Last week I’ve started my weekly blog about a change I’m currently doing. I’m revealing what I’m doing today, I had to wait last week because I don’t want to raise the bar of expectation.
A little history of me is needed to understand. I’ve been playing musical instruments for as long as I remember. There are plenty of photos of me holding a guitar when I was around 4 or 5 years old. I remember dreaming about playing music on a stage some day, something what I do quite regular these days and enjoying every second of it.
I got my first drumkit when I was 6 I guess? From that moment I stopped trying other instruments, this was the one I liked the most.
While I was making noise on the drums, I enjoyed music a lot. Especially bands like Everly Brothers, Simon&Garfunkel, Beach Boys, Rubettes and Buddy Holly. Back then my parents had a car and for some reason I can only remember the Carpenters in that car. Also my mum singing along, something which I didn’t like.
Anyway, years passed on and apart from singing along with music, I’ve never done anything to get my singing improved. I disliked the sound of my voice and I figured, as a drummer I’ll probably never sing right?
Wrong. I started a 50s Rock ‘n Roll band and I found out I needed to do some backing vocals there. I had to take lessons for that because I knew I’m not used to keeping tone or how to manage my vocal chords. So I did, I took every week a lesson at a vocal coach. He was a nice guy, but was lacking quite some experience in teaching a starter like me. Eventually, I choose to not spend money on it anymore. The progress was too slow.
The Rock ‘n Roll band fell apart and after a few changes, I joined the band Pyrates!. One thing I like about Pyrates! is harmonising vocals. I used everything I learned from that roughly 50 vocal lessons, but still I am/was too unsure about the quality of my vocals plus I found it very hard to get the tones right. So, another vocal coach was searched.
Again, it didn’t work for me. Lack of funds combined with not actually learning something made me stop there as well.
Recently, I got annoyed that my vocals sound so different in my head than on the recording we’re making with Pyrates!. Despite doing everything I learned/remembered, I simply can’t get the right sound out of me. The lead singer of Pyrates!, David, who is an awesome musician who I really look up to for his vocal ability, noticed the volume is much lower when I sing higher notes and other songs I really sing strongly. I choose to do the test myself and record myself singing over random songs and that opened my eyes (or ears better to say). My god, I sound terrible as soon as I’m in the higher region. The lower vocals sound ‘ok’, but still not good enough for me.
Basically I put myself into a choice. Or I’ll fix my singing voice or I stop singing altogether. I decided to take one shot to get my singing improved and that’s what I started end of October.
For the first time ever in my life, I’m actually noticing a change in my singing. Only after 6 lessons of this course (one every day + 1 day ‘vocal rest’) I started to notice a small change. Enough to continue with this online course.
So far, I’ve learned how to warm up my vocal chords in an easy way and this week I’ve been learning about breathing technique. This course promises me to improve my singing. As he states himself ‘Anybody can be a good singer, it’s just a matter of the right technique’.
As soon as I have some decent results, I’ll let you know how things are working out. In the end I’ll post a full review of this course. So far, I’m really enthusiastic and I’ve learned more than my 2 (!) vocal coaches learned me.