Wanna be able to sing high without shouting

[Simpan24]

Hi

Right now im learning from Eli prinsens vocal technique program and in there he talks about thinning out your voice to be able to sing high in chest voice.

Sometimes when i hear Rob Halford when he sings on stuff like the bridge on Diamonds and Rust where he goes high on the Then and there part and on Heading To The Highway on a chance before i fall. I wonder does he thin out his voice or does he use mixed? Any good workouts on thinning out your voice?

[VideoHere]

Not being a wise guy, just trying to help out.....  

Do you understand what it means?

Do you understand why you need to do it?

This is a helpful video and exercise, but you should have a nice strong middle development work going on as well, because this serves like a launch pad to those higher pitches. Be sure to keep it bratty and don't sing too loudly.

This helped me very much because as you can tell he's not backing off and yet not going overboard.

Don't forget to warm up a bit before you go near this kind of stuff.

Also, the nay exercise is a good one.  The teachers will likely add more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[KillerKu]

Don't neglect top down training, imo. Swell a light non breathy sounding falsetto into a bigger voice without straining. If you keep going with the right vowels, closure, twang, and support you can build a stronger head voice. I can kind of take that and inch it into a shout. If you just shout you'll always be using thick folds, firm closure, and trying to thin from there without awareness of the other states of closure was too hard, for me at least. I had to approach voice from both sides and gradually increase and decrease the intensity.

Now that I have more than one coordination, I can kind of inch a shout down, but back in the day when I tried to sing lighter/middle/mixed/whatever, I just strangled myself, having no idea what the hell that was. 

Also, try different vowels. the vowels I intuitively sang with no knowledge of singing voice were 'ah' and 'oh' with a somewhat low larynx. Keeping a very open space. Those can be shouty vowels in the high range. Experiment with narrower vowels like 'a' in apple  'i in sit or 'e' in edible. R vowels might help too. Like arrrr and errr.   

[Felipe Carvalho]

@Simpan, can I hear how "shouted" sounds like in the present moment, go for it and blast it out, let me hear how it sounds like.

[Robert Lunte]

Agreed Felipe...

To raise the quality of our responses guys, lets encourage people to paste links so we can hear what they are doing. I mean, lets be honest, if we can't hear it, then what can we really be 100% sure about? 

Also, Simpan... it seems on several occasions we always come around to advising you to train and get to work. None of these issues you are concerned ab out are going to ever go away or improve if you are not training. Are you training? 

[Robert Lunte]

Hi

Right now im learning from Eli prinsens vocal technique program and in there he talks about thinning out your voice to be able to sing high in chest voice.

Sometimes when i hear Rob Halford when he sings on stuff like the bridge on Diamonds and Rust where he goes high on the Then and there part and on Heading To The Highway on a chance before i fall. I wonder does he thin out his voice or does he use mixed? Any good workouts on thinning out your voice?

Look, I don't know what Eli is talking about, or if Eli knows what he is talking about but... to sing high without shouting you have to balance vowels x energy x frequency x musculature coordination and strength ... The first thing you should do, having heard you before, is heal your voice... start doing a lot of resonant tracking and get out of your throat. You need to learn how to produce clean vocal fold compression and resonate in your forward mask and hard palette more. You then need to work on simple, light and floaty , early bridges that are just smooth, regardless if they are windy or not... when you have that nailed, you need to then begin to work on your belt musculature.

[Simpan24]

Yes i am training. I am right now training on sirens. It will take some time for me to thin out my voice because im a baritone.

 

[Jarom]

Yes i am training. I am right now training on sirens. It will take some time for me to thin out my voice because im a baritone.

 

Make sure you slide on the sirenes instead of jumping from note to note. The point of sirens are to help you bridge and smooth out the break. So, if you keep doing what you're doing with the jumps they won't help you. Make sure you slide through all the notes..

[Simpan24]

Ok did it sound horrible?

[Felipe Carvalho]

3 things that you could work toward in order to improve this sample.

1 - Same vowel through it all, no nasalance. You begin with a nasal Ah, then you add a H behind the next note, then you change it to OH. Its either AH or Oh, and dont make it nasal, oral all the way, literally keep your voice in your mouth.

2 - Before you breath, think of the highest note on the interval you are going to sing, position your mouth, tongue, everything as if you were singing that note, then inhale WITH that positon and thinking of the vowel , dont let anything change, inhale with the "high note/vowel position" and keep it until the last note is finished.

3 - Dont thin, I have no idea of what you are trying to achieve by "thinning", but in fact, given what I heard in these samples, you would benefit from going strong. You have a bit of airyness, insecure attacks, etc. So instead of "thining out", I would think "loud and clear". Think authoritative voice, or calling someone thats far, whatever you need to keep you strong. The key here is to think of volume, of "more voice", and not of forcing/pushing it.

[Danielformica]

Hey simpan you definitely don't have to worry about whether you are a baritone or tenor yet unless you decide to sing classical. 

From listening to the clip I think you know that what's happening is you just keep getting louder and louder until you can't get any louder and it just caps out. That is definitely not the way to do it. You want to stay connected without getting louder. Work on your falsetto up and down your range a bit first then choose a volume and stick with it. Sing on ah to oo that might help. Try to relax your face and jaw and mouth like your a mannequin and think like you are singing straight across rather than going up and down. Just some thoughts to work with but don't continue with what you were doing.

[KillerKu]

 

Ok did it sound horrible?

I thought it was a pretty iconic scale. Ah ha, to ah oh. With a defiant, kind of snotty timbre. When you get more skilled sing this:

 

[Robert Lunte]

Agreed Felipe...

To raise the quality of our responses guys, lets encourage people to paste links so we can hear what they are doing. I mean, lets be honest, if we can't hear it, then what can we really be 100% sure about? 

Also, Simpan... it seems on several occasions we always come around to advising you to train and get to work. None of these issues you are concerned ab out are going to ever go away or improve if you are not training. Are you training? 

I have to quote myself on this... 

And... if you want your singing reviewed... if you are going to embed a file or soundcloud of your singing or training and you would like me and the experts on this web site to chime in and give you feedback, please do so at the "Review My Singing" forum.

Moderators, please help on this... if a discussion turns into a "Review Me..." discussion, please move it to "Review My Singing". 

Thanks guys... 

[KillerKu]

Hey simpan you definitely don't have to worry about whether you are a baritone or tenor yet unless you decide to sing classical. 

From listening to the clip I think you know that what's happening is you just keep getting louder and louder until you can't get any louder and it just caps out. That is definitely not the way to do it. You want to stay connected without getting louder. Work on your falsetto up and down your range a bit first then choose a volume and stick with it. Sing on ah to oo that might help. Try to relax your face and jaw and mouth like your a mannequin and think like you are singing straight across rather than going up and down. Just some thoughts to work with but don't continue with what you were doing.

You see I can kind of understand a variation of this thinking, but if you obsess about equalizing volumes you'll end up pressing your G2 and hooing or strangling your G4, unless you're like the deepest bass ever or are singing very quietly with G2 as the bassline. Obsessing about volumes just made me paranoid and constrict. Any evidence I've seen from monitoring the tract (CVT, etc) supports the idea that certain ranges support louder notes in certain configurations.

And it's not volume that caps the bridge. It's the vowel choice/closure/respiration. People can bridge later with a heavier vowel choice and some of the people here could likely outmatch Simpan24 with decibels per note. You can plug up the bridge quietly. So for me, the answer is not to fear volume. It's finding a coordination that works. Some are louder, some are quieter.

[ronws]

Yes i am training. I am right now training on sirens. It will take some time for me to thin out my voice because im a baritone.

 

Judging by the timbre of your voice, you are not baritone. And not being able to get through the passagio without yelling does not mean you are a baritone. It means you are yelling to get through the passagio area. So, stop yelling. 

You need to start out light and let your higher notes be light for a while. You may think it won't sound "manly" for a while .After a while, your lightness will build back into strength.

Also, that was not a siren. It was a vocalise with the starting note ascending up the major scale.

[Simpan24]

Ok hehe weird in school choir they said i was bass/baritone. Should i focus on getting into head voice instead of yelling?

[Simpan24]

Ok i tried again without sounding nasal 

[KillerKu]

Ok hehe weird in school choir they said i was bass/baritone. Should i focus on getting into head voice instead of yelling?

Focus on finding a way to smoothly transition from a headier voice into your chest with no flip. Strengthen the head voice so there isn't a noticeable flip at various volumes. Top down sirens might be useful. Once you get the idea of bridging and connecting the voice, you can include more bottom up. Right now it sounds like you slam the high notes. Do descending scales from head voice as well as ascending scales.

And I think you might be a nasal baritone excluding lower resonance like Bowie pre 75 or so. But it's too early for faching and it will really only matter for low notes and timbre all that much.

[ronws]

Ok hehe weird in school choir they said i was bass/baritone. Should i focus on getting into head voice instead of yelling?

From what I can hear, you are not baritone, certainly not bass. They may be calling you that because they need one. Or, they could be right and maybe I am wrong. Either way, yes, focus on head voice rather than yelling.

[Simpan24]

I tried singing without straining but it ended up sounding too windy and too quiet. And i dont know if this is falsetto?

[Jarom]

I tried singing without straining but it ended up sounding too windy and too quiet. And i dont know if this is falsetto?

Don't worry about sounding to soft or wimpy right now. Just worry about bridging and connecting  through the break without choking. By the way you don't sound quiet or wimpy in this recording.  One thing you can try is singing the top note in falsetto over and over again while slowly adding some twang by crying like a baby or quacking like a duck. High notes should almost feel like falsetto but sound like chest if you do them right.

[KillerKu]

I tried singing without straining but it ended up sounding too windy and too quiet. And i dont know if this is falsetto?

This is the right direction for now. You can work over time at adding more mass if that is your intent. As for volume, sing an A2, and then sing this voice you're doing right here. Same distance from mic, no compression. Watch the size of the sound wave.

You'll probably be surprised how loud it is. The other vocal you were using was shouting so of course that was loud. It would have probably been 5 times as loud as your A2. In some ways certain voices may feel smaller or seem smaller in your throat than they sound if you're used to shouting.

I've got no problem with shouting artistically personally as I like the sound, but if you have other less fatiguing ways to sing that's a good thing. Eventually you may be able to swell this voice here into a shout.