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How to build BOTH strong, chesty AND free, released headvoice?


Opaa

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So how? Any tips?

I don't want to compromise one for another. Power or freedom. Tone or ease etc.

My ideal is pretty much Adam Lambert technique, he has it all. Perfect mix of power and freedom. He can hit all the strong notes in the world and he can sail between the lightest released head voice and do everything in between, it's just mindblowing.

Anyone else with this ideal? Any tips?

I'm currently working on CVT exercises and just started James Lugo's exercises and some demanding songs. I can sing very high, but if I want to have any decent tone I often have to stay lower and support like a madman. That's ok but I'm just not sure if what I'm doing will eventually carry to the "ultimate goal" that I have. I want to build a crazy good upper voice from E4 to E5.

Some audio of where I'm at right now:

Here's some curbing vowels with as much support as I can get and thickest tone I can get up there without doing anything unnatural or squeezing with the throat or anything: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8384032/2012/29.1%20powerful%20curbing%20all%20vowels.mp3

Curbing is tricky to me, I'm working on it. It takes crazy amount of effort to keep a full tone, but then it doesn't have much freedom or flexibility.

And here I kind of 'let go'. I relax more, go a lot higher but the sound goes in a weird, nasal, whiny place. Quite horrible, although the highest notes sound cool actually: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8384032/2012/30.1%20lambert%20screaming.mp3

Now I need a workout plan! Right now I'm experimenting with doing two things. One day focusing on a thick tone and supporting like crazy and not going crazy high. Then next day I work on release, lighter headvoice and going crazy high but often sounding weak.

It seems that the "heavy workout" is carrying results, because I'm able to sing some more demanding songs live now and with a nice full tone. It's also a crazy amount of work and I don't know if this direction will carry to the "Lambert technique".

What do you think?

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Go on with exercises and sing alot of songs. Your à lighter type tenorvoice just like Lambert much Will come with TimE and experience :) Congrats you dont really need to spend much time on building range(wich consumes years) just sing songs of artists you wanna sound like and Continue doing exercises :p

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Jens I've been working with my range for over a year and it has worked, I'm happy for that. Now I make it stronger and fuller, that seems to be the right thing to work on now. I'd love to go straight for that nice, relaxed Adam Lambert belting style, but I've had it with my whiny, wimpy voice and working and stretching that full voice and supporting like crazy seems to give some results. I hope I will be able to come back later when I have more developed full voice and technique and then work on the dynamics, lighter mix and headvoice connection stuff and not sound like a wimpy amateur while doing it.

But thanks, I was afraid that the answer might be that simple.. Sing alot of songs and exercise a lot and much will come with time and experience, thanks :)

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just like jens said...time, patience, and consistent practise. gains are typically slow and sporadic (ups and downs) but they come in time.

ironically, you don't nescessarily need to do heavy, thick, exercises to build your voice. it's not the be all/end all to adding substance and weight to the voice.

focus your training on finessing the voice as well, and learning to access your resonators. light, well executed exercises with support and connection can be just as, if not more important that chesty, curbing-oriented exercises.

you can always add weight later on.

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So how? Any tips?

I don't want to compromise one for another. Power or freedom. Tone or ease etc.

My ideal is pretty much Adam Lambert technique, he has it all. Perfect mix of power and freedom. He can hit all the strong notes in the world and he can sail between the lightest released head voice and do everything in between, it's just mindblowing.

Anyone else with this ideal? Any tips?

I'm currently working on CVT exercises and just started James Lugo's exercises and some demanding songs. I can sing very high, but if I want to have any decent tone I often have to stay lower and support like a madman. That's ok but I'm just not sure if what I'm doing will eventually carry to the "ultimate goal" that I have. I want to build a crazy good upper voice from E4 to E5.

Some audio of where I'm at right now:

Here's some curbing vowels with as much support as I can get and thickest tone I can get up there without doing anything unnatural or squeezing with the throat or anything: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8384032/2012/29.1%20powerful%20curbing%20all%20vowels.mp3

Curbing is tricky to me, I'm working on it. It takes crazy amount of effort to keep a full tone, but then it doesn't have much freedom or flexibility.

And here I kind of 'let go'. I relax more, go a lot higher but the sound goes in a weird, nasal, whiny place. Quite horrible, although the highest notes sound cool actually: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8384032/2012/30.1%20lambert%20screaming.mp3

Now I need a workout plan! Right now I'm experimenting with doing two things. One day focusing on a thick tone and supporting like crazy and not going crazy high. Then next day I work on release, lighter headvoice and going crazy high but often sounding weak.

It seems that the "heavy workout" is carrying results, because I'm able to sing some more demanding songs live now and with a nice full tone. It's also a crazy amount of work and I don't know if this direction will carry to the "Lambert technique".

What do you think?

HOW did you DO THAT?! that's amazing already as it is!!

by the way can someone explain what curbing is? how does it relate to TVS terms? (twang?)

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So how? Any tips?

I don't want to compromise one for another. Power or freedom. Tone or ease etc.

My ideal is pretty much Adam Lambert technique, he has it all. Perfect mix of power and freedom. He can hit all the strong notes in the world and he can sail between the lightest released head voice and do everything in between, it's just mindblowing.

Anyone else with this ideal? Any tips?

I'm currently working on CVT exercises and just started James Lugo's exercises and some demanding songs. I can sing very high, but if I want to have any decent tone I often have to stay lower and support like a madman. That's ok but I'm just not sure if what I'm doing will eventually carry to the "ultimate goal" that I have. I want to build a crazy good upper voice from E4 to E5.

Some audio of where I'm at right now:

Here's some curbing vowels with as much support as I can get and thickest tone I can get up there without doing anything unnatural or squeezing with the throat or anything: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8384032/2012/29.1%20powerful%20curbing%20all%20vowels.mp3

Curbing is tricky to me, I'm working on it. It takes crazy amount of effort to keep a full tone, but then it doesn't have much freedom or flexibility.

And here I kind of 'let go'. I relax more, go a lot higher but the sound goes in a weird, nasal, whiny place. Quite horrible, although the highest notes sound cool actually: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8384032/2012/30.1%20lambert%20screaming.mp3

Now I need a workout plan! Right now I'm experimenting with doing two things. One day focusing on a thick tone and supporting like crazy and not going crazy high. Then next day I work on release, lighter headvoice and going crazy high but often sounding weak.

It seems that the "heavy workout" is carrying results, because I'm able to sing some more demanding songs live now and with a nice full tone. It's also a crazy amount of work and I don't know if this direction will carry to the "Lambert technique".

What do you think?

First clip: You start in curbing but as the pitch increase, overdrive "creeps" in and therefore it gets more and more difficult until you can't sing higher. Instead, try to let neutral or metal-like-neutral (mln) "creep" in your curbing. Or stay completely in curbing.

Second clip: Your highest notes are good and it's usually BETTER (both sound wise and easier to do) if they're twangier than your low notes. However, when you travel down in pitch you KEEP that overly twangy sound - so I'm guessing you'd like the sound better if you were to gradually darken the sound as you go down in pitch - effectively making a more seamless transition from head to chest. Also, if you want to make the sound a bit less twangy you can experiment with adding a slightly more "dopy" sound to your tone or "yawn". Just be careful not to overdo it because at some point it will take away the nice "ring" in your sound that you get from the twang.

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Hi. I can try and give some feedback on the examples you posted:

I think singers that sing in this kind of singing style, I mean the good ones are using always good voice techniques, use many times the "belting" technique. I am not very updated with actual singers, but I can think of an example like Whitney Houston. She is using it (maybe used in the past) many times when she sings, But I can say that if someone does not operate it with a good breathing support it can sound exactly like yelling.

So it should be some different between simple yelling and actually singing.. You need to learn even if you sing in a pop style , lets say, how to use your body to support a tone. You should learn how to focus your voice, otherwise you are kind off throwing it from your throat. On the long run you might hurt your voice...

I suggest you should go for someone who can teach you some voice technique.. It is not enough sometimes just listen to someone we like as a singer and try to imitate him/her. Keep on singing though! especially if it makes you feel good!

Sarit Aloni

onlinevoicestudio.com

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Opaa - You've got it! Those clips sound great - and that F5 is really the perfect weight. That's about the heaviest you can go up at that pitch. You've got TA engaged all the way. That's Lambert's weight. You've developed the "single register" voice with practically a seemless transition to CT dominant head. It's the extended chest voice. I know these aren't CVT terms, that's just the way I think about it. Your tone is not whiney at all.

I guess you want more control - more agility up there? That's what I've been working on too. One thing I would suggest, and maybe you're already doing this, is to practice some fast Scalar type exercise patterns and carry them up as high as you can go. Tamplin's got some cool patterns in stage 3 that are pretty taxing. I find that I can sing these just fine and very fast down lower, but as I get aboe D5 I have to slow down a bit. (it's important to sing them as slow as needed to maintain control) I've taken those types of patterns and developed other patterns and different vowels and am working daily on getting these to be more free. The more free I am up there, the faster I can go. My goal is to be as agile up in that range - D5 - Bb5 as I am lower. I'm not there yet. It's coming slowly. Lambert is extremely agile up in that range and can go super fast without losing any control.

The other thing I've been doing daily is the CVT Neutral exercises. Those have helped a great deal as well.

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guitartrek thanks for the reply. I've been on a break with Tamplin stuff, but now I'm considering starting the stage 3, although I just started Lugo's stuff and I'm gonna stick with it for a good time I think to give it a real shot. There's so many options though, I just got to practice different things and develop this thing step by step. I've started CVT neutral exercises recently and they seem to work like magic to find those "light headvoice coordinations".

I've been experimenting also how to think about things, in CVT terms or in CT / TA (chest / head) terms or in both, and also a lot of other stuff. It's pretty confusing sometimes but I'm like a scientist who is experimenting with stuff and building understanding with experience. Also a CVT teacher keeps telling me that I tend to open my mouth too much, and yet Ken Tamplin teaches to do just that. Stuff like that is confusing.

More control and more agility? Seems like a good idea to work on fast patterns in mix and head voice, it might help me find that relaxed weight and tone too.

Thanks for the feedback jonpall, videohere, Sarit_Aloni, rfcorange. I'll read your post again later on when I'm able to focus :)

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BTW I read the vowel modification thread and something about guitartrek's way to describe it clicked right away:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8384032/2012/31.1%20vowel%20formants%201.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8384032/2012/31.1%20vowel%20formants%202.mp3

I have never done those mods so well. It keeps that sound together and I didn't have to fight it, it just clicked right. I also tried to apply them a bit with simple phrases (songs) and it's tricky but I know now I got to work on that a lot, it's clearly a big key to this... Vowel modification thread was very informative.

To me Ken's modifications are a bit different thing than what CVT teaches. Ken teaches the pockets that are formed in the back of the throat at certain pitches, and that pocket remains in the back of the throat even when you move the vowel around a bit. This is what I mean, I tried this idea:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8384032/2012/31.1%20vowel%20formants%205.mp3

I can move around with the curbing vowels and even move to overdrive and back, but that one pocket remains in the back of the throat. Wow CVT is totally right about those vowels and vocal modes, and so is Ken about that vowel mod or POCKET that happens in the back of the throat and changes as the pitch rises.

I'm learning... :) This thing clicked now so well and fast that it is scary... Maybe other things that I have been working on carry fruit now that I also consciously execute the vowel mods as well as I can.

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Oh I just sang Crying by Aerosmith the way I have never done before:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8384032/2012/31.1%20crying.mp3

I also locked my support here and there and squeezed a bit too much from the neck, had to push a bit and didn't hit the vowel mod "pockets" and stuff like that, but this is the first time that I sound alright when I sing this song and I didn't kill myself doing it, although it was a shaky balancing act.. The notes from E4 to B4 are the real balancing act, the screams often come easier to me.

Lol I'm just posting my singing workout diary here online, hope nobody minds! Well maybe this can be helpful to somebody else too.

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the pockets can be finessed into exactly where you (you, meaning you personally) need to have them.

the shades of the vowel can vary by singer also.

it's like tuning an old slide rule radio, if you're old enough to remember.... how you needed to dial in on a specific radio station just right to remove the static and noice from the signal? (pre-digital tuning).

and when you hit the pocket just right there's a feeling of release and you can feel as well as hear the resonance.

great feeling isn't it. that's progress. congrats.

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