Tony O'Hora How to sing like.......

[MDEW]

In Tonys' videos he demonstrates the underlying tone to a singers distortion or grit.

I can sing the underlying tone without trouble. How to sing the grit? That is the problem.

Should I send a clip with the underlying tone and see if it is right to build on? For those of you who can sing like this, Is this the way that you approach the sound?

[MDEW]

Do you really maintain that underlying tone that he speaks of? I can get the pitch clean and soft. When I try to sing louder I start having problems.

I was experimenting last night with A4 I can get a grittier sound but I do not think that underlying tone was used. I believe the vocal folds themselves were responcable for the distortion therefore changing the underlying tone. Not false folds or Soft palate vibrating.

Or am I still too confused about distortion and grit.

[jonpall]

Brightening the sound is key for high grit, yes. I sometimes have trouble doing that, maybe because I did lots of SLS many years ago and I'm used to lowering my larynx a bit when singing high. But for rock screaming/singing like that, you actually need to raise your larynx. In addition to this, you need to make sure to increase your energy level/support a bit.

Btw. does anyone have any cool exercises for this subject?

[MDEW]

It seems like a contradiction; the underlying tone is Lowered larynx almost dopey and dull but to get the sound you brighten and increase energy. :/ Does anyone see the irony here?

[benny82]

It seems like a contradiction; the underlying tone is Lowered larynx almost dopey and dull but to get the sound you brighten and increase energy. :/ Does anyone see the irony here?

It just seems: You can twang the epiglottic funnel (brighten) and dampen the larynx (dopey) at the same time. They will cancel each other out, but you can mix them. The balance is actually quite similar to TA and CT balance. You can use both at the same time. They will cancel each other out in terms of vocal fold length, but the tension on the folds will rise.

You can try this: start with a dopey sound and hold it. Then, while holding it, move the back of your tongue towards the soft palate (position it near the upper molars), while not changing the position of the tip of the tongue (which should be at the lower front teeth).

This action will brighten the sound and will almost automatically cause you to "smile more" just like the others suggested. When you move the back of the tongue close enough to the palate you will notice the grit starting without losing the underlying tone.

[Felipe Carvalho]

It seems like a contradiction; the underlying tone is Lowered larynx almost dopey and dull but to get the sound you brighten and increase energy. :/ Does anyone see the irony here?

There is no irony mdew.

When you use what he is describing as a basis, an adjustment happens and the emission ballance changes. If you take that same adjustment and change the posture of the larynx (higher) + opening the pressure relationship will go outside what the coordination can deal with, resulting on the noise.

Its important to be able to do it clean and correctly first, so that ypu dont need to cause more unballance than what is necessary. And it comes with time. The better you are on controlling the clean, the easier it will be.

Lets put it this way. The dopey sound causes resistance to appear above the fold level, reducing the necessary effort to phonate and allowing you do continue using your voice normally above the passage point.

If you do that, and then remove the resistance, that lighter coordination cant deal with it anymore.

There are many other things you can do with head register, including belting. But the rounder and dopey sound is for sure one of the best ways to let the ballance happen.

I sincerely doubt anyone watched the video and became able to sing that song decently though...

[MDEW]

What caught my attention was the underlying tone. I can do that. That is what I do in the car while listening and singing along. It sounds like crap so I do not do it for anyone else. But when I would try to sing for real worse crap happens. :o

[Felipe Carvalho]

But you see, it must develop until it sounds awesome before you can trust to sing with it. Adding distortion is not the solution for the tinal disparity.

What is done on classical technique is doing a leap of intensity on the passage. At whatever volume you are on chest voice, when you cover you increase the intensity to compensate the dampening and the lighter quality, this makes the passage almost innaudible but retain the control present on head voice.

[MDEW]

Thanks Felipe, Benny, Jonpaul, Phil, All good posts. Very helpful ;)

[ronws]

It just seems: You can twang the epiglottic funnel (brighten) and dampen the larynx (dopey) at the same time. They will cancel each other out, but you can mix them. The balance is actually quite similar to TA and CT balance. You can use both at the same time. They will cancel each other out in terms of vocal fold length, but the tension on the folds will rise.

This sounded confusing to me. Canceling each other out, yet mixing. Makes me think more of filter adjustments in playback, like the bass-treble knob on a cheap radio. And, electronically, that is an adjustable filter, essentially a band pass filter that is rolling of both highs and lows, depending on the resistance of that stage, which is adjusted by your knob. Changing resistance changes whatever frequency is resonated in a circuit, which, by the function of only allowing certain things to pass, prevents other things from being reinforced, acting like a "filter."

As opposed to a 10-band equalizer, for example, on a hi-fi stereo, for playback. In which case, you can adjust for different levels of bass and treble. However, sonically, in the human ear, one is going to take precedence over the other. And whatever "seems louder" gets precedence. It is the masking effect of the human ear. Loudest tones get prominence and attention.

Thing is, I don't think the human voice is necessarily capable of 10-band equalization, so to speak. I think it is more of the variable reinforcement of higher over tones over lower over tones. And, in a mathematical simplicity, any tone distortion that is not produced at the folds would necessarily be somewhere else in the vocal tract and that would be a matter of what tissue is available and the alignment of that tissue, both in degrees of tension and its place in the stream of the note. And, similar to the process of heterodyning in electronic wave propogation, that combination will also produce what is electronically called side-bands but in acoustics is overtones and undertones. Heterodyning is when two waves meet. There will be two additional frequencies. One that is an addition of the two frequencies, and one that is a subtraction or difference. Let's say the fundamental has a value of 4. And the distortion or added tone has a value of 2. The two additional frequencies would be 2 and 6. But if the resonating space is only big enough for the fundamental and one of the heterodyned frequencies, most times, the smaller one, which is the higher one, gets passed. So you would have values 4 and 6 getting reinforced.

Though I could be wrong. It would not be the first time.

[derekreno]

This is a good thread. This kinda has me confused too. The dopey sound I get, and can get some pretty good grit below the passaggio. When head voice comes into play, that's where I get all messed up. Like MDEW said, I can do the underlying tone easily, but if I try to add some balls to say an A4, it all falls apart.

What confuses me is the low larynx with twang. Isn't twang produced with a higher larynx?...or am I getting my buzzwords mixed up. So how do you twang with a dampened larynx...

[MDEW]

Twang is a narrowing of the aryepiglottic sphincter. Supposedly. So it has nothing to do with larynx position.

I was working on this today. Not actually the distortion but playing with the harmonics.

I could get a deeper sound in the high notes but nothing that made it sound closer to "Chest voice".

What I tried to concentrate on was the fold closure and keeping it consistant. Because of the nature of twang it helps with keeping the cords closer together. The dampening of the larynx helps cut back on some of the higher harmonics in twang.