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Happy Thanksgiving! Can You Feel The Love Tonight. Tips and advices??

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I'm curious. Do you know how to sing with a bit more volume? If it's an artistic choice, I can understand the understatement. It's just quieter and thinner than would usually be done.

If you try to open up resonators (something that helps me is imagining widening the back of my throat), experiment with vowel shapes (uh as in up, is a thicker one), and apply breath support, you could add a lot more volume or more 'fullness' to the sound. It might help a bit with pitching too, although you did pretty well for this style of voice.

I don't know what your goal is, how much is choice and how much isn't. All things said, you emote fairly well which is good. Too many singers run through a song like it's a jungle gym, navigating the structure but not really feeling it. Whatever you do, keep that spark there, I can see some passion shining through and that can take you a long way.

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hello ,

this is a smouth and nice version  and you are on pitch .

 

however there are some things that you can improve .

First of all  , the breath /diaphragm support .  You switch to mix/head voice too early i think , so you dont really have power , with a good support you could sound deeper and more powerful .

 

second thing , I find that you sound not enough bright , make your tongue more tonic , and sing with smile .

 

And be careful with the "i" vowel ...

 

 

good job anyway ;)

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Oh man, all of our musical advice on teaching you improvisation is gone with the forum update, Joshua. If you didn't get it, let me know and I'll try to recap for you. Ronws, MDEW, and I all  were ready to give you enough information to build you into a jazz soloist on your piano while singing like a pro on top!  When you come back, let me know if you got any of our info. You're gonna surprise yourself.

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Hey guys! THANK YOU for all the feedbacks! I really appreciate it.

 

@Roddy I've never had a vocal lesson, so I don't really know about breath/diaphragm/head or any of that stuff (although I've watch some videos in Youtube). I basically just sing based on my ears and my feelings. I do agree that my voice is not powerful enough, and tend to "break" when the notes get higher... And I really want to add some volume and fullness to the voice. So, I'll just keep practicing! Thank you!

 

@KillerKu hi thank you for all your feedbacks!!!! I saw your advice in this post, but I didn't get any other information from any of you guys outside this post. Is that what you're talking about?

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I'm curious. Do you know how to sing with a bit more volume? If it's an artistic choice, I can understand the understatement. It's just quieter and thinner than would usually be done.

If you try to open up resonators (something that helps me is imagining widening the back of my throat), experiment with vowel shapes (uh as in up, is a thicker one), and apply breath support, you could add a lot more volume or more 'fullness' to the sound. It might help a bit with pitching too, although you did pretty well for this style of voice.

I don't know what your goal is, how much is choice and how much isn't. All things said, you emote fairly well which is good. Too many singers run through a song like it's a jungle gym, navigating the structure but not really feeling it. Whatever you do, keep that spark there, I can see some passion shining through and that can take you a long way.

 

I tried to sing with more volume, but ended up a little bit screaming and straining and doesn't really sound good. I think it's just some technical skills. It is not really my artistic choice. I like full and smooth voice with just the right amount of volume. I do agree I have to sing bolder, and "let it out" more

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Hey guys! THANK YOU for all the feedbacks! I really appreciate it.

 

@Roddy I've never had a vocal lesson, so I don't really know about breath/diaphragm/head or any of that stuff (although I've watch some videos in Youtube). I basically just sing based on my ears and my feelings. I do agree that my voice is not powerful enough, and tend to "break" when the notes get higher... And I really want to add some volume and fullness to the voice. So, I'll just keep practicing! Thank you!

 

@KillerKu hi thank you for all your feedbacks!!!! I saw your advice in this post, but I didn't get any other information from any of you guys outside this post. Is that what you're talking about?

 

I had made an observation that you seemd a bit more comfortable at the piano when singing and you had told me as a pianist you were taught only classical and could not play by ear nor improvise, which saddened you.

 

So we all stepped in to teach you how to step outside of classical music into both improvisation and playing by ear: I'll recap as much as I can for when you get back:

 

For improvising, the easiest thing for a beginner to do is take a common scale (major, minor, blues are quite common ) and experiment with trying different note combinations both separately with different phrasings (melody) and combined in different patterns (harmony). If you play classical piano, you probably know key signatures. If you think of those less as 'note patterns on a paper' and more 'distances between between notes you can utilize in general' they become a very different tool to use harmonically and melodically.

 

Improvising within a scale can produce cool results, and it's personally how I started improvising many years ago.

 

So like in a F Major scale: you'd have

 

F (root note/tonic, the key signature, right?)

G (major 2nd interval, count 2 notes up or 10 down)

A (major 3rd interval, count 4 notes up or 8 down)

A#(4th interval, count 5 notes up or 7 down)

C (5th interval, count 7 notes up or 5 down)

D (major 6th interval, count 9 notes up, or 3 down,

E (Major 7th interval, count 11 notes up, or 3 down)

 

Any of these notes could be combined into various melodies, harmonies (chords) and various patterns simply by exploring them freely, finding the sounds that resonate meaningfully with you as an artist.

 

Now scales are a great approach to improvisation, and can produce good results, but personally I hit a wall with this approach (some call it noodling) and for me personally to make progress I had to do a lot of training for my ears. 

 

What this means, is you really start to 'listen' for notes in your head. You listen to the distances between notes (intervals) and you try to 'play' what you 'hear.' One great exercise for training your ears is simply learning melodies or chords of songs 'by ear' as best as you can. A really good exercise for a beginner, is to sing a note with your voice, and refuse to let change the note no matter what you do with your instrument. In the meantime, search your instrument as many incorrect notes as is necessary until you this exact note. Even if every single note you play is wrong, eventually you 'will' find the right note. Over time you will grow faster and faster at finding the right note and your mind will grow 'more and more ' in tune with your instrument, until you can 'hear' the next note you would be playing more and more. Or hear a harmony you might want to add?

 

You can also listen for common chord changes in songs and start to hear them more and more quickly. Really common ones are heard in songs like Stand By Me (Ben E King), or Let it Be (Beatles). Some genres are more inventive than others (blues is often very predictable, while jazz and classical are often comparatively more complex).

 

Anyway, most people eventually reach a limit of what they can hear in a piece of music, depending on its complexity and speed. I can pick out most melodies that aren't extremely fast, and a degree of harmony and translate it to an instrument, but once you reach like an orchestra with hundreds of instruments often with different parts, it's likely even a really great musician will have too much going on in the piece to fully dissect everything. That's part of why written notation is so important, is to preserve pieces that are simply too complex or reproduce by ear. 

 

The good news is you only have 10 fingers, total. So for the most part, on a piano, you can really try to train yourself as best as you can to be 'in tune' with your instrument and play from in your mind.

 

My advice in get started, don't feel bad having fun with your fingers. Let them roam. Fingers are often much faster than musician's ears (mine still are to this day), unless the musician has absolute pitch (often obtained at about 5 years old).  Explore your scales, chords, in different orders, different rhythms, different combinations. Don't censor yourself. You'll have to get over your fear of being 'trapped' as a classically taught pianist who can only read from a sheet. As you progress train your ears more and more until more sounds are coming from your 'mind' and less from your fingers. Most musicians aren't perfect at this skill, even great ones.

 

This part of music music is a really beautiful and rewarding journey, and there is no reason to feel sad or trapped into being a 'classical' pianist. To me that's like feeling sad about never haven't been to Paris, when you have tickets on your desk. You'd surprise yourself with what you can do. You'll be able to combine these skills with your voice as well. For compositions, songwriting, arrangements, and accompaniments. Don't give up on this, I believe in you thoroughly. You're still fairly young too. You have so much time to become fantastic. If you have any desire at all, chase it. Don't let anyone tell you there is a category of musician that can't do these things. It's not true and you can do it. 

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