What's been your biggest problem or obstacle as a singer?

[Mahesh]

Everybody's got a different voice. Everybody's looking for something different out of their voice. And so, I was wondering.. what's been your biggest struggle or challenge as a singer that you've been trying to or been meaning to solve?

 

 

[HoboSage]

Though I know I'll sound my best, I'm nonetheless hesitant to bring my recording gear into the shower with me.

[Peggy]

I've always enjoyed backup singing and not lead singing.  Since I write  lyrics, they most often have a feminine aspect to them and they need a female singer.  So I have to go way out of my comfort zone in singing the lead vocal.

 

(Sometimes my lyric is written for a male singer, sometimes it could be sung by a male or female, but not generally.)

[Mahesh]

On 11/30/2022 at 11:48 PM, daydreamdays said:

Haha, every single aspect of it!  Mostly, I think, it's just motivating myself to practice.  I feel so hopeless that it's difficult to get around to it and spend hours avoiding doing so.  I also don't really even know where to begin, I mean, I practice the major scale and do really simple sight reading exercises, aside from that thing where you pluck the notes of the chords to a song slow and sing "oohs and ahhs" to try and find the tune and/or key before I'll sing covers here and there, but I don't even know what to cover, as I'm a limited baritone and everything seems to be written for tenors.  I'd say that there isn't anything, from the breaths to the tune, about singing that hasn't been an obstacle, including my psychology.  It's very slowly becoming a little bit easier, though, if not ever so slightly better, though I often find that, in working on songs, when I find a bit of the tune, I'll lose some of the theatrics, which ultimately detracts from the recordings, as, since I can't sing well, a lot relies on the inflection.  I don't know if it's still up, since you only get so many uploads and I think my files are kind of large for whatever reason, but "The Balancing Act", I think, sounded a lot better more out of tune, but with better inflection, as I'm not going to impress anyone with my voice, anyways.  Not learning to song is it learning, though, and, so, what can you do? 

 

A good way to find motivation is to change the mental narrative you approach it with. I understand that's easier said than done but hear me out...

 

First : Try to remove the idea of practicing and singing as geared towards an end result of any kind - good singing, better pitch, expressive singing etc That may seem odd but what then are you left with? YOU, the instrument. Learning to singing is all about understanding yourself, your inner voice and outer. It is a clear activity of self exploration with good singing being just one outcome. Even if you have no practical outcome from it, you can take solace in knowing that it is time well spent in trying to understand yourself a lil more deeply. It's an essential learning activity to fail and learn from it in some way but that becomes hardly possible when you put success and idealism on a pedestal.

 

Second and practically, start simple.

 

Guitarists start playing the chromatic scale or a few finger exercises to stretch their fingers on the fretboard. We (singers) may have to go further simpler. 

 

Single notes - how many notes can you sing comfortably, on pitch while being able to sustain for 3 seconds? Note it down in a journal with a date. Call it your fixed points in range.

 

Multiple notes - Spend time moving around between notes in this range slowly and without tightening the body.

 

As for the range beyond this, you'll need a lil assistance from vocal technique specific to your issue. It takes a lil more time but it's worth it. When curiosity leads the game rather than consequence, the learning process becomes easier. And funnily enough, all the desired results surely then appear as a side effect.