Mary Testa

On bad days I can always count on Mary to cheer me up. There is just something about her voice and energy that is uplifting.

Take a look. (and after that look at some of the other videos her comic timing is amazing!)

David Carroll

I am working on a couple of longer posts but wanted to show some examples of male singers you may or may not know about. First off is David Carroll. A amazing vocalist! And probably my favorite male singer in musical theater. He had a voice that was amazing and sadly his life was cut short (so we don't have many chances to hear his instrument) There is a great recording of him, the bonus track, on the Grand Hotel cd singing "Love Can't Happen." He also can be heard on the American cast recording of Chess.

Take a look at how Seth Rudetsky deconstructs the song. Amazing.

Barbara Walsh...

Another great example of letting go. (and her technique is pretty flawless)

Technique and what works for you.

Josh commented on one of my earlier posts: "Over the years, I have long since struggled with finding a technique. I've found that, for me, I'm a kinetic singer. In that I have to experiment on my own to find placement, tone and manipulating vowels or phrases to give "the sound" that works for me. Could this be causing damage to the voice?"


I am the same way. I have been singing my whole life but never really had voice lessons until I hit college. (Choir doesn't really count and it can pose other problems for your voice if you aren't careful...but that is for another day.) I took lessons pretty regularly for about 8 years and it was only a few years ago that I finally just decided to find a person to sing with on a regular basis (see post below). It was amazing what happened. In a few short years I have expanded my range and my technique much quicker than I ever did taking lessons on a weekly basis. And although I had some great teachers many of them didn't quite know how to get their messages across.


For example many of them would say "open your mouth and allow the space to stay there." But in reality that can be taken many ways. You can open just the front of your mouth. You can open just the back of your mouth. You can open and spread the lips...You can open and purse the lips of keep them held in a fish like configuration...you get the picture. I know many people who understood what to do when they were told the first time. The frustrations I found was when I was really was doing exactly what they were saying but because there was a miss in the communication I would only frustrate the teacher and it wouldn't lead to a good lesson. 


I have found in the last few years that when I can sing regularly without the fear of having to produce results I am able to try different things and sooner or later I find what works for me and more often than not I actually turn to whomever I am practicing with and say that I finally understand what my teachers had been talking about. It is pretty amazing.


Many days I really do wish I would have just "gotten it." It would have made pursuing a singing career easier. But the satisfaction I get when I finally put two and two together and realize what actually works for me, I think, will work out better in the long run. I will know what works for me and what doesn't; and because I have played and tried and succeeded and failed I will have an understanding of my instrument that can rival anyone else's. 


Side note: Can you hurt the voice doing it this way? Short answer is yes...but you are the judge of what will and will not hurt it. You are the only one that can feel what your vocal chords are saying to you! You have to listen and if you go too far take some time to rest and recover before you practice again. That is where technique can come in. You can then fall back on it. You can say I pushed today and so what do I need to do in order so that I don't make that mistake again.  I believe you should push your limits every now and then as then you can eliminate things that are obviously wrong. For a better understanding look at the book "How To Stop Acting" by Harold Guskin. I know it is an acting book but he has some exercises that you can use not only to help your acting (both plays and musicals) but you can adapt the exercises to your vocal practice as well.

Thursdays are AMAZING...

Pretty much every Thursday for the past 3 years I have meet up with Gail, a very very good friend, and sang. We started out meeting for just a couple of hours and as time went on it evolved and we average about 5 hours of work. We have the greatest time because we trade off one singing 2 songs and then the next. Working this way allows us to actually sing through full songs, we can try things we never would have tried in private lessons because you normally only have an hour, and most of all it is fun.

It is less stressful than paying someone for lessons and trying to make sure I get my money's worth. I am not down playing actual voice lessons but when you have enough technique I am now a believer that getting together with at least one other person on a regular basis and just singing back and forth is very beneficial.

When you work with someone the other person and feel the energy you are releasing, or if you aren't. Live performance requires the performer to allow their energies to flow so that the audience can feel something. You can't be introverted as you can in film as you will loose not only the people at the back of the room but the ones in the front row because if you are in your head you aren't allowing the audience to experience what is going on.

Letting go...and getting out of your way.

Letting go while performing is something that can frustrate me to no end. You know when someone has something special, and not necessarily the "it" voice at the time, but when their performance defies expectations.

I must admit that it is only recently that I have become a huge Dorothy Loudon fan. For the longest time I just didn't get her performance style and was somewhat turned off by her vibrato. But then I began to watch some of her videos online and now I understand what letting go can do for the audience. Take "You've Got To See Mama Every Night." I am not yet confident enough to just talk in the middle of a song unless I have practiced it that way. She, after reading about her performance styles online, was known for her comments and patter when she performed (especially in cabaret type settings.) It is on display in that song and it give something to the performance that makes her uniquely her. It is awe inspiring, and I hope that one day I will be able to add even the slightest bit of spontaneity she adds to her performance here.

What are some techniques you use to relax and enjoy yourself while singing?

Lisping...

I didn't know until a couple years ago that I have a lisp and that as a child it was really pronounced (along with the inability to say "r.") A couple years ago, I had started to notice I had a lisp. It began to frighten me a bit but I didn't dwell too much on it. Then while discussing it with my mother she told me that my Uncle had said, "I didn't know Jim had a lisp."after watching my youtube video of me singing "My Stupid Mouth."   

It was a bit of a shock when my mother told me that I had it as a child and because of speech therapy (learning to say "r" by repeating it over and over and over), I lost, but I don't remember having the lisp. (There was another instance which my father told me about: One day he had seen a boy pick on me because of the lisp and he told the boy it wasn't nice and to stop. The kid's mother was near by and in reply stated, "He can do what he wants because he doesn't have a father at home!" Wow I knew lisping had a stigma attached but really....) HA

Anyway,

Only in the last couple of years have I been able to relax my jaw and tongue while singing which in turn allowed my tongue to move back to its former position, more forward in the mouth. I was getting worried about it becoming a bigger problem and started to research online ways to overcome it. Then I came across an exercise, which did wonders, where you smile broadly while showing your teeth (in a tense smile) and repeat, "Susie sells seashells down by the seashore." It was a miracle because after repeating it several times I heard and felt a difference. It trained my tongue to sit in a position further back in my mouth (which most native English speaking people do), making the "s" sound while singing and even talking easier; not to mention it allowed me to roll my "r" a couple of times every now and then which I am totally excited about because I can't roll them.

Michael Buble has a much discussed about lisp which you can hear if you jump to 2:27 of his music video for "Everything" ("You're every song / and I sthing along")  I am in great company. :) 

Do you have any other examples of well known singers who lisp or have other vocal difficulty that they either cover up or use to show they are only human? (I would love to hear from you.)