Hot answers tagged voice
15
Head voice, chest voice, throat voice, as well as their "register" version and falsetto are old and confusing names to describe an almost universal phenomena:
When singing from the lowest to the highest pitch than you can sing, the hollow parts of our body (chest, larynx, mouth, upper cranium) share and sustain differently the resonance of the sounds ...
14
I would not be surprised to hear that singers are more commonly corrected in that direction, but it's certainly not impossible to be "a little sharp." A few reasons this might be perceived:
There is generally a correlation between tension and higher pitch, be it tension in the diaphragm or larynx or whatever; when people sing higher in pitch, they ...
13
I often start my warming up like this:
Take a deep breath and sigh/hum softly and gently. Repeat this a few times.
Repeat the exercise with the mouth opened, but not with more effort, for a few times
After a while, you should have found your "ground tone", which is the tone you can sing without straining. This tone is the basis of healthy singing. Take a ...
12
One cause of yawning can certainly be that your body needs more oxygen, so key to solving the problem is getting enough breaths in. Some scores have breaths marked, but for others you'll need to work out for yourself where you can fit your breaths in.
You can train for bigger breaths but some people find it difficult to breathe properly.
I know a couple of ...
12
Drinking cold water long-term won't make your voice "lousier". The whole idea behind singing is to have your vocal cords and surrounding muscles as loose as possible while singing. Hydration is a huge part of healthy vocal cords, so drink as much water as you can (hot, cold, or otherwise).
It's just recommended that if you get thirsty either just before or ...
12
Both, but talent and practice tend to refer to very nearly the same thing (It's hard to separate innate musical ability from ability conditioned from dedicated practice). Let's clarify your question as "Genetics or practice".
Practice will take you into the realm of professional singing. It's not enough to get you big solos, but it is enough to get ...
11
First off, relevant to your question, a tight throat is a sore throat. The number one most common mistake novice singers make is controlling their breath (and thus volume and phrasing) by constricting their throat. First, this clamps down on several key areas of resonance, reducing projection and increasing the nasal quality of your voice (which most people ...
11
Every singer who has ever gotten voice lessons deals with this. Do not be upset if it takes considerable time and practice for you to learn how to sing the high notes freely and easily.
If you keep practicing regularly and carefully, you will get better at it over time. There are certain techniques you can practice to make the high notes sound better, but ...
10
If what you want is to improve your vocal range, I would recommend these exercises:
Warm up. Always warm up for a while before starting the actual exercise, doing easy vocalise in the middle of your vocal range.
Scales, Thirds and Fourths. All types of scales that go through your entire vocal range. Practice them as often as you can. This will gradually ...
10
Probably, you would look for the same things you would seek in any private music instructor. No teacher is right for every student. Here are a few things I would suggest:
Ask around. Do you know anyone who has been a voice student? Is there any particular instructor that this student recommends?
When you do have one or more instructors in mind, find ...
10
The only difference between singing and humming is really where the air is going. Since you're directing the air through your mouth to form a whistle, this can't be humming, you're actually singing and whistling at the same time.
When I taught myself how to do this, I did notice that the two pitches were moving together at first, but I'll bet if you worked ...
9
Here are three exercises I use with students:
Lip-buzzing through a phrase of a song (i.e. one long lipbuzz - as you need to engage your support to lip-buzz). If you can't lip-buzz, then rolling an 'r' also have the same effect.
Slow breath in for three beats, then make a sizzling sound out for 10 beats (and then gradually extend this during practice to ...
9
There are several things you can do to warm up your vocal cords properly.
Sing half-scales using vowel sounds ("oo","oh","ee","ah","eh")
Sing half-scales using vowel sounds + h (great for rough vocal days) ("hoo","hoh","hee,"hah,"heh")
Sing half-scales using vowel sounds + m ("moo","moh","mee","mah","meh")
Hum scales and half-scales.
Do neck rolls (these ...
9
I'll answer the "When should I" of your question simply, and from the experience of someone with a music ed degree, but no formal voice training. I do know the basics of vocal training and education, and have had a little myself. I won't delve into the different physiological differences with the falsetto voice, since that's been awhile… :)
For most male ...
9
Tags are idiomatic to barbershop music (which is typically four a cappella voices), and refer to the ending chords of a song, usually coincident with the last line of lyrics.
Sometimes singers will get together for the sole purpose of singing tags, since they are easier to learn than an entire piece of music and usually consist of harmonic cadences that are ...
9
In choral settings it is a little more relaxed about what ranges are needed and what words are used to describe the singers in them. Usually singers in choirs don't have such a need for a very soloistic or virtuosic approach to singers and thus have a slightly smaller range. In opera it is pretty much demanded that you have close to a two octave range or ...
9
First off, let's start with the definitions of the terms.
False Bass (or "Fauxbourdon") is a French term relating to the harmonization of plainchant melodies in which the bass would be a 6th below the melody; thus creating a serious of first-inversion chords as the organum would typically be harmonized a perfect-fourth below the melody.
I believe you ...
8
Wikipedia says:
The issue of the female falsetto voice has been met with some
controversy, especially among vocal pedagogists. Many books on the art
of singing completely ignore this issue, simply gloss over it, or
insist that women do not have falsetto. This controversy, however,
does not exist within the speech pathology community and arguments
...
8
As @luserdroog said in the comments, it would be best if you could get at least a couple lessons. Otherwise you risk learning bad habits with the physical aspects (that can't be taught well except in person) that you'll have to un-learn later.
Another approach is to join a community choir. While some choirs require auditions, others do not (particularly ...
8
I'm no expert on this, I'm only speaking from my own experiences singing in choir.
d
One of our conductors did this to help our voices blend better. He would ask individuals from a section to sing their part, and he would choose the one he thought had the most suitable sound/tone for the song. Then he would bring the other section members one by have them ...
7
One of the first thing you could do is to train yourself to yawn : yawn and alternatively inhale and intonate at a standard voice level at the same time, opening the mouth as wide as possible.
Do that slowly, several times before starting to sing.
It will flex your face muscles in a good way and place your lower jaw. A little side benefit is that you will ...
7
One "game" is to get a piece of paper and place it against a wall. You then have to keep it up for as long as possible using only your breath. Without any support, you just can't keep it there.
If you make this competitive - against other singers, or just against the clock - it could be a way to encourage improving support.
7
It is often not sweet drinks, per se, but what's in the most popular sweet drinks.
So for example, soda (I assume the UK equivalent would be a 'soft drink' like Coca Cola?) often contains caffeine, which has a dehydrating effect and therefore affects the voice. This was borne out by a study in 1999 'Effect of caffeine on the vocal folds: a pilot study'* ...
7
Visualizing harmonies takes place in what I and others call the aural image; basically, being able to hear music internally with little or no outside stimulus. When instrumentalists practice this, they usually do it by singing, since the voice is that much more closely related to the brain than any given instrument. For all of the above, though, it can be ...
7
Vocal cord nodules are benign (noncancerous) growths on both vocal cords that are caused by vocal abuse. Over time, repeated abuse of the vocal cords results in soft, swollen spots on each vocal cord. These spots develop into harder, callous-like growths called nodules. The nodules will become larger and stiffer the longer the vocal abuse continues.
Some ...
7
[Insert obligatory 'ruining your voice for eternity' lecture here]
Now that's over with... Here is what I've found from my experiences with trying to make my voice sound rough.
Quick Background: I've been experimenting with this style for 3 or 4 years, just on a casual level while practising, not a professional or even performance basis. Also, most of the ...
7
This is a very interesting question! I would never expect an expert to try to guess someone's vocal range simply based on their ethnic heritage, but it's true that some trends do persist just like any other physical characteristic does along cultural-biological lines. For example, the term "Russian bass" has been used to refer to Eastern-European basses with ...
7
One of the best ways to improve your skill at reproducing notes is to develop your ability to sight-sing, which is the ability to read music at sight without the help of an external instrument. This primarily involved training your "inner ear" in a process called audiation. Audiation is essentially hearing something in your head before you externally ...
6
The average singer who goes from practicing or exercising many times per week down to once a week or less will see a marked decrease in their range.
Humans have a natural vocal range, or tessitura. The average is about an octave, though many can sing a span of an octave and a half or even a two-octave span (three-octave range) even "cold". Outside that ...
6
First, I've been a professional musician, but I'm not a professional singer - nonetheless, I've recently started working with a teacher that has made a huge difference in my singing, and the lessons are fresh in my mind.
The trick, I believe, is learning to tell the difference between your voice being tired vs. strained. If you are straining, you are ...
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