How to sing ANY song like a PRO

1. Introduction: It be awesome to sing your favorite song and not just nail the technical details, but also to sound very polished on all levels to tell a story that is compelling and captivating. In this course, I'm going to share the secrets that all the pros use in order to sound Amazing. But who am I? And what do I know about singing? My name is Freya Casey. I'm a professional singer 2. Orientation: Ready to tackle your song. Here's what you're going to be able to do at the end of this course. You're going to be able to sing one of your favorite songs that you're going to pick. I'm going to help you pick a song that's going to make it easy for you and possible. At the end of this, you're going to record a song and you're going to be proud of it. You're going to feel like Wow, Your voice shines, you sound amazing. In order to do that, there are a few prerequisites. First of all, I want you to have an open mind. Let it sink in. Take your time. Be in an uninterrupted setting when you watch the lessons so you can start experimenting and trying out different things and be ready to discover facets of your voice you may not have been aware of before. You're going to need a computer to download a backing track. You're also going to need your phone with different apps that I'm going to introduce you to. To get a backing track to transpose it into the right key, and you may want to print out the workbook or have it as a PDF to write on that will help you see better results. This is going to be such an exciting journey because at the end of this, you're going to sound like you made that song just for yourself. Like it was written just for you. How long should you practice every day? I always say it's more useful to practice more often. Then it is to practice for a really long time because your vocal course can only take so much every single day. It's like working out. Singing is a muscular activity. Instead of taking 2 hours and working through the entire course in a couple days maybe, Take your time to let it sink in and to really recover your voice after each lesson. Treat it like a workout. It's a mental workout and it's a physical workout, and the physical part of it, you want to make sure you don't get to the limit to where you're straining and the next day you can't sing well. You know your own limits and every voice is different, depends on how much you have trained in the past and where you're at right now and how good your technique is currently, but we're going to establish some of these things. Make sure you just listen to your body. Are you ready? See you in the next one? 3. How to Pick The Right Song: This lesson, we're going to do something very important. We're going to pick a song. Now, picking the right song for your voice is crucial because if you pick a song that's not allowing your voice to be showcased, you are going to struggle and we don't want you to struggle. By the end of this course, I want you to nail that song that you have chosen. Number one, Think of your natural tendencies. Are you a high and loud belter? Are you in your everyday life, someone who is louder and the voice just carries you, everyone hears you, or are you more reserved? That usually means that your singing voice might be something like that. For me personally, my natural tendency, I have a brighter, lighter, youthful sounding voice. It's really good for ballads and Disney Princess stuff. It's like Star shine bride on the mountains tonight? Not a footprint to be seen. A kingdom of isolation. That is good for my voice. Or are you more like belting out like beyond say? Or do you have more of a raspy voice? For me, for example, something like ACDC wouldn't be the best choice. I'm on a high way to hell. I certainly can sing the pitches, but it's not really natural for me. It sounds like I'm trying too hard. Just think of some famous singers, you know. Just think about Barbara Streisand attempting an ACDC song or Bon Jovi trying to sing like Josh Groban. Different voices, right? But you also want to pick a song that you can connect to personally, that you feel compelled to sing. As a professional, I've always had to sing songs even that I wouldn't have picked for myself, but I made them my own. We're going to talk about that later. But I want you to pick something that really resonates with you. But remember, it needs to be something that is doable. If you have a large vocal range, then you may pick something that has a larger range. If you don't have a large range, pick a song that stays within the confines of something that is singable for you. We don't want to avoid the challenges, but right now it's all about nailing a song with what you have right now, the tools that you have in your voice available to you, right now. That's what we have to work with. And we're going to talk more about the technical aspects, but don't pick something that five years down the road may work, but we are not working toward that right now. We're picking something that makes your voice shine right now. Also consider agility. Don't attempt to sing a song like Christina Aguilera with all the ad libs and try to copy it exactly the way she does it if you're really bad at being agile. If you don't have an agile voice, you want to pick something that is easy for you, that doesn't go too fast. Of course, pick a genre that resonates with you. I can sing soul, but it doesn't mean I'm going to sound like Aretha Franklin, not as convincing. We're going to talk more about keys later, but for now, your homework is pick a song. That you really think this showcases my voice, and I want you to try it out because you're not going to be confronted with a limiting factors until you actually sync through it and then you realize maybe it wasn't as easy as I thought because usually it will be a little harder than you initially had imagined. I will see you in the next one. 4. Making Accompaniment and Arrangement Work For You: You've picked a song that you really like that is doable in your voice. Now, let's just talk a little bit about making it your own. There are different versions you can make. Even if I did select Highway to Hell or something like that, there's a lot I can do with this. For example, let's look at highway to hell. I don't have to use the original version. I can just even make it anything I want to make it. Living easy. Living free. And so on. I can make it my own version. Now, there are a lot of acoustic versions out there that you can look at, but ask yourself, you could even take a song that is not 100% the way that you want it to be and make it your own. You could just do an acoustic version. Look for those accompaniment tracks. They out. You could also a band. Also use something more stripped down, something orchestral, maybe sometimes. Get inspired by looking at some cover versions, and you will find there are so many different. Let's look at acoustic cover, for example. There are some really cool versions, sometimes even with violin or with Cello or piano and all these different versions of songs that you would have never thought could sound the way that they can. If you have a softer voice, you could still sing something like Highway to Hell and do it so differently. Living, easy. Living a free. Seasons ticket on a one way ride As thing maybe. Take everything mitra You could just add lib and do whatever you want to do with a song. I just wanted to illustrate that there are a lot of things that you can do with it to make it even more your own. Whatever you do, whenever you pick an accompaniment, pick something that is high quality. Don't do like a mite. Put on your earphones. That is the best way to check this and try to listen for the stereo panorama. Usually when something is recorded, The instruments will be slightly left and right so that the voice can be very much in the center of the recording. It's very crucial because the end result is going to depend on the panorama a lot. Because if everything is in the center, your voice gets buried, and it's going to sound off, and it's going to sound very cacophonous almost. To me, it does. Make sure listen with your headphones or earphones and determine, is there a stereo panorama to where you can pick out, there's something that I here a little more to the left, and there's something more to the right. That is proper stereo and at the end result of you singing whether it's live, just playing the track off. Or recording, especially for recording, you want to make sure the stereo is there. Just try out different accompaniment tracks and see which one you really like the most. Where can you find good accompaniment tracks? Well, number one, you could go to YouTube. There are a lot of free karaoke versions out there, even sometimes acoustic ones, different versions of something. You can also go to Spotify. There are also different websites out there where you can find karaoke versions that are usually pretty good quality. Now, in the next lesson, it's going to be very important because we're going to talk about picking the correct key. 5. Finding the Right Key: All right, Let's recap what we have got so far. You have picked a song that suits your voice, that resonates with you. The style is good for your voice. It will showcase your natural tendencies and the beauty of your voice. I picked footprints in the sand performed very popularly by Leona Lewis, and I'm going to accompany myself on the piano, like this right here, let's talk about finding the right key. This is a song that has a large range. It goes low and high. So You walked with me footprints in the sand and helped me understand where I'm going. And then at the end, it goes really low. You walk with me. Da da da da da da da da Then I heard you say. That's the low point, okay? Doable in my voice. The key is not too bad. I promise you I'm always there When your heart is filled with sorrow and despair. I carry you. Okay, good. That's not the highest point. It does go higher later, so let me test that out. When a weary When I know you will be the So it's quite a challenge, and yes, but it's doable. No. A. Okay, that high belted pitch is doable. Okay. What if I transpose this even minimally? What if I transposed it just down by half a step. That would already make a difference in my voice because it would mean I would probably not be able to sing that lowest pitch there. It's like, You walk with me. Footprints in the sand. That's all doable. Help me understand where I'm going. It's quite low already, even just the half step. Then I heard you say, maybe it would be transposable. Maybe a half a step down, and then the high pitch would become a half step lower than I did before. Penn Yeah. Both keys would be doable for me, but for simplicity's sake, I'm just going to pick the key that's the original that I have the sheet music for. Yeah, that'll work. However, you may have a song that may be an entirely wrong key for your voice. That is often the case, for example, if you're trying as a female to sing a song that is originally by a male artist or vice versa, unless that person has either the male has a very high voice for a or the female has a very low voice for a female. If that is the case, don't worry, we can still make this song work. What you're going to do is you're going to download the backing track that you have picked. If it's in the wrong key, don't worry. Download the track from YouTube. You can do like a downloader. This is for practice sake. Then you're going to go to an app called al.ai and I will provide the link for you. You're going to upload that track and you're going to strip away the vocals so that you have just the backing track. You have a good quality backing track works with most original tracks. The next thing you're going to do if you do not play an instrument and you do not know how to transpose the key. You're going to go to the N tune app. Let me show you real quick. When you go to the N tunes app, you can add new tracks and you can pick where where you get this from, for example, I have my dropbox connected, you can get it via Wi Fi, but I have it in here already. I have one right here, and what you can do now, for example, this is a track and I can just lower it. That's minus one. And I can lower it even more. I can change the key. You can do that and it'll work up to a certain degree after a while, it's going to sound radiculous. If I do like this, that's like a plus seven half steps higher, that is ridiculous. But you can do this up to maybe three or four, it's doable, but you can also change the speed of it, for example, the tempo. Let's do it faster. O There is a level of distortion that starts, but could do it slower. You just have to play around with it and see what works for you, but there's definitely some room for transposing, which it still works then. Now, here's what I want you to do. I want you to try that song that you picked in different keys. Use that any tune app and just sing through it and see what it feels like, even if it's just a little bit higher or a little bit lower. If it's a lot, if you need to do it by plus six or minus six, That's too much, it's going to sound distorted. What you can do, however, you can go to YouTube and sometimes you can find it in a different key, a karaoke version. If you pick a song that is a song that is often performed and that's well liked, chances are you can find it in a different key. Then if you need a minor deviation from that key, you could still do a plus two or three minus two or three, and it won't sound too distorted. But see what your voice does when you just change the key a little bit. You'll be amazed at how different it feels in your voice. 6. The Right Singing Technique: All right. Now let's dig into the meat of singing. We're going to talk about the technical aspects, and this is going to be the longest lesson. First of all, let's talk about pitch. We all know, of course, we want to sing the right pitch, singing on key, on pitch. How do you know if you were sing on pitch? I'm going to give you three different strategies for all different scenarios. Okay. First scenario is that you actually know how to play an instrument, the piano, or maybe the guitar, and you can follow the sheet music or you can plunk or play around your melody line, only the melody line. In my case, let me just look at my piece of music here. You walked with me footprints in the sand. I'm going to play out the pitches very slowly. Walk with me food b s and helped me understand where I'm going way. By playing the piano and singing along, I'm really slowing it down so that my brain can see if it's matching. If you are not very accurate in pitch currently, that is a good strategy to become more accurate because you slow things down and try to match. The more often you do this where you sing along, piano is really good because you don't have to tune it. A well tuned piano ideally and actually electric piano like a digital. Because it's always well tuned. You're going to learn to be so much more accurate. If you don't have an instrument available to you or you don't know how to tell if you're on pitch, you can use another app, and I'm going to show you what it is. Download the free nail the pitch app and you can see, it's going to I did something just a few minutes ago. But what you can do, you just, you can just let it play. As I'm speaking, you can already see that it's going up and down. But for example, I'm just going to get my first pitch. You're going to see this line there. You Can you see how Got pause actually. You see how that last one there. I was in the middle of that, it says B three. I was in the middle of that box there or of that line. Which means I was in the center of the pitch. Which is what we want. What if I'm going a little sharp, you will see that not that orange, but that white line inside of the orange. If I'm not in the center, you walked with me See how now the line was more on the top. Can you see that? So you want to be in the center. You both Full break No worry when there's a little deviation down here because depending on the consonants and different phrasing. But the long pitches, you want to make sure that that white line is as much in the center as possible. That means you have good intonation. Another thing you can actually do is go to YouTube, look for a karaoke track or even for an original track to practice intonation and slow down the speed. You can go to 0.75 or even slower if you want, but it sounds really comical when you does that. Just go to a slower speed to where you can take time to make sure you're singing the right pitches, especially when it's a song that's a little faster or moving, that really will help you be very clear about the pitches that you need to be singing. A lot of times it's not that you can't sing on pitch. A lot of times too fast. You can't adjust fast enough. But let me show you what it sounds like when I'm sharp or flat, even just minimally. Here's a little bit sharp. You walk with me footprints in the sand and helped me understand where I'm going. It sounds really, really off. Now, let me show you what it sounds like when I'm slightly flat, which means below the pitch. You walk with me Footprints in the sand and helped me understand where I'm going. It's just slightly flat, but it just sounds horrible, right? So it's very important that you're always as much in the center of the pitch as possible. And of course, our melody consists of a bunch of pitches. So get the melody correct, and then get the right timing. That's another thing. So if I go You walk with me footprints in the sand. It's really hard to sing off pitch. Let me actually sing on pitch, but then be off with a timing. And help me understand where I'm going You walk with me when I was all alone. So if the timing is off, that doesn't work either. You have to make sure that timing is right. And for that, that slowing down on YouTube or even using that any tune app could be very helpful. The next thing that's so important is phrasing. Now, what I don't want to do is speak like this. When you walk with me, there were footprints in the sand, and it was all amazing, and I know you were my friend and everything was great. I sound like a robot, right? When we speak, and we really mean it. Ebb and flow. Some parts of words are more emphasized, and some parts are lighter. It's this emphasis and lightning up, d d, d d dum, there's a flow to language, and it works the same in music. The flow of language is very much tied to the flow of the music, which means the downbeat is usually the most emphasized in between, a lot of most of the time, it's not as emphasized, it's a little lighter. There are things such as syncopations, meaning a normally unaccented part of the measure is accented. I'm not going to get into more technical details here, but in this case, instead of, let me just go to the course to mix it I promise you I'm always there when your heart is filled with sorrow and despair. So, what I want to do here is not sound the same from beginning to end. I promise you. Oh. I'm always there U Uh uh uh. I want to give it a shape and a flow of direction. So I promise you I'm always there. When your heart is filled with sorrow and despair, I'll carry you. When you need a friend, you'll find my footprints in the sand. So, and the music is composed in a way that the words fit to that in the same way that, you know, the words and the music flow, it fits together. So, now I want to do the same when I sing. I promise you. I promise you. I'm always there When your heart is filled with sorrow and despair. See how it's not despair. I'm not giving every pitch the same weight. Listen carefully to the original artist and pick that out. Listening differently is the first step to really doing this yourself. Got to start realizing and noticing what they do musically. Because singing is more than just singing pitches. It's creating music and a story. I Carry you When you need a friend Another secret. Usually, when it's high, there's a purpose. Okay? When the pitch goes high, give it a purpose. There is a reason why it's composed that way, because it's important. You have something important to say, you. It's not. You. I'll carry you. There's a reason why the composer did it this way. To get the timing more accurate, you may even want to practice with a metronome. You can get one for free. If you have one at home, that's great. If you don't have one, you can get a metronome app. It's free. I use the metronome. I have the pro version, but you can even get the free version and it's fine. But you can do this. In my sheet music, it says the quarter note equals 60, which means I want to set it up to 60, that is the tempo. Three, and four and walk with me footprints in the sand and helped me understand where I'm go If I am not sure about how I'm supposed to count, I can just break it down to the metronome, and the cool thing is, you can just tap this and tell it to give you eighth notes instead. You also have the subdivisions, two and three and four, and one. You walk with me footprints and helped me understand where I'm going That's very helpful to do that frequently if you're not very solid when it comes to counting and following a beat. Right now, your homework is, number one, practice it in tempo and then speak it to find the correct phrasing, to find where is the emphasis. Then with all that knowledge that you gained, then you're going to use your backing track that you have chosen, that you have transposed into the right key, and now you're going to sing it through with that pitch accuracy. After having slowed it down and with the right timing and phrasing. This is going to take time. It's not going to be fixed in 5 minutes. This may take a few days. Do it step by step, little by little, the more time you take for each step, the more accurate it's going to sound, and the better the end result is going to be. 7. How To Be Productive In Your Practice Sessions: In this lesson, we're going to talk more about the details. The devil is definitely in the details when it comes to music. I want you to think quality over quantity. Do not just sing through the entire song beginning to end over and over and over again. What we want is intentional practice and fixing the problems and not just confirming the problems. Because what happens when you just sing through it over and over again, you're just going to reinforce all the bad habits without actually fixing it. You have to take things apart, look at the detail at the micro level, really take a magnifying glass. Huge magnifying glass, and I'm going to demonstrate to you how I'm going to do it, the process I'm going through and really try to ask yourself, how can I fix this problem? How can I do an exercise that I can insert here in order to fix this problem and don't just sing over it and do it over and over the wrong way. I'm going to demonstrate to you and I'm going to talk through. I'm going to comment how I practice this song and the process that I use. You walk with me. Footprints in the sand. Okay, wait a minute. I do have a lot of time to breathe in the beginning, so I need to breathe early. There's this long intro, so So slow breath. You walk with me. I could put a little bit of breath in to give it more emotion. M. M, M footprints send send so that higher pitch is a bit more emphasized and the lower one needs to actually back off a bit. It sounds better and not being heavy on the bottom and hanging onto it. And helped me understand where I'm going that's quite low in my voice. Let me actually do an exercise to try out go go go I don't want to sound dark and low. I want to sound pleasant and resonant and beautiful and intimate. So how can I speak it? Because it reflects my speaking voice, even when I sing go go sliding down. Yeah. How am I sliding down? Go. Am I just dropping down or am I sliding slowly? Go. Is that too slow? Go. Deep breath again, but relaxed breath because I wanted to reflect the character of the song and the sound of my voice. You walk with me. When I was when when I see if I'm doing that accurately. When I when I is at a glottal onset, when I or not. When I when I when I was Yeah, maybe not glottal. When I was all alone. With so much unknown. That's low. A long long long. Oh, that is even a long. It is a kind of a glottal onset, so I need to be careful to not be too harsh on that glottal onset, so I can be accurate and have full control over that onset. A long, that's hard. Uh. So not too harsh glottal. Long, a long, a long. And I need to realize that I don't need a lot of sound. I don't need a lot of volume. A long, a long, friendly voice, not lowering the larynx, along the way. Then I heard you say. Then I heard. Then I heard, very relaxed, barely touching the pitch. So soft. Then I am so kind. Then I heard you say Nice deep breath. 'Cause now we're in chestwis. I promise you. Okay, how can I place that vowel so it sounds nice. It's you. You you. I don't want to sound nasal. I promise you. I'm always there. Nice vibrato, maybe at the end. Yeah, I think that's nice. It's a long pitch, so I should put a vibrato, but not instantly. I should put the vibrato a little later. I would probably go back and listen to the original and kind of see like, Okay, maybe I could have if I don't know, when am I supposed to put on the vibrato, I'll just go take a listen. Always there There Nice deep breath, deep and intense. When your heart is filled with sorrow and despair. Carry lots of ooze in there, right? So let me do an exercise with an o and chest was, Yes, I need to open up that o toward the top cause it's too close, if I go high, it's not singable. Yo. That doesn't work. Okay. I'm much higher than what I needed now. I think that'll work. Carry too dark. Yo My be a little bit of a funnel. When you need when you need. Oh, an E. That's hard. E. Need E. E. E. E. Also, the E needs to open up just a tiny bit toward the top. E, when you need a friend. Oh, I need to also sing through the when you need a friend. And now, I need to get a little softer because I'm about to come to the end of this course, and then getting into the next verse. You'll find my footprints. Breathe or not breathe. Let me try out both ways. You find my footprint sad I'll try it with breathing. You'll find my footprint. For me, I think I like it better without the breathing, so I'll do without the breathing. You see how that works? You have to go through that process and ask yourself, does the vowel sound right? Am my breathing right? Is that a beautiful sound? Is the placement right? Where is the vibrato is the intensity right? Am I having dynamics in there? All the things we talked about so far, don't just plow through the song, but ask yourself on a detailed level. What if I just have that difficulty with that high pitch? I'm not going to sing through the entire verse and all that if the course is the core problem at this point. What if that's just that high pitch, the friend, when you need a friend. What if I struggle just with that? I don't need to sing through the low part. I just need that. Let me do melting exercises. Friend, nona. Can even go and look for tutorials on YouTube for more details on belting, for example, or I think I'm struggling with breathing. Then we're going to talk about that more too. Just look into the topic where you feel that is still something where you need to work and you don't know how. It's all about being intentional and going very deep, not wide, and addressing the problems and fixing them. That is the process I'm going through. Do this today and going forward, actually all the time from now on, and let me know in the comments, what details have you found that you keep struggling with. 8. Advanced Breathing and Vocal Techniques: Let's talk about breathing. We talked about it a little bit, but breathing is really important not just to get air because without air, there's no sound, but also it is part of the sound of singing. Don't look at breathing as this nuisance of like, Oh, I hate. I wish I didn't have to breathe. You do have to breathe, but also you do want to breathe. Just think about it. What would it sound like if you never heard a breath? Let me demonstrate. If I just try to breathe and hide it, doesn't sound human anymore. You walk with me footprints in the sand and helped me understand where I'm going. You walk with me. And I was all alone. So much unknown along the way. I promise you I'm always there. This is really hard now, not breathing. When your heart is filled with sorrow when despair. I carry you when you need a friend. It's really strange. What about this? It's gonna liberate Ma. I promise you. I'm always there When your heart is filled with sorrow wspair. I'll carry When you need a friend. You may have already noticed this. I actually exhale sometimes. Here's what happens when there's intensity. It's like, No, no, no, no, no, no. How could you do this to me? See how even that outward breath sometimes, that kind of slips out there because of the intensity, because we're utilizing support so much, and that diaphragm is at work. That sometimes causes your breath to go like, Oh Some breathing doesn't just mean it's a necessity. It is definitely also part of the sound of speaking and singing. So the breath tells you already my attitude. That's different from. Se all that just sounds different. So it's like you walk with me. Footprints sand. See, I just almost sounds very very intense, most like I'm weeping. Help me understand where I'm going. That is another extreme. Of course, I'm not going to do it exactly this way. Also where you breathe is relevant because don't just breathe at the end of the bar. You breathe at the end of the phrase or where it makes sense. Now, of course, granted in pop music, you will hear a lot of singers breathe before the last word, even if it doesn't really make sense. But ideally, you will breathe where it makes sense musically and or phrasing wise the words. In that case, like, with so much unknown along the way. It doesn't really make sense to breathe in the middle of this phrase because it would disrupt the flow of what I'm talking about. You would say, Oh, with so much unknown along the way. With so much known along the way. That doesn't really work. Breathe where it makes sense. Another very important thing is to be very clear about your vocal registers. You have two registers. Chest voice is what you speak in most of the time. Head voice is more the higher end of your voice. It sounds really strange. I promise you Ooh. I'm always there when your heart is filled with so room and despair. That's head voice, but that is not appropriate for that song or for that genre. So I want to be in chest voice, which also is going to mean I need to pick that song to where I can sing in my chest voice range, and not sing in head voice. We talked about this a little earlier, but know where you sing with what register. And if there is a falsetto or a head voice part that you want to do, it's okay. I could do it. When you need a friend There was more heard voice, friend I can do it if I make it sound beautiful. Another thing that's very important dynamically, usually what happens when you sing higher in chest voice, you're going to have to give it a bit more power. Doing a little bit of a crescendo and more intensity for the higher pitches, if you want to sing them in chest voice is a must. When you need a friend If I soften up, my voice will automatically flip into head voice. When you need a fray, it's not sustainable to sing this high pitch in chest voice. You have to engage those muscles that keep it in the chest register, which is prevalently the thyrotinoid muscles versus the crcothyroid. But that's not relevant for you to know. What is relevant is that, nos, just like when you speak, when you're more intense, then your voice gets higher, That's really helping you to sing in chest voice. Breathing and knowing your registers dynamically how to navigate through higher and lower pitches. Think about it, and now go through your song one more time. Yes, this time you're allowed to go through it entirely to see if you are following these patterns. But as you're going through, make notes in your printed out sheet music or lyrics sheet so that you will remember because the thing is you won't remember everything. After you get through singing, you're going to have forgotten a lot of things that happened while you were singing. Make notes. I'll see you in the next one. 9. How To Tackle Difficult Songs: Let's talk about breaking down a song when you feel like it's a little bit difficult. You want to break it down to its most simple form. Let's just look at, for example, feeling good. You know it by Michael Buble. It has a lot of add lips, so what I'm going to start out with is the most simple bare form of it. So it's basically birds flying high. Doesn't have to sound amazing yet. I'm just getting clear about the timing and about where are the triplets, and what are the actual pitches. You know how I feel. So it's on two. So it's like one and, you know how I feel. I could speak it through. Sun in the sky. You know how I feel. Breeze drifting on ba. Dre Breeze drifting on ba hi da da da dum. There are actually several pitches. But let me just go and look at the sheet music. If I have any, and if not, I'm going to listen carefully, and I'm going to just simplify it for me. Breeze drifting by I don't have to do the exact add lip. Maybe I could just try out. Breezrift, on b. That's enough. I don't have to do ba. I don't maybe have to do it. You know how I feel. You know how I feel. I could do that. There are several ways to do this here. You know how I feel. It's a new dw. It's a new day. It's a new life F. F me. There are different things I could do. What is the simplest form? For me. And I'm feeling. Good. One, 22, 22. I'm breaking it down to make it simpler for myself. Leave out ad libs or if you do add libs, try to break them down to slow them down and to be clear about what are the actual pitches of the ad libs? Be clear about the timing, slow it down, break it down, and even the most complex song will become more logical to you. Music is very logical and sometimes very mathematical. Now let's talk about modulations. They can sometimes be a challenge. In my footprints in the sand song, there's a modulation, so how do I find those pitches? Let's look at this. The end of that course, before the bridge, you'll find my footprints. That is a very extreme modulation, how am I going to find that? When weary. So that is okay, so let's see. How do I find it? Send Sen Oh, it's actually on the high. You find my foot. You find my foot bring in. When Sin sin a Data. It's like the German fire department. Da d, d d, no d d, we did we did. No did we did. It's that fourth. D, d, d, d. So I have to get the fourth. Let me practice that a few times. Let me do that without the cord first. That's hard. S s d d. I'm weary. Okay. Try it with the cords. The sa Well da da da da. So I basically just have to memorize that pitch. But when you break it down and you do that over and over again, that transition, just the transition, No. You just have to memorize what that's going to sound like. Break it down until you understand and you can follow when it makes sense to you, then you can sing the song. Do it right now with a song that you have picked, and anything that is not clear to you yet, make sure it does become clear. 10. How To Make The Song Your Own: All right. Now, let's get to the fun stuff. We have got all the technical stuff squared away, and it will take some time to sink in. A song will mature in your voice. You will find that as you work through all of those things, when you take a little bit of a break and then return to it, things will have sunken in. It does take time. There are songs. I have been singing for years and when I return to them after taking a long time off, From them, a lot of things happen in my voice because it matures and it just ripens in my voice. The first strategy is to actually pick a song that does resonate with you where you feel like, Oh, yes, I have lived through this. This is something that has a very personal meaning to me. For me, the rose has a very personal meaning to me because it's like the song that long story, but it is for my dad who passed away in 1998. That is the song that symbolizes my dad for me and that time when he passed away and all the signs that we got that he's in a better place. So for me, that is a special song, and every time I sing it, it's almost like I'm singing about my dad and about that story for me personally. So that is easy enough. But what if it is a song that maybe it's not exactly personally your story, you have to identify with a character, Ma it your own, make it specific. Don't just be very general, when something says, I love Don't just think I love you. Think about a very specific person and a very specific situation, and exactly how you feel. In theater, we always call this like you have to fill in all the blanks for your character. So you know basically everything about the character. What is the temperature as you are thinking about the situation? How do you feel? Is it cold? Is it warm? Is it bright? Is it dark? How do you exactly feel? What is the exact person you're singing about. What is the exact situation that you're talking about? Some songs are vague in what they actually mean. You have to give it a very specific meaning. If you don't, your audience isn't going to understand and you're not going to be able to come across as very authentic. Then you really have to live through the story as you're singing, which means you have to come to the point to where your technique is under your belt? You have to let go of all that? Not that you have to throw it out the window, but let go of worrying about your technique and now you are at this point where you have to tell yourself, I've worked all this. I just trust what I have right now technically, and now I'm going to focus on truly experiencing the music and the story. If I just sing the song and focus on technique, it sounds more like Some say low It is a ra that drive the tender Some say low It is a at your soul to bleed. I'm detached right now. But when I really am in the story and I'm connecting to the song and I make it my own, I'm not singing it to anyone. I'm experiencing it. I'm just enjoying it myself because I'm living the story. Some say low It is a ray that drives the tended. Some say low It is a. That leads your soul to bleed. Some say low it is air the less aching I say love It is a flower. And you it's only seen Even just the look on your face, even if you're just recording the song. A lot of things happen even in your voice that are very small nuances that can't be explained by just technical aspects. I could coming from the other direction of like, post you're singing, I could then explain what you're doing on a technical level, what's happening with your larynx and your pharynx and all that stuff. But intuitively, you do a lot of things to make your voice sound natural when you are truly authentically wanting to tell a story and you're actually telling the story that is yours. It has to be yours in your mind, and if it's not, your audience isn't going to believe you. Here's a fun exercise that I did when I was in college studying opera. I had to literally know everything about the character that I was singing. When I studied a role, they would ask me all these things. Like, What is your favorite color? What do you like to eat? What relationship do you have to your mother? I had to be able to answer all those. Now, while there wasn't really any clue in the script sometimes or in the opera in the libretto, actually tell me the answers, I had to know the answers because in order for me to sing the character and be convincing and authentic, I have to know everything about the person who I am. Do that exercise. It's fun. Who are you? Do a little sheet of paper, who are you? How old are you? What is the situation? What is the setup? What has happened in the past that led up to this right here that you are singing about, who is the person you're singing to, and what do you feel about them? And how do you feel? Is it even every emotion usually has two opposite sides. Even anger. It has an explosive side and an implosive side. You could be angry of like, Oh, my goodness. Just like screaming it out, or you could be angry like I'm angry. That is also another love. Could be many different facets. Different ways. I'm so in love, or like I'm so love heart seating, but I can't let anyone know. Or I love you. I love you. I love you so much. Cuddle me. I do with my kids every day I love you so much. Different ways. Come at it from different angles so that it doesn't get boring. Play out all these different angles of whatever the emotion is. Sometimes there is a beat, meaning there is a shift in sometimes going from the course to the bridge or from the verse to the course. There is a shift. We need to see this in your face and in your attitude. You need to shift that so there's clarity of now something different is happening. I hope you have fun applying this because this is where it really becomes so enjoyable. 11. Becoming A Master Storyteller: All right. In order to help you make the song even more your own, I'm going to show you a trick that I learned in opera school. Change the subtext or add the subtext. Here's what I mean. Let me take this song Disney's reflection as an example. The words say, look at me. You may think you see who I really am. But you will never know me. Every day, it's as if I play apart. Now I see if I wear the mask, I can fool the world, but I cannot fool my heart. Then it says, Who is that girl I see staring straight back at me? When will my reflection show who I am inside? Let's just even detach it from the original Mon story. Lets you see what could that mean to me? It's about reflection. It's about me not recognizing the person. I'm playing apart. And the words that I speak have subtext because in a song it's very condensed, you have to add more. Look at me. You may think you see who I really am. I mean, look at me. Look at the clothes that I'm wearing. That is not my choice. I look like I'm supposed to look like, but it's not what I really want. I don't want to wear these clothes. I want to be adventurous. I want to go out there. I don't want to be a princess. Look at me. This is what everyone else has made of me. It's not who I truly authentically, I feel like I'm caught in this golden cage, but you'll never know me. Every day, it's as if I play a part. Every day what I do is like I try to be dainty and I try to please my teachers and I'm trying to please my parents. I'm trying to please everyone except no one asks me how I really feel about it. That's the subtext. Even in a line such as, I love you, there could be so much subtext like I love you. Remember last night when we had the dinner and you touched my hand. We were looking into each other's eyes and it didn't need any words. Your gaze at me told me everything I needed to know and that way it made me feel was so special. That is a subtext. It's like, I love you. It's so short and so condensed. But there's so much subtext that goes into that. It's really fun to do that exercise right down or say out loud, some of the subtext in your own words. How would you say those words if you were talking to the person that you're talking about? If you were talking to yourself, if you were writing it down into your diary, maybe a journaling about it, what would be your words and what would you add a subtext to make it much more specific? It's a fun exercise, and I can't wait to hear your story. 12. How To Connect With Your Audience: Now it's time to connect with your audience. Unless you just want to sing in the shower and no one listening to you, you're going to sing to someone for someone. I feel it's selfish to hold back your voice, so you want to bless someone else with your performance. Here's the deal. You want to tell an authentic story. We've already talked about that. Beyond that, you want to make your audience feel like they are being included. They can even feel like they're included even when you're in your own world and you're just singing it to yourself. If you are feeling something authentically, they will empathize with you. Human beings are very empathetic. Whenever you're going through something, they will feel with you. The first objective is for you to sing the song and truly connect with it, feel it, live it. But then what you also want to do, you want to get to this mindset of, I know what I'm doing. Everyone came here to listen or even listening to a recording, they came here to enjoy. Don't apologize. That's the worst thing you can do is to appear and be like, Oh, I'm so sorry. I think it's going to suck and sound horrible. No, you want to come with a mindset of, thank you so much for listening to me today. I want to give this gift of me giving my best and performing this song that means a lot to me. Thanks for giving me this opportunity. Thanks for coming to listen, whether they're coming somewhere to actually listen to you, or they're turning on the recording, clicking on it. Be grateful and be sharing. It's almost like you want to talk to your best friend and tell them the story that means a lot to you. Know if you've ever done YouTube or social media. What if you just had your closest circle of friends and you were telling that story that's in the song and you would be like, this is what I'm feeling. Depending on the character of the song, you want to either be in your own little world because it is so intimate or you want to let the audience participate. If it's an upbeat song that requires you to start the party up, include them. Make eye contact. Even if it's with a recording, it's almost like you want to visualize. Yeah, I'm having fun. R. Let's party and have that objective of actually getting others involved. It's not about the singing so much right now at this point because we established the singing technique, we're leaving this behind. It's going on autopilot. We have done the homework. That is working. Now we're working on those other levels of performance and actually connecting with an audience or with a recording, which of course, there is going to be an audience eventually. Before you start singing, depending on the song, if there's a long intro, you want to breathe You want to get into the flow of music, for example, like, don't cry for me Argentina, longest intro and Otro ever. Make the music happen. The music reflects your emotions. Get into it already. If it's an upbeat song that starts right away, take about 5 seconds at least before you get started to focus, to collect your thoughts, to prepare your body for the performance. Then taste every single word and mean it. If you have memorized your song, everything should go on autopilot and you can fully focus on connecting with your audience and telling the story in a very convincing and authentic way. 13. Best Strategies To Memorize Songs: As a singer, you are a storyteller, so you don't want to look at sheet music when you perform. You want to be able to memorize. Another reason why you want to memorize is also, even when you're recording in a studio, having sheet music in front of you, it's almost like it hampers your creativity. I always feel like when I'm looking at a page, it's not like I'm completely free. Something is holding me back and confining me. It's almost like I'm wearing these blinders. Memorization is very important. You know it by heart, you know what's coming up. How do you memorize? Here are some strategies that have worked for me. Now, first of all, repetition, repetition, repetition. You can listen to the original and just mouth it. But what I like to do is to actually record myself, rehearsing the song or recording myself and then listening to that recording over and over and over again because not only does that help me to memorize the song because I'm going to sing along, but it also helps me to identify what I don't like about the way I s it. So even then, as I'm trying to memorize, I'm still tweaking things because I'm noticing things that I didn't while I was singing. You will sound so different on a recording than you will while you're singing it to yourself, you're going to sound very strange. Listen to your own voice because when you listen to other voices, you have that stuck in your mind and when you sing, you're going to think, you sound just like them, even though you don't and then when you just take away the backing track, out the original voice, it sounds so so different and then you're disappointed. Always record yourself. You can even record yourself just with your smartphone, it doesn't have to be great quality. I will show you later how to actually record quality. But for now, all you need is just to record yourself on your phone and listen to it over and over and over again. When you drive, when you walk, when you do anything that allows you to listen with your headphones, do it. Then depending on how you learn best, you may want to write down the words. Write them down, write them down by heart, copy. And then try to memorize it and write it down. Another thing that I think is helpful for memorization is to always use the same sheet. As you practice, you either have a printed out lead sheet or just the lyrics, or you have the sheet music printed out. Then as you make notes, you always have that same sheet music and it looks the same. I photographically memorize it sometimes because I can, this is where the page turn was, and that's the first word on the next page, or this is the double bar, and this is where the modulation is. I see it visually and that helps me memorize it. The subtext will also totally help you memorize it because you're actually singing about something it's a story that you're telling. The subtext totally helps you have an image in mind, connect the lyrics to an image. And connect that image to a specific word. Speak it like you speak a poem that can also help just reciting it. The cool thing is, I know a lot of poems because I know a lot of songs, and I can recite a lot of classic poetry because I have sung a lot of songs that used the poetry as lyrics. When I had to memorize entire operas in Italian, the thing that helped me the most is just to put on the CD. Nowadays, of course, have a recording wherever you have it streaming or on your phone and listen over and over and over again and mouth along, sing along and even in your mind, you don't even have to do it out, or just think through the text, sing it in your half sleep, sing it in the morning in the evening. I am me not actually singing out loud. Right now, I want you to take 10 seconds to sing out your song without actually singing. Go. Isn't that cool? You can actually listen to the music and sing it without actually doing it. Your brain is very powerful. There is some research that has actually found that if you just think about something versus actually doing it, that just thinking about it has a huge effect. Just telling your brain you are doing it for your brain, there's really hardly a difference between really imagining it and actually doing it. Your homework for today is to find your favorite strategy and to take a few days to memorize it so you know it by heart so that you can come back and do what we're going to do next. 14. Recap & Project Homework: Awesome, you made it through the course. We have talked about technique about connecting with your audience, about the performance aspects, and now you have memorized it and you are ready to perform. Here's what I want you to do because of course, I don't want you to just stay in your closet. I want you to actually put your song out there in this world. What you're going to do is, you're just going to take your smartphone, you're going to turn on that backing track that you selected in the background. With your smartphone, with your video camera, you're just going to record yourself performing your song. You're going to tell us what is your name, what is the song? Why did you pick the song? Just make a very brief introduction. Maybe quickly, what does it mean to you as if you were moderating it and about to perform in front of a large audience, which this is a large audience right here. A lot of people are going to watch this. I want you to get vulnerable and Remember that everyone is going to watch this. These are all your classmates and they are all in the same boat. No one is perfect and everyone is a different level. I know that someone who has just started out may sound different than someone who has been singing for 20 plus years, which probably you wouldn't be watching this course if you've been singing professionally for 20 years. We all know this is a work in progress, but I want to hear where you are right now. Just open up and dare to post. Give us a short introduction. Sing the song, enjoy it. We are your audience, and we will cheer you on. You're just going to hear positive feedback, which then is going to help you be even more confident. Just remember, you will continue to grow as a singer, as an artist, as a performer until the day you die. It will never stop. I still learn so much every single day. I've been onstage my entire life, but there are always new things I discover in music. Since singing is a universal language, it doesn't matter what language you sing in or where you come from, we love music. Happy singing.