Would love feedback on my singing !

[Jeanette O'Sullivan]

Hi there,

I am new here, and was hoping to get some feedback regarding the areas of my singing that need the most work.

I do not have much vocal training, but am generally regarded as having a "good voice". I want to improve the areas where I am lacking (pitch? power? tempo/rhythm? tone quality? how?), from a professional perspective!

See my clips here:

https://www.smule.com/JeanetteLucie

I realize there are a number of clips:

Perhaps two representative ones would be Jar of Hearts and Perfume; the rest are less practiced.

 

 

[Jeanette O'Sullivan]

Feel free to comment on whichever clip you would rather. 

[Draven Grey]

I listened to Perfume. I tried Jar of Hearts, but it's hard to hear you over the other voice.

You had an ear for pitch and a natural pleasant tone to your voice, but your fundamentals are all a bit off for singing. I'll get to that more in a minute. Yuo have a lot of great potential, and I can hear a great singing voice in there just waiting to be utilized in full. Please don't take my review as harsh. Text alone can feel that way very easily. My hope is to help you, not critisize you.

You need to be training your voice. Not doing so is holding back a lot of your potential. I highly recommend starting with The Four Pillars of Singing and seeking a vocal coach with student success in the style you're going for. Not success as in career success necessarily, but in learning to sing that style well - contenporary rather than classical.

There's only so much I can address in text without you having a coach or doing a lesson with me, Robert, or other coaches here. The first thing I hear is your placement is lending itself to more speech vowels than singing vowels. There are a couple of ways to get you started toward proper placement of singing vowels. Start by making a soft "K" sound while breathing in. That spot your tongue hits the roof of your mouth is where you want to point your vowels, letting the soft palate do most of the work for you. Higher notes will feel like they go deeper into the soft palate as well, and if it makes sense in text, you want to allow your vowels to shade back from that soft "K" spot, adding deeper vowels in the soft palate along with the deeper note (deeper in the soft palate, but higher in pitch). Besides willing them into the soft "K" spot, you can also bare your teeth, or smile. This helps naturally lift the voice. Additionally, when first starting to do this "lift" of the voice resonance and vowels, it may help to place a finger on your lower lip and try to make your voice go up and over it. This is called "over the pencil", as it's modified from putting a pencil between your teeth and sing up and over it with only vowels.

Your TA (chest voice musculature) strength and breath support are a bit weak, which is a HUGE area holding back your voice. GRanted, without proper placement, trying to add these in will only get you yelling, rather than singing with more power. There are ways to strengthen these but it would likely take a lesson to really show you how, since you need get a proper feeling for the basics befroe we can truly help with adjustments.

One thing you can do right now is bridging and connecting. This will help you gain better control over the musculature, placement, and movement of the voice. It's arguably the most important thing to learn for singing besides pitch. I talk mroe about that in the video below. To predicate my videos, I truly only put these out there to help people get a feel for proper sensations of the voice. There are things to do from there that make it even easier. For instance, instead of opening the jaw wide to help TA engagement, this is better for a more controlled vowel: raise the embouchure (lift and bite), narrow vertically, and push the tongue slightly forward into the bottom teeth (which gives extra support to the TA muscles). OPening the jaw may help you learn to turn on the TA muscles and sing higher notes, but narrowing is what allows you control from there.

 

[Jeanette O'Sullivan]

interesting: there is no second voice in Jar of Hearts, just an echo of my own voice.

Thanks for the feedback! Guess I better get a vocal coach

[Robert Lunte]

A very generous response from Draven. Nice. Thanks for your help Draven.

Jeanette, I listened to "Hallelujah".

It is apparently clear that you have a lovely voice with great potential.

Two things:

1). Smule is a fun tool, really a toy to use for singing. With your passion for singing, you should step up and learn how to make a better production to feature your singing. I recommend one of the "everything you need" recording kits found at our The Vocal Gear Store. click on Recording. See the Focusrite kit.

2). You voice is pretty, but no doubt you could benefit from more musculature and strength. That would come from belt or TA ( a muscle ), strengthening workouts.  

 

[Robert Lunte]

1 hour ago, Draven Grey said:

I listened to Perfume. I tried Jar of Hearts, but it's hard to hear you over the other voice.

You had an ear for pitch and a natural pleasant tone to your voice, but your fundamentals are all a bit off for singing. I'll get to that more in a minute. Yuo have a lot of great potential, and I can hear a great singing voice in there just waiting to be utilized in full. Please don't take my review as harsh. Text alone can feel that way very easily. My hope is to help you, not critisize you.

You need to be training your voice. Not doing so is holding back a lot of your potential. I highly recommend starting with The Four Pillars of Singing and seeking a vocal coach with student success in the style you're going for. Not success as in career success necessarily, but in learning to sing that style well - contenporary rather than classical.

There's only so much I can address in text without you having a coach or doing a lesson with me, Robert, or other coaches here. The first thing I hear is your placement is lending itself to more speech vowels than singing vowels. There are a couple of ways to get you started toward proper placement of singing vowels. Start by making a soft "K" sound while breathing in. That spot your tongue hits the roof of your mouth is where you want to point your vowels, letting the soft palate do most of the work for you. Higher notes will feel like they go deeper into the soft palate as well, and if it makes sense in text, you want to allow your vowels to shade back from that soft "K" spot, adding deeper vowels in the soft palate along with the deeper note (deeper in the soft palate, but higher in pitch). Besides willing them into the soft "K" spot, you can also bare your teeth, or smile. This helps naturally lift the voice. Additionally, when first starting to do this "lift" of the voice resonance and vowels, it may help to place a finger on your lower lip and try to make your voice go up and over it. This is called "over the pencil", as it's modified from putting a pencil between your teeth and sing up and over it with only vowels.

Your TA (chest voice musculature) strength and breath support are a bit weak, which is a HUGE area holding back your voice. GRanted, without proper placement, trying to add these in will only get you yelling, rather than singing with more power. There are ways to strengthen these but it would likely take a lesson to really show you how, since you need get a proper feeling for the basics befroe we can truly help with adjustments.

One thing you can do right now is bridging and connecting. This will help you gain better control over the musculature, placement, and movement of the voice. It's arguably the most important thing to learn for singing besides pitch. I talk mroe about that in the video below. To predicate my videos, I truly only put these out there to help people get a feel for proper sensations of the voice. There are things to do from there that make it even easier. For instance, instead of opening the jaw wide to help TA engagement, this is better for a more controlled vowel: raise the embouchure (lift and bite), narrow vertically, and push the tongue slightly forward into the bottom teeth (which gives extra support to the TA muscles). OPening the jaw may help you learn to turn on the TA muscles and sing higher notes, but narrowing is what allows you control from there.

 

Draven is great. One of my favorite coaches on YouTube.

[Jeanette O'Sullivan]

Thanks Robert! Thanks both of you for the generous feedback. Realizing that the examples I chose may not actually be my best work - glad you listed to something more recent, Robert!  I will definitely start off watching some tutorial videos in the areas both of you have suggested.

Cheers!