I found this video so helpful! Thank you so much. I really enjoy the technical level of your videos and how specific you are about all aspects of singing. I studied linguistics, so the knowledge you share about vowels in singing is particularly interesting to me. I really appreciated what you shared about not liking your voice at one stage, because of the limitations you felt your voice had, but that you were helped to see how beautiful your voice is and that you learned to work with it and appreciate it. I found that truly encouraging because I have always had that lighter, sweeter, "choir" voice, and for years I was too shy to sing in front of anyone because I felt like I didn't have a nice voice to listen to, and that it wasn't original enough to be appreciated as a good voice. Now I want to approach my voice differently, and tell myself that I can work on it and improve it, but I can enjoy it for what it is too. :)
I have been enjoying your videos! I like your original tunes - you sound like a waaay better singer than I was 13-17 years ago. I even recorded an EP and it was HORRID!!! I was all over the place in tone, pitch, had no breath control. I still struggle. Your explanations are very detailed and have been very helpful. I'm hoping one day I will feel comfortable to record myself again.
I'm so proud of you for having the courage to share this video with us, Karyn. I love your old voice, and I'm super excited to hear your current voice if/when you decide to share some of your more recent music.
Excellent, for me this is much more didactic than the handful of your instructional videos I've watched. I think it is because it is very concrete and specific.
singwisevocals This is the first I’ve watched in this series, but not the first of your channel. The concreteness is what stood out, and it invites the listener to try to hear what you hear. Outstanding! I am looking forward to the first lesson I have booked with you next week.
I just found your channel- sorry to see you aren’t making new videos. I can tell a lot of what you’ve posted will be very helpful! Looking forward to watching more
Loving your videos, your expertise and passion for singing really shine through! I am most impressed by this video; thank you for being vulnerable and sharing. I have a learned so much and that I have lot to work on.. which gives me hope 😉. You are an awesome teacher. When I’m ready for lessons I will be looking you up!
This actually helped me a lot. I'm 18 and pretty unconfident about my voice. I make audio recordings so I can listen to myself but I never know what exactly to look for. Thanks for giving me some specific errors to find! Also I really love your voice and think that you did a great job. I imagine you had a little less experience back then.Keep up the good work!
Wow this is so awesome. But the info is overwhelming and I had no idea what you were talking about during assessment. But your knowledge is so awesome. Wished I understood it enough to make my own self-assessment.
ooo out in the forest...did I inspire this? :-P great energy and so cool to see you sharing your old recordings - I've never heard your music, I really like your voice it sounds great. By the way I really like where you pointed out "bridging early acoustically closes the voice too early for most vowels" at 3:45 It's something I've known but never heard other voice teachers talk about it, so cool to see you know about this phenomena. I also find sometimes people sound nasal simply because they are going too thin too early in their voice and not bringing up enough "meat" another issue with bridging early.
Anothet great video. I love your balanced attitude. Accepting your voice with it's limitations and good points, while moving toward improvement with a positive outlook. This is important for all of us. Although I believe a commercially viable sound, like conventional beauty, isn't the best goal for many voices, I understand that it is a goal for a lot of singers. I look forward to your future videos and hearing some of your more recent singing.
Thank you for your comment. My goal was to try to provide a balanced assessment because I want my viewers to have a balanced attitude when evaluating their own singing voices. This is healthy and will ultimately encourage growth and ward off discouragement. There is always something good to be found if we're truly looking for it!
Hey, karyn. Very interesting video, I liked it a lot. It makes me sad that you didn't like your voice and wanted to quit at some point, but I'm happy that you accepted it and started to like it. I like your voice and also the songs, and I'm sure you sound different now when you can sing in mixed voice and add twang. It'll be very interesting to hear the comparison between before and now. :) I personally like many types of voices, and I like light voices a lot. Every type of voice (and also every style of music) has it's audience. A few years ago I was also singing mainly in my chest, without the resonance and with no mixed voice (somewhat similar to you here), but in the last year I learned how to sing in mixed voice, with a lot of resonance and I like it so much. You helped me a lot with your great videos and exercises and I'm very thankful. I'll soon send you second personalized video lesson, because I improved a lot, especially in my upper mixed and head voice. Greetings from Bulgaria! :)
Thanks so much for your comment. I think that the real dislike of my voice came from expecting it to sound like something that wasn't actually natural to my unique instrument. This is common with so many singers. I appreciate a lot of different types of voice, too, but it's hard for some of us whose voices don't sound like what it selling at the moment to not feel pressured to 'conform.'
Yeah, I understand this. The pressure is very real (not only in singing) and many people suffer a lot because of it (including myself) and that's why it makes me sad, because I have felt it. But I think with age and maybe some understanding of the social conformity and personality traits these things improve and we start feeling better about ourselves. :)
Absolutely! I have a video coming out in a couple days in which I chatted with Carl Wehden about this very topic. As I've gotten older, I've definitely started to find my authentic self and have gotten to the point where I feel like I have nothing to lose in just going for it - in exploring my voice more fully. I feel less of a need to micromanage and control and try to be 'perfect,' (although being a teacher puts a whole different kind of pressure on me to vocally impress).
Oh so your upcoming video will be very interesting. :) And yes, the vocal teacher pressure is definitely bigger and I understand how hard are the things you do, especially for you being a perfectionist and I admire you so much for this. (Because when you are not a perfectionist everything is so much easier - many times I wanted to be like that). But still there will always be people who will like the things you do and appreciate them and there will be people who won't. It's great that as we age we feel better. I don't know if you had time, but a few months ago I recommended you to read very interesting blog post from Tim Urban called Taming the Mammoth: Why you should stop caring what other people think. I think you will like it.
As always, this is a great video. But with an extra bonus, being that you expose yourself completely to your subscribers with the ultimate purpose of pedagogical examples, The comments you make in your own voice assessment help us see very clear the issues you identify. Once again, thanks!
I really love the quality of your voice on much of what you presented here. I'm sure you have a totally different concept of how you'd approach it now but there is a realness and innocence in your vocals that I think is really beautiful! While I'm a huge believer in constantly refining our skills, be it as a singer, songwriter, producer etc...I find it is still important not to lose sight of that youthful innocence because there's something intangible that can be truly magical!:)
scott fishkind What wonderful insight! I like the idea of retaining the innocence in our singing. Sometimes we get so caught up in trying to manipulate and learning how to create different sounds and trying to be unique that we train and plot our ways out of who we are at our core. Our vocals start to sound manufactured and contrived, rather than inspired. And some of that comes from what the industry is telling us we need to do in order to stand out and receive recognition.
Thanks Karyn! This is a lesson I had to learn myself as a songwriter, singer, and producer. I have been writing songs for as long as I can remember. I have a composition degree from Berklee and then had to spend years learning how to let that knowledge seep into my intuition rather than relying too much on my intellect. I also had to make the journey back to songwriting from "composition" which took some time, though I do feel my composition knowledge has really helped me, especially as a producer since I hear music production in layers. Additionally I have been in the Nashville region for the past 25 years and did a lot of songwriting here, well over a hundred songs, and yet too often I was trying to be someone other than who I really am musically. So several years ago I was listening to songs I wrote in my 20s (which was back in the late 1980s) and realized I was creating some really magical music, totally from my heart, not worrying about trying to be anyone other than who I was at the time. Granted my lyrics writing back then was where I needed to get stronger but still the songs have so much realness and vibe to them. These days I have returned to that spirit of writing. Granted the years of working with an excellent publisher here has refined my skills so that the things that were weaknesses back then are now strengths, but at the same time my music is so much freer. I am not worrying about trying to fit any songwriting mold. Ironically, the feedback I've been getting from my musical colleagues is that my new music actually has a lot of commercial potential even though I wasn't focused on trying to fit into any particular category and I'm just writing intuitively. Even my singing has is at another level. I am finally embracing my uniqueness as a singer and not worrying about how I compare to other singers. Of course I am still always trying to improve my technique and practice vocalizing daily w/ various resources (especially materials by Ann Peckham, Jeannie Gagne, and of course what I'm learning from you :)). I'm just not trying to feel like I should try to sound like anyone else. :) I would love to hear more of your original music and singing!
Wow it seems like you were born with a great singing voice, I think what most of us do is we deceive ourselves and we are easy on ourselves and try and believe that we have great voices but others don’t hear the same things we hear in ourselves. So there is also that side of the subject. We need to be honest with ourselves because that’s why so many people think they can sing when they can’t
Self assessment is really hard. What I find best is to listen the next day. I believe that it gives me a more objective view. A lot of times I just happy that I got through the song. What I do is record in the kitchen. No mics no effects. It helps me hear where I'm being lazy or putting to much spin on it.
I love singing in the kitchen! Great acoustics. I understand what you're saying about listen back to the recording the next day. If I'm actively working on a given skill or sound, I like to record (hand recorder) and listen back immediately because I can then make the necessary adjustments to the sound right away.
An inspiring video. Yet, when we are beginners, it is hard to evaluate as analytical as you can do it...that comes with a lot of knowledge and experience.
You're absolutely correct. Back then, I didn't know nearly what I know now. I did know that I didn't quite like the sounds of the recordings when I heard them. I didn't like the 'hollowness' and 'dullness' (flatness) of my tone and how I couldn't make powerful, belted sounds during my choruses. But I didn't know how to go about fixing these things in a practical way. I was aware of the break because it interfered with my ability to cross the registers without making slight pitch errors. These were all problems that kind of stuck out like a sore thumb. But that's partly why I made this video - to help my viewers become aware of the types of things that they should be listening for in their own singing. It's not a perfect system, but I think it can get you started. The main things that I assessed here were: tone, vowels (consistency), resonance, registration, intonation, range. Intonation and range are objective values. Most individuals can tell when their pitch goes flat or sharp (unless it's less than a half tone off, in which case, it might take more development of the 'ear' - many of these tiny pitch errors went unnoticed by me until years later). Range is measurable by discovering the lowest and highest notes that you're able to sing. Registration problems are usually fairly easy to acknowledge - most singers are acutely aware of the breaks, cracks, flips, etc. in their voices. They may not know that some of their intonation problems are related to imbalanced registration, though. Vowels, tone, timbre, and resonance are a bit more 'vague' and hard to describe because much of how we tend to describe them is in terms such as 'colour,' 'back,' etc.. But all singers, even beginners, can learn to analyze their vowels - their constancy of definition (formation), as well as their consistency of definition across different words and pitches - if they know that this is something that they should be listening for. So, I draw attention to it here. But you're right: It often does take time to learn how to do this. So, the beginner can start with those things about his/her voice's qualities and skills that are most evidently 'off' and work from there. I think you've just given me a really great idea for a follow-up video on this topic! Thanks for the inspiration.
Thank you for your detailed comment. I am interested in this topic because I just want to start evaluating my voice. Your comment gave me some ideas regarding what to look for. Hope will work :).
How does it feel, is there increasing freedom in both recordings of your singing as well as the feeling of ease in the singing voice. If this is the trend, you’re probably headed the right way. All vocal effects can be applied upon finding function freedom of the singing voice. This is how I tend to measure my progress.
Karen you rock, I love your old voice :D The "too far back" voice reminds me of Tori Amos. Are you really going into M2 so early - I thought it sounded like a loss of compression only? I go into M2 on Eflat5 or F5, or thought I did, maybe Im wrong. I feel a definite change on an A4 but as I understood it, this was just a thinning out of the vocal cords, not a true register change as on the F5?
Yes, I consistently transitioned into M2 at my lower passaggio (E4). Sometimes I would try to push up to about F#4, but that was it for my M1 range. M2 dominance is my 'default' coordination, even to this day.
I like my songs, too. (Some of them, at least.) I'd love to see what would happen to them with the help of a good producer, better musicians, and better vocal technique.
It's quite hard to get accurate feedback about the singing voice, I think. Tendency is to be hard on yourself, and third parties are influenced by their taste a lot. It was good share some old singing though, thanks, I liked it and think most people would class that as good singing. It's always hard to say with what's commercial at a certain time too, though Amy Lee hasn't done bad with that kind of sound I think.
Thanks so much for this. Yes, Since I've come closer to accepting my voice, Amy Lee is one of the examples that I use as comparison and inspiration. She doesn't have a really heavy instrument and doesn't use rock technique, and yet Evanescence is classified as a rock band. Much of the 'rock' sound comes from the musicians. So, although I will keep striving to do more with my voice, I know that I can always lean (heavily) upon a band to create much of the 'heaviness' that I desire. (Of course, in recent years, I've turned my attention more to musical theatre, so my goals are a bit different.)
Paul unfortunately there doesnt seem to be many places online where you can actually get decent feedback. Seems insane since there are thousands of singers online etc. The forums with any type of activity are always more or less storefronts for someones product. Therefore all of the "feedback" given is just a funnel for the product. like-->'gee paul, you have a nice voice but u lack twang. Thats good because twang is heavily addressed in volume 2 of our xyz product"
I honestly don't find much to be wrong about your old voice, especially because of the types of songs you were singing. That kind of quality sounds good with the emo type songs. Good song choice for the voice, or good voice for the song choice. Either way, it was good and appropriate. don't get so hard on yourself.
It certainly wasn't all bad, I agree. But if we don't assess ourselves honestly and accurately, we won't grow. And I love the idea of continuing to grow.
Speaking of vocal assessment. i always comment on your vids but you have never heard me sing lol. here is something I both wrote AND recorded after working a full day yesterday. I was trying to finish it by midnight for a challenge on a FB group. So its thrown together and it sounds like it. Im doing all the instruments and programming the drums. In any case it gives you some idea of where I am. Sometimes I feel like im really good but then sometimes i feel like its hopeless. cest la vie. relaxed training is one thing but once you hit "record" you enter into the hardcore fog of war. clyp.it/1mm14msb
I found this video so helpful! Thank you so much. I really enjoy the technical level of your videos and how specific you are about all aspects of singing. I studied linguistics, so the knowledge you share about vowels in singing is particularly interesting to me. I really appreciated what you shared about not liking your voice at one stage, because of the limitations you felt your voice had, but that you were helped to see how beautiful your voice is and that you learned to work with it and appreciate it. I found that truly encouraging because I have always had that lighter, sweeter, "choir" voice, and for years I was too shy to sing in front of anyone because I felt like I didn't have a nice voice to listen to, and that it wasn't original enough to be appreciated as a good voice. Now I want to approach my voice differently, and tell myself that I can work on it and improve it, but I can enjoy it for what it is too. :)
I have been enjoying your videos! I like your original tunes - you sound like a waaay better singer than I was 13-17 years ago. I even recorded an EP and it was HORRID!!! I was all over the place in tone, pitch, had no breath control. I still struggle. Your explanations are very detailed and have been very helpful. I'm hoping one day I will feel comfortable to record myself again.
I'm so proud of you for having the courage to share this video with us, Karyn. I love your old voice, and I'm super excited to hear your current voice if/when you decide to share some of your more recent music.
Thank you.
Excellent, for me this is much more didactic than the handful of your instructional videos I've watched. I think it is because it is very concrete and specific.
Thank you. What makes it something that you get more out of? (And have you watched the others videos in this series?)
singwisevocals This is the first I’ve watched in this series, but not the first of your channel. The concreteness is what stood out, and it invites the listener to try to hear what you hear. Outstanding!
I am looking forward to the first lesson I have booked with you next week.
I'm looking forward to meeting and working with you, too!
I just found your channel- sorry to see you aren’t making new videos.
I can tell a lot of what you’ve posted will be very helpful! Looking forward to watching more
Loving your videos, your expertise and passion for singing really shine through! I am most impressed by this video; thank you for being vulnerable and sharing. I have a learned so much and that I have lot to work on.. which gives me hope 😉. You are an awesome teacher. When I’m ready for lessons I will be looking you up!
That's so sweet of you! I look forward to someday meeting and working with you. In the meantime, please don't hesitate to ask questions.
This actually helped me a lot. I'm 18 and pretty unconfident about my voice. I make audio recordings so I can listen to myself but I never know what exactly to look for. Thanks for giving me some specific errors to find! Also I really love your voice and think that you did a great job. I imagine you had a little less experience back then.Keep up the good work!
Wow this is so awesome. But the info is overwhelming and I had no idea what you were talking about during assessment. But your knowledge is so awesome. Wished I understood it enough to make my own self-assessment.
This is the most useful video of yours, thanks so much!
Your speech at the end is very helpful to young singers. Thank you.
You're welcome. Thanks for your comment.
ooo out in the forest...did I inspire this? :-P
great energy and so cool to see you sharing your old recordings - I've never heard your music, I really like your voice it sounds great.
By the way I really like where you pointed out "bridging early acoustically closes the voice too early for most vowels" at 3:45 It's something I've known but never heard other voice teachers talk about it, so cool to see you know about this phenomena. I also find sometimes people sound nasal simply because they are going too thin too early in their voice and not bringing up enough "meat" another issue with bridging early.
Of course you inspired my forest background! ;-) And thanks for the very kind and insightful comment. (We should catch up soon.)
absolutely
thanks so much for this! this was a great video. Also I actually loved the stream and trees in the background :)
You're welcome. Thanks for leaving a comment.
Anothet great video. I love your balanced attitude. Accepting your voice with it's limitations and good points, while moving toward improvement with a positive outlook. This is important for all of us. Although I believe a commercially viable sound, like conventional beauty, isn't the best goal for many voices, I understand that it is a goal for a lot of singers. I look forward to your future videos and hearing some of your more recent singing.
Thank you for your comment. My goal was to try to provide a balanced assessment because I want my viewers to have a balanced attitude when evaluating their own singing voices. This is healthy and will ultimately encourage growth and ward off discouragement. There is always something good to be found if we're truly looking for it!
Hey, karyn. Very interesting video, I liked it a lot. It makes me sad that you didn't like your voice and wanted to quit at some point, but I'm happy that you accepted it and started to like it. I like your voice and also the songs, and I'm sure you sound different now when you can sing in mixed voice and add twang. It'll be very interesting to hear the comparison between before and now. :) I personally like many types of voices, and I like light voices a lot. Every type of voice (and also every style of music) has it's audience. A few years ago I was also singing mainly in my chest, without the resonance and with no mixed voice (somewhat similar to you here), but in the last year I learned how to sing in mixed voice, with a lot of resonance and I like it so much. You helped me a lot with your great videos and exercises and I'm very thankful. I'll soon send you second personalized video lesson, because I improved a lot, especially in my upper mixed and head voice. Greetings from Bulgaria! :)
Thanks so much for your comment. I think that the real dislike of my voice came from expecting it to sound like something that wasn't actually natural to my unique instrument. This is common with so many singers. I appreciate a lot of different types of voice, too, but it's hard for some of us whose voices don't sound like what it selling at the moment to not feel pressured to 'conform.'
Yeah, I understand this. The pressure is very real (not only in singing) and many people suffer a lot because of it (including myself) and that's why it makes me sad, because I have felt it. But I think with age and maybe some understanding of the social conformity and personality traits these things improve and we start feeling better about ourselves. :)
Absolutely! I have a video coming out in a couple days in which I chatted with Carl Wehden about this very topic. As I've gotten older, I've definitely started to find my authentic self and have gotten to the point where I feel like I have nothing to lose in just going for it - in exploring my voice more fully. I feel less of a need to micromanage and control and try to be 'perfect,' (although being a teacher puts a whole different kind of pressure on me to vocally impress).
Oh so your upcoming video will be very interesting. :) And yes, the vocal teacher pressure is definitely bigger and I understand how hard are the things you do, especially for you being a perfectionist and I admire you so much for this. (Because when you are not a perfectionist everything is so much easier - many times I wanted to be like that). But still there will always be people who will like the things you do and appreciate them and there will be people who won't. It's great that as we age we feel better. I don't know if you had time, but a few months ago I recommended you to read very interesting blog post from Tim Urban called Taming the Mammoth: Why you should stop caring what other people think. I think you will like it.
As always, this is a great video. But with an extra bonus, being that you expose yourself completely to your subscribers with the ultimate purpose of pedagogical examples, The comments you make in your own voice assessment help us see very clear the issues you identify. Once again, thanks!
Thanks for the lovely comment!
I really love the quality of your voice on much of what you presented here. I'm sure you have a totally different concept of how you'd approach it now but there is a realness and innocence in your vocals that I think is really beautiful!
While I'm a huge believer in constantly refining our skills, be it as a singer, songwriter, producer etc...I find it is still important not to lose sight of that youthful innocence because there's something intangible that can be truly magical!:)
scott fishkind What wonderful insight! I like the idea of retaining the innocence in our singing. Sometimes we get so caught up in trying to manipulate and learning how to create different sounds and trying to be unique that we train and plot our ways out of who we are at our core. Our vocals start to sound manufactured and contrived, rather than inspired. And some of that comes from what the industry is telling us we need to do in order to stand out and receive recognition.
Thanks Karyn! This is a lesson I had to learn myself as a songwriter, singer, and producer. I have been writing songs for as long as I can remember. I have a composition degree from Berklee and then had to spend years learning how to let that knowledge seep into my intuition rather than relying too much on my intellect. I also had to make the journey back to songwriting from "composition" which took some time, though I do feel my composition knowledge has really helped me, especially as a producer since I hear music production in layers.
Additionally I have been in the Nashville region for the past 25 years and did a lot of songwriting here, well over a hundred songs, and yet too often I was trying to be someone other than who I really am musically.
So several years ago I was listening to songs I wrote in my 20s (which was back in the late 1980s) and realized I was creating some really magical music, totally from my heart, not worrying about trying to be anyone other than who I was at the time. Granted my lyrics writing back then was where I needed to get stronger but still the songs have so much realness and vibe to them.
These days I have returned to that spirit of writing. Granted the years of working with an excellent publisher here has refined my skills so that the things that were weaknesses back then are now strengths, but at the same time my music is so much freer. I am not worrying about trying to fit any songwriting mold.
Ironically, the feedback I've been getting from my musical colleagues is that my new music actually has a lot of commercial potential even though I wasn't focused on trying to fit into any particular category and I'm just writing intuitively.
Even my singing has is at another level. I am finally embracing my uniqueness as a singer and not worrying about how I compare to other singers.
Of course I am still always trying to improve my technique and practice vocalizing daily w/ various resources (especially materials by Ann Peckham, Jeannie Gagne, and of course what I'm learning from you :)). I'm just not trying to feel like I should try to sound like anyone else. :)
I would love to hear more of your original music and singing!
Wow it seems like you were born with a great singing voice, I think what most of us do is we deceive ourselves and we are easy on ourselves and try and believe that we have great voices but others don’t hear the same things we hear in ourselves. So there is also that side of the subject. We need to be honest with ourselves because that’s why so many people think they can sing when they can’t
Self assessment is really hard. What I find best is to listen the next day. I believe that it gives me a more objective view. A lot of times I just happy that I got through the song. What I do is record in the kitchen. No mics no effects. It helps me hear where I'm being lazy or putting to much spin on it.
I love singing in the kitchen! Great acoustics. I understand what you're saying about listen back to the recording the next day. If I'm actively working on a given skill or sound, I like to record (hand recorder) and listen back immediately because I can then make the necessary adjustments to the sound right away.
An inspiring video. Yet, when we are beginners, it is hard to evaluate as analytical as you can do it...that comes with a lot of knowledge and experience.
You're absolutely correct. Back then, I didn't know nearly what I know now. I did know that I didn't quite like the sounds of the recordings when I heard them. I didn't like the 'hollowness' and 'dullness' (flatness) of my tone and how I couldn't make powerful, belted sounds during my choruses. But I didn't know how to go about fixing these things in a practical way. I was aware of the break because it interfered with my ability to cross the registers without making slight pitch errors. These were all problems that kind of stuck out like a sore thumb. But that's partly why I made this video - to help my viewers become aware of the types of things that they should be listening for in their own singing. It's not a perfect system, but I think it can get you started. The main things that I assessed here were: tone, vowels (consistency), resonance, registration, intonation, range. Intonation and range are objective values. Most individuals can tell when their pitch goes flat or sharp (unless it's less than a half tone off, in which case, it might take more development of the 'ear' - many of these tiny pitch errors went unnoticed by me until years later). Range is measurable by discovering the lowest and highest notes that you're able to sing. Registration problems are usually fairly easy to acknowledge - most singers are acutely aware of the breaks, cracks, flips, etc. in their voices. They may not know that some of their intonation problems are related to imbalanced registration, though. Vowels, tone, timbre, and resonance are a bit more 'vague' and hard to describe because much of how we tend to describe them is in terms such as 'colour,' 'back,' etc.. But all singers, even beginners, can learn to analyze their vowels - their constancy of definition (formation), as well as their consistency of definition across different words and pitches - if they know that this is something that they should be listening for. So, I draw attention to it here. But you're right: It often does take time to learn how to do this. So, the beginner can start with those things about his/her voice's qualities and skills that are most evidently 'off' and work from there. I think you've just given me a really great idea for a follow-up video on this topic! Thanks for the inspiration.
Thank you for your detailed comment. I am interested in this topic because I just want to start evaluating my voice. Your comment gave me some ideas regarding what to look for. Hope will work :).
You're welcome. And please let me know if there's anything I can help you with.
How does it feel, is there increasing freedom in both recordings of your singing as well as the feeling of ease in the singing voice. If this is the trend, you’re probably headed the right way. All vocal effects can be applied upon finding function freedom of the singing voice. This is how I tend to measure my progress.
Karen you rock, I love your old voice :D The "too far back" voice reminds me of Tori Amos. Are you really going into M2 so early - I thought it sounded like a loss of compression only? I go into M2 on Eflat5 or F5, or thought I did, maybe Im wrong. I feel a definite change on an A4 but as I understood it, this was just a thinning out of the vocal cords, not a true register change as on the F5?
Ah, yes! I've forgotten all about Tori Amos.
I've edited my comment now, sorry! Just jotting things down as I listen to the video :D
I love these songs, wow.
Yes, I consistently transitioned into M2 at my lower passaggio (E4). Sometimes I would try to push up to about F#4, but that was it for my M1 range. M2 dominance is my 'default' coordination, even to this day.
I like my songs, too. (Some of them, at least.) I'd love to see what would happen to them with the help of a good producer, better musicians, and better vocal technique.
It's quite hard to get accurate feedback about the singing voice, I think. Tendency is to be hard on yourself, and third parties are influenced by their taste a lot. It was good share some old singing though, thanks, I liked it and think most people would class that as good singing. It's always hard to say with what's commercial at a certain time too, though Amy Lee hasn't done bad with that kind of sound I think.
Thanks so much for this. Yes, Since I've come closer to accepting my voice, Amy Lee is one of the examples that I use as comparison and inspiration. She doesn't have a really heavy instrument and doesn't use rock technique, and yet Evanescence is classified as a rock band. Much of the 'rock' sound comes from the musicians. So, although I will keep striving to do more with my voice, I know that I can always lean (heavily) upon a band to create much of the 'heaviness' that I desire. (Of course, in recent years, I've turned my attention more to musical theatre, so my goals are a bit different.)
Paul unfortunately there doesnt seem to be many places online where you can actually get decent feedback. Seems insane since there are thousands of singers online etc. The forums with any type of activity are always more or less storefronts for someones product. Therefore all of the "feedback" given is just a funnel for the product. like-->'gee paul, you have a nice voice but u lack twang. Thats good because twang is heavily addressed in volume 2 of our xyz product"
I honestly don't find much to be wrong about your old voice, especially because of the types of songs you were singing. That kind of quality sounds good with the emo type songs. Good song choice for the voice, or good voice for the song choice. Either way, it was good and appropriate. don't get so hard on yourself.
It certainly wasn't all bad, I agree. But if we don't assess ourselves honestly and accurately, we won't grow. And I love the idea of continuing to grow.
Speaking of vocal assessment. i always comment on your vids but you have never heard me sing lol. here is something I both wrote AND recorded after working a full day yesterday. I was trying to finish it by midnight for a challenge on a FB group. So its thrown together and it sounds like it. Im doing all the instruments and programming the drums. In any case it gives you some idea of where I am. Sometimes I feel like im really good but then sometimes i feel like its hopeless. cest la vie. relaxed training is one thing but once you hit "record" you enter into the hardcore fog of war. clyp.it/1mm14msb
Thanks for sharing this.
I am a lyric soprano who wants to be Bonnie Raitt lol
Work with what you've got! Learn the necessary contemporary techniques, but maybe consider raising the key a bit. :)
I thought your singing was great- I only wish to be that good
That's sweet of you to say so. I have no doubt that if you practice the right things in the right way, your technique will continue to improve.