Today we worked on relaxing into our placement so that we get all the control that our forward placement gives us - while we are now able to add more style!
Pop Box!
With any contemporary genre (pop, country, alternative, indi), we want our voice to sound as up-to-date, in control, appropriately stylized, and easy as possible. In order to go from where we use our voice and placement in a pop ballad to where we use it in an upbeat pop song, we have to condense our placement to fit the faster speed - making our words smaller, brighter and shorter than before. To accomplish this, we put our voice in a slightly smaller place - taking out more bass in our voice, singing each word through our teeth even more, and moving to a more chipmunk - or small place in our high notes. When we add this smallness, we increase our vocal agility and are able to sing our fast high notes a little bit easier.
Our upbeat pop box placement is the one that is the hardest transition to make because it feels the most unnatural - and you have to hear yourself do it in playback to make sure you are bright enough, small enough, and quick enough.
With these mid- uptempo contemporary songs, we also have to work on staying in the pocket (or keeping up with the music). To do this, we shorten our words significantly - to give us more control of the note, and to give us time to add texture and scats. This "pop box" placement optimizes our forward placement for quick words and notes - taking it to a few extremes to make sure that our voice doesn't feel and sound like it's moving through molasses when we sing quickly.
In order to do this, we move our voice to this more forward condensed place - (making it sound a little more chipmunky than usual) we shorten our words, talk them a little bit more, and make sure to separate each word with space giving our brain time to slow down the words and hit each one - taking out the "melting together" or "molasses" feel.