A siren & an introduction

[incessantmace]

Hi all! My name's Ramon, I'm 22 years old and hail from the Netherlands. I've been skulking about these forums for a couple of weeks now. I wanted to post a short clip of my voice doing an ascending G3 - G4 siren. Skip to the bottom if you want to listen, cause here's a brief summary of my singing history.

 

I've been singing for a year now. But I only started to take it seriously in the last month or so, as I started training with the Four Pillars of Singing. Before that, I was training with a local teacher but she lacked the necessary experience and expertise for me to grow under her tuition. There was no head voice training whatsoever so I couldn't sing the songs I wanted to, because they were too high for me.

I practiced scales about an hour a day but I didn't progress, to my dissapointment. So I left!

 

Then I remembered that I'd bought the 4P a couple of years ago (Believe it was 2012 when I bought it) and went out and mailed Robert Lunte. He was kind enough to allow me to freely update and redownload my 4Pillars copy. (Awesome customer support, anyone?)

When I initially bought the program a couple of years ago I became sick. In fact I still am but it has just receded (if that's the correct term for that). For a long time I was unable to engage in proper singing, I believe about 2 years. Then when I got better and wanted to start singing again I totally forgot about the 4P and went to that local teacher instead. BIG mistake. Wasted a ton of money on practically useless lessons. 

 

I feel I've improved more in the last month of practicing with the 4P than I have in entire previous year.

 

 

 

Is this proper head voice which I'm phonating? Also, are there any glaring issues? Any constructive criticism would be much appreciated, thanks!

[hobbit rock]

Ah......a fan of early Soundgarden....Good man.

[ronws]

Yes, good head voice. Now, to avoid the flip coming down, you have to remember to back off the pressure, a little bit.

[incessantmace]

Ah......a fan of early Soundgarden....Good man.

 

You noticed that huh, lol. Chris Cornell is definitely someone I idolize as a vocalist.

 

Yes, good head voice. Now, to avoid the flip coming down, you have to remember to back off the pressure, a little bit.

 

Thanks! I'll keep that in mind. I've noticed that the flip is always worse on the descend for me so I'll definitely give that a shot.

[hobbit rock]

Yeah. Ultramega OK is a great album. They were still an underground band and the recording sounds pretty low budget. Not a lot of sheen to the production.

 

Siren sounded good btw. I've been doing a lot of them lately- high to low and descending super slow so that I can really feel where that flip is going to happen and just hold on to the connected feeling (and sound). I'm more likely to change registers abruptly if I descend quickly. I'm still feeling it out and trying to build strength.

[ronws]

You noticed that huh, lol. Chris Cornell is definitely someone I idolize as a vocalist.

 

 

Thanks! I'll keep that in mind. I've noticed that the flip is always worse on the descend for me so I'll definitely give that a shot.

That's because you know that you need to ramp up, so to speak, to go higher. Then, coming down, you haven't ramped down to a lighter attack or onset and that is why you get that flip, break, switch, whatever you want to call it.

[incessantmace]

For some reason I can't quote while I'm using the mobile version of the forum on my phone. Is this a known issue or is there something wrong on my end?

@Ron: That actually makes a lot of sense so I'll have keep that in mind too! Good stuff, thanks!

Also, when you said back of the pressure earlier I assumed you meant breath pressure? When I try to do that my voice unravels into falsetto. I can't keep the compression going when I go less than full throttle on breath support.

[ronws]

Try, instead, backing off of the air speed, rather than pressure.