Singing With Style: Jazz Vocal Warm Up & Vocal Style Singing Lessons
Album Description
Singing With Style is a versatile program for developing and maintaining good singing technique and vocal stylizing skills. Part One is a song-based vocal warm up of eleven jazz standards and detailed technique instruction. Part Two uses the same songs to teach many aspects of vocal style including ornamentation (licks and riffs), phrasing, pentatonic runs, interpretation, improvisation, scat singing and much more. Singing With Style includes:… More >>
Singing With Style: Jazz Vocal Warm Up & Vocal Style Singing Lessons
I am not a trained singer. I am certain the exercises presented are valuable ones. There’s certainly good information here. Unfortunately the singer’s voice is so sugary and fake sounding that I can’t choke this down. I absolutely want to hurl into a bucket every time she sings. How can I take advice from someone who thinks this sounds good? I hate to be so negative about anything that’s probably full of good information, but I can’t help it. I think this is awful. If the jewel case hadn’t broken when I opened the package, I’d try to return the item. This is a lot of money to pay for a thing I hate this much.
Rating: 3 / 5
Great song selection, lots of tips, and what I really liked was the long section about developing your own vocal style. Just as helpful, but way cheaper than taking weekly private vocal lessons!
Rating: 5 / 5
There is a ton of good info on these CDs; I learned a lot from the technique section and the warm up works well, and I’d much rather warm up singing jazz songs than scales. Then there’s the second half: I’ve had a hard time finding anything that covers how to stylize your singing, and Susan explains it all in detail. Really helpful. I have a friend who sings rock and soul and she liked the style section, too, even though Susan uses jazz songs as examples. There’s so much in here that I think either a beginning or a pro singer would get something out of it.
Rating: 5 / 5
I stumbled on this by mistake here at Amazon, and was thrilled, since I am in the process of recording vocal technique tracks, myself. This course is based on jazz style specifically, and is not going to do much for those wanting to sing classically, but should benefit singers of other “popular” vocal styles. The basic understanding of vocal technique is explained well, and the lessons progress quickly, but the important parts are covered fairly thoroughly.
Susan Anders uses an excellent selection of jazz standards for her lessons, and includes accompaniment (instrumental only) at the end of the course in the last (3rd) CD. This will allow for practice, as well as some performance opportunities.
My concern with the course is twofold:
1. Anders sings with the back of her tongue arched up, which makes her voice sound young, pinched and thin. She speaks of an “inner smile”, and also talks about lifting the soft palate, in order to allow for proper resonance. However, with this lifted palate and “inner smile”, if the back of the tongue is not relaxed, then it ends up sounding just like Anders. That might be the desire of the singer to create that sound, but it sounded whiny and annoying to me. And it is contradictory to her constant urging to avoid tension, since that is exactly what she is doing!
I would avoid the “inner smile” and instead, lift the upper lip off the teeth just a bit (as if biting into a piece of fruit). This will bring the resonance forward and create a bright timbre without the tension in the throat, which should be relaxed.
If you are unsure about the throat being tense, you can mimic a dog panting, with your tongue resting on your bottom lip, with no tension in the point of the tongue. In this position, sing the phrase on the vowel sounds only, or just on “Ah”. If it sounds (or feels) more open, you probably need to do this a while to relax the throat and keep the tongue low in the back of the mouth.
2. Vibrato is assumed to be throat-generated vibrato. No details are given on how to develop vibrato, only advice in how to avoid unhealthy throat vibrato. This is actually a “shake”, which is a distortion of the pitch. Vibrato, or “spin” is best produced from the diaphragm, as the breath is being supported, and the throat is open and relaxed. The movement of the air will create a “spin” effect to the sound. This also keeps the throat relaxed and open, since it is not being used to develop the vibrato.
Of course, the reason Anders assumes throat vibrato, and does not address diaphragmatic vibrato is because that is the way she produces her vibrato. In actuality, both of my issues work together. If she corrected one, they would both improve.
Rating: 4 / 5