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Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

244 points by jesperordrup

by caryme

4 subcomments

This is cool! There's a lot of bad (and by bad, I mean misaligned with modern voice science and science-informed pedagogy) on the internet, so it's nice to see a resource striving to organize some good information.
A couple recommendations I'd suggest exploring to be even better aligned with current understanding:
Current literature does not distinguish between head voice and falsetto. While "falsetto" often carries a connotation of breathiness, that is not inherent to the register. Both are referred to in literature as laryngial mode M2, in which the Cricothyroid muscle is dominant in shaping the vocal folds. In contrast, chest voice or M1 is Thyroarytenoid dominant. While that may be a bit in the weeds, I found wrapping my head around this very helpful in cutting through a lot of confusing language around head voice .
Use of these different registers changes across genre and voice type. Classical sopranos and mezzos use head voice in their upper range, while musical theatre sopranos and mezzos bring their chest voice up (i.e. belting). Meanwhile, tenors and basses typically use chest voice for their full range in both classical and musical theatre genres, with much more use of head voice in pop/contemporary genres.
One other suggestion is to more prominently feature SOVTs (semi occluded vocal tract exercises). You reference them in your warm up section (lip trills and straw phonation) but these are highly effective and evidence-based tools to develop efficient phonation.
Further, for anyone looking to learn to sing (and anyone can learn to sing!), there's no better resource than a voice teacher. Most teachers nowadays teach online as well as in person. A great place to start looking for a teacher is through NATS or ICVT.

by meixyz

3 subcomments

For all those who think they're not talented and therefore can't learn how to sing, some good news here: Learning to sing is a matter of coordinating and strengthening muscles, so it can be practiced and improved just like anything else. The predisposition is largely the same for everybody (vocal pathologies excluded).
The reason why most people can't just naturally sing well is that singing is not a primary biological function, but a bi-product of a survival mechanism (vocal folds, aka airflow control / airway protection).
The muscles interacting with the vocal folds (thyroarytenoid and cricothyroid) have antagonistic function and work on reflexes rather than control, so the hard part of learning how to sing is to train them to coordinate properly rather than work against each other.

by GiraffeNecktie

0 subcomment

For overcoming pitchiness, the "one weird trick" I learned from a singing teacher is to imagine you are moving in the opposite direction from the actual pitch. If you're going higher, imagine you're going lower and vice versa.
This helped me overcome the tendency to constrict the throat when reaching for a higher note or to go flat when heading lower.

by jesperordrup

1 subcomments

I think that everybody can sing better with a little guidance. Thats already worth something to 1 + those nearby

by sharyphil

1 subcomments

This is great, I feel we will be seeing more and more of these hyper focused niche learning projects.
As for the project itself, I think it's useful, definitely has Claude interface - colors and font even. :) But still so much better than the umpteenth productivity SaaS AI wrapper.

by aaarrm

1 subcomments

Okay, what's the actual point of this website? It's just a glossary of singing terms, that if you sing at all you would know pretty much all of them. Even the "resources" section that links to youtube just links to a search on youtube of the term, not a specific video. Was this just your AI project for fun?

by rmnclmnt

3 subcomments

> Growl > > Famous examples: > Christina Aguilera, James Brown, Tina Turner
I was not expecting these names!

by rdiddly

1 subcomments

Would be gratified to see a male, David Lee Roth, added to the whistle register examples! (Edit: or James Brown)

by jesperordrup

0 subcomment

Updated with cvi term notes and map.
To come: beginner guide

by dostick

1 subcomments

Nirvana and Radiohead do not sing as entire band like barbershop trio/quintet. Their singers have names.

by erdemo

1 subcomments

This is what I was looking for recently! Thank you!

by allears

0 subcomment

There's a story (dunno if it's true, but it could be) about an anthropologist who is living with an African tribe to study them. He gets to know the tribe and is accepted by them, and one day a village elder invites him to join a group sing that evening. The anthropologist says "No, no, I can't sing." The elder looks at him in astonishment and says, "What do you mean you can't sing? You can talk, can't you?"

by allears

1 subcomments

I think this is a great summary and resource. No, it's not all you need to learn to sing, but it wasn't intended to be. Regarding singing on pitch and in tune, that too is a learned skill. A good coach or singing class will work on ear training. Sometimes the (wrong) mechanics of your vocal technique can make it difficult to hit a pitch accurately, but you can definitely improve your ability to hear a pitch and sing it. These are things that even pro singers train and receive coaching on.

0 subcomment

by jesperordrup

0 subcomment

Updated. Less pops

by gushogg-blake

1 subcomments

Too many popups

by megous

1 subcomments

This has a lot of Riggs/Manning's SLS/SS vibes. Incl. the exercises and terminology.

by Almondsetat

1 subcomments

[flagged]

by homeonthemtn

1 subcomments

Hey this is really neat, thank you

by ninkendo

2 subcomments

Nit: please don’t push to my browser history every time I expand one of the sections… I had to press my browser’s back button a dozen or so times to get back out of your site.

by huflungdung

0 subcomment

[dead]

by SwiftyBug

12 subcomments

Singing is one of the few things that I suspect may not be just learned. Sure, you can improve a little, but not go from complete trash to someone you would actually tolerate hearing sing. I think our anatomies constrain us much more than for other things. How come some people can naturally sing and others produce a horrible screech? What I've been trying to find is a style that best suits my voice that will make it seem like I'm not horrible. Don't know what that is yet. Finding that is not so easy when you don't have a large vocal range nor a particularly interesting voice.