***Vocal Training: Tips, Techniques, Critiquing***

[RunsWithBuffalo]

I thought it would be a good idea to have a place where people who are looking to improve their voice can go to find help.

Remember, almost anyone can sing and sing well as long as they practice with good technique. Listen to dave sing on the early demos, he sounds pretty bad, but over the years he has gotten a ton better and even won the grammy for best male vocalist.

You may not win a grammy, but you can learn to sing with confidence and be in tune.

Feel free to post good articles, websites, tips, whatever

This is a great website. check out the breathing article for starters and work your way through it
http://www.vocalist.org.uk/techniques.html

NEW!!! check out the flash player at vocalist.org!
It has midi files that you can sing along to to practice. Especially
good for those who dont have a piano or cant play scales on a guitar.
http://www.vocalist.org.uk/vocal_scales.html

Another good four part article with sound clips
http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/columns/ ... art_1.html

Here are some tips i have for making your voice sound better than it is:

1. Reverb. Reverb. Reverb...no seriously, adding a little bit of echo really makes your voice sound a lot better, but be careful not to overdo it. Reverb makes things sound smoother with less of an edge and for this reason it can make your vocals get lost in the mix. For all you cool edit pro users, i find that if you record your vocals separately, it is very easy to just double click the vocal track to put it into the single track mode. from there just highlight the entire track, go the left menu and find reverb under delay effects. I personally like "vocal - nice presence" but you can experiment.

2. COMPRESSION: many of you may be wondering what the hell it is. Well to put it simply, when a singer sings into a mic, there voice probably is very loud at some parts and very quiet at others. What a compressor does is smooth out the signal. It quiets the loud parts and raises the volume on the soft parts. The overall effect is a much more streamlined sound. In cool edit, go under the amplitude tab and find dynamics processing, there are two vocalcompression presets if you scroll down the menu. try each one out and see which you like. remember to highlight the entire track first.

3. Confidence: Be a fuckin rock star. If you have to wait till no one is home and just belt it! tenative voices always suck, you have to sing like you mean it. A lot of this comes over time, you just have to get over how your voice sounds to you. No one likes the sound of their own voice, but if you record and listen to it enough, you get over it. Once that is out of the way, you will be able to sing with a lot more confidence. Why do you think drunk people sing better? its because they dont give a fuck about what anyone thinks. That is exactly the mentality you have to have. Don't worry, it comes with practice and time.

4.Harmonies: This is hard I won't lie, it is something you have to practice. Remember, singing an octave higher isn't really a harmony, though it can sound good if done well. I find that the best way to practice harmony is to sit at a piano and hum along with notes. for instance, a c chord is C E G, so i start with the C, I hum that and then i hit the E, I try to change my pitch naturally and fluidly to that note, and then to the G. Do this over and over until it happens naturally. Some singing excercises will have you learn to sing all the scales, this is good for improvising and songwriting but now necessarily for harmonies. Of course you dont need a piano to do this, your guitar has all the notes you need. To really understand how to do this, do yourself a favor and learn just basic chrord theory, ie how chords are built.

5. Fattening the voice: So you think youre voice sound thin or weak recorded? Try this, using your best vocal take, make a copy of it so that when it plays, it is doubled. At first this sounds terrible, like a chorusing effect. To get rid of this pan on track to the left speaker and one track to the right. On one of the tracks add just a bit of reverb and on the other set "wetness" to 100% so that all you hear is the effected part. Voila, big sound! Play with the panning you may want to hear the normal voice part in both ears but make sure that its still dominant in the one speaker, otherwise it will just blend with everything else.

thats it for now, ill add more later. anyone else's input would be greatly appreciated!

Good luck!

[sunglassesatnight]

Great thread. I need this.

[Appfro]

Great thread. I need this.

[castellar]

Thanks for the links. Im sure everyone could use this.

[proudestmonkey41]

THANK YOU!! great thread!

[RunsWithBuffalo]

I added some of my tips in the original post ^

[Alazais]

Great thread. Maybe now I will stop breaking glass everytime i try and sing....

[Blake]

BUMP

GREAT thread!! Thanks for taking the time to do this

[sfmartins]

Great! Maybe I will start singing... The tips are pretty cool! Thanks a lot!

[Sciaracastro]

yea, great thread indeed

[DrumsFoDaSoul]

I always sing while listening to Dave. Hit the notes he hits and so on. Not saying Im trying to sound identical to him, but rather the fluccoation in the notes.

[J_Clark]

Great thread. Maybe now I will stop breaking glass everytime i try and sing....

[aj1pso]

Great thread. Maybe now I will stop breaking glass everytime i try and sing....

Actually, you'd have to hit a pretty hard note to break glass

It is a great thread though.

[RunsWithBuffalo]

TOP: check out the flash player in the link i added from vocalist.org, its plays scales for you that you can sing along with.

I also added a cool tip i saw in an article about fattening vocals.

[mattinbeloit]

Good suggestion, I cant emphsize how great doubling vocals can be. Play around with that effect and see what you get, dave does it a lot.