Vocal tone - vowels
These days I’ve been working on vocal tone and texture. I have a handy little setup where I can play a passage about 15 seconds long and listen to the playback through a delay line.
Today’s efforts were pretty good considering I’ve been taking a break for a while. Pitch didnt seem to be an issue much of the time though there were a few things that I noticed:
- My consonants were disappearing totally. I really had to exaggerate them to get them across at all, to say nothing of providing the punch and energy that the vocals demand.
- I’m getting better at tone control, for example keeping the sound from rising above the soft palatte and channeling most of it through the mouth, which avoids the nasally tone. Today I was even able to direct the vibration into the jaw below by lower front teeth, which made it sound much rounder than before, though maybe a little too much.
- It’s tempting to adopt some kind of drawl to make a voice sound distincting or professional sounding. Got to watch out not to overdo it.
- Spent quite a bit of time today on whisper voice, which take a lot of air. On mic though it can sound pretty good. The trick is to get enough air and force behind it that it doesn’t sound weak. This needs more practice.
- Vowels are very important. In particular i notice if I bend my “ee”s a little to the “ay” sound they sound more pleasing.
Things are improving though I must say I still dont sound that great. I’m not yet sure what I’m not doing that separates me from Eddie Veder, but I’m pretty sure I’ll figure it out this year.