I went to night school vocal lessons. What you realise is that everyone else has the same problems, its a question of whether they have the nerve / guts to admit it.

Uncle Daves "learn the words" point is also spot on. You only start to perform a song after you've stopped worrying about it (and worrying makes you tense which is A BAD THING).

You have to warm up the voice, loosen up the head, throat and upper chest muscles, avoid alcohol and indeed anything chilled. Cold fluids tighten up the throat. Personally I fail on the beer front but you can't have everything.

Certainly the things that help most to avoid
soreness have got little to do with technique - pick your key well and never overstretch. Having said that developing your breath technique makes singing that much easier you will end up louder anyway!

Whilst on a good day with a following wind I can get to Bb and not sound like a cat, I only tend to go past F for held notes in a song if if feels wrong in a lower pitch (e.g. Eric Carmen - Hungry Eyes - sounds rubbish pitched to an F but has the right feel when I use G!) or it is so rangy that the bass end sounds awful as well. Iterestingly since I took lessons my lower register has improved hugely, which I attribute mostly to better breath control and resonance management. This takes pressure of the top end as I can now sing songs in a lower key without sounding gutless or losing pitch. An interesting practive exercise is to sing your favourite songs one octave down! Its also a good warmup exercise. I do this in the car on the way to gigs.

I use a compressor on vocals to give more gain in the quiet bits of my range and take the volume out of the louder areas (i.e. to compensate for having no microphone technique due to playing a keyboard at the same time!).
On the subject of keys, I'm sure I read that Art Garfunkle picks the key for "Bridge over Troubled Water" just before he sings it, depending on how good feels.

A bit of technical stuff which may help...

Our teacher placed great emphasis on space, relaxation and resonance. It's all connected. The space bit is that if you have your mouth constricted, or your throat is "tight", theres less of an opening for the sound to come out of and you sound more like a duck. Your throat will get tight if you aren't relaxed; if you are breathing using your chest rather than your diaphragm you are onto a loser as the act of breathing tightens the throat. You can get more space if you move you ribs out of the way - ever wondered why the serious male singer can get pigeon-chested? You can't hold the ribs out if you are using them for breathing. Shifting the ribs is beyond me, however. Heaving shoulders may emphasise a big emotional point of a song but they do nothing for the quality of the voice.

You may notice a lot of "Broadway" singers always sing to the balcony. This keeps the airway from the throat out through the mouth open and unobstructed. Singing to your feet is therefore a very bad idea!

You can alter how you sound by adjusting the shape and tensions in your face. Smiling makes you sound brighter - singing with a "depressed" shape makes you sound duller. You can experiment by humming a constant pitch and moving your mouth and face around to see what differences it makes to the tone.

The tensions in the face and throat also alter resonance, which also affects the sound. You are getting somewhere if you can hum a note with your mouth closed and get you lips to vibrate in sympathy. If it starts to tickle, all the better!

Also, singing wearing spectacles makes you sound more like a duck. I use contact lenses when signing - you really can tell the difference if I'm wearing glasses.

Hope this makes sense and helps!

Good stuff, and you're right about singing to the balcony. Aim for the last row!

John...

Thanks for a very comprehensive and interesting reply. As an optometrist, I find your glasses vs. contact lenses comparison interesting. I wonder if your facial posture is different when you're wearing contacts. That's the only thing I can figure would make a difference.

Hold the phone! "Also, singing wearing spectacles makes you sound more like a duck. I use contact lenses when signing - you really can tell the difference if I'm wearing glasses."

If this was the case, there would be a lot of really great vocalist that sound like a duck--which is not the case. If your specs are having an effect on your voice, you're either not wearing them properly, or there's something anatomically wrong.

I've been wearing glasses since age 12, never sounded like a duck, and some folks would put me in the baritone range. I'll match my bottom notes against the Statler Brother's baratone any day, and come to think of it, I believe he wears glasses as well (could be wrong on that one though).

I do agree, however, that you must learn the words in order to gain confidence and maintain good eye contact with your audience. Once in while, you can take a quick glance at the words, and that's not a bad thing. Most of the time, though, you should be looking at the crowd, smiling, using a bit of body language and be enthusiastic--it's contagious.

Like most of the performers on the site, I now use a laptop computer in conjunction with the keyboard. It serves several purposes, including holding the lyrics to more than 600 songs. The lyrics are in bold, black pring using 14-point Times New Roman font so you can see them from any angle or distance on the computer's 14.5-inch screen. At the top of each page, the keyboard settings for the song are in bold, 20-point font.

The same songs and settings are in my Music Finder Directory, and after the first word of the song's title the key the song is performed in is in brackets. For example, "Margarettaville (A)" tells me that I play and sing the song in A-major. This eliminates lots of problems and decreases dead time to less than 2 seconds between songs. Keep in mind that you can scroll through the MFD using the 2000/2100 and Tyros scroll wheel feature without selecting the song. Then when you end the song you're singing, it's just a matter of pressing the enter button, press the intro button, and you're ready to kick right into the next song. When you can keep the music flowing, one song after another, with little or no dead time between numbers, you'll keep the dancefloor filled, you'll build confidence and everyone will be smiling at the end of the evening.

Good luck and stick with the lessons,

Gary

The glasses tend to slide down my nose and compress the airways! The only way I can stop this is by tying my glasses to my head round the back and thats just not on!

I'm maybe overdoing the description of the "duck" effect, but to take it to the extreme, sing without glasses and then pinch your nose to block up the airways and there is a noticable difference in tone.

[This message has been edited by MacAllcock (edited 10-23-2003).]

If you wear glasses that restrict your air flow, you've got more issues than we can discuss here. C'mon, get real .....

Good, now I know what you're talking about... and there is a fix. Go to your eye care professional and have him apply a pair of non-slip nose pads on your glasses, which should at least minimize the sliping.

If that doesn't work, I would suggest getting a new pair of glasses. Something small, light weight material, like titanium, and high-index lenses. Possibly rimless or semi-rimless frames. All of these items will add up to lighter weight, maybe MUCH lighter glasses than what you're wearing now and eliminate the problem. Hope this helps and good luck.

I understand what John is talking about. I've worn glasses since High School and when I have sung wearing glasses ('spectacles' for all our UK members) and especially when perspiring (no not because I was nervous necessarily ) but on a hot day, etc., the glasses do have a tendency to slip down on the nose and in theory could possibly pinch the nose a little and constrict the air passages. And if and when that happens your tonal quality could be altered to make you sound like, well; a duck (sort of). I have since switched over to Contacts when Gigging myself because mainly I'm Vain (just kidding of course) "actually I do it because the Stage lights have a tendency to reflect off the lenses of my glasses and it does not look very Professional imo. Anti-Reflective coating on the Lenses will mostly prevent that but Anti-Reflective coating has a tendency to wear off after a while and the coating can actually become smudged to where it starts to be difficult to see through them. And wearing Contacts also will eliminate the possible other scenario that John is talking about. If you do wear Glasses make sure that they have a 'secure' fit to where they wouldn't possibly slide down the nose. It can be embarrassing and you may even lose a Gig contract because the Owner, etc., won't put up with his client sounding like a duck. Just my thoughts.

Best regards,
Mike

Don... yes you can! All you have to do is to change keys at the appropriate places. Billy Joel starts in the key of C. Then at "Son can you play me, etc", he jumps up an octave. That's the hard part, right? Well, the song needs a lift right there, but the same effect can be had by changing keys. What seems to work here is going into the key of F. Then at "Now John at the bar", go back into the origional key of C.

Whenever changing keys in the middle of a song, it's important to preceed the new key with some sort of chord modulation, which can be creative, or as simple as injecting the dominant 7th of the new key (in this example, C7).

When listening to commercial arrangements you'll hear this sort of thing done all the time... and sometimes in such a creative way that it's a strong asset to the overall arrangement. However, when it's applied to a song that we've heard 100s of times, it'll seem "not right". Never-the-less, as musicians, we have a creative license to do this sort of thing... and after a few plays, it'll seem very acceptable. Give it a try on "Piano Man"... great song, BTW. You might like it.

Good idea. I'll try it.
DonM