Fundamentals: Part 1

- Singing isn't just about making sound. It's the combination of your voice and your ears that make a complete system. There's no way that we can perform as singers, that we can deliver an intentional, purposeful vocalization, unless we hear what is actually happening. So, it's just as critical to being a great singer that you be able to produce a sound, it's just as critical that you are able to hear, that you're able to tune in to all the nuances and different elements that define that sound, that make you able to perceive differences in color, in tuning, in pitch. So, we're going to very much work on not only our ability to produce sound, but our ability to listen, to hear. So, with that in mind, knowing that you don't hear your instrument the way everybody else does. You know, it's not like you're playing a guitar. A guitar player can play a guitar, and he's pretty much hearing what the audience is hearing, right? But you don't. As a singer, you sing, and it's actually resonating in your head and in your body, and you don't hear it the way your audience does. So, it's very important for singers to be able to record them singing, record their instrument, so that they at least can do a check on, like, a reality check, a perspective check, so that you can hear the playback and hear what your instrument is sounding like to your listeners. So, if you can grab any kind of tape recorder. I used to have a little cassette, portable cassette player I took with me everywhere. Now, I put everything on my phone. My voice memo app on my phone holds song ideas, vocal melodies, I mean, anything auditory lives on my voice memos in my phone. So, lots of free apps that you can get to record. You can use GarageBand, if you have it, in your Mac or your iPad. There are lots of opportunities and devices that you can use to record. Make sure you have something in your life that will let you record your voice, record your singing, and play it back. We're going to be thinking about two qualities that are really essential to the perception of what our instrument sounds like. One is tone, or the color. We usually speak of tone, the tone of a sound, and use words like dark, like (sings). That's a dark, round tone. (sings) We might use the word bright, or reedy, to describe that tone. So, we're going to be thinking about tone, and we're also going to be thinking about register. Starting out here, we're going to work very much in our chest voice register, what we call our chest voice, or modal voice. It's the register that is very near to your speaking register. So, wherever you comfortably speak. I speak, you know, pretty naturally right around in here, and if I sing, ♫ If I turn those into pitches ♫ And actually sing tones around my singing voice ♫ My speaking voice and my singing voice ♫ Are right in the same register Then, I am singing in my chest voice. And we'll use that term a lot, as we work in these first few lessons. Now, that doesn't mean that a melody might take you out of your chest voice, or to the edge of your chest voice. ♫ When you start getting up a little higher I just changed from my ♫ Chest voice into my head voice It's a little pure, a little softer, and you can hear the change in quality. Don't be afraid to change from one register to another, if you're comfortable with it. Lot of us have a pretty marked break between our chest voice and our head voice, and we're going to work with that, so we can try to make it as seamless as possible. But don't think about it right now. Just go ahead and sing. I want you to keep these things in mind, always go back to your good stance, your relaxed instrument, and lots of fuel, and now we're going to add just the thought of tone and which register you're going to be working in.