Draven Grey

I listened to your other song too. I hear what Rob is talking about concerning Sob mode, and I also think it has a lot to do with your chosen dynamics. For instance, in the other video on your channel, you have a bit more twang and compression. However, even in that video, you chose to not allow yoruself to belt when the song called for bigger dynamics. It was almost as if you were holding back, which kept the song (or both songs) from ever climaxing or taking people on an emotional rollercoaster that you could have with those lyrics. You obvisouly were able to keep your chest voice musculature engaged on higher notes, but you stayed soft in volume, which rounded out the voice, made it prettier, and pushed it much further back towards your throat (hence "sob").

By belting, I don't mean yelling either. Don't be afraid to get loud when the song calls for it or you want to show passion or emphasize parts. Get loud from pushing into your abs from behind, not from pushing from the throat. And let that extra air pressure push right into your soft palate. Then lean the voice a bit more towards your teeth for more edge, if you like. The extra air pressure will cause more twang through what's called Bernoulli's Principle, and cause more volume without pushing frmo your neck (which would be yelling). The focus on keeping the voice up into the soft palate and then out towards your hard palate will also cause more compression. 

You sing in key, which is a major plus  You also don't have a "weird" voice.

Training your voice doesn't make you sound "trained". I'm not even sure if that is a sound, considering the major variety in both singer who've taken lessons and those who haven't. You train you voice in order to more easily get the sound you want consistently, releave tension, and make your voice last for many years to come. You will sound like you want to and not like you don't want to.

Here's one of many examples - Simply lifting the voice to the soft palate will help with all of those things I mentioned. That means baring your teeth a bit on higher notes, and focusing on the voice going up and out, singing more towards where the hard and soft palate meet. I often have a student put their finger on their bottom lip and try to sing up and over it. Singing from the throat, where you typically speak from, does not make for a lasting consistent, and controllable voice. Also, lifting the voice as described doesn't mean you can't dampen the larynx and change your tongue position slightly to get something that sound exatly the same as you did before. But it will be a conscious decision and much more relaxed and consistent, rather than being whatever happens to come out.

Great voice!

On the second verse, you started to go a bit flat. I didn't hear the same sisue on most of the rest of the song. It was almost as if you were trying to force harsher sounding vowels by squeezing them out rather than adding color to an already well placed vowel. You might try placing those vowels a bit deeper into the soft palate and using more breath support to get a more compressed sound rather than squeezing.

I can see this helping the only other thing I heard you struggle with as well. When you added breath support you tended to so one of two things: (1) you compressed along with the louder volume, causing a lot more twang/closure/harshness when you got loud, or (2) you opened your embouchure far too wide vertically, which cause the same issue, thus "splatting" the vowels. If you learn to narrow your embouchure to support the vowels being more in line with the placement of the note in the soft palate, it will release some of that harshness, and allow you more control over just how harsh you want it to sound (based on how wide you open).

This will also help a bit with the overcompression at louder parts, but you can also purposefully dampen the larynx more during those parts. Learning to dampen and stabilize the larynx will not only make singing higher notes easier and less harsh, it will make it more consistent with the rest of your voice. There are some great training onsets to help build that sort of support, but apart from training in TFPOS to learn those onsets, you can start by placing your finger just below your larynx and then trying to sing through scales while keep the larynx in the same spot. This isn't the same spot it is when speaking. It helps to start singing, feel where the larynx goes on the more releaxed notes, and then try and keep it there as you go up.

Look up Robert Lunte's videos on embouchure and vowels. I think they will give you a bit different way of thinking through how you were trying to place your voice.

You have a beautiful voice. I'm excited about hearing you with even more control over the sound colors of your higher pitches.

You made a good attempt on these song. I commend you on your effort, especially since it sounds like English may not be your first language and English, which often makes English difficult to sing. I've trained a few students from other countries that spoke naturally much further back in the mouth and throat than English. I had to give them speech training as well as singing.

I think what Gsoul was asking is if you were trying to stay quiet. Your breath support and volume sound like you're trying to be as quiet as possible rather than sing out strong and proud.

I have some students who have struggled with the same type of volume and breath support simply because they didn't even think about volume control. Find a volume you think sounds good and fits the song, then try to keep all of your singing at that volume. Sometimes, different parts of a song will call for you changing your volume level, but you still want to stay consistent throughout each part. For instance, a chorus may sound betetr louder, a bridge might work better quieter, but it truly depends on the song and the emotion you want to convey. But volume control and breath support are not the main issue. It's very important, but I heard something else that could hold you back even more.

You seem to be singing a lot of speech mode vowels, rather than well placed singing vowels. Vowel placement is extremely different for singing than it is in speech. Learn to lift the vowels to the soft palate. You feel this happening if you smile when you talk. But unlike talking, you want to try and place all your singing vowels to feel more like they're coming from the soft palate than from the throat. Beside the smile, or embouchure (like the video below), you can also place your finger or mic on your bottom lip and try to sing up and over it. Try keeping all of your vowels there. 

Do you train? Do you have a teacher? I think you would benefit greatly from it. Check out the TVS Training Program linked to in the footer of this page. Even better, train with a teacher who is getting the results in their students taht you want to have yourself. And if you think you can't afford it right now, then at elast watch the video below and Robert's other videos too. He's one of the very few vocal coaches on YouTube who actually explain what they're doing well enough for you to learn from his videos. His course, which I mentioned above, is far more in depth though.

Great showcase song for you! It's very difficult to teach emotion like that, and always a treat when someonne gets it naturally.

Watching the video, I think the pitchiness on the higehr notes is due to your embouchure being too relaxed. That's often the frist thing I go to when a student is a bit pitchy. The voice simply isn't getting enough support to stay lifted. If that's not the problem, then it may also be where you are "pointing" your vowels. You will feel the vowels go deeper into the soft palate as the pitch geos up, but it can help greatly to also keep them pointed into your hard palate. Try making a soft "K" sound while breathing in. The spot where that hits the roof of your mouth, right where the hard and soft palates meet, is a place you want to feel resonance on your vowels. Where Robert teaches formant tuning, I've found that it sometimes helps to separate parts of the formant for certain students. The two main araes I point out are the soft "K" or "reonant spot" and the pressure of the soft palate raising. Both are resonance and shaping the reonsnance chamber, but sometimes it can help to separate them in your mind. The way I describe doing it is all about keeping the voice lifted and out of the throat. Then formant tuning becomes a way to think about moving the pressure around and make singing more effortless or relaxed.

What he's doing sort of works for a more classical style. He's correct in his description of what's happening. His implmentation of it needs some work. The guy's tongue is all over the place, and his overall embouchure is horrid! In contemporary singing, that "buzzing" he's talking about is better done with tracking (like humming and buzzing the lips), quack (glottal closure), and then using opening and narrowing of the vocal tract to help tune the formant. It's similar to the "eeyah" he's doing, but far more effective in training placement of the voice.

I'm 100% in agreement with Robert. I was thinking exactly the same things as I watched. 

To add, about being flat at moments: From what I could tell it sounded like you were allowing the sound to modify back too far when going into light-mass head voice on the higher notes. This put more pressure onto the glottis, and ended up both pulling the voice down into the throat rather than resonating mostly on the soft palate and opened up the glottis with more uncontrolled airiness.

There are multiple things that can cause this. The most common causes I have seen with my students is closing the embouchure too far and also thinking of modifying vowels as going deeper into the mouth rather than deeper into the soft palate. Often, this is fixed by adding a little more twang, focusing the voice upward, training to keep the embouchure shaped and tuned, and also training to get a very resonant "ou" vowel on the tongue being as far back as you allow the feeling to go (rather than going back to an "oo"). From a highly resonant "ou", I have my students open into other vowels. We often speak relaxed into the hard palate and then sing in a relaxed upward "ou" area focused light-mass head voice a lot before trying to sing a song at full volume or especially before full voice in the upper range. Almost every single time they go a little flat, it's because they let go of horizontal emboushure a bit too much, closed vertically a bit too much, and put too much pressure on their throat rather than the soft palate (up and forward).

With what Robert is talking about for intonation and tuning, you will be able to easily sing in head voice as resonant as you like, and add in only as much TA as you want for the sound you're going for. The correct placement makes it where only very fine-tnue adjustments need to happen in order to change the sound.

You have a beautiful voice. With a little more training, especially above the passagio, I have no doubt you can compete with the big league singers.

I've also coached a lot of bands and artists in stage presence. You're definitely comfortable on stage, it really shows. Now it's time to train hard enough so that when you're performing you don't have to think about technique and can instead focus on letting your whole body get lost in the music. That's a skill all it's own. Critique the hell out of your videos, and start to expiriment with what you've seen other artists do that you really liked and felt their emotion through. The "cool" things that stand out most to you about others are often because you really identify with it and it's already a part of you that only needs amplified more.

What type of feedback would you like on this?

Hey Lyndon, There's a section of the forum devoted to reviewing your voice:

http://www.themodernvocalistworld.com/forum/14-review-my-singing/

It's paid, but you will get expert reviews of your voice there, so it's well worth it. I highly suggest you check out the training program in the footer of this site too, or private lessons with Robert or any other number of teachers here. Please feel free to start or join ongoing discussions around the forum until then. Also feel free to ask if you have a specific question as to technique or something you're struggling with.

I second Robert's opinion, including his course and lessons.

Hey Evan. If you want some feedback on your singing, you should post a recording of yourself over in the "Review My Singing" section:

http://www.themodernvocalistworld.com/forum/14-review-my-singing/

It costs, but having vocal coaches and experts take time to write you a review is well worth it.

As for AAA, they aren't singing in falsetto, but rather a connected full voice, belt range, "mixed" resonance. That's comes more easily when you learn to add in your TA mucles in your ehad voice, and tune the formant (shade or narrow the vowels) to support the notes more effortlessly. Keep at it. You'll ifnd a lot of help here, especially through the owner, Robert Lunte's course and/or videos.

Done:

Okay, so it's two years old. Does it still count? I wrote it, and even edited the video. That has to count for something.

4 minutes ago, ronws said:

I think you misunderstood Draven. What he means is that you are the greatest obstacle to what you want to achieve. I have found that improving on singing mainly involved getting out of my own way, to learn how to walk without stepping on my own feet, so to speak.

You said if you had that range nothing will stop you. He said, you will. That means that you can often hinder yourself with preconceptions about what you can or cannot do, what you think is happening to make a sound, which may be different from reality.

But can you sing that range? Yes, you will.

Bravo! This is exactly my intent from my words. @muffinhead, I see you working hard in TFPOS. I have no doubt you can do whatever you want with your voice as long as you stay determined to do so. Don't let "I wish I could..." or "If only..." ever stand in the way of knowing you'll reach your goals because you will stop at nothing to do so.

I don't want to hijack this thread though. So to relate that back... I've had a lot of pleasure teaching an SLS student how to belt. They have amazing control of their voice. Sadly, I've yet to meet one that has the strength to sing in a full voice after a few notes above their bridge.

7 minutes ago, muffinhead said:

If I had that usable range nothing could stop me lol. 

You will.

I've been teaching a lot of new students lately, so haven't had time to dive into the course as much lately. Granted, I've been teaching the onsets in more of a TVS way now, and have noticed a big improvement on helping my student's get results even faster than before, not just that but pinpoint issues extremely fast too. For myself, it has given me a lot more control over my voice as well, but in ways I didn't know were even an issue. This is exactly the type of program I've been looking for, since I feel I'm already pretty advanced in my singing.

I'm writing this just to say thank you for one thing in particular. After learning the lift up/pull back technique, using TVS coordination onsets, and even contract & release (although I overused it at first, ouch, lol!), my opened up my voice more than I thought possible. Before, I could easily sing a C5, even up to an E5 while belting, but only for about 30 minutes before feeling some fatigue. I could even belt up to a G#5 for a very short period. With the fatigue, I figured I was pushing too hard, but didn't know another way. So, with the new album being written, I simply started writing and altering my songs to stay lower in pitch than that.

After practicing TVS methodology, I quickly realized just how much a belt is truly just head voice with TA being added. With this realization, I could suddenly control the volume and pressure of my belting much more than before. I can belt the E5 for hours now. To be clear, I know the difference in sensation and sound from a true belt vs. falsetto with twang or added harshness. I haven't ventured much above that, since I currently still fight the urge to push. The last time I belted the G#5, I was teaching a soprano a certain song, and didn't realize how high I was singing until it started hurting 15 minutes in. Then it was too late, I had pulled a muscle and it took me 3 months to recover. Needless to say, I'm overly cautious about belting above the E5 now. Not that I normally sing anything that calls for anything higher than that anyway. 

I'm very excited about this discovery, and I'm looking forward to the lesson on belting to refine it even more. Thank you for taking the pressure off my upper belt range. This will be extremely important as The Silent Still begins to tour our Rock Circus Masquerade production at the end of this year.

Good to know I'm on the right track. I haven't gotten into ITRs yet, but have been doing as you described on the Coordination onsets for many years (just calling them something different). I have my own routines that I adjusted to include what I've learned in onsets and acoustic modes in TFPOS, rather than the things I was doing close to the same things. I'll get through acoustic modes today and look at the ITRs. I agree that I have been placing too much emphasis on the C&R on the resistance side of things. I've never really trained resistance before, besides just doing "neeyahs", which are a less refined Q&R.

I've been practicing and teaching TVS onsets for two weeks now. I've been teaching onsets for years, but not as consciously picked apart as the TVS onsets. Lately, I have noticed my throat musculature is getting sore much like other muscles do after a workout. This is particularly noticeable after and with messa di voce and contract & release onsets.

I've tried to stay very conscious of unnecessary tension and pushing, especially since I teach up to five hours a day. My more serious students are noticing the same type of soreness in their throat musculature too, after a week of working with those two onsets. Is this normal when first starting to use these onsets? I imagine it is, since I'm likely working a muscle group an entirely different way than ever before. But want to be sure, since I'm pretty sure that I've never felt this before, even though I consider myself a more advanced singer.

If it's normal, then I'm extremely excited to hear how my voice coordination and strength benefit from it!