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Showing posts with the label Vocal Performance

Vocal Science - "Fifty Shades" Of Voice: What Do We Mean By This?

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What we mean by this is that the human voice possesses a ‘rainbow of colours’, so to speak. It also possesses different varieties of voice performance .  Singers always say that sometimes they really have ‘good days’ with their voice, i.e., their voice obeying their commands and give them the right tonality, bright tone and perfect pitch; whereas some other times, they refer to the ‘bad days’, i.e., when the voice sounds dark in tone and the pitch and projection also suffer. Objectively, the latter, in this case, depends on the mood of a singer, the weather and, perhaps, the personal circumstances prevailing the performance.  All of the above is somewhat good, but wouldn’t it be even better if the singer did not depend on the outer factors; but would mostly depend on the professional training and proper vocal technique, pertaining to the vocal performances and studio recordings.  After all, we are talking about the human being and the human voice he/she possesse

Vocal Science: Assessing Your “Instrument” and You as a “Player”… So To Speak.

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Let’s find out what you’ve got! And also, let’s find out what I mean by definition of the “instrument” and the “player”. What I mean by the “instrument” is the height and weight of the person, his/her outer and inner “opening” of the vocal anatomy as well as the pitch and tonality of their voice; not to mention many other components, which will also come into play (in a manner of speaking). Quite often, I have been asked if it is possible to increase the capacity of one’s “instrument”. I can compare it with extending an average sized keyboard to a much bigger upright piano, so that it would be possible to recite on it, let’s say, a Concerto by Tchaikovsky (or something like this of that caliber). My answer is that it is possible to a degree. Over the years, I had singing students coming to me, possessing a very small mouth, short height and small body frame overall. Due to my  very specially designed speech and singing exercises , I was definitely able to stret

Vocally Speaking - If you needed brain surgery, would you want an orthopaedic surgeon to perform it...?

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Let's suppose that a patient needs brain surgery and then finds out that the actual surgery will be performed by a Doctor of Orthopaedics! "How could that be?," you might exclaim!!! It's true - it is highly unlikely that it will happen in real life. However, in the recording studio there is person who is usually called the "Producer" assigned to be a "jack of all trades" and, so to speak, "brain surgery is included". What do I mean by brain surgery is the actual narrow field of vocals? Primarily the producers are instrumentalists and majority of them are very good at their craft. But, very rarely, they are also the vocalists, least of all vocal mentors . Quite often, the clients come to our studio with their own recordings and reveal that the producer was excellent in everything else... until it came to vocals. Some of the producers, apparently, did not even care about the vocal performance and some of them were trying to give