Two Common Problems Singers Have

Video Transcript

" Hey! I am Mark Black and welcome to expertvillage.com. We are going to be talking about vocal performance. I want to talk about four primary problems of the vocalist and this is not something that… this is like a statement. And the first problem… these are the four reasons that vocalists have special problems. Number one is you cannot directly observe your voice, you cannot when you hear a guy with a beautiful voice of a lady with a voice you can not go and look inside oh! I see what she is doing and when you have problems yourself or you are doing great, you cannot go oh! I know what I am doing, the voice is all based on feel. Even the world’s greatest teacher is telling you I think I am opening up to this, I think I am doing this and he listens to you and says I think you are doing that wrong or you are doing that right and because it is not directly observable, it is hard to control, that is hard to imagine. And the second point… the difficulty for vocalists that is with that, is that because you cannot see it, singing is largely made up of habits. You have been using your voice since the day you were born, unlike a guitar player, unlike a trumpet player, somebody says let us learn this and the guy sits down and he works on different parts. You have always used your voice, you use it everyday and you are going to use it tonight, you are going to use it in the morning, and because it is made up of habits you can’t see it and you use it all the time. When you start trying to change things in your voice sometimes, A: Either they seem uncomfortable and unnatural because they are working against your habit, if you sound like this, and you are trying to fix it, and you are trying to do things differently this is going to feel unusual, unnatural and secondly it is a habit you got to create a new habit. In other words you got to pursue it long-term, not just a new piece of information. If I was trying to play the guitar and my teacher told me oh! put your thumb behind the neck, I can see that constantly “Hey ! Look my thumb is not behind the neck” but with the voice if somebody tells you to open up support from the diaphragm, you got to remember to do that without being able to see anything, just oh! I am not supporting, so that is the problem with the vocalist."