any self taught singers here?

  • Thread starter Thread starter a27thletter
  • Start date Start date
A

a27thletter

New member
just a question about how you went about it, i'm in a position right now where i'm tied up between school and work and i dont have time to do voice lessons with a vocal coach, however i plan to do lessons in the near future. i'm basically looking for things i can do on my own to get my voice in better shape for this sortof "john mayer meets dashboard confessional" type of music i'm writing these days. i'm at the point now where i can stay in key almost all the time but the main thing thats killing me is that my range sucks, and my tone just doesnt seem right most of the time and i'm not sure how to exactly find "my tone" if you know what i mean. so, any tips or advice or whatever, i could use it all. thanks you all,

p.s. i have two books: singing for dummies and the idiots guide to singing, they helped me a lot in the begining stages for finding the right key and singing notes and all but they really dont help with my tone, i constantly find myself subconciously singing in too high a register when i sing along with the cds.
 
Fuck all the books and fuck all the lessons. I am not good but I have a feeling I know what it takes to do it. The trick for most of us non singers is to make the most of what you have.
Do you drive to work? Turn your CD player down instead of up to sing to stuff in the car. Turn it off in the middle of a song you know really well and sing it to the end and turn it on at teh last line to hear how good your timing is. Seriously, most of us spend a lot of time driving to and from work, this is the place to practice.
Hum stuff you love at work instead of listening to radio at all. I know this sounds dumb but most of the voice training I get is just to hear myself and try to sound musical. You don't want to imitate anyone because your style will suffer and your potential will never be realized.

Most of the singers I really love are not good in any classic sense. They are freaky people who know how to hit a musical vibe and expression that no one else has. Robert Smith, David Byrne, Tom Petty, Josh Homme, Beck...these people have made the most of their character and not so much singing "talent".

Go with what you got baby.
 
an awful lot to what the above guy says - still - something really useful you can do to improve your range and comfort/projection is work on breathing with your diaphragm, and then doing vocaleses to widen your range. After that, just sing, sing, sing
 
i bought the Learn How To Sing book by ashlee simpson.....it does wonders for my backing tracks :D
 
i work for dominos as a delivery person, so i spend at least 6 hours a night in my car, . i have tons of time to sing along to cds, if that really helps, so i'm thinking about taking some of my favorite songs and removing the lyrics from them and making a cd of just the music to sing along to, do yo think that'll be a good practice for my voice? one of the biggest problems i'm seeing is my inability to keep my larynx low and my soft palette raised while singing, anyone have tips for that? it seems like as i raise in pitch my larynx naturally wants to raise up higher in my throat.
 
does the ashley simpson book mention anything about what to do when your vocal cd starts playing the wrong song during a live performance? does it actually tell you to do an irish jig? edit: i feel bad now, like my karma is destroyed, sorry ashley
 
a27thletter said:
does the ashley simpson book mention anything about what to do when your vocal cd starts playing the wrong song during a live performance? does it actually tell you to do an irish jig? edit: i feel bad now, like my karma is destroyed, sorry ashley
Click to expand...
No, but it's got a Forward by Hilary Duff and it was edited by Lindsay Lohan...
 
I Love...

Hilary Duff's stuff sounds killer to me. I consider myself an emo rocker (not to be confused with screamo unless I screw up and forget to edit my loud cursing out of the vocal mix) I think it is great. She is so innocent and doesn't ACT cool like Ashlee. But, who doesn't love her sister. Oh, and Lyndsey Lohan's stuff, technically sounds killer too! I think so at least.
Hilary Duff in all of her auto-tuned glory. Still cool!
 
Sporkmyband said:
Hilary Duff's stuff sounds killer to me. I consider myself an emo rocker (not to be confused with screamo unless I screw up and forget to edit my loud cursing out of the vocal mix) I think it is great. She is so innocent and doesn't ACT cool like Ashlee. But, who doesn't love her sister. Oh, and Lyndsey Lohan's stuff, technically sounds killer too! I think so at least.
Hilary Duff in all of her auto-tuned glory. Still cool!
Click to expand...
It's not that bad, but my sister took her 11 year old to one of her concerts, and told me she can't sing for shit live. My sister is no musician, and doesn't know a thing about autotune, but she knows when someone can sing.

I'm just waiting for her to turn 18 like Lindsay so that I don't feel like a pervert when I look at her.... :o
 
I've found Hilary Duff's tracks to sometimes be good, sometimes pretty lousy. I'm not sure if it's the performer or the repertoire or both. I do know that I seem to be able to cmfortably sing all her songs in the original key and octave. I mean, sure, I'm a tenor, but I'm not even in falsetto most of the time....

Lindsay Lohan... I've only heard a couple of songs, but even from that, I get the distinct feeling she has a decent set of pipes. And she's not a bad actress, either. I'd love to get to hear her in concert some time.

Oh, dear... I just admitted to listening to Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan....
 
I suspect the vast majority of singers in rock/pop/country are "self taught" and they do it the same way that self taught singers/musicians have learned for decades - sing/play along with your favorite recordings.

That is a great way to learn phrasing and to an extent, breath control. If you try to mimic various singers you can eventually find the style that is right for you (the growl of Joe Cocker or the soulful smoothness of Michael McDonald, etc).

Once you feel you can hit the notes of the melody lines, try to pick out the harmony parts. There is nothing better when developing your ear for harmony than to learn harmony parts from recordings. After a while, you should be able to add harmony parts to melody lines even if there is no recorded harmony.

That all being said, even a few lessons with a good vocal coach can be helpful. I was self taught and sang in bands for years (close to 4,000 gigs) and I decided to go to a vocal coach - within 4 weekly lessons, and plenty of practise on my own, I added a couple of notes to my range, improved my tone and did not burn out my voice during gigs (by better breathing and body mechanics.

I still fall into bad habits (learned from years of bad technique), but now I know when I'm doing something wrong and can quickly correct it.
 
Well, I'll buck the common thinking here and say...

Buy some books. Visit the library and borrow a few for FREE! Why spend months/years fumbling around on your own when you can learn the same things from someone else in 30 minutes? Learning proper technieque doesn't mean you have to sing like an opera singer. Sheesh...

Knowledge will only help you be a better singer. Learning how to visualize your tone and placement. How to lift you soft palate and proper mouth shapes. How to breathe with your diaphram. None of that can hurt no matter how you want to sing.

Mimicing other singers is also good to a point, but only if the singer you are mimicing has good technique. If not then you're doing more harm than good. You're developing bad habits that will take even longer to unlearn, and you run the risk of temporarily/permanenatly harming your voice.

A
 
Well...I'm a self-taught singer, and what I found was that not only am I a poor student, I'm a worse teacher. :D
 
I'm pretty much self taught except for a couple community college classes.
I'd recommend finding a good vocal coach if you're serious which it sound like you are.

Luckily, the teacher I had was amazing...she really taught diaphram breathing well which helped me a lot.

Having a good vocal coach/instructor can help immensely. A good one will be able to pinpoint exactly what your challenges are and how to overcome them.
 
when i'm looking for a vocal coach, if i end up doing that route, what price range should i deem acceptable? i've found that i know all of the basics, i can sing notes just fine at this point and can hold the note with no concious effort, but i just cant seem to apply the stuff i've learned from books and exercise cd's to my actuall singing. i dont know what my problem is, maybe its psychological,.
 
a27thletter said:
when i'm looking for a vocal coach, if i end up doing that route, what price range should i deem acceptable? i've found that i know all of the basics, i can sing notes just fine at this point and can hold the note with no concious effort, but i just cant seem to apply the stuff i've learned from books and exercise cd's to my actuall singing. i dont know what my problem is, maybe its psychological,.
Click to expand...

Yeah, there is some stuff you can't learn from books, and it sounds like you've found it. You hear singers singing on their throat all the time (not automatically a bad thing, Springsteen is a very heavy throat singer for example) but when you hear a properly trained singer move her voice from chest to throat to hard palate to head it's a different league.

I think that you can only learn stuff like that with physical face to face instruction. There's also the matter of protecting your voice in the longer term. Tutored singers last a hell of a lot longer and can make more noise with less effort.
 
One could always test their singing quality via karoke...granted this means would probably be best accomplished where a) there's no alcohol involved; b) if there is, most of the people know you and would only give ya a good razzing. I was in school choirs, from 5th to 12th grades, so I can't claim to be self-taught. Retaining what I learned, having graduated high school in 1987, does take self-discipline, however. Whenever I do participate in karoke, I only pick songs that are within my range, and generally the goofy stuff (like "Purple People Eater").

If ya happen to know somebody with a keyboard or a piano, or own one yourself, try to find out the scope of your singing range. Sing "doh" as low as you can, then find that note on the keyboard. See if you can go any lower than that. When you start "frogging out," the previous note is the low side of your range. The same applies to finding the upper end of your singing range, except you sing the entire scale to do it. Start with "doh" at whatever is the lowest note you can sing, and go up the scale..."mi, fah, sol, la..." etc. When you get to the last "doh" going up, that's your starting point for another run up the scale. When you feel like you're straining your vocal chords, back off a note or two, and that's the top end of your singing range.

Two helpful hints, toward getting the most from your low and high ends of your singing range: 1) when going for the lower notes, slightly raise your chin, which allows for the most amount of airflow; 2) when going for the higher notes, slightly lower your chin, which will keep you from straining your vocal chords. It may sound bass ackward, raising your chin for the low notes and lowering your chin for the high notes, but it's true. When I was in 12th grade, my singing range was from about the middle of the alto clef (1st soprano) to 2-3 notes below the bass clef (nearly contra bass). Nearly 20 years later, I'd be lucky to get too much above middle C, yet I can sing probably a full octave below the bass clef, so I still have about the same singing range, it's just gone lower.

One thing that's always "got to me," over the 18 years since I graduated high school is, how's come ya don't really hear many baritone lead singers, in rock & roll music? I'm sure some of you can come up with other examples, but I usually can only think of Neil Diamond, when it comes to baritone lead vocals, never mind that Diamond is a solo singer (with backing vocals).

Matt
 
i agree with aaron, that a little bit of knowledge gained fron any available source can only help get you where you want to go but faster.

singing, like all physical things, has a huge mental component to it as well. new ways of perceiving can make a huge difference.

my big thing with singers is do they sound convincing? i believe that along with a range of pitch, you must have a range of dynamics, a range of vowels and consonants, a range of emotive states. when you can exist in a large range of feeling, you are bigger and more powerful. and i don't mean powerful as in loud, i mean powerful as in commanding.
 
dgatwood said:
Oh, dear... I just admitted to listening to Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan....
Click to expand...
That's alright! I am sure that most of us have CD's in our collection we won't let the others see... :D

Linday can sing, but I don't listen close enough to see if they autotune her. I've listened to that Teenage Drama Queen song at the end of the movie, and like I said, she's nice to look at....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top