Up and running!

When we had our last fan get together at Mayumi's Angelina called in on Skype and we all got to talk to her. She told us she had been really busy giving vocal masterclasses and she was asked for each of these sessions to sing a few pieces at the end of the session. One of the pieces she chose to sing was Adam's "Soaked". She adjusted the key for her voice of course but what astonished her was that for the first time ever in her career when she sang the audience sang with her and she was totally unprepared for what that felt like. It absolutely blew her away. But what I found incredible is that this was an audience of vocal masterclass students in classical technique who knew Adam's song well enough to sing along. Isn't that FANTASTIC? Angelina has sung on stage with many great voices and she is absolutely blown away by Adam. If you can get your friend interested definitely play Soaked from Acoustic Live and also "Come to Me Bend to Me" from Brigadoon and "My Conviction" from hair.

Okay. Head voice and chest voice. How to tell which? Check out this video about finding your head voice.



In the beginning minute, he is demonstrating chest voice. Where the resonance comes from the chest cavity. When you are singing comfortable low notes, you are singing in chest voice. As he goes higher and higher, you can start to hear strain in his voice as he pushes it as far up as he can. (Bruno Mars, anyone???) He also demonstrates chest voice at around 1:50.

I like his analogy of a race car. But I would take it a step further. You are in first gear, and you push the pedal to the floor and go as fast as you can. The engine revs and strains, but, there reaches a point where it cannot do any more. Continue to drive pedal to the medal like that in first gear and you will burn out your engine. (Adele? Is that what happened to you?) Think of first gear as your chest voice.

However, if you shift into second or third gear, the engine stops rev-ing and you are able to push the pedal down again and build more speed. This is like shifting into your head voice. If you produce that high, clear wooooooooooo, you should be able to feel the vibration in your sinuses (your head). Alternately, if you do a deep sigh like settling into your comfy lounge chair after a long run..... aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh. Feel the vibration in your chest? Chest voice.

Now check out this video, where the coach is trying to get the student to find his head voice. You can hear the strain and crackle in the student's voice as he tries to copy the clear, ringing sound of the coach's voice. It is interesting to watch the coach try different strategies to get the guy to find that "sweet spot" and shift into head voice. He is finally successful by having the student hold on to a guitar in order to feel the vibrations resonating in the wood and the body of the guitar as the coach demonstrates. Then, he is able to reproduce the same sort of vibration in the guitar with his head voice.



The first time you, as a vocal student, manage to stumble into your head voice and feel that vibration in your skull and the total lack of strain in your throat muscles it is an "Aha!" moment. Then, once you have had that sensation, you keep practicing until you are able to produce it consistently. (And, that can take a long time.)

Then, you have to learn how to produce that head voice on a variety of different high pitches and while singing a variety of different vowels. (Oooo is the easiest, or possibly eeeeee. Ahhhhh is difficult.)

The final stage of developing your head voice is to be able to transition from the lower chest voice to the higher head voice and have the tone sound consistent. Many (most) singers have a noticeable "break" when they shift. Just like you can hear the change in the sound of the engine in first gear to the sound in second gear, you can hear a change in the quality of the tone. Adam is a master at this regiter shifting all the way up and down the scale, so that you don't hear where he shifts gears.

Cassie do you follow this BS on DDD currently about Adam singing the "wrong" notes in TSMGO at the EMA's? Greg is going on about this wrong note stuff and he posted some wiki page about key signatures to support his arguement but all I get from that is that key and key signature is about notating music not about right or wrong notes. Can you explain what the heck he is talking about or his whole thing BS as I suspect?

Thank you. I thought he was full of shit but although I pick up things here and there I don't actually KNOW enough to be sure. I read an analysis of Ring of Fire that said he sang it in the Phrygian(?) scale and that was a middle eastern style vocal that Western singers usually aren't able to execute well. Wish I could remember where I saw that. It was done to show that while he might have used Dilana's musical arrangement the vocal arrangement was absolutely NOTHING like her vocal.


ETA: I remember reading somewhere that classical music notation severely limited musical creativity as it lead to rigidity in musical development. When you limit "music" to only what can be represented by notation structures you limit creativity. Also many primitive music styles do not lend themselves to strict notation. Even things like the blues and jazz are not well served by notation as the limits of notation structures do not truly allow for proper representation of the music.