make songs hard to sing. This goes some way to cover why some songs are easier and some songs are harder, despite sharing similar ranges.
What learning songs is ACTUALLY about
We build and train our voices so that our vocal capacity grows, so as to eventually exceed the demands of any song we might wish to sing. Once your vocal capacity DEFINITELY exceeds the demands of the songs you wish to learn, songs become fairly easy to acquire.
TIP: This is one reason why we change key so much. It’s the vocal equivalent of lowering the weight on a barbell in order to reduce the physical demand on your body, thereby making it very manageable. As strength/facility grows, the weight can go up. But our ego needs to be OK with not lifting a super-impressive weight straight away.
Skill is developed in high repetitions
With the assumption that a song’s demands are within your vocal capacity, repetitions of the song no longer become about squeezing our way to high notes or low notes. The notes are already a given.
Instead, it becomes more about putting in as many manageable, easy-going repetitions of the song as possible. It won’t sound super polished within just a few attempts, or even a few dozen attempts. In fact, I don’t feel like I’ve got a song up to a reasonable standard until I’ve done around 100 reps of the song.
Most amateurs VASTLY underestimate how many repetitions it takes to get a song under your belt and polish it, whereas professionals grasp that it’s a game of constant refinement that takes a song from ordinary to extraordinary. You don’t do it in one BIG pass, you do it through a few thousand teeny-tiny passes, with incremental improvement each time.
Accept songs will be in bits for a while
With that acceptance of imperfection, professionals also grasp that songs will be worked on in pieces for some time. Some bits of the song will come together more easily than others, which means some bits will sound better, and others will sound worse.
The bits that sound worse, generally need more work. Then, when all the bits of the song are at a similar standard, the challenge becomes about putting it together. This generally increases the difficulty as well, as the workload of doing an entire song in one go is greater than doing it section by section.
TIP: Picking songs that have only have simplified song structures (e.g. only verses and choruses, like ‘Make You Feel My Love’, or only verses with a middle eight, like ‘Fields of Gold’) is a way to reduce the vocal workload AND learning workload. Fewer sections to learn, and less diverse demands placed on your voice.
Accept that NO-ONE sounds good on songs that aren’t fully polished
If a song is within your vocal capacity, in a decent key, and you’re doing lots of easy-going passes… well, you STILL likely won’t sound great. Not until you are nearer that 100 rep mark.
Of course, if you’re starting to become pleased with your sound around 20-50 reps, it’s only going to sound better as you put in the reps. But if anything feels tight, sore, unpleasant, strained, etc, then the song is either out of your range/vocal capacity, or there is some finessing that needs to be worked on that isn’t range dependent. Often it’s down to approach.
Conclusion
Learning songs is meant to be a finesse driven experience, not a pugilist “force my way to the notes/to the end of the song” experience. We are putting in the reps to refine our ability on a given song, not to tear apart and build muscle.
We also need patience as singers. Songs are not instantly slam-dunks on the first handful of tries. It takes time not just to build the voice, but to learn HOW to acquire songs, and none of that is done in one day.
If this is something you are struggling with, and you’d like to figure out how to do this in your own voice, I’d love to help you figure out your favourite songs in your voice. You can book in via my booking form right here.