As with the last post, I think it would be a good idea to address a point that I keep making on my Reddit singing blog posts. Many who post there are concerned that they can’t sing on pitch. As the scientific paper I cited in the last post indicates, it’s about muscle control. This is something I discovered on my own, but it’s good to have scientific support for your personal experiences! I tell these concerned aspiring singers that they should sing songs that they can sing well, and while doing so, the right muscles will develop, and then when they feel they have strong command of those songs, they can move up to slightly more difficult ones.
Now they still might have issues with certain sounds, especially vowels, and they still might not be practicing totally effective breath support, but they should be well on their way to singing well enough to be a mic/pop singer. However, there are some other qualities that might be lacking, and those are more difficult to convey, especially “energy” and consistency. I’ve spoken about these before, especially consistency in the context of what contestants on the TV show, “The Voice” are told who don’t make it to the televised blind audition stage. But for most people it’s too abstract, apparently. Energy is perhaps more obvious, but can lead to aspiring singers just getting louder and/or straining, and then they are inconsistent, so nothing productive was gained.
As I have demonstrated with examples from the singing of “pop stars” over and over again on this blog, it’s very common for these people to sing badly, but this is rare on studio recordings, which are enhanced with all kinds of technological effects. Even so, in the recent Amazon commercial, Freddie Mercury is clearly off pitch:
And what about those who sing “badly” (in any traditional notion of the term) but who were highly successful? Just in the band, AC/DC, there are two examples of this (Bon Scott and Brain Johnson). But what did their vocalizing possess? Consistency and energy! What I wanted to do several years ago, and what I think I can help at least some people achieve, is singing with consistency and energy, rather than just make noises in a consistent and energized way.
In the last post, I pointed out that we now know what singing is, physically, and it’s been clear for a very long time that singing is much healthier on the vocal cords than screeching or yelling (an example of that vocalization being cleaned up with technology was presented in the previous post), especially at lower volume (unlike opera), which you can use if your voice is always amplified, so you get the benefit of sounding better and preserving your “instrument” by learning how to sing, rather than just developing some odd vocalization that is consistent and energetic (or doing things that aren’t singing but sound like singing to most people after the sound engineers clean it up). That doesn’t mean you have to sing all the time – you can add a little talking or other non-singing vocalization here and there for stylistic interest (I would advise only trying to do this once you can do it without any discomfort. pain, or straining).
But because most aspiring pop singers don’t realize this, they become fixated on some abstract notion of singing, such as that they have to sing a song as it appears on a musical score or that they have to “match notes.” There is no Singing Police, at least in pop music, and they so often “put the cart before the horse,” wanting to do things that require the requisite muscle development/coordination, which they so obviously do not possess in many cases! Yes, it can be boring to sing simple songs while waiting for the muscles to develop and to figure out breath support, but it will likely save you a lot of time in the long run (and a lot of money, if you study with a “voice coach” who has you doing endless “exercises” that may strengthen the wrong muscles). Now if you want to sing opera or musical theater, this the above is certainly not necessarily the case, and so I suggest those who have learned the fundamentals of singing consult “voice coaches” who specialize in these fields.
NOTE: As of this date I am still offering a free first lesson/assessment with absolutely no obligation of any kind. Just email me: nickspinner55@gmail.com. Also, I won’t give your personal information to anyone else. I might reference your singing on some blog posts if you provide me with audio clips, so let me know if you don’t want me to do that, but remember that the idea is to help aspiring singers! If you have publicly posted on sites like Youtube or Soundcloud, I’ll assume it’s okay to link to those in my blog post. I can’t guarantee that there is room for you in my schedule at any given time, and the earliest I can schedule new lessons will be some time in July, 2020, but I should be able to provide you with some advice that might be helpful, after getting a sense of where you’re at.
Learning to sing (with microphones) 