Welcome to PEG'S TUNES!
original tunes and other music stuff
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WELCOME TO VOICE LESSONS
AND LIFE LESSONS…
meeeeeeee maaayyyyyyy maaahhhhh mooohhhhhh moooooooo !!!!!!!!
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 VOICE LESSONS |
 LIFE LESSONS (Always a fish outta water, here's my observations!) |
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Lesson one - Breathing |
| ONE- BREATHING
Focus on your chest and shoulders. When you breathe in deeply, you'll want only your chest and shoulders to rise. Keep your stomach still. Ready?
Breathe in deeply (chest and shoulders up)… hold… release… Feel it?
LET'S TRY A BETTER WAY TO BREATHE...
Okay, now keep your chest and shoulders still. When you breathe in deeply, you'll want the air to expand your upper stomach and then come up into your chest (keep shoulders back). Ready?
Breathe in deeply (shoulders stay back)… hold… release… Feel it?
NOW, this time when you breathe into your upper stomach and into your chest (with your shoulders back), release your breath purposefully and slowly by pursing (like whistling) your lips to control your airflow. Put your hand on your upper stomach and feel your muscles push all the air out of your body. When you think all the air is out, squeeze your upper stomach muscles to push the rest of it out. Ready?
Breathe in deeply through upper stomach into chest(shoulders stay back)… purse lips… slowly push the air out with your upper stomach muscles… keep pushing… keep pushing until all the air is out… Feel it? (I bet you feel a little light-headed, huh?)
So that's whatcha call using your diaphragm to breathe. If you use your diaphragm to sing, you will have more control and strength in your voice than if you use your chest. |
Maybe life would be easier and my neighbor wouldn't be so afraid to ask a favor of me if… I would just listen, take a BREATH, and say, "I would be happy to collect your paper. Have a great trip!"
Have you ever had one of those days? One day, my husband asked me where his keys were. I spontaneously erupted, "How in the hell would I know where your keys are! Like I don't do enough around here already? Your laundry, the dishes, clean up your messes, pay the bills, mop the floors!! What about MY needs?! What about MY keys? No, Let ME find YOUR keys!"
Okay, so I really don't yell at my husband like that, but some days I may feel a little less than perky. Life just seems to be a little easier when we don't overreact to something that is simply trivial or a small irritation. Rather than responding or reacting instantaneously, I try to BREATHE for a minute and recognize I am mad at myself for not practicing the guitar all week, or I did not follow up on a project, or just in a bad mood; and try to reply, "No, honey, I haven't seen your keys. Ya need help lookin'?" With work demanding, the t.v. blaring, the traffic coming, the bills to be paying, the news disturbing, the multi-tasking.... |
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What's your tone and texture? Record yourself and find out. Recording yourself is a major tool to help you with improving and adjusting the quality of your singing voice (even speech making and acting, too). The voice people hear is not the same voice you hear from inside of your head. One way to look at tone is to sing the word “Weeeeeee,” and raise the back of your tongue and close your throat a little. The more you do that the more nasally or whiny your voice sounds. Keep singing “Weeeee” and slowly lower the back of your tongue and open up your throat a little more. This may help you hear the difference between thin tones to richer tones. If you lower the back of your tongue and breathe with your diaphram, you will here more of a richness. Have you heard yourself sing? Record yourself on tape or webcam or whatever you need. Sing your favorite song and then listen to yourself objectively. Don’t compare yourself with the artist you may be imitating, find out who YOU are and what sounds good on you. If you sound nasally, maybe try to open your throat a little more and use your diaphram; if you are loud, close your throat a little more and ease up; if you sound like a foghorn, maybe relax a little more and adjust the back of your tongue. If we understand our own unique voice and tone, we can use it to our advantage when we create. Opera singers have big beautiful tones, pop singers have thinner tones, some pop singers are more versatile than others. I love edgy bold sounds of some blues singers. I love it! I don’t have it though. My voice is probably more fitting to jazzy or Broadway songs. But knowing my voice is more smooth than edgy helps me to adjust a little when I sing blues. The higher I sing, the smoother or prettier my voice gets (kinda like Snow White cartoon!), so I need to sing bluesy songs in a lower key. I did not know that until I heard myself, though. Here's an example of my Snow White voice. Had I paid attention, I would have recorded it in a lower key. How would you want to adjust this voice? Find out what you sound like and use your best qualities when you sing. If you want to sing a song that doesn’t sound like you, make some adjustments, record yourself and see what you can accomplish. Of course, there’s more to tone than this but get started getting to know yourself. |
"Watch your tone, young lady!" Does that sound familiar? I have this sarcastic knack about me and sometimes when I am telling someone directly and honestly about what I think, I am often mistaken as being sarcastic. Wonder if it's my tone of voice? In my line of work, I interview a variety of people. But before I do, I review background information about the person before I meet with them. At the beginning of this assignment, I tended to have a strong impression about who they were and perhaps my tone was assuming and judgemental at first meeting. Through numerous interviews, I've come to find there is often two sides of a story. Now I try to use a respectful tone and get all of the information and broaden my perspective. Because of this, I try to meet people with curiosity rather than judgement and always use a respectful tone! As my mother always says, "Judge lest not ye be judged." (and watch your tone!) |
| THREE - PHRASING Phrasing is a way a singer makes a song his or her own. The singer reads the lyrics of the song and communicates the lyrics with feeling so the listener feels your emotions. It may be anything from holding onto a word longer and or with emphasis to show it’s importance (i.e. I LOOOVE YOU for emotion vs. I love YOU for a direct hit).
A vocal coach once told me to take a song and pretend like it was written for you. No matter how popular the song, sing it on your own terms.
How would you communicate phrases like these?
can't take my eyes off of you... check out that cutie in the corner... your smile makes me melt... how could you leave me... i miss you so...
Here's a nifty song I recorded called Imagination by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke that demonstrates phrasing. What kind of adjustments would you make to make this song YOUR own?
IMAGINATION
Another thought... You know when you are in the shower singing your heart out and no one else is around? I bet you're phrasing!
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I tend to be a people pleaser (see breathing) and could NOT say no to anyone. I wanted to help people, and for years I thought saying no to someone would make them feel bad. I wanted them to feel GOOD about themselves, for gosh sakes.
I learned that people can accept ‘no’ if it’s done honestly and with respect. I realized saying no until someone is accountable for their actions helps them grow as an individual, rather than enabling them to continue to be manipulative to get what they want. If I don't know if the answer is yes or no, it works better to say, "Hmmmmm, good question, give me a minute."
On the other hand, I learned you can say yes when you feel it’s appropriate. I worried about saying yes, too. What if someone called me on my decision? It’s sure easier to say no, isn’t it? I learned that if I make a decision and I can articulate it to myself, then I can justify my decisions to anyone, even my boss. If they disagree, I am at peace that I made the right decision for myself. That’s called discretion. Using discretion may result in fewer pits in one's stomach. :@) |
FOUR- MUSIC IS MATH
I believe music is math. Pretty fascinating. This chart shows the different ways to look at a basic scale and chord structure (don't be afraid!). In these examples, I'll be referring to the key of C and the C scale. This is just a little overview.
On a piano, every note is a white key beginning with the key just left of any two black key set. The scale starts with a C and ends with a C. That is a full octave. How many octaves can you sing? Start with the lowest C you can sing and keep pressing all the white keys one after another until you've reached your own top note. If you can start a little lower than the bottom C and end a little higher than the top C, then you can sing about two octaves.
The first row represents your basic C scale: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C.
The second row represents singing "Do, a deer, a female deer; Re, a drop of golden sun ; Mi, a name I call myself; Fa, a long long way to run; So, a needle pulling thread; La, a note to follow So; Ti, a drink with jam and bread; that will bring us back to Do!!! So in the key of C, the Do, Re, Mi sound is the same as the C, D, E, sound, etc.
If you wanted to play a C chord on the piano, in basic terms, you would press the C, E, G, and high C keys simultaneously.
The fourth row represents the roman numeral approach to the C scale: I=C, II=D, II=E, etc... A basic roman numeral chord would be I, III, V, I notes simultaneously.
When professional musicians get together, they need to play in the same key and play the same sounding chords, so many use the roman numeral system. For a C chord, the musicians would play the I, III, V, I notes (the same as the C, E, G, C notes) on their guitar, bass, or piano. The roman numeral system comes in handy when a singer wants to sing a song that starts lower or higher than the low C. Soooo, if I sing a song that starts with an A chord, then the musicians would know the A chord begins with I=A, III=C#, V=E, I=A. Below is an A scale.
You know how In the C scale we use all white piano keys? Well, when you see a "#" next to your note, you press the black key to the right of the white key instead, a half step higher. If you see a "-" next to your note, you press the black key just to the left, a half step lower.
And don't get me started with major and minor and augmented and diminished chords, I could go on all day!!! But I'll stop here on the "math" lesson! |
Life is math?
I always used to think of myself as pretty flexible. Maybe, but I'm really anal. I like things in their proper order. Kinda like a C scale! If you don't play the notes in order and in tune, it ain't my kind of C scale.
If we don't follow the instructions in order, aye caramba! Just like putting a table together that has all kinds of pieces and screws and brackets, and directions, to build a perfect table; if there are extra pieces, it's not perfect.
It's just like writing a song, words need to rhyme, verses and choruses and bridges need to be in their proper order.
or like getting work done efficiently and timely…
or like following a strict diet…
or like writing the perfect song (rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, never good enough)…
Oh, it is exhausting being anal!
Sometimes we have so many expectations of ourselves, we find more failure than success in many of our endeavors. It may feel all or nothing; success or failure. The drive is positive, but doing it all perfectly is unrealistic. If I can't do the diet; instead of quitting, maybe change it up a little and don't follow it exactly. If I have not succeeded in the music business as I had perfectly envisioned; maybe accomplishing some small thing every week (like update the website, work on a lyric, practice guitar and sing…) will lead me to the goal faster than harping on what I haven't done.
It's time to be a little more objective about things. You want to build a sturdy table or play a perfect scale, it should be stringent and in order… If you want to make a pizza or create music or go on a diet; mix it up a little, try a little this and a little that with no recipe.
So the moral of my story? Know the difference between what must be and what may be. Take care... |
by Pegeen copyright 2008
