Diary Of A Vocal Coach: Training Sessions Part 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9

Training session na Mayunga (mshindi wa Airtel Trace Music Star Tanzania), nikimuandaa kwa shindano la Airtel Trace Music Star Grande Finale litakalo fanyika huko Nairobi, Kenya tarehe 28 Machi, 2015. Kijana wetu yuko vizuri, tumpigie kure.

JOETT
Vocal Coach/Private Singing Lessons
Online Singing Lessons Course

Diary Of A Vocal Coach: Training Sessions Part 1, 2, 3 & 4

Training session na Mayunga (mshindi wa Airtel Trace Music Star Tanzania), nikimuandaa kwa shindano la Airtel Trace Music Star Grande Finale litakalo fanyika huko Nairobi, Kenya tarehe 28 Machi, 2015. Kijana wetu yuko vizuri, tumpigie kure.

JOETT

Vocal Coach/Private Singing Lessons

Online Singing Lessons Course

How to Quickly Fix Tricky Pitch Segments of a Song

{Published in Business Times Newspaper March 27, 2015} If you’ve experienced pitching difficulty when trying to deliver a song, you will appreciate what this article is about to deliver—some handy tips on how to fix tricky pitching issues that oftentimes serve to torment and frustrate the singer. Common hurdles are the low notes that sound rather muddy, and the high notes that sound rather pinched or strident—OR weak and unsavory falsetto. The thing about it is if you’re a musician worth your salt, you will know when your vocals just aren’t sounding right. So let’s go over the common complaints afflicting the singer, and what you can do to quickly fix these seemingly insurmountable shortcomings in your vocal range.

 I will begin with the high notes and take you down to the lower register. Let’s say you’re finding it difficult to hit a clean and crisp high note without resorting to a lighter-production falsetto tone that, unless you’re doing it for special effect, doesn’t sound quite right. The reason is simple. When you get to a certain octave, what is happening is you’re disconnecting. And here’s a quick solution: try to imagine a straight line that goes from your chest to your head. The quick-fix way to align your vocals to travel in a straight line is to simply hum your way up. Take a deep breath, and then begin by humming the melody of the song in your speaking voice (the low note) and push that up into your upper register… into what we call the ‘head voice’ (you’ll feel the resonance in your head). And if you begin to disconnect on your way up, lean forward as you approach the top note. Repositioning your posture by leaning forward alleviates the gravitational pull to allow the muscles surrounding your larynx to stay relaxed and to not interfere with your tone production. That’s all there is to it. With the help of special arpeggio exercises, try to practice the hum—daily if you can—to improve your tone production and chest to head voice connection. Once you get the hang of this, there’ll be no need to lean forward. Hitting the highs will come naturally. Use the forward lean strategy only as a short-term solution to help you stay connected.

And what about the low notes? Begin your hum at the bottom of your range and as you approach the top note, lean forward to prevent you from reaching or having your larynx muscles recruited to produce the tone (as when this happens it causes strain). On your way down, gradually begin to tilt your trunk back to the erect posture as you did at the beginning of this exercise. Keep working your way down the scale into your chest voice as deep as you can go. If you do this correctly, you’ll find that your voice in your lower range is now crisp and clear. If you’ve had voice lessons before you’ll be well aware of how this feels. Download free mp3 to arpeggios and descending scales here.

JOETT
Vocal Coach/Private Singing Lessons
Online Singing Lessons Course

How to Smoothly Sing Your Way through the Passage Areas of Your Range

{Published in Business Times Newspaper March 10, 2015} If you’ve ever been fearful of using or exploring your range when you sing, this article will offer tips on how to get over your fears and most importantly, how to remedy your situation. I frequently hear people say, I can’t sing high notes. Or, my voice really hurts when I sing only a couple of songs. Complaints are by and large pretty similar in the sense that, there is only one solution to all of these seemingly varied vocal problems. Yes, once you’ve done it, you’ve fixed all your vocal issues in one fell swoop. I will explain.

As you sing higher into your range, you may have experienced that you begin to tense up around the throat, feel uncomfortable and even switch registers in a manner that actually doesn’t sound right. The reason this happens is because you are encountering areas where muscular and or resonance activity make it difficult to negotiate smooth transitions between vocal cord adjustments. Most singers know these areas all too well. They are places where the voice jams up, suddenly shifts in quality, or even breaks—things that can discourage someone from ever exploring the full potential of their voice. And so you begin to think, you can’t do this!

We, however, refer to these areas as passage areas. That's because, when you approach them the right way, they become passage ways between where you are coming from and where you want to go in your vocal range. And there’s only one way to get through these passage areas—by doing specific exercises that cut through these areas.

Your first passage area is the most critical. It's where your outer muscles (if they haven't done so already) are most likely to enter into the adjustment process. When they do, they pull on and tighten around the outside of your larynx in an effort to stretch your vocal cords to get the necessary tension for the pitch or dynamic level you require. However, stretching your cords in this manner causes your entire singing mechanism—tone and words—to jam up! Fortunately, there is a better and much easier way to stretch your vocal cords to achieve the necessary tensions without disrupting your tone-making process or your word-making process.

The key is to do less in order to do more. To be specific, the higher you sing the less air you should and conditions you to do just that.) When you reduce the

amount of air you send to your vocal cords, you make it possible for the muscles inside your larynx to stretch your vocal cords by themselves. Your outer muscles are less likely to interfere because there isn't as much air to hold back. Your outer muscles will interfere in the vibration process whenever you use more air than your vocal cords and the other muscles inside your larynx are able to handle.

use. (In training, this is an automatic reflex and

To help you get started with singing higher into your range, I offer FREE vocal coaching via WhatsApp that includes FREE mp3 downloads to vocal exercises. 

JOETT
Vocal Coach/Private Singing Lessons

Imminent Demise of Auto-Tune Singer: Are You Prepared for the Revolution?

PUBLISHED IN BUSINESS TIMES NEWSPAPER 13th MARCH 2015 == Auto-Tune is an audio processor, created by Antares Audio Technologies which uses a proprietary device to measure and alter pitch in vocal and instrumental music recording and performances. It was originally intended to disguise or correct off-key inaccuracies, allowing vocal tracks to be perfectly tuned despite originally being slightly off-key. Well, it didn’t stop there. In recent years, the auto tune has become the lifeblood of the bad singer and has helped create the superstars we know today that couldn’t sing their way out of a paper bag no-matter what—singers who owe their entire ‘singing’ careers to the auto tune, and paradoxically, the saga continues even on live performances where an on-set studio would auto-tune their vocals as they performed. The latter being a costly affair, and that’s why the next best thing and more commonplace would be to not sing at all. Lip synching as it were, and singing on top of prerecorded vocals being pretty much the in thing—AND what beggars belief—ACCEPTED by the public. But things are about to change. Are you ready for the revolution?

Let’s stay in Africa for a moment to discuss this topic. When was the last time you heard a record that didn’t have vocals auto-tuned from start to finish? And I don’t mean the occasional vocoder vocals sprinkled in good taste, but the full whack treatment of it throughout the entire track! Has that got you thinking? What actually hacks ME off is when live performances at the MTV Awards in South Africa are done in this fashion. Well, word has it, music lovers on the continent are beginning to wake up to this proverbial con and you’ll find more and more, singers who originally depended entirely on gimmickry are now having to perform live—to their embarrassment, obviously, because of their inability to hold a simple note. Coke Studio Africa, with their live band format, have perhaps unwittingly unveiled some masks and rattled some cages on the popular TV show. I don’t know whether to thank them for it… I’ll let you be the judge and juror. But if deception by way of the auto-tune is on its way out, what are YOU, the singer or aspiring singer of tomorrow, going to do about it?

Well, the BAD news is, you’re going to have to learn to sing using special exercises to develop and condition the voice. And the GOOD news is that it is perfectly doable. So if you think this is rocket science, dispel that thought from your mind right now! YOU can do it if you really want. Hey, in the 80s and 90s there was no auto-tune and they sounded splendid—much better than they do today. I have nothing against technological advancement, but in this instance, the musical fraternity—obsessed with pitch perfection and opting for technology (rather than vocal training) to cover up bad vocals—has, fundamentally brought about the imminent demise of  their own creation—the auto tune singer. If you want to harness your full potential as a singer, get some vocal training!


JOETT
Vocal Coach
Private Singing Lessons

Airtel Trace Music Star to be Mentored by Superstar Akon

Hired by Airtel Trace Music Star to sit on the judge panel alongside Afro pop songstress Vanessa Mdee and record producer Hermy B, Joett and his musical fraternity pals were charged with the arduous task of sifting through audition tapes and later, after selecting the top 5 entries, Joett was commissioned to vocal coach the contestants for the Tanzania Finale that took place February 7th 2015. Quite a tall order, considering Joett only had 10 hours per contestant to get their vocals in order in time for the finish line, in which Mayunga emerged overall winner.

Winners from thirteen African countries will attend a televised Pan-African Grand Finale in Nairobi on March 28th, to elect the Airtel TRACE Music Star 2015. The winning finalist will travel to the USA to be mentored by megastar Akon and he/she will star in their own professional music video to premier on TRACE. The Airtel TRACE Music Star winner will also sign a record deal with Universal Music in the USA. In the run-up to the Pan-African Grand Finale, Tanzanian winner, Mayunga, continues to receive professional vocal training and mentoring from Joett.

How to Develop the Art of Training the Voice and Allowing it to Happen

PUBLISHED IN BUSINESS TIMES MARCH 6th 2015 == If you’ve ever had trouble allowing your voice to deliver the notes to a song the way you want them, then chances are you’re holding back. If you’ve done the training, all you need to do is to allow it to happen. This may sound like a farfetched pie in the sky storyline, but let me assure you that it is very true and real. This article will offer tips on how to make the transition from training the voice on the scales, to delivering tight and powerful vocals when you sing ANY song. It’s a journey of discovery you’ll likely enjoy if you stay alert and tuned in to your inner voice. So let’s begin.

First things first, do the scales to train the voice. They may seem like some lifeless exercises to you, but they do what they’re meant to do. They fix your voice. However, here’s the secret to getting quick results with your training. Agreed, the ability to learn varies from person to person, but if you try to focus on HOW you feel when you train… by listening to your own voice and by being aware of how it feels as you do the exercises, will help you DISCOVER your voice very quickly. With every exercise, you’ll begin to understand better how your voice works. Speech level singing, in particular, would have you sense areas of your vocal range you never knew existed. But only if you listen, feel and use all of your senses to experience the sensation of connecting your chest voice to your head voice. Now let’s take a closer look at HOW to allow things to happen.

The best way to learn to sing is to do the vocal exercises (the scales) and to make sure that you’re doing them correctly. You see, you’re training both your ear and your voice here, so make sure you’re listening very intently so that you sing in key. There is a tendency—with many, to want to get over and done with the scales as quickly as possible so they could just sing a song. Let me give you a piece of advice. Never do this in a hurry! Focus on training your voice first before you even attempt to sing the songs you SO want to sing. You will be amazed how after focusing more on the exercises, when you’re finally good and ready, how much easier it becomes to sing your favorite songs… as if by magic! I implore you to be patient and to take your training very seriously. That’s if you really want to discover, nurture and develop a great singing voice.

JOETT
Private Singing Lessons