Today we worked on our "pop ballad" placement! This placement is coming from our familiar baseline/forward placement - it is slightly different than our "uptempo pop box" placement. We still work on coming approaching our song from a talked place - keeping our voice nice and forward - but the slight variation in tempo and word length brings new challenges and potentially bring out new singing monsters - because the song is slower. We mapped it out, and then worked on it like this:
-Bass
We start moving our voice to a more pop sound by first bringing our voice all the way forward - or removing the bass and heaviness. This first takes our voice to a slightly squeaky or "Pinocchio" sounding place. This allows us to thin out our vocal cords in order to sing quickly, add scats, and stylize our song using things other than vibrato.
Simplify
We then simplify all of our style - taking out all vibrato and focusing on the tone by itself. Most singers tend to use vibrato as a crutch to enhance their overall tone instead of using it is a stylistic tool to enhance a song (they use it like frosting instead of like sprinkles). By simplifying the style and removing this crutch - we are able to then tackle the tone and make it sound great by itself. We add back in our vibrato later - but in much smaller doses, speeding it up and using it sparingly to enhance the overall style of the song - making sure it doesn't overpower anything.
+ Wide vowel
When we get to this point, we are working with a stripped down version of our voice that is slightly squeaky - and more often than not - a harsh, piercing, or weaker sound than we want. The way that we then take that placement and sound - and make it sound big and wonderful, is we widen the vowel - adding an "ah" sound to the middle of our words. We jump to this big vowel sound to make our low notes sound more natural, smoother, more consistent, more in tune, more stylistic, and easier to control. We add this "ah" sound to our high belt to make it sound bigger and more open without adding pressure to our vocal cords - making it easier and more comfortable to sing while giving it a much more full sound. The first vowels we focus on changing, are our "I" vowels.
Style
From there, we work on adding in other small style choices to further enhance our song. Today we worked on adding "punchiness" - or emphasizing the beginning consonants in some of our words to give our song more movement, and trailing forward - or cutting our words off in a way that keeps them simple while not sounded staccato . We will continue to add more and more style as we continue to work on our song!