From: JfGindi~ol.com Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 14:41:05 -0400 Subject: Singing and rack playing
Into almost three months of singing lessons, I've learned an incredible amount and am starting to feel good about my voice. Had suspected that my singing had suffered because of my harp playing. Actually, it had suffered for a few different reasons, not all of them harp. Wearing my rack, I had developed the habit of scrunching up my shoulders to get the harp to my lips. I think I also had the habit of bending my knees to get lower, then bringing my head straight back so my throat was arched--I did this when playing rack and singing. It seemed passionate and cool. Wrong, wrong, wrong. In my case anyway, the head should be tilted forward a little bit (to keep the larynx down). This helps me get smoothly into my head voice and keeps the support there for those higher notes. With head arched back, I get that shaky out of control sound. It is a bit of a problem to get harp rack (with mic enclosed), vocal mike, guitar and head all situated properly. I've found certain tilts of the head seem to open up my throat a little more than others. In short, the habits I developed playing guitarmonica have to be redressed now that I'm taking singing so seriously. One thing I never understood about singing until now is how important pronunciation is. I never understood why my voice turned to hell when I started expressing passion. The reason is that I lost the containment to correctly pronounce my words, esp. as my voice went higher. That's a big thing for me now, to form each vowel. The distinction between head and chest voice is very interesting. I never knew about my head voice, so I would sing all the time in my chest voice. It sounded boring and heavy. Then, to get passionate, I would bring my chest voice up and it would go out of control. The better solutiuon would have been to have gone into my head voice (which I am working to develop to that it's connected to my chest voice). The head voice has more of an edge to it, in fact, is just totally where it's at. Along with getting the voice in key, singing scales helps to get the chest to head transition going. One thing I've learned is: instead of starting off a sing in my high chest voice, bring the head voice down. The voice will be lighter, more flexible, less operatic. Another trick I'm learning is the art of finding the right key for songs. I find that if I pitch a song too low, I'll start off singing it low, but will eventually bring it up andoctave, and be singing it too high when I get poassionate, or as the song builds. In the past, I would try to deal with this by making the song lower. But this would just frustrate me more, because I'd be stuck in my chest voice, with no power. And to express power, I'd have to go high. Now I've learned to start the song not lower, but HIGHER. If I start the song in my head voice, I have no overpowering urge to go high, and this keeps me out of trouble. At least so far. The last tyhing I want to comment on, is how necessary it is to avoid singing into my harp mic (a stnard attached to my rack). I run my harp through a couple of effects, and if my voice goes through them, it sounds pretty lousy. Right now I'm experimenting with wearing my rack off to the side, so I have have to turn my head to the side to play harp, and then it back to the front to sing into the vocal mic. This has been a huge period of musical growth for me. I've even rented a piano ($30 a month) and to tell you the truth, I don't think I can ever live without one again. Jon
