brywool wrote: This stuff is exactly right. Holding the tongue and doing the gee thing is one of them. Just curious, where'd you get that? I got that from a lesson with Mark Baxter. There's another one where you pull the jaw down and sing la gah. Great for 'freeing' up stuff. Those things have made me sing a lot better. I used to skip over those for some reason. Now I find that if I do them, my gig goes so much better.
So many different sources over the years. Long story. My dad was a singer & I sang a LOT w/him when I was a kid, he was pretty much my coach. He did a LOT of Sam Cooke type stuff. I did a lot of theatre, some musical. I got a lot of lead roles just b/c I could sing. I had coaches for projecting my stage voice. I'm a really small thin person & directors always wondered if I could bring it. Thing is, my singing voice is deeper, more chesty than my speaking voice. But theatre singing is theatre singing, know what I mean?
In high school, I knew a bunch of guys in a band. They wanted to really rock & do a really hard sound but no one was into it. They figured they needed a chick to bring an audience. Since I was dating one of them & always hanging out at rehearsals telling their singer he wasn't doing it right, they figured I'd do the trick. I actually got paid for singing in that band at 15 yrs of age! My dad died & I kinda lost interest in singing properly as he'd always been my coach & I started doing a lot of screaming. That messed up some of my theatre chances over the next few years so I started getting some lessons & hit a lot of teachers who wanted to train me in an "opera" way doing scales, scales, scales. I wasn't interested. I gave it up for a while, then got back into theatre in my mid-20s. We used to get done on stage & go sing karaoke. That was our way of letting loose. I'd let loose a bit & get everyone up dancing doing some Pat Benatar's Shadows Of The Night for example. I was so fed up of theatre singing where it's all so even keel kinda thing. There was this one coach there one nite & he really wanted to work w/me. He taught me a LOT of stuff I never knew. He had trained in the singing like speaking techniques. Really cool stuff.
I sang in another band for a while again w/a bunch of guys who wanted a chick but I didn't write & it was obvious, they wanted a singer who could write so we kinda went out separate ways. Then, I ended up doing some background vox & jingles for a while, as well as a little modelling (Sears catalogues & shit where u could be short). Meanwhile, I was always working in bars that had music & hanging out w/the singers talking technique.
I then wrote a book & did seminars & toured the country. That was when I REALLY needed some vox training. Talking for 4 hrs day after day is as bad as singing, if not worse. Also, the audience would keep u talking to them & signing for about 2 hrs afterwards. My agent would book me 5 freaking days straight. I was so hoarse sometimes & my throat would kill me. I started asking for around for a good coach again. One guy who really helped me had coached a speaker called Les Brown (black guy who did a lot of PBS stuff) that I was on tour w/for about a year. That coach was Joe Frey from Michigan. He helped a lot of speakers. In terms of relaxation, he was really the best. I couldn't have done that schedule w/out him.
Then, I got stalked by a crazy "fan" & gave that up too. Sometimes, I feel like singing again. I did do some piano bar stuff w/a friend who wanted a singer w/her about 5 yrs ago for a while. It was fun. But I got sick of all the Billy Joel/Bryan Adams ballads we were doing. Now, I just hang out w/a lot of singers who come thru work & I still learn bits & pieces from them. Maybe some day....
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