Singing Blather

The key skill for a musician is listening. The ability to play or sing is built upon many instances of making sounds, and then adjusting technique based on the result.

The same applies to bands. No matter how good the individual musicians, the band sucks if everybody doesn’t listen to each other very closely. If it’s just one guy, the band can play along with him, but if you ever wind up in some garage with two “band members” who don’t really listen, you might as well pack up your stratocaster because you’ll just be adding to the godawful din.

About six months ago, my singing voice was in great shape, because I’d been playing songs almost every day for months, and making small adjustments. I had good pitch control, and was getting pretty happy with my ability to phrase things in a way suitable for my voice, and without sounding like I was “putting on” an accent.

My current goal is to get back to that state.

I was not gifted with a natural singing voice. Fortunately, the great thing about “rock and roll” is that it’s an everyman’s music; you don’t need opera-quality “pipes” (they would help), but you do need to learn how to make good use of the equipment you came with.

First and foremost, that means hitting notes accurately. You can sneak up on them from below, but not above (a problem for me). It also means finding a way to avoid unflattering sounds: strained high notes or bleating like a lamb, in my case. Unfortunately, you may wind up having to sing every song in the same couple of keys because of a restricted vocal range where you actually sound good. That’s okay; if Ringo just sings a song or two per album, nobody notices it’s the same five notes. That’s one good reason to have more than one singer in a band – odds are their ranges are a bit different and you get a few extra keys to choose from.

Harmony singing is another great dodge, because two mediocre voices listening to each other and hitting the notes in a tasteful arrangement tend to fill out any harshness, and can easily sound comparable to one really good voice.

I like to sing with Matt, because we’ve played together for years, so we each know the other’s style idiosyncracies well enough to quickly knock together a pleasing harmony. Matt has a better natural vocal quality, but I have a good instinct for harmony and a slightly higher range. Back in the Stickmen/My New Invention days, I would do a couple of lead vocals, and also sing harmony about half of the time. It made things more interesting, and covered a lot of sins, I hope.

(Originally written 23 Jan 2007).