How to sing with a smooth and warm tone?

[frisbeeman]

I really love the vocal tone that Bing Crosby and other crooners get, but my voice doesn't have the same depth and doesn't have that creamy sound. Is there something I can do get closer to this sound? I take voice lessons, but I don't want to ask my teacher because she doesn't really like jazz a whole lot and I'm taking from her to learn proper technique. I have a pretty good classical voice; I just want to transition to a more crooning style on occasion.

[ThePowerOfOne]

It's simple: imitate him over and over until you find his qualities in your voice, exaggerate it if you have to and then refine it.

[Jim Brewster]

Overall it should be less technically demanding than classical, but that doesn't mean it will be easy. You'll have to "unlearn" some of your technique. Tone, phrasing, and pronunciation should be more speech-like with less concern for projection--crooning came into vogue with the microphone. Think of carrying a tune and a casual conversation at the same time, and you'll start to get the right attitude.

My favorite crooner is Nat King Cole. I like his tone and clean intonation. Crosby and Sinatra were a bit "scoopy" and "swoopy" for my taste.

[ronws]

I really love the vocal tone that Bing Crosby and other crooners get, but my voice doesn't have the same depth and doesn't have that creamy sound. Is there something I can do get closer to this sound? I take voice lessons, but I don't want to ask my teacher because she doesn't really like jazz a whole lot and I'm taking from her to learn proper technique. I have a pretty good classical voice; I just want to transition to a more crooning style on occasion.

The answer is in your own words. You go to a teacher to learn "proper technique." Which implies that either you or your teacher, with you believing your teacher, consider jazz singers like Bing Crosby to be singing with improper technique. My question would be, how is it that Crosby was using incorrect technique? Or was it "incorrect" because it was not "opera"? I never heard Bing get a bad note.

Learning to sing jazz is no easier or more difficult than learning to sing opera. It is still breathing, resonance, pitch control, mastering of the tone, whatever that tone is.

This might mean changing teachers, especially if you want to sing jazz and she is not going to teach you.

Then, again, we all have our predilections. I am not a singing teacher. If I were, and a person showed up wanting to learn screamo, I would show him the door through which he just entered. Which is nothing against screamo, just my own value system.

Short answer, define what you want, seek it out. You only have one life and trust me, it is shorter than you can imagine.

[moneyspills]

The first is that singing effectively doesn't always mean singing louder. You may see this in amateurs, that they push their voice and raise the pitch thinking this is going to project the singing or make it sound better. The sound instead just becomes screechy and pitchy. When learning to effectively sing you need to sing from your entire body; the back muscles, the diaphragm, and the entire voice box are involved. Control is the key; you need to control your voice, the pitch, and the tone in order for it to sound better. This means not just singing "more" but controlling the vibrations that begin in the throat for a deeper, richer sound.

Here's a video to help you sing better: Music Classes Online

[RowboCaup]

A big part of jazz is learning how to improvise, best way to do that is to practice improvising on familiar progressions. If your goal is to sing jazz, then I'd say drop the classical teacher (unless you feel like you are going to benefit from the lessons) and start taking jazz voice lessons.

A lot of crooners have baritone voices, they usually don't sing particularly high, or particularly low. What they do is they sing with style. It's all about the delivery for them (well, for all singers lol), that's where it counts. Learn the music theory, practice that improvisation, develop that style, and find other cats to jazz with. Enjoy one of my favorites, the Velvet Fog: