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 or style that our brain wants us to add, separating our scats into individual notes, and focusing on the tone by itself. Most singers tend to use vibrato, and the "singing monster" part of their brain (or falling back, mixing pitches and tones together) as a crutch to try and enhance their overall tone, instead of using it correctly as 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 and correct style 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.