The Singers Thread

[Tessar]

That is so beautiful, and really well sung. What is the context of the song?

[Varnafindë]

From one of the YouTube versions I've found:

For those who haven't seen the movie, this song gets its power from the fact that Gabriella is domestically abused by her husband.

Even her husband joins in the applause when she finally dares to finish her project and sing the song.

Another version says,

A successful international conductor suddenly interrups his career and returns alone to his childhood village in Norrland, in the far north of Sweden.It doesn't take long before he is asked to come and listen to the fragment of a church choir, which practises every Thursday in the parish hall. Just come along and give a little bit of good advice. He can't say no, and from that moment, nothing in the village is the same again. The choir develops and grows. He makes both friends and enemies. And he finds love.

Gabriella is not his love interest, mind you, that is one of the other girls in the choir.

I haven't seen the movie myself - I bought the DVD some time ago, but I haven't watched it yet. Now I really should find some time to do so ...

[Tessar]

That's wonderful. She's a great singer, too.

I had two super successful lessons tonight.

My contralto girl is an absolute freak of nature. I mean that in the very kindest and best way. But definitely a vocal freak. O_o She now has four entire, complete octaves and a half step. It's all full-voice, usable range that would sound passable if she put it into a song. By comparison, my full voice range is just under 2.5 octaves, which is a typical vocal range for an adult. If you include my falsetto I have about 3.5 octaves, but that's not "real."

She already had like three and a half octaves, but today I had her doing some exercises to fix the breathy area in the middle of her range... we mostly fixed it, then I took her way up in her head voice... and she kept going, and going... and then flipped into whistle voice (which she's done before) but instead of being breathy like it used to be it was solid, and she absolutely NAILED a Bb above soprano High C. This girl is a contralto and she can sing notes that most grown, fully trained sopranos can't sing.

So ANYWAYS.

Then I had my shy soprano who's never sung before, or done choir, or been in theater shows or anything... it's been a struggle to even get her to sing three notes in a row without her stopping and criticizing herself. So at her last lesson I told her she had to be brave, and she was, and this lesson she was even better... and she made huge strides in her singing today. It was like a totally different singer. She was so excited by her own progress that at the end of the lesson she told me that she was feeling so much more confident and proud of herself.

So hurray for a successful teaching day.

[Varnafindë]

I wish I could have you as my music teacher as well - it would be too long a journey to take the lessons, though

It seems you're doing a great job.

[Tessar]

I wish I could teach you too!!! I think we'd have a lot of fun.

I'm a bit frustrated with the waiting involved in my own voice right now. On the one hand I'm elated because I can sing things, and with more ease, that I could not sing before. But on the other hand, my voice still lacks full resonance. I played a clip of my singing for a friend who is a violinist and explained that my voice lacks depth of tone, and he said that it sounded like a violin that hasn't been played in a long time... The wood stops vibrating as much when you play, and it gives the violin a "thin" tone.

That's exactly what's going on in my voice. There are a few vestiges of throat tension still being weeded out, but for the most part that all seems to be going away. So there's just a tiny edge of throatiness in my voice, but it's not very noticeable. The "core" of my voice is starting to come in, and I have a brilliant "edge" to my sound, which is important to have, but I lack that full, resonant warmth that my voice needs.

Supposedly that's going to happen all on its own, in it's own good time, if I just let it. Ugh. I want to ask my teacher how long he thinks it will take, but I know there's no way to answer a question like that.

[Tessar]

Ugh, my voice is a huge mess right now but it's a mess because it's in the process of sorting itself out.

Still working on releasing the last of the tongue tension, although it's well on its way out. Right now I'm learning to also release the breath while I'm singing, which I didn't realize I had been holding back by tightening some muscle in my mouth.... not entirely sure how I was doing that. Sort of like collapsing the very back, insides of my mouth (tonsils), which somehow tensed something in my throat and gave me a small airstream to work with.

When I unlocked that bit of tension it made my throat raw, for a few days, to sing for more than a few minutes but I think it's because my vocal folds had never experienced a full flow of air. O_o It really worried me so I took it to my teacher to check out and he said it was the process of something good taking place. So I trusted him, and it does seem to be working itself out. I have to imagine that I'm (and sometimes just flat out force myself to) singing with a very breathy voice, but not actually 'pushing' air to make that happen. It's like holding a bucket of water, and instead of pouring it through a funnel, or throwing it forcefully out of the bucket, I'm just tipping it over and letting what feels like an enormous amount of water pour out all at once. It's not a narrow stream, like the funnel, and it's not pushed, like "tossing" the water out, but it does feel like an awful lot of water/breath.

Fingers crossed good, good things are happening! I'm noticing that my voice is bigger, sounds more lyrical, and has more "shimmer" on the sound, but it's really not any richer sounding to my ear. I'm trying not to worry about that... it's either something I'll be able to worry about fixing once my airstream has opened up, or it's something I have no control over and I have to wait for my voice to finish maturing.

[Varnafindë]

If he says it's the process of something good taking place, then you can accept it and let it take the time it needs - whether to be ready to take even more fixing, or to become what it will be in the future.

Seems to be good news!

[Rían]

Just wanted to share a lovely new recording of O Fortuna ...

[Tessar]

Woohoo! I had a great voice lesson today. I learned a couple of new things and my voice teacher was quite impressed. I was quite impressed for that matter. I had no idea I could do some of those things, but it was nice that I know I couldn't have done them without a LOT of training beforehand.

[Tessar]

Had a sobering, but good discussion with my teacher this evening.

He said I sang so well in my lesson today, and so beautifully during choir tonight, that he could finally tell me: when he first started teaching me, and up until a few months ago, he didn't think I would ever actually be able to sing. He said I had so many technical problems because of my past teachers that he thought my voice was probably going to wind up just falling apart by the time I was 30 no matter what he did. But he knew I wanted it so badly that he hoped if he kept telling me I had a special voice over and over, maybe there was a tiny chance it would come together.

And it makes sense. We would fix one little thing and I would sing better for a week or so and then my voice would collapse in on itself all over again. The net result was that my voice was improving over time, but my high notes never really opened up for more than a few days at a time here and there and I would have a week where I sounded good and then a week where it just sounded like crap.

In the last four weeks or so I've made such huge strides though that my voice seems like it is finally out of the woods. All of the sudden I'm getting complements from left and right about how beautiful my voice is, and I can actually SING music instead of having to chop it into little parts and endlessly try to figure out how to maneuver my voice through them.

Now some things I never understood have started to make sense. I would always get angry when teachers would say, "just sing!" because I couldn't. I had so many issues that my voice would fall apart if I didn't focuse 100% on my technique. But now I just put my voice in the right place and I can "just sing," without having to focus on it. I'm finally able to do the things I've been getting my freakin' voice students to do for so long!!!!!!! That was always so frustrating to be able to teach my students to do things I couldn't pull off.

I'm not even doing anything "differently," just everything is actually working together all at once instead of fixing one little thing and that causing something else to go wrong in an endless cycle. It makes me feel a little better to know that I was doing everything right, it just wasn't working for whatever reason. Something I had no control over had to fix itself before everything could come together.

[Varnafindë]

That's wonderful, Tessar!

[Earniel]

Great to hear how well things are going with the singing.

I find it a bit weird -or perhaps telling about my sense of sounds and music - that while I've heard a few recordings of you singing and thought they sounded great, your teacher was at the same time thinking you couldn't sing at all. And I thought, well, if that ain't singing, what have I been listening? It sort of feels like there's an entire level of competence way beyond what I can ever grasp about singing, sort of what relativity theory is to my understanding of physics.

[Tessar]

It's a subtle difference in a way, but to trained ears it's a million miles of difference.

And it's honestly not that hard to be able to hear, but you either need to invest hundreds of hours into listening to different singers (like I did when I was in my teens) or have someone who knows what they're listening to tell you what to listen for. That way is a lot faster.

I think an untrained listener would just say that my high notes sound easier, and don't sound as "high" any more, and that my voice is louder or "fuller."

[Tessar]

I know the study of singing is a life long journey, but some times I'm just like, "GAAAAAH!! WHYYYYYYYYY?!!?!!?"

It truly is a pendulum. You overcompensate incredibly far in one direction so that it can slowly swing to a neutral, balanced place. For example my singing has become so easy that I actually lost the natural "focus" and "brightness" in my voice because having my throat so open allowed me to add lots of fake "darkness" and weight to my voice.

For all of these years what I thought was "nasality" in my voice is actually a really nice, ringing quality when I allow it to happen... So when I don't accidentally squash it into oblivion, mistaking it for nasality. Oops?

But if I hadn't spent these last few weeks/months over correcting and making my voice too open and dark, I wouldn't now be able to start adding that "brightness" back in while maintaining a nice, open throat.


... Of course now I may end up over correcting and adding too much brightness for a while till it has to swing back in the other direction? The good thing is that now I feel like these compensations are correcting my voice between "decent" to "very good," where before even on my best days it was only correcting from "not good" to "decent," when I would make these adjustments.

[Rían]

It sounds so complicated!!!!!

Which makes me want to ask this question - my oldest son is getting into church ministry, and has taken up the guitar and has make amazing progress. He has a good natural voice, according to many people, but has had no lessons. Would it be a good and helpful thing for him to get some lessons over the summer when he's back home, or would it just confuse him? You singers just confuse me when I read your posts!

[Tessar]

Get him some lesson. It'll help him a lot.

The technical stuff is not really required for the sort of things it sounds like he'll be singing, but some advice on how to properly use his voice, how to warm up, what his optimal singing range is, etc. is not complicated at all for a good teacher to explain and he'll benefit greatly from that knowledge.

[Tessar]

Also, if I can make a suggestion, try to do a little research and see if there are any famous teachers in your area. I.e. people who have had competition winning singers. As horrible as this sounds, I do highly recommend an opera teacher, because most of the pop singer teachers I've met know little to nothing about how the voice actually works and their students are terrible.

It will be more expensive, but it's better to spend $80 per lesson for a few months and make real progress that will last for the rest of his life than to take a year of $20 lessons and not see real improvement. Believe me, I am speaking from experience. I had a part time job to pay for my voice lessons, and I could've afforded a more expensive teacher but I didn't realize I needed one!!

I had one lesson with a good teacher, my first voice lesson ever, and it made a difference in my voice that lasted for several weeks even though I didn't go back. Then I studied with a terrible teacher for two years and not one thing changed. Then I had a terrible teacher my first year of college and nothing changed... One voice lesson with an amazing teacher in my second year of college, and after I sang a warm up in choir all of my friends thought my voice had changed over the summer. After one lesson.

Your results will vary, but if you don't see results very quickly then the teacher is no good for you. Voice lessons don't make you a pro overnight, but they SHOULD make noticeable improvements.

I highly, highly suggest looking at your local universities and reviewing the biographies of the department voice teachers. Not all college level teachers are good, but they will on average probably be better than your mom-and-pop teach-from-home teachers.


Again, my suggestion is find a good opera teacher. Opera teaches you how to sing in a healthy, beautiful manner. It is VERY easy to take opera principles and apply a little more nasality, or tighten your throat a little, or do whatever you need to do to get that "contemporary" sound that is your end goal. Listen to some of Adele's older, live performances. She applies some really good, what I would term "operatic" technique, but because she does little nuanced things she doesn't come across operatic.

I.e. learn the basics of healthy singing through opera, then flavor to taste.

[Tessar]

Or don't change much at all and just sing like David Phelps... Who is pretty much mind blowingly good. I have very little love for most Christian singers, because they mostly sound atrocious, but David Phelps is seriously on a different level of awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjsTx0RLrLM&sns=em

[Varnafindë]

I like his performance very much.
I don't think I had heard him before - will look out for the name now. Thanks for sharing!