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Distorsion on light phonation

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Xamedhi

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Hey all!

I'm a big fan of Jorn Lande and I was listening to this song and wondered... what kind of distorsion could he be using on that light note at 00:49 ?  Is it common to be able to use distorsion in light mass phonation?

 

I don't know how to use distorsion, and when I have tried to add false cord distorsion to my singing, I can only do it on chest, but I can't for the life of me apply that on headvoice. Also, I can't sing with distorsion, it's uncomfrotable and sometimes has hurt, so I must be doing it very very wrong ( that's why I avoid it, hahah)
I really am puzzled as to how can distorsion be achieved at such light coordinations.  

To people here who can do distorsion effectively, can you do that kind of stuff he does?
Is it hard?
How does it feel?
 

It seems to me that a lot, if not most, of people can do distorsion intuitively while talking or yelling. All I can do, is the Louis Armstrong voice haha But I feel like that's cheating, because it engages swallowing muscles ( think of Kermit the frog ) and I can't sing a serious song there, haha

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 Distortion is anything that disrupts a steady vibration. Too little air across the folds, Too much air.....Too little compression, too much......Over twanging........

Some people get a little bit of moisture in their throat and sing through that for distortion (same effect as gargling )......some people let the uvula vibrate by allowing the tongue to lightly make contact......

   False folds and other loose flesh like the soft palate  can be caused to vibrate to make an effect...... Jorn may not even know what he  is doing that causing that sound.

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Cmon guys what we define the sound as is irrelevant, we can clearly hear what jorn is doing. He's letting go of foldclosure and in someway adding a sweet distortion, im also intrested in learning this as i cant do this. You got any idea bob?

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Jens,

You turned me on to this guy and he is great.  I'm not much for performing distortion.  But it's funny....It manages to seep in.

I'm pretty sure if we were in the room with him, he'd be pretty loud in some sections.

 

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heres a cool way to get distortion at lower volumes. I speak alot about not blasting and chasing the sound but keeping it more controlled.

 

Guys, I'm working with Dan right now to get his vocal training offering up onto the TMV World Teacher Workouts store front... soon Dan will be there... and others. I created this downloads interface to give other teachers, other then myself, a chance to offer their products and services to our community. Im excited to have Dan there, we have been working on getting it ready for a few weeks. We are almost done. Thanks for your patience. 

You'll notice that me and Kevin Richards are already there... 

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heres a cool way to get distortion at lower volumes. I speak alot about not blasting and chasing the sound but keeping it more controlled.

 

Yes!... this is really good advise and coaching. Always find the clean position first, then "overlay" the distortion on top of that. This approach to finding distortion is the exact reason why we call the distortion techniques in "4Pillars" , "Overlay Distortion"... to point out that the distortion is an "overlay" to an already existing clean position... I think it takes some real experience to recognize and coach this detail about training or finding vocal distortion... Good call Maestro Dan... 

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Jens,

You turned me on to this guy and he is great.  I'm not much for performing distortion.  But it's funny....It manages to seep in.

I'm pretty sure if we were in the room with him, he'd be pretty loud in some sections.

 

and he is lighter in some sections as well .  thats the point of the thread lighter phonation's with distortion. ;)

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My tastes are generally pretty far swung to uncontrolled, chaotic singers, so I haven't really listened to Jorn too much. He is really good at what he does.

I do think I have an idea of how it is done, and it's about being able to control the swell of a head voice, while controlling a certain degree closure and adding a certain percent and adding a rasp on top. I suck at it, but gave it a shot here of what i think would help, which is swelling a head voice to find a position and then and then adding a bit of rasp:

https://app.box.com/s/hf05u2de8bivukccqp9z18u3xfxcjdtt

And what I got there is only because I skyped with Dan way back and he did this voice swell thing. Since then I started noticing it in a few of my favorites. Al Green does something similar around 1:28 through 1:40 or so:

 

The thing I've discovered with rasp into a lighter voice, is I can't push it at all. It will flip into a heavier coordination. It has to be on a controlled level or a controlled gradient. As someone that really likes chaos, I don't know if I want extreme control over my voice. A lot of times what attracts me most in art is a loss of control.  If I ever reached Jorn's level it might just be too much. I can already anticipate being disappointed in the lack of chaos if my body operated mechanically predictably 99 percent of the time.  I like surprises and unexpected results, messes, imperfections, and stuff like that.

But this thing just requires quite a bit of coordination. Especially on the level that Jorn does it. I can hear the hootier resonation at the same time? I don't think ti's a coordination people would stumble into that often. Get good at the crescendo, decrescendo thing. Figure out the exact amount of air you can let slip through, while still swelling the note. Figure out the hootier vowels you can still swell into a twanged head voice. Figure out the most minimalist way to add rasp. By the time you figure that stuff out, you're probably pretty far along in mechanical mastery of the voice. Obviously a teacher who knows how teach such things would get you there faster. I kind of hope I never get as good as this guy.  I might live with Al Green one day, but I'm not in a hurry. I think Lande is just too much control for me.

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  • 2 months later...

Hey guys, I think I got the coordination for this. It's been a while since I visited the thread. I forgot I had started it.

This is from September 11th

 

https://app.box.com/s/6g5566t8hwtaoio6hlrqa42xubj7apgz

 

It has quite a bit of air, so it still feels and sounds uncontrolled, it could be considered falsetto. It's the closest I can get to the sound.  Then I do a clean headvoice on the same area just to show I can phonate easily there.  

How I got the coordination was just sirening up I do at the end. It's a light/medium chest voice with distortion that I just siren up with a bit of extra air and looseness.

 

 

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