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YOUR
REAL VOICE - the vocal ezine for real people
May 14,
2005 #3
FEATURE EDITORIAL
Unconsciously Imitating Other Singers
Thanks to Joe from Paradise, CA for unwittingly suppling today's topic
by emailing a question to me.
So, why is it that we imitate the sound or style of another
singer? If we want to be great singers ourselves, why do we
always end up sounding like someone we've heard before? And WHY
can't we control this imitation thing? It took me years to find
the answer to this, but once I did, I had the biggest artistic
breakthrough of my career! The answer is.............
We all start out as fans! That's right, we sing because we
hear someone else do it first. If we like what they do, we want
to do the same. BUT.... it's actually much worse than that.
Think about how you learned language as a baby. We learn to make
vocal noise, and eventually speak and understand language, by being
listeners and imitators first. We copy the sounds of others long
before we ever have an original grunt to make for ourselves! For
about the first two years that we hear language, we are on "input"
only, and have no way to separate our particular way of making sound or
thinking from the impulse to make sounds like the big people around us
who make sounds.
For singers, it gets worse....
Consider the difference in complexity and skill level required to learn
twelve notes and a few rhythms, vs. learning the complete alphabet,
sounds and meanings of 800,000 words and how to use them correctly to
make sure others understand the sounds we make, and we understand and
decode the meanings of the sounds they make. That's a BIG
difference in skill! We had much more practice at learning the
language because it took so much more work, and required so many more
brain parts to accomplish. We mastered vocal sound first BY
imitation.
That's why it's so unconscious and can be so difficult to undo in our
own voices!
But there is a way to get out of the trap, and that is to bring what is
unconscious to the front of our mind and make it conscious. If I
am about to do something, and I am clear that I am about to do it, I
have the choice to do it or not do it, and this is all totally under my
control. If I am about to do something that I don't even notice,
I have no ability to stop it or influence how it do it. It's
almost like it does itself!
That's how singing gets for a lot of us who spend tons of time
listening to other singers and learning their songs. We learn
songs by hearing them, so the key to making our singing consciously
ours is to be able to hear and separate our sound from another singer's
sound. There are two ways to approach this: the
pronunciation sounds and the notes. For example, three singers
that sound completely different than me in pronunciation are Dido,
Vanessa Carlton and Britney Spears. They also sound completely
different than each other, so they are great for this experiment.
Imagine each of them singing a song by each other. Britney
Spears, an American from the deep south, would pronounce the words
completely different from Dido, from the UK or Vanessa Carlton from New
York City. If I sing any song by them I will sing it sounding
exactly like ME because I will pronounce the words the way I actually
say them in conversation. What initially happens for my students
is that they sing the song unconsciously imitating the other
singer. Then we go through the lyrics and speak them just like we
would in a conversation. When the student hears me say back to
them the exact pronunciation they used while they sang it, they crack
up because it sounds so ridiculous.
So, here's how to tackle this one in your own voice, and have a good
laugh at the same time. Pick a song by a singer that sounds
COMPLETELY different than you. For instance, if you are from the
UK, pick a country or blue grass song by an artist from the deep
American south. If you are from the south, pick a song by a
world-beat artist from South Africa. You've got to get WAY
outside your normal sound. Speak through the song imitating the
accent of the singer as accurately as possible. You want to
really mimic every sound they make, but ONLY speak it. If
you're really brave, tape record it and listen back to it a few
times! Once you hear yourself, all the unconscious habits
that hang around in your voice will start to become clear to you.
If you have questions about this article, please email us at info@sing-in-tune.com
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