Jump to content

Vocal transformation

Rate this topic


MDEW

Recommended Posts

After training for awhile to strengthen your singing voice have any of you noticed a change in the texture of your speaking voice? Also,Have any of you noticed that you sound like a completely different person when you sing than when you speak.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, I did not have this issue.

But, if you have a spoken voice that is too tense, or if you are used to alter it by lowering the larynx for example, as you exercise into more relaxed posture, your voice may change regarding your own perception, others will just understand you better.

A real change, like sounding like somebody else is impossible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not impossible, if it was there could be no vocal impersonaters. Highly unlikely yes.

I sound like different people purposely by using different mouth positions or posture coordinations ,different constrictions maybe. So why not if you start loosing constrictions adopting better posture, make better use of onsets the total sound and texture could change all around.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

the sound of you speaking then singing....i'd have to hear what you mean. can you send over a sample?

but as far as the voice altering a bit when you exercise, yes it can get a little lower or higher depending on what you are working on.....or how hard you worked it that day.

however, you have to be aware of not falling into the trap of "i need to put on my singer's voice." some singers think they have to alter their voice to sound like a preconceived image they have of what a singer "should" sound like.

that's a bad trap you don't want to fall into. work with your natural voice, and your natural tone and timbre. if you want to get a sexy sound, or a certain sound, that's fine, within the context of your own voice.

this guy i know has to make everything he sings sound like elvis......i mean everything....lol!!!!!!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know if my voice sounds different to other people.

I never asked them.

But to me it feels more resonant. I feel a lot more buzzing inside my body

when I'm talking.

Also, I can feel the airflow in many places inside my body when i'm speaking.

I used to talk with just my chest, but now I feel the air all the way down to my stomach.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What got me thinking about this was the Queensryche thread and the one with Michael Bolton.

The voice used in Silent Lucidity is very much different than my natural voice at this time. If I was singing in a very natural way to me at this time I would sound more like Michael. But at this point my resonance is way off.

When I do sing in a style used in Silent Lucidity the resonance seems to be more powerful.

Example of sounding totally different when you sing and when you speak would be Jim Neighbors. His natural voice sounded nothing like when he was singing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

nabors was probably classically trained. when you sing classical style the larynx is lower and you divorce yourself from speech pronounced vowels which will have the effect of deepening and richening the tone, kills the southern accent, all of that.

that's why a classical singer's range doesn't (typically) go as high as some rock singers. they focus on beauty of tone..you can only go so far up in range with a lowered larynx.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was basically a question that had run through my mind. Some of us have problems with resonance, support, cord closure and vowel production. All of these things do effect how we sound. I do know that the general shape of ones body and the shape of the vocal tract itself has a major part in how our voice sounds.

But also how we hold our mouth and lips. Some of us speak with tight lips and open nasal passage.

Once we relieve these things We really should sound a whole lot different in our speaking voices.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

mdew, Im sorry but I dont remember you sounding anything like Michael Bolton in any of your recordings.

Impossible meanning: Cant fool a close relative/voice identification test = voice is still the same. Remove constrictions and problems and you will just reinforce the qualities that make you sound like yourself, will allow identification to happen more easily and will be also easier to understand.

All this talk is simply wondering about voice metaphysics, all I can say is use these efforts into producing something simple but consitant and pleasant to listen, its more than most can do and more than a head start, then you may begin worrying about using resonance strategies.

Resonance strategies can be used to go after certain interpretation choices when doing a song already performed by another artist, to try to retain the original idea, but you will still sound exactly and just like you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Felipe you are correct and I was not meaning that I do in any way sound like Michael Bolton. I did say I would sound "more" like Michael than the singer of Queensryche. Not Deep and rich but lighter and smoother. And I intended to say if I was doing everything correctly and natural wich I know I am not doing now.

I know that we should train without any misconception on how our voice should sound to us. Be led by the voice not try to force it anywhere. Asking perhaps if someone found anything different or unexpected in their voice after a fair amount of training.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think my speaking voice has changed at all but I do know I am sometimes more conscious of it. I now sometimes think of how I am speaking. When I first started to actively learn about the voice and singing a year ago I was more concerned about altering my speaking voice and improving it. I think this was more result of reading Roger Love as he focuses a lot on professional speakers. I have since come to terms with all of it and don't concern myself so much with my speaking voice.

We all sound different to ourselves as opposed to how others hear us. By the way people imitate me I guess I sound more like Rocky Balboa or like a typical Bronx or Brooklyn movie stereotype. A gangster? I have a heavy NY accent. I always feel I might be singing that way also so I remain aware of my pronunciation in songs.

But I no longer think about the connection between my speaking voice and singing voice or how one effects the other.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

M, I've been singing quite a while so I don't know. And it probably doesn't matter. I take a magic pill to sing, anyway.

:D

One or two here have said that my speaking voice sounded lower than they imagined it to be, probably because I sing so high, and they imagined my speaking voice to be high, like Bon Scott or Roger Taylor (from Queen.)

Then, again, I don't think I speak that low, to begin with.

I suppose it depends on who you ask and what day of the week it is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know about any magic pill to make you sing better but I know a couple of things that may make you "think" you sing better.:lol:

Being that the way you talk can be a product of your environment. If you are timid you may speak "heady and soft" or work in an environment that demands you to speak loud and twangy. You can be accustomed to your sound.

It just seems that after training for singing you could find that in case the of the timid person the voice could gravitate to a more chesty sound with a deep resonance that that person didn't even know they could produce.

I just wondered if any of you had expirienced something like that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know about any magic pill to make you sing better but I know a couple of things that may make you "think" you sing better.:lol:

Being that the way you talk can be a product of your environment. If you are timid you may speak "heady and soft" or work in an environment that demands you to speak loud and twangy. You can be accustomed to your sound.

It just seems that after training for singing you could find that in case the of the timid person the voice could gravitate to a more chesty sound with a deep resonance that that person didn't even know they could produce.

I just wondered if any of you had expirienced something like that.

Totally agree with that. Both in the work sense and in the instrument sense. Since I was 10, I have played guitar and sang. So, I had to figure out how to sing over the volume of a guitar. And work influences may take away from or add to the experience.

In my job, I handle the most picayune of details. What did we do, who said what, etcetera, it's almost like being a police officer taking an evidence statement to be used in solving a crime.

So, if someone tells me I was pitchy, I need them to tell me where, on what word or part of the phrase. Chances are, I could fix that spot with the twist of a vowel. Or, is the whole thing a total loss and I should start from scratch? But most people are incapable of giving the necessary detail and it was unfair of me to ask or expect it of them.

More often than not, they just say it was pitchy and then prescribe this or that singing systems and these scales for this amount of time. Why, because that is what they have done for the past year or so. It's like hitting a fly with a nuclear warhead. Hand me the flyswatter instead of a thermonuclear blast. But most people cannot differentiate between the two.

A few can pinpoint a problem and the exact solution to that probem.

Another problem is misconception and the desire to fight. People will misunderstand me and think that I am saying that scales are useless. I did not say that but they will be looking for a fight and need a justifcation to start one.

All these things can affect singing and the perception of singing.

Sorry to go off on a tangent like that. And since most people are incapable of the detail I would ask for in a critique, I must, as I was raised to do, figure it out for myself, which gets back to one's environment. And yes, that can have an effect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have been amazed by the people here. From just listening to a song they seem to be able to pinpoint a problem you might be having and give you steps to smooth things out.

I can tell when I am having a problem but I usually can't pinpoint it on my own.

And when it comes right down to it what distinguishes ones speaking voice from another is just as much a matter of accent, mannerisms and inflections. A voice impersonater may be off on the actual pitch or depth of a voice but if he has the accent and mannerisms down we can still tell who he is impersonating.

Felipe, I have to agree with you that although the voice may get deeper or thinner whatever the case may be, over all you will still sound like you to others.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A voice impersonator often takes one variation in a voice and a phrase and then highlights it, making it cartoonish. For example, even the best imersonators of Pres. Bush #43 make the accent thicker than his own voice and lean on the phrase "very funny" which he may have uttered only once. The illusion is that they sound and talk like him when, actually, they don't.

And I agree with your post, M. It's a total effect. And even so, despite whatever effects and mannerisms, people can still your voice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know about any magic pill to make you sing better but I know a couple of things that may make you "think" you sing better.:lol:

Being that the way you talk can be a product of your environment. If you are timid you may speak "heady and soft" or work in an environment that demands you to speak loud and twangy. You can be accustomed to your sound.

It just seems that after training for singing you could find that in case the of the timid person the voice could gravitate to a more chesty sound with a deep resonance that that person didn't even know they could produce.

I just wondered if any of you had expirienced something like that.

mdew,

i'm going to try to explain this the best i can...follow me...

as time goes on, one of these days you will likely get to a point where you will be practising something and all of a sudden the breath pressure will go into a certain place in the vocal tract which will feel "like a good fit"...will feel correct...you will sense a slight release of pressure and the tone will be very resonant....

pitch will be dead on.....you will just know it....

you may not know what you did. if you had sufficient breath pressure, the tone can be a bit startling to you, but yet you'll know something was right.

the long term goal is to find and discover that place, each singer has to discover this for themselves....that pocket, for every throat shape (vowel) and every note in your complete range.

you may have to spend years to get to that place.

does this help?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

mdew,

i'm going to try to explain this the best i can...follow me...

as time goes on, one of these days you will likely get to a point where you will be practising something and all of a sudden the breath pressure will go into a certain place in the vocal tract which will feel "like a good fit"...will feel correct...you will sense a slight release of pressure and the tone will be very resonant....

pitch will be dead on.....you will just know it....

you may not know what you did. if you had sufficient breath pressure, the tone can be a bit startling to you, but yet you'll know something was right.

the long term goal is to find and discover that place, each singer has to discover this for themselves....that pocket, for every throat shape (vowel) and every note in your complete range.

you may have to spend years to get to that place.

does this help?

Excellent point, Bob. We each will find our own way.

With one proviso. It can take some people years. I am doing some things differently in recent times that make things easier and more fluid for me that I did not do in the previous decades of singing. So, did it take me decades to do what I can do today? Or just flashes of insight and recognition of feeling at a moment that lights up the path?

I'm not here to scare people off from what it takes to sing. Though we have had a few that momentarily appeared and seemed to lack drive and commitment, looking for the magic pill that I have. My magic pill is decades, and not always done correctly. My magic pill is that I cannot imagine not singing and my drive to make my singing something that I like and more accurate, etc, ad nauseum. I don't think that M is one of those people who lacks drive and desire. I think he has that in truck loads. Along with emotional baggage that is weighing hime down.

Others learn quickly and have good instincts. Such as Dio. He didn't even want to be a singer, at first. In one of his early bands, he played trumpet. Everyone else in the band tried to sing and were not good. So, they "volunteered" him. But he started out with the self-determination that he was going to do what he could do and never mind what others could do. That is the Dio method and he started singing for his first band around age 11. So, how long did it take him to learn to "Sing"? Even then, people liked his voice and he only did what it is his voice could do, per his own words. That's not to say that he didn't pick up things along the way but he was mainly guided by his own vision.

For me, it is easier to see singing as a lifelong thing, rather than a determined amount of time to a level of proficiency. But others may need those milestones. If someone told me years ago that it would be years before I could sing well, my thought would have been "ok, whatever ..." Because I was raised with "figure it out for yourself." And there's no time limit, long or short.

A person may not get it in a day or a week, or a month, or a year. Or 10 years. Or they may work at it exactly for 3 months, 2 days, 5 hours, 20 minutes, 14.7 seconds and then something finally dawns on them or clicks into place.

Though maybe, all this stress on "years of work" might work as a test of someone's resolve. But, to me, that sounds like a challenge, like someone trying to tell me that I must suffer this or that or whatever. And my answer is yeah, whatever, and then go do what I am going to do.

I am the only hell our mama ever raised.

(insert devil smiley here)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ron,

i'm not here to scare people off either.

from what i have read, to reach a certain level of proficiency (a relative term)....starting at square one....let's assume you are starting from square one. because i believe even if you sang for many years without vocal training, and then you decide to vocal train (i'm one of those) it can be like starting from square one.

if we assume that scenario, it takes on average 4-6 years.....why not tell it like it is? if someone doesn't want to seriously work on it, no one says you must vocal train, but it does take years to develop a performance, pro-caliber voice, that's all i'm saying.

and brother ron, as far as dio is concerned, it's hard to believe he didn't have some kind of vocal training or if not vocal training, studied to figure things out for himself.

there's just too much technique being demonstated. he's probably another one of those guys that isn't going to divulge much of anything.

he said it's all about attitude and doing things "intelligently"..had he expounded on "intelligently" all his wisdom and experience would have come out.

but you could just tell he doesn't want to do that, because he probably busted his ass to be able to sing like that.

just my opinion buddy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess it depends on past experience.

I was raised with the expectation of being on my own and figuring it out for myself. Don't worry, I have other issues from my upbringing. But singing is not one of them. I was never told that I could not sing. The only impediments in that were in my own expectations that I would some day, as a man, get a low, grumbling baritone, at least, voice. My step-grandfather, no blood relation to me, was a bass. But, in voice pitch and center, I am more like my mother. She was not a high pitched woman. But I sound a lot like her. And no, it doesn't hurt my feelings if some think that I sound like a woman. Let's call my speaking voice mezzo-soprano, just for giggles.

I have not seen a particular number anywhere of exactly how long it takes to sing well in the style that you want, though I've heard some opera teachers feel that it takes years, up to a decade, to mature into the voice you should have. They also don't advise going outside of what your voice should be doing. But hey, who listens to that? That would be like, doing what it is your voice should do and staying away from what it should not try to do.

But let's run with 4 - 6 years. That's not a bad number. As long as someone actually pays attention to the lessons to be learned. It's not enough to just log 6 years. It must be 6 years of avoiding or getting rid of bad habits. 6 years of learning what it is your voice can do and stay away from damaging things. Otherwise, it is six more wasted years, regardless of how long one has sung before.

I also understand and agree, to an extent, of starting over even after years of singing. For I have done that, to an extent. By giving up the idea that I will have a baritone bottom and simply accept that I am a light tenor (and I have had a classical coach confirm that for me, btw) I have released one major impediment. And so learn to approach differently. And I, like you, am not following every thing that Frisell says. Anyway, so I learn new things, and I learn how much easier it is to sing since I am not detuning myself trying to get a baritone bottom end, no matter how much I admire some baritones.

I learn that it is okay to accept my limitations while, at the same time, working in new directions. I just don't see it as pushing in new directions. I don't need that visual but some people do. Some people psychologically need that "struggle" because struggle is all they have known and cannot contemplate not struggling.

Which is not to say that I don't train at singing. I do. But so much of it is approaching from the right perspective and using the body the way it works. On the way home from the grocery store today, I was singing along with a song being played on Mad Rock 102.5 FM. "More than a Feeling," by Boston. And matching Brad note for note. Without straining my throat. Not trying to sound like Brad. Not trying to sound like Axl trying to sound like Brad. Just sounding like Ron singing duet with Brad. And hurting my own dang ears from volume. I probably sing as loud as you do, I just don't think of it as carrying chest high. But I digress.

4 - 6 years? Who cares? I'm going to have fun along the way and not pay attention to 4 - 6 years and there's no one big enough to stop me.

I think, deep down, M is the same. He's got the drive. He's just got to give himself permission to do so. Once he sheds the efluvia of a family telling him he cannot sing (and I know how tough that can be, some people never escape that or other emotional trauma), he will fly through 4 - 6 years. Or more. Or less. With the drive to sing, it's not a matter of how long it takes. I think such a statement is simply to weed out the wannabes from the serious student.

It's like the introduction to bud/S (Navy SEAL training.) They will tell you that it is an historically proven statistic that 70 percent of the cadets will fail. Either through failure to score adequately in the course, or through voluntary removal from the program. For the whole program is voluntary. You can quit the course and it will not count as a demark on you military record. Some medical out through an accident in training. Some fail through incompletion of the events or scores that are too low. Almost all failures are voluntary self removal from the program. All you have to do is ring the bell three times and you can go back to your regular base, a hot meal, a hot shower, and full night's sleep in the rack.

To borrow that example of dedication, it is also with singing. You keep going because you cannot contemplate otherwise. But, along with that, I think, should be some self-knowledge. Following bud/S class 234, one guy absolutely sailed through gun week, though he was a bit weak in swim week. Why did he fly through gun week? Because he hunted small game since he was a child. Anyway, some cadets are going to have an easier being snipers, some are going to have an easier time sneaking in planting explosives. Others are going to be better at commanding others as team leader. Each one has a talent that he is better at than others on the team.

Also with singing. So, as a singer, find out if you are a sniper, a demo expert, an intelligence and cartography expert, or if you are good at leading others to do what is needed. The leader of the team is not always the best rifle shot at 600 yds. So, he calls forward the guy with the M-24 who can part the hair on a gnat at 600 yards.

Same with your voice. That may take 4 - 6 years to figure out. May take less time. Who knows? I suppose some people care exactly how much time it will take to do this or that. I don't have an answer. I just know that I have not thrown away absolutely everything in the last couple of decades of singing. My starting over is more about learning to stop impeding myself.

4 - 6 years is only worth it if the correct effort is applied. Otherwise, it's 4 - 6 years more of beating the crap out of yourself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As for RJD, I know I can't change your mind.

To me, it's like saying to him, "you didn't do that on your own. You can't possibly know how to sing. So you think you can sing? Hey everyone, come in here. Ronnie's going to sing. Sing us something, Ronnie. Sing something mister I-can-sing-even-though-I-have-not-had-structured-singing-lessons."

And then he sings something. And someone says, "Well, where did you get singing lessons? There's no way you could sing like that on your own. No way."

Yeah, it's kind of like that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As for RJD, I know I can't change your mind.

To me, it's like saying to him, "you didn't do that on your own. You can't possibly know how to sing. So you think you can sing? Hey everyone, come in here. Ronnie's going to sing. Sing us something, Ronnie. Sing something mister I-can-sing-even-though-I-have-not-had-structured-singing-lessons."

And then he sings something. And someone says, "Well, where did you get singing lessons? There's no way you could sing like that on your own. No way."

Yeah, it's kind of like that.

ron, you're making the assumption (for me) that i'm saying unless you have voice training you cannot sing, and that simply is not what i'm saying.

like i said somewhere else before, all of the pros are going to run into voice issues (large or small) at one time or another...it's inevitable.

whether it's health related, stamina related, whatever, even a psychological impediment....they will very likely experience a vocal issue.

ronnie james dio, right up to pavarotti.

at some point........some will be able to work their way out of it and some will need the help of professional whether it be a teacher or a coach or a doctor.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...