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Adele-Make you feel my love, Birdy-Skinny love covers

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I can hear emotion in your timbre. It has a delicate and fragile quality to it. It is a style you can develop on with more training. It's sombre and affecting to me. I can feel it. I like the individuality of it. It's a bit falsetto/breathy but your personality comes through in the way you phrase things and the vowel choices.

 

If you don't already know how to make a less breathy version of this voice, you can train to control the amount if you'd like. The quickest fix I know of, is saying a vowel extremely fast. Like 'uh oh' but really, really fast. It's pretty hard to make it breathy unless you add a lot of H.

 

Where do you want to go with your voice? You can take it a lot of places. Where it is at right now, I find it nice to listen to, and I'd liike you to keep posting. I'll keep listening to ya, but it's probably not dynamic enough for much mainstream consumption yet, if that is even a goal. Pitch isn't too bad most part, a bit slurred and moves about a bit, going a bit flat on the lower notes on the Adele song, but I like the style of movement.

 

I would listen to singing with this kind of phrasing, but people who are more interested in pitch perfection would advise probably a little precision towards reaching the center of pitch a little sooner and use less blue notes. 

 

Anyway, I think you should keep singing, train your voice into whatever you want it to be, and keep posting here. It's cool. I like the middle finger too. Punk rock falsetto. ;)

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I've been always wondering how people sing to sound breathy because I actually love how it sounds and can't do it myself :) I think it goes well with your timbre making the song soft and tender. 

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I've been always wondering how people sing to sound breathy because I actually love how it sounds and can't do it myself :) I think it goes well with your timbre making the song soft and tender. 

 

Breathy Voices:

 

Perfect timing, Matakka. I had some time when warming up today. So I figured I might be able to help both of you. So I'll start with the breathy voice. The breathy voice is when the vocal folds in the larynx are more apart. You probably know how to whisper, which is an extreme version of breathy voice with no voice.

 

In English, the "H" consonant is basically the breath control consonant so adding more of the feeling of that consonant. Yawning and sighing at the same time can help achieve a really relaxed natural position for things to be breathy.

 

However you should pay attention, because breathier voices on average are more fatiguing on the vocal folds, because there is so much air blowing past them. It's fine to use, but you'd want to rest it. And the other thing, the breathier you get, the lighter your tone should be (closer to falsetto). The thickness of the a voice is partially controlled by how closed the vocal folds are, so if they are closed and you're trying to be breathy, it can put excess pressure.

 

I made this sound file that might help here:

 

https://app.box.com/s/j8s6vh4kkwenvu55u4vby3cho6pbrsi6

 

I explain a few things, but since English isn't your first language, you might have to just listen for the sounds. I sang snippets of Happy, Unchained Melody with ligher voices. But I showed a fuller voice singing Valerie, but those fuller sounds are more advanced and you want to be careful how much you add.

 

Non Breathy Voices

 

 

So on the flip side and for Krispian this might be helpful for you. If you sing or speak breathy and you don't know how to reduce this, I made something that might help you.  What is going on is your vocal folds are more apart. One of the best exercises I've found for reducing breathiness in a fairly intuitive way, is to say a vowel very quickly. Like 'uh oh.' And then gradually extend the vowel out until it is longer.

 

Now the only thing about this exercise, is it might create too much closure, more tha you want. So it can help to add the feeling of an invisible 'H.' Like a tiny cushion.

 

And for Krispian, I don't know if your native language is English, but I tried to explain it a bit. If you don't understand, the sounds are still demonstrated. At the end I showed what it would be like to sing Stevie Wonder breathy, how I would have to lighten the timbre, vs if I sing it not breathy, I could add more closure.

 

https://app.box.com/s/dt6rg9ryrcw4i64b94wf2lbj72jysohy

 

I hope these can help, it's really useful to be able to control the amount. In general, kind of a medium thing is fine. Fuller thicker notes, require less breathy.

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Hi KillerKu,

 

Thanks a lot for this lesson, I enjoyed reading and listening! :)

It's such a cool thing to feel how the voice sound goes from something intuitive and very unstable to a skill

which can be technically understood and trained.

Although at this stage I'm having more questions than answers.

About vocal folds closure - I guess it can only be trained by whispering and singing in full sound and

comparing the sounds? Because it is not something you can actually feel and control like you do opening and

closing your mouth for example.

I like your exercise to reduce breathiness, we're doing quite the same thing with my coach. Like she described

the feeling you should get - it's like pricking with a pin into your diaphragm by these short sounds 'ah' or

'oh'. Then gradually extending.

What I don't quite understand yet is, when you're going breathy do you lose support or should it still be there? When you're singing high notes, is it better to go breathier or fuller?

Sorry if I'm asking silly questions here, I will also look through the singing technique forum :)

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Hi KillerKu,

 

Thanks a lot for this lesson, I enjoyed reading and listening! :)

It's such a cool thing to feel how the voice sound goes from something intuitive and very unstable to a skill

which can be technically understood and trained.

Although at this stage I'm having more questions than answers.

About vocal folds closure - I guess it can only be trained by whispering and singing in full sound and

comparing the sounds? Because it is not something you can actually feel and control like you do opening and

closing your mouth for example.

I like your exercise to reduce breathiness, we're doing quite the same thing with my coach. Like she described

the feeling you should get - it's like pricking with a pin into your diaphragm by these short sounds 'ah' or

'oh'. Then gradually extending.

What I don't quite understand yet is, when you're going breathy do you lose support or should it still be there? When you're singing high notes, is it better to go breathier or fuller?

Sorry if I'm asking silly questions here, I will also look through the singing technique forum :)

 

It's cool, I like your voice and want you to succeed. I've got some free time at the moment.

 

You generally don't want your vocal folds to be as open as in a whisper unless you are actually whispering. That's an extremely open position even for most breathy styles. You'd want the minimal amount of openness basically get the breath into the tone, as it is less fatiguing. 

 

If you train, you actually can control the amount of openness to some extent. In English we have something called an H Consonant. Which we used in like 'hello' or 'hi.' Another very relaxing way of finding it is the yawn and the sigh. Once you've toyed with the extremes you can learn to control the amount of closure some. It's the 'fine tuned' closure (once the folds are already pretty much touching) that is more difficult to control. In this exercise I created a breathy voice with H and yawn/sighing, and then reduced it steadily using the word 'less, less, less; less.'

 

https://app.box.com/s/0jc1edededefpm1ede6nwponlt3d8cgq

 

You will want to support breathy voices, but you'll probably refine your support. It doesn't have to be a huge workout once you get isolated the components that are necessary for a given voice.

 

For singing higher notes, generally the rule is to use less air given the same 'closure of the folds' because to make higher notes they are vibrating faster and creating more compression. It can create a situation where you're 'forcing' air into a tight space it doesn't fit through. You don't want that one. ;)

 

But if you make the timbre lighter (that yawn sigh tends to shade it to a lighter place and let them part some) you can use more air on a high note than a lower note, you just have to accept that the timbre will be lighter. 

 

It's past midnight here, so I can't sing very loud, so I thought it would be neat to record something, this is Fleetwood Mack's Rhiannon:

 

https://app.box.com/s/5g2y6d2kq0tmig1pyten64seq92vzjdr

 

That right there is about as breathy as I am comfortable singing. If you notice is it soft and wispy, tender, and delicate, right? As long as you let it get softer, and don't force air it's not a big deal. I wouldn't speak breathy all the time and rest the voice regardless. It can sound cool.

 

The final thing you should know is some of the fanciness is production, here is the same track just raw with no production:

 

https://app.box.com/s/l32xstp5ypapixm3fn6hygpem203yx4v

 

Anyway. you have a cool voice and sing Valerie, Matakka. :D You encouraged me to record it too:

 

 

I'm wishing you well in your singing there and it's cool to ask questions from time to time. I like helping people. :)

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