Room Acoustics for Singing

Question

I'm working to improve my singing ability at a very basic level.

During the week I have access to three different rooms 1) with a lot of echo (bare walls, ceiling and floor) 2) One that has a little bit of echo(specifically a music room with acoustic tiles etc) 3) a room with no detectable echo (by me, it's not an anechoic chamber)

I intend on practising in each room, but I'd like your opinions on what I should be checking for in each room.

At a guess, I tihnk I should use the echoing room to check if I'm hitting the right notes, and the echoless room to work on building volume and power in my singing.

How would you best use each of these rooms?

Answer 1

My suggestion would be to practice in all three rooms and learn to optimize your voice in each situation. It's a sure bet that when you begin performing in public, you'll need to be able to adapt to the current acoustics at hand, and there seems to be no standardized acoustics for performance venues in the real world. It seems like previous experience dealing with associated acoustical problems might prove to be of value. Using your ears should help you determine what you'll need to focus on in each situation.

Answer 2

Try recording in the echoless room with a microphone and closed-back headphones to isolate whatever sound is resonating in the room. This way you can get the pure sound from your voice without reverberation interfering with the acoustics of your voice. If you don't have fancy headphones, you can probably get away with regular ones since the reflections off of the surrounding walls isn't a huge issue.