Recently, I've finished the first assignment for my vocal workshop which was to re-interpret a popular exisiting song as your own cover and to make it vocally challenging for yourself. Since I historically struggled with using my chest voice, I decided to do a bluesy cover of Panic!At The Disco's "I Write Sins, Not Tragedies" since most of it sits comfortably in my chest voice and the chorus / bridge veers into the upper limits of my chest voice where I have a habit of switching back into my head (often because I feel like I get a little too loud when I sit in my chest voice in my upper register).
What I learned from this was that using a more nasal tone, combined with focusing my more on my resonance and placement, that my vocal tone could sound quite crisp and powerful in that register of my voice, without having to push so hard to get there. It just takes a certain amount of concentration rather than force to get my voice into the right position - which is basically having your soft pallet sitting nice and high in the same position it does when you yawn. I've been using a habit tracking app called "habitica" to try to get myself to do at least 5-10 minutes worth of targeted vocal exercises everyday. These exercises help me to work on the weakest parts of my voice and what I need to re-learn in how I sing. This has been so useful for helping me to blend with the other vocalists in Gem's recital. Quite a few of the songs like "Better" and "Recover" need to have that more gospel-like tone - it needs to be thick and full so most of that is about understanding your register and resonance. I've gradually found it easier and easier to slip into my chest voice in my upper register and to be able to tell what it feels like when I'm in it versus when I'm just using a very convincing head voice. The one thing I've been really struggling to get my head around recently as we've been rehearsing my own recital songs is how to control my vibrato. I can turn my vibrato on and off fairly easily but really struggle with how to control the width of it. This again, has been a vocally historic issue for me as my vibrato used to be quite uncontrollable and was a nervous habit when I would perform. However, nowadays I'm a much more confident and experienced performer and don't get the same kind of nerves I used to get when performing as I did when I was a teenager. It's just become a habit that my vibrato sounds a certain way and it's a habit that I want to try and break this semester (or at least try to work around). With Sophie's (our vocal workshop lecturer's) help, I want to be able to control how wide my vibrato is and not just when I use it. This may mean practising singing without playing guitar as I've found it quite hard to focus very intently on my vocal work when I'm playing at the same time. Even though I've been singing whilst playing guitar for over a decade now, I'm using my voice in a very different way that requires me to focus much more on what's going on internally rather than what my hands are doing. Next weekend from the 15th-16th of October, I've got a gig at the Greenbushes Acoustic Festival, so hopefully I'll be able to use some of my newfound vocal skills there in a solo context. Then after that on the 18th of October, I'll be performing in Gem's recital at the Rosemount Hotel on Tuesday the 18th of October! So very exciting stuff - I'll make my next update post most likely after Gem's recital.
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Artist SummaryI'm a WA Fremantle based singer-songwriter / composer. Here, you can have a gawk at my studies, compositions and performances. Archives
August 2022
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