How Good A Singer Are You? The Vocal Litmus Test

How Good a Singer Are You?  The Vocal Litmus Test

 

I was watching the movie ‘Trolls’ with my 8-year-old daughter the other week and was taken back by the character Branch - played by Justin Timberlake.

If you're not up to speed with the story, Branch was a negative, paranoid and cynical little fellow who was at odds with the main character, Princess Poppy, who was completely optimistic and positive in every way. 

In one particular scene, Princess Poppy experiences a little bit of hardship and Branch, completely out of character, consoles her with the song ‘True Colours’ - sung by JT himself.

I was immediately gripped by this rendition, partly because I have a slight weakness when it comes to the 90’s boyband sound (Backstreet Boys, N’Sync …….. come on, if you're over 30 you secretly know the lyrics to all of these songs even if you have publicly declared your dislike for these guys).

But also because of how Justin uses his voice.

The Test:  Can you sing at every pitch with all Dynamics for varied lengths of time?

 

So I started to play around with this particular song from the film and found it quite challenging, mainly because I’m not used to singing that quietly.  Yet here was a powerful moment in a film, extenuated by a song that had a very quiet dynamic which wasn’t static.

What I mean by that is that the song was sung at varying degrees of soft vs staying at one exact volume the entire song.

This can be quite a shock to listeners who are used to hearing modern pop music which is generally loud all the time.

Now if you don’t have control over your voice, then this can be a very tricky thing to achieve. 

Ultimately the entire voice needs to be developed in order to gain complete mastery and control over how you want it to function.

Case in point - your head voice is dependent upon you chest voice and your chest voice is dependent on your head voice.  

So in developing the voice - you need to use a louder volume in order to get certain muscles to work, in order that when you sing quietly those same muscles are automatically involved in improving the sound at that volume.

So How Does One Do This?

Exercises.

A lot of them.

Deliberately trying to move towards a defined target and asking loads of questions as to why you are failing.

This is not just my experience but also a theme that keeps on popping up in performance literature.

Personally, I change up my repertoire to incorporate different styles of music.  It creates a lot of mental tension and emotional balance that can only be recovered by either: 

a) quitting, or 

b) working your butt off until you win!