Vocal No Fly Zones

No matter what kind of singer you are – professional, amateur, car, shower – you probably like to sing your favorite tunes, and said tunes are likely sung by someone with a much different (not necessarily better) voice than your own. Unless you are a professional singer that has learned to occupy his or her own vocal space, you have probably developed a ‘system of modulation’ to approximate the tone and timbre of your favorite singers, which probably sounds pretty good to you in the car or the shower, but you might notice that it does not sound so good on recordings or via amplification (or maybe it does, if you are one of the lucky few). Why is that? The first reason is what I call ‘hearmagination’: Your brain mixing up what comes in through the ears with what exists in the mind, blending together what is real with what is imagined, resulting in a pretty good sound that, in fact, may not be so good. This is immediately revealed in recordings, with the caveat that some recording devices make you sound much worse than you actually do, so take this with a grain of salt. The second reason is what I call, quite simply, ‘encroachment’, for lack of a better, contrived term: When someone modulates their voice to the point where they remove the very position and space required to make the best of THEIR voice, because they are trying to emulate SOMEONE ELSE’s voice. Most of the time, in an effort to sing in a higher key, they end up ‘raising’ everything, and, in essence, occupying what I call ‘vocal no fly zones’ – the space in one’s anatomy that must remain free of obstacles in order to facilitate the best sound possible. The only way to combat this, in my opinion, is to STOP singing along and START singing alone. Of course, learning to sing with YOUR voice requires one to accept the sound as it is, and then improve upon it in a way that maintains alignment – i.e. make it better, but do not modulate it. There are all kinds of ways to do this – e.g. shouting ‘hey’ in different keys offers a good clue for ones natural position and space – but, the main point of this post is the analogy this offers for life in general: (1) don’t confuse reality with what you imagine, (2) don’t modulate and emulate in lieu of being you, (3) be comfortable with who you are, and work to improve yourself in ways that make YOU a BETTER YOU, not a DIFFERENT YOU. This is one of the greatest self-taught lessons you will ever give and receive, with a few hints here and there from other people, but just barely enough to scratch the surface. You can always pay someone to teach you how to sing better, but the endeavor to live better is patently a self-funded learning endeavor ;-)