Confession #1: I didn't intend to become a singer.
Not that I was especially phobic about the prospect either - but in my musically formative years, my first passion was the guitar, and trying to come up with cool tunes. The problem was that in my high school and university years, it was impossible to find, let alone hang onto good singers. In those days my bassist buddy Mike Nitchie and I were joined at the hip, and we usually had a drummer willing to stick around for a couple of years at a time - but singers were a different matter. While my little bands awaited the arrival of our own Steve Perry, I would fill in on vocals, partly because I wrote all the original material, partly because I was keen enough to memorize lots of lyrics. Eventually, we just started gigging that way.
Of course, voice is a very personal thing, and singers are the most conspicuous targets on stage and recording. Gregg Allman is reputed to be so self-conscious about his voice that he still refuses, after a near-50-year career, to have anybody but the recording engineer present when he lays down vocal tracks; Ace Frehley made his recorded vocal debut by lying on his back on the studio floor to counteract his nerves (and it apparently worked). When I first played a cut from the Devil You Don't CD for a friend who I hadn't seen much of in many years, his response was, "hmm...yeah, that's cool...you didn't tell me you had a girl in the band".
Shortly afterward, a roommate of mine told me, "hey, I listened to your CD last night. I liked it! Neat songs - but I don't like the singer."
"You do realize I'm the singer, right?" I replied, bemused.
"Really?! No! Well...maybe not all of it was that bad, or I mean..."
Later that very day I got a phone call from the Island Music Awards - I'd been nominated for Best Songwriter and Best Male Vocalist awards. I figured I might have a slim chance at Songwriter, but I held out no hope for Male Vocalist whatsoever. As it turned out, I didn't win Songwriter - but I took home Vocalist. Male Vocalist, I'm tempted to remind my old friend.
All this time that I've done vocal work, I've fought with my vocal machinery. I've cringed at a lot of live recordings due to tone and pitch issues, I've cursed the mysterious force that appeared to tighten my vocal chords and squeeze my tone down in the opening tunes of a performance, I went through a phase of drinking warm grapefruit juice before shows (it certainly never hurt, 'though it did weird out a waitress or two), I've kacked, yodelled, squeeked and grown hoarse - thankfully never all at once...but to be fair, that's only half the story.
When I can get the machine to behave as it should, meanwhile, it's an intoxicatingly powerful feeling, and I'm happy to say it's a much more frequent occurrence than in the bad old days a couple of decades ago. As much of my repertoire calls for me to sing in the upper reaches of my vocal range, I've found that a few pre-show excercises that ease me into those higher notes (by way of scales) can be quite helpful - as does resisting the instinct to let the throat tighten when high notes approach. Perhaps not surprisingly, this is not an issue at all when singing along to tunes casually at home, but any public performance - even if I don't feel at all nervous - is susceptible to the dread tightening.
Confession #2: Ironically, I've taught many choir classes, all of which I begin with a physical warm-up of head, neck, shoulders and vocal chords - but I've been terrible at practicing what I preach, at least until more recently. I guess the luxury of hypocrisy came at a higher cost than I knew. Good thing I didn't take that attitude into a field like carpentry, or I'd likely be missing a few fingers by now.
Despite much denial, I believe everybody is capable of singing in tune - and if you do sing, it's quite likely you wrestle with a few technical vocal issues yourself. I hope this blog entry might have been of some help in that regard. All musicians have little disagreements with their instruments from time to time, but those invisible vocal chords often seem to be the most mysterious instrument of all - to say nothing of the most personal. Perhaps I'd have saved myself a lot of work and strife if I'd simply set out to sing like Mark Knopfler or Bob Dylan - effortlessly low and rough-hewn - and still safer than carpentry. I'd also never be mistaken for a girl, to be sure...well, certainly not a very pretty one.
Not that I was especially phobic about the prospect either - but in my musically formative years, my first passion was the guitar, and trying to come up with cool tunes. The problem was that in my high school and university years, it was impossible to find, let alone hang onto good singers. In those days my bassist buddy Mike Nitchie and I were joined at the hip, and we usually had a drummer willing to stick around for a couple of years at a time - but singers were a different matter. While my little bands awaited the arrival of our own Steve Perry, I would fill in on vocals, partly because I wrote all the original material, partly because I was keen enough to memorize lots of lyrics. Eventually, we just started gigging that way.
Of course, voice is a very personal thing, and singers are the most conspicuous targets on stage and recording. Gregg Allman is reputed to be so self-conscious about his voice that he still refuses, after a near-50-year career, to have anybody but the recording engineer present when he lays down vocal tracks; Ace Frehley made his recorded vocal debut by lying on his back on the studio floor to counteract his nerves (and it apparently worked). When I first played a cut from the Devil You Don't CD for a friend who I hadn't seen much of in many years, his response was, "hmm...yeah, that's cool...you didn't tell me you had a girl in the band".
Shortly afterward, a roommate of mine told me, "hey, I listened to your CD last night. I liked it! Neat songs - but I don't like the singer."
"You do realize I'm the singer, right?" I replied, bemused.
"Really?! No! Well...maybe not all of it was that bad, or I mean..."
Later that very day I got a phone call from the Island Music Awards - I'd been nominated for Best Songwriter and Best Male Vocalist awards. I figured I might have a slim chance at Songwriter, but I held out no hope for Male Vocalist whatsoever. As it turned out, I didn't win Songwriter - but I took home Vocalist. Male Vocalist, I'm tempted to remind my old friend.
All this time that I've done vocal work, I've fought with my vocal machinery. I've cringed at a lot of live recordings due to tone and pitch issues, I've cursed the mysterious force that appeared to tighten my vocal chords and squeeze my tone down in the opening tunes of a performance, I went through a phase of drinking warm grapefruit juice before shows (it certainly never hurt, 'though it did weird out a waitress or two), I've kacked, yodelled, squeeked and grown hoarse - thankfully never all at once...but to be fair, that's only half the story.
When I can get the machine to behave as it should, meanwhile, it's an intoxicatingly powerful feeling, and I'm happy to say it's a much more frequent occurrence than in the bad old days a couple of decades ago. As much of my repertoire calls for me to sing in the upper reaches of my vocal range, I've found that a few pre-show excercises that ease me into those higher notes (by way of scales) can be quite helpful - as does resisting the instinct to let the throat tighten when high notes approach. Perhaps not surprisingly, this is not an issue at all when singing along to tunes casually at home, but any public performance - even if I don't feel at all nervous - is susceptible to the dread tightening.
Confession #2: Ironically, I've taught many choir classes, all of which I begin with a physical warm-up of head, neck, shoulders and vocal chords - but I've been terrible at practicing what I preach, at least until more recently. I guess the luxury of hypocrisy came at a higher cost than I knew. Good thing I didn't take that attitude into a field like carpentry, or I'd likely be missing a few fingers by now.
Despite much denial, I believe everybody is capable of singing in tune - and if you do sing, it's quite likely you wrestle with a few technical vocal issues yourself. I hope this blog entry might have been of some help in that regard. All musicians have little disagreements with their instruments from time to time, but those invisible vocal chords often seem to be the most mysterious instrument of all - to say nothing of the most personal. Perhaps I'd have saved myself a lot of work and strife if I'd simply set out to sing like Mark Knopfler or Bob Dylan - effortlessly low and rough-hewn - and still safer than carpentry. I'd also never be mistaken for a girl, to be sure...well, certainly not a very pretty one.