Last Friday night famed vocal coach Brett Manning (he coaches people like Taylor Swift and Keith Urban) came to Brookwood Church to do a seminar. He doesn't do many but he's an old friend of worship leader Steve Smith. You might have seen him on CMT's "Can You Duet" show - it was kind of like a Country American Idol. Brett was a judge along with Naomi Judd and songwriter Aimee Mayo.
At the end of the seminar we had a question and answer time. I asked "Church music has changed so much in the past 20 years, could you talk about the difference between "legit," traditional/operatic singing and contemporary vocal style?"
Brett said the main difference is... personality! Think of how much personality is injected into contemporary vocals... compare how distinctly different Randy Travis, Madonna, Scott Stapp and Billie Joe Armstrong of Greenday sound. He hilariously mimicked Celine Dion perfectly, demonstrating all the vocal tones and effects she can produce.
Contrast this with "legit" singing. The vocals are vowel to vowel, all produced in the same, even sounding way and all notes are held for their full duration.
This reminds me of something American Idol top ten finalist Chris Sligh recently told me. He was doing a concert at a church, and the music director said something like "my vocalists are good but something doesn't seem quite right." At the praise team rehearsal Chris heard the problem: the vocalists were singing "properly" and holding out notes for their full duration. Kind of sounds like the problem I talked about a few weeks ago at WorshipIdeas - the pressing problem in worship music today is not transitioning to contemporary from traditional, it's in learning to do contemporary music in a contemporary way.
Depending on the song, a contemporary vocalist won't hold out a full quarter note, even if it's written as a quarter. Chris mimicked the vocalists he heard singing the popular praise song "Mighty to Save." Instead of singing the song conversationally and casually as it was originally recorded, the vocalists were singing "mighty to saaaaaaaaaave" and stretching out that note with full vibrato.
How can you help your vocalists? It's no different than trying to get a stubborn, dated guitarist to use a capo, only in this case you're trying to convince a vocalist that they can lay off the vibrato. As I said in my article, it's a pride issue. If your team has teachable, humble heart attitudes you just might have a chance.
Check out Brett Manning's Singing Success vocal training course. I've used it myself and really enjoyed it.
4 comments:
Most people, if they took music classes in college or majored in music, were trained to perform classical music. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but unless you plan on making a career in the opera or broadway, you will find yourself behind the 8-ball when it comes to singing contemporary music. You are so right in saying that it takes personality to pull off contemporary music. I could tell the difference between a Robert Plant, Freddie Mercury, or Roger Daultrey growing up more than I could a Placido Domingo from a Luciano Pavarotti. The key is not to imitate someone else's personality, but find your own.
I am dealing with this right now at our church. I am so glad I stumbled upon your blog. Lots of patience and prayer is going into this issue for us. Howeer, this is really giving us a great opportunity to talk to the old standby praise singers about how to communicate with the congregation.
I am a vocal instructor and was trained in the traditional method back in the late 60's, early 70's. I had to retrain myself to sing in a contomporary manner. It was a tough transition, but oh so rewarding.
There are actual mechanics, beyond personality that need to be applied. If you've ever been to a Tim Carson vocal workshop, you've heard him say "sing like you speak." That is the secret, but it can be difficult to get a handle on it.
If you can find a Contemporary Commercial Music vocal teacher, they know how to help you grow. That term has been coined in the last decade to clearly define the different type of vocal production.
One tool is to repeatedly speak a phrase from a song in an emotional but authentic speaking voice (use broad tonal inflections). Then sing it using exactly the same voice, but without tension in the throat (which shouldn't be there in a healthy speaking voice).
It's incredibly freeing to use your voice in this manner. It is natural, not contrived, and has greater flexibiliity.
The traditional singing training originated from a need to be heard by a large group of people. With our amplification culture, there is no need for this type of production, unless, of course, the lights go out.
I was so relieved to see the word "Warbler" used in previous entries on this page. It was good to have a lable for the process that matched how I felt. As a youth I went to a barbershop quartet workshop and the presenter stopped all of the singers and said. "OK who's doing the vibrato? He also said "The only vibrato I want to hear is the sound you make when I'm throttling your neck! He was teaching us that 10 people singing with out of synch vibrato can sound more like a pop corn popper than a vocal group. I don't use his words today with our praise team, but I do tell the story. I have heard gospel quartets do vibrato in harmony where the peak and trough of the vocals were synchronized. That means people have to sing together for years to get it right. Praise teams do rarely have that luxury.
A very common sin for musician's is vanity that involves way too much thinking about the self, or it involves a need to compensate for the parts of themselves that they don't really feel that great about. It takes a lot of ego strength to put one's self out there and sometimes people haven't had a lot of people around them that have been open or honest. These things make change very difficult.
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