My first time posting here... help finding my mix? :(

[SAImuffin]

Hey everyone!

I have been singing for around 10 years now, but I used to put a LOT of pressure onto my voice when singing high notes so letting go of that straining habit and developing a mix still is super hard for me. I hope some of you may have tips for me or can tell me some exercises I could do to sound less nasal/more powerful for the high notes...

These covers are in Japanese. I hope you will listen to them anyway... I don't have any recent English covers at hand I fear

("zutto kitto", originally by Hirano Aya)

("scenario writer", originally by baikap. I think here you can hear my problem with the changing tone quality quite well.)

Thank you all in advance!

~ Sai

[Stiletto]

Hello Sai,

I am new here but can share a couple of things that will make this easier.

1. Our own ears are perhaps the worst tool we have to give us real time feedback on how we are singing. The sound is transferring past bone, soft tissue, atmosphere and THEN back through soft tissue and bone to get to our brains for analysis.

FORGET what your ears are telling you and focus entirely on sensation. Which is to say that through your low notes, and highest, you should feel almost zero sensation in the throat, face, neck, mouth, tongue etc. A buzz around the lips/nose is what you are looking for sensation wise. A complete and utter lack of sensation everywhere else is what you want. If you start to feel a squeeze or tightening anywhere in the scale - stop. That's the wrong direction 99 times out of 100.

2. Try to imagine your face, neck and shoulders full of botox. In other words, utterly and completely relaxed and unavailable to you in order to sing the notes you want to sing. Most singers will contort facial muscles and therefore neck muscles and everything else in order to reach for notes. That's inefficient singing and only leads away from singing powerfully. Anything that leads you away from the "botox" mentality, I advise running away from. I know its a stupid analogy, but I think a pretty powerful mental picture of what you want to strive for.

3. Practice in the mirror. You will think you are relaxed until you sing in the mirror and realize you are anything but. Do this a lot. It will force you to sing a particular way in order to move throughout your entire range. It will eliminate the "cheating" for notes and keep you on track.

4. When I am singing difficult material, I always sing it softly, and very gently a few times to get in touch with the lack of sensation I need to have when I am actually going to record it. I will not keep a take if I cannot sing it with almost zero sensation in the areas I mentioned earlier. I would suggest doing the same. Take a line that seems challenging, sing it softly without regard to how it sounds for now and focus on "0" sensation. Remember to do this in the mirror.

5. Almost without exception, when a singer "feels" powerful, he isn't. Singing when done right will most times feel very un-powerful and unimpressive to the singer but the exact opposite to everyone else or the recording. In my opinion this is because all of the energy/air is leaving the body and not staying inside the body when done right.

6. Lastly, focus on air speed rather than sound volume. I like to think of the singers number one priority is to move as much air as possible as efficiently as he/she can. When you sing a line, try and expel all of your air as effortlessly as possible in the process.

Let me know how it goes!

~Stiletto

[Stiletto]

For some reason I did not see the links! I just listened. You sound very relaxed and I would imagine that if I were to see you sing, you would appear to be as well. That's a great thing because that's 90% of the battle.

In terms of tone, power etc., the only thing that is lacking to my ears is the air. The second song in particular. While sung in tune and very pleasantly I might add, there is a notable lack of power and intensity. If there was a scale to measure such a thing and a maximum of airflow was a 10 and the minimum was a 1, I would say that you were singing at about 50% air flow in that demonstration.

In order to get where you want to go, you have to be able to move that up into the higher percentages.