Transcripts
1. YOUR VOICE IS YOUR INSTRUMENT: My name is Clarice Assad. I'm a composer and a performer from Brazil. I have spent most of my life trying to find my own voice, basically treating my voice as an instrument. The voice is an instrument that is always with you. You carry it wherever you go. We are a limitless sound bank. We can create any sound we want with our voices. I really want you to experiment with your voice, and develop some techniques that will help you create your own sounds. It involves a few mechanics, the ability to hear something and reproduce it with your voice. You explore mouth percussion. We're going to dive a little bit into sounds that you can make with your voice that makes singing more interesting, by bringing different syllables into the equation, or by using different parts of your mouth and your throat in learning how to incorporate different styles and techniques into your singing. Some of the material will require you to train a little bit. Just think of yourself as an athlete. You really have to develop these muscles. But you have to remember that a little bit every day goes along way. The good news about practicing with your own voice is that, you can be walking on the street and doing some beat boxing. You can practice constantly and get better without even noticing it. You can make it part of your everyday life. Your final project can be as simple or as complex as you choose. You can create a one vocal line a capella arrangement, or you can record a multi-track arrangement, or original of your own choice, as long as you use at least three techniques explored in the videos. I can't wait to see what you come up with. See you in class.
2. THE LEAD VOICE: Hello and welcome back. Today, I'm going talk about the lead voice. Now, the lead voice is the solo melodic line that singers usually sing using lyrics, and also the part that most people remember when they hear a song. The reason why I'm making this video is to start building up our foundations rhythm, which is the driving force of any popular music. Then we have the bass, which is the foundation of the song. Finally, we have the melodic line, which is performed by the lead voice. Now, we're going to talk about putting all of these parts together, and putting it into the context of a song. Let's do a listening quiz. I'd like for you to grab a pen and paper if you haven't already. Then once you listen to the next arrangement, please write down how many voices do you hear, and then try to separate them in your head. What do you hear? What are they doing? Do you hear a bass? Do you hear a lead vocal? Do you hear harmonies? What kind harmonies? Write everything down as much as you can. Be as specific as you can be. The song is called Easy to Love by Cole Porter. Let's check your answers. The arrangement is divided in three parts, melody, bass, and accompaniment. Very simple. The bass is both rhythmic and melodic, it's doing a walking bass. The melodic line is song with lyrics, which is very easy to distinguish. The other voices, they act like a comping instrument, like the piano or the guitar. Let's go over some tips. The course was designed to give you ideas and techniques to inspire you to create your own sounds and arrangements. Every voice is different and everyone's interests are different, so I encourage you to check out the full class at first. As you move through the class, write down, take notes of the sounds you most resonate with. Then you can go back to your favorites list and rewatch the videos, and then write the patterns in your own handwriting. It will help you memorize them more easily. Practice every day, 15-20 minutes a day, at least. Thank you so much for being part of this quest. I can't wait to hear what you'll create. You're ready to rock.
3. BASIC BEATBOX: That's my good friend Crystals Bacon on Beatbox. He's an amazing hip hop artist, composer, and just a fantastic person. His Beatboxing is really off the charts. Because he can implement so many different styles in journals of music into the world of Beatbox. He collaborates with artists from all over the world, and he is also a really good communicator. The reason why I'm bringing up this video today is because I've had many conversations with Crystals about Beatboxing, and I have learned quite a lot from him. Including how to make some basic cool sounds, which I'm going to teach to you today. Hello everyone. Today I'll walk you through vocal techniques for beat making. As you know, this is not a class on Beatbox. I am only sharing tools that are used while teaching the building blocks of this vocal workshop. If you are interested in the fantastic world of Beatbox, I recommend you visit the website humanbeatbox.com, which has a ton of resources on sound production and advanced vocal techniques. First, we'll examine how to produce individual sounds, and then connect them to create a pattern. Then we will work on a simple beat, and I'll leave you with some extra patterns to explore. First, the bass drum or kick drum, then the hi-hat, and finally the snare. There are many ways you can achieve these sounds with your mouth. Now the kick drum, the hi-hat, and the rimshot are the most comfortable sounds to make. The open snare is a bit more complicated because it involves more than one place of articulation in the mouth. All of the sounds I'm using now are called plosive sounds. Consonant sounds and which involve first a contraction of the mouth that allows no air to escape from the vocal tract, and second, the air's compression and release. Examples of plosive sounds include p, b, t, d, k, and g. Now take a moment to produce these sounds, and feel where they are in your mouth. A p, a b, a t, a d, a k, and the g. Notice how p and b are produced mainly by pressing the lips together, while other sounds involve positioning the tongue in specific places. Like the t sound is produced by placing the tip of your tongue behind the top teeth. To make the k sound, air is briefly prevented from leaving the vocal tract when the back of the tongue lifts and presses against the soft palate at the back of the mouth. The kick, the hi-hat, and the snare can used in endless combinations. The open snare sound effect happens in two parts. First, to create it, clench your teeth to get it lightly, put your tongue away from them, and then push the air out. After that, you add a plosive sound, and combined you get this. It takes time to put these sounds together if you've never done them before. It's like going to the gym, practice at different tempos. Slowly, at first, then faster as you get more control over these sounds. To help you keep a steady pace, you can use a metronome. Make sure you drink plenty of water to keep your vocal chords hydrated, even if you think you don't need a lot of water. For the pattern we will work together on, I will use the [inaudible] sound. Start with the boom. Now let's try another one together. Thank you so much for watching, and I hope you had fun Beatboxing with me. We're going to talk about breathing.
4. BASIC BREATHING TECHNIQUES: Hello again. I'm here to talk a little bit about breathing. Whenever we are working with a vocal percussive part, it means you're not going to have a lot of places to breathe, because these parts are just relentless, they just keep going. You learn how to breathe in a different way than when you're singing a melodic line. There are a few ways you can go about that.
5. BRAZILIAN PANDEIRO MOUTH PERCUSSION TECHNIQUE: Hello and welcome. Thank you for being here with me today. The vocal percussion part is supposed to sound like a pandeiro. The rhythm that we're exploring here today is the samba. The pandeiro looks very much like a tambourine but here's where they're different, the drum head is tunable and the rings hold metal jingles called platinelas. They create a crisp, drier, and less sustain tone than on a tambourine. Pandeiro patterns are played by alternating the thumb, fingertips, feel and palm. Now how do we translate these sounds into beatbox? As I said in this example, I'm using the samba. The samba is usually performed and played into 2-4, never in 4-4. Like in many other styles of Brazilian music, it is a syncopated rhythm, so the strong beat is not on one, it's on two. This is how you feel the samba 1-2,1-2.1-2,1-2. When you practice the exercise I'm going to give you, remember to keep that in the back of your head. Remember that the accent is on the second beat, not the first beat. The first thing you need to learn is how to create a shaker sound. Now you use three sounds to create that. First sound you make as a "ch" sound; "ch", "ch", "ch", "ch". The second sound is a stopped "k". Now you're going to combine "ch" and "k". The third sound sounds very much like you're telling somebody to be quiet, "sh". Go ahead and try that a few times. Let's put these three sounds together slowly "ch", "k", "sh". Now we're going to add not another sound, we're really going to drag out the "sh", "ch", "k", "sh". Then we're going to go back and then repeat that and loop it a few times, "ch", "k", "sh", "ch", "k", "sh". Now when you get really comfortable, you can speed it up, and then you have a pattern of samba that's very simple but very effective."ch", "k", "sh", "ch", "k"," sh". Now the question is, how do we go from "ch" "k" "sh" to what I did in the beginning of this video with [inaudible]. There are three sounds going on here at the same time. I tried to emulate the base sound on the pandeiro, which is pitched [inaudible]. The pandeiro is an instrument you can tune, so it could be lower or higher than that. It's very much like when your trying to blow air into a balloon. Then the third sound is the punch. Basically, as I was saying, it's the same exact thing as the shaker sound except that your mouth is closed and base tone and everything that I've talked to you about those [inaudible] and stopping the sound and applying the low pitch is there. There are few sounds you have to practice individually first and with a lot of patience. You need to make the lowest sound you can possibly get [inaudible]. Then you put a lot of pressure against that [inaudible]. Finally, combine it with the blowing a balloon situation and you have. I am trying to make the [inaudible] sound, but it's not coming out because I'm stopping it. The intention of having to go for that pitch is very important and it really doesn't matter if you don't have the lowest voice, I am a woman I don't have like her base like a bass-baritone singer would, but I can fake it. Now to remind you of the pattern [inaudible] I'm going to transform that into [inaudible] All we're doing is positioning the mouth into this. [inaudible] This position remains always the same. [inaudible]
6. HOW TO SOUND LIKE AN UDU DRUM: How can we translate these sounds into the voice? The low sound has a little bit of a hmm to it, so, we need to work on pitch first. Take a deep breath and sing a low peer tone, no vibrato, no nothing, just a pure. Next you add a consonant to it, either a G or a K, a hard G, hard K. Either would be the G or a hard K with the pitch. So kong, hmm, kong, and then the hard G, gong. Now there is a very cool thing about this drum which is you hit it, you get a little bit of glissando out of it. I am going from one pitch to a higher pitch, a low pitch to a high pitch. But I'm glissando from one pitch to the next, and I am doing it really fast, goo. Next up you can play around with a length. Now you need to work on the treble sound. For sound TA, second sound, KA, TA, KA. Eventually going to get it up to speed. Once you get up to speed, you won't really be speaking TA, KA exactly, it is going to move into something else. Next thing you're going to do after you've practiced your TA, KA and you have your TA, KA very much under control, is that you're going to more of TA, KA into TIN-K. Instead of TA, KA, you do TIN-K. It's a very nasal sound. Is no longer TA, KA, it's TIN-K. But what's happening inside of your mouth is the same thing, so, practicing with TA, KA first is a lot easier than practicing with TIN-K. Now, try to make one pattern very slowly using these two sounds. Thank you so much for watching.
7. SINGING BASS PATTERNS: The bass provides you with the most important foundation you can imagine. It's the root. Singing the bass line for a lot of people is complicated because it involves actually knowing what these bass notes are. It's important that you know that in order to understand what the bass line is doing, you really have to start listening for it. This has nothing to do with being able to create that sound. It has more to do with your training, and your ability to know in a song or in any piece of music what the bass is and what it's doing. It doesn't mean you have to have a low voice to sing it. You just need to know what it is and what it's doing and then be able to sing it back. Today, I'm going to talk a little bit about the bass. So far we've covered a lot of what we can do with a voice in a rhythmic way. Now the bass is a little bit trickier because when you sing the bass line, you have to have a certain range for your voice to be able to emulate the sound of a bass. Clearly, I don't have a low range, but I can, number 1, make my voice change a little bit in quality so that I can give it that feeling and I also of course, need to sing the bass line. It also needs to be lower in the register than wherever you're going to be singing on the top because this way you have the difference between these two lines. So even if my low voice is not that low, I move my top note is higher than that, you will create the balance. I will give you an example of how I use my voice to create a bass line. [inaudible] Either T or a hard K. [inaudible] I'm going to sing a base tone like a 2-5-1 pattern, 2, 5, 1 and I'm going to have a little bit of mouth percussion going with that so we have a little fun. [inaudible] A little slower. [inaudible].
8. IDEAS FOR YOUR PROJECT: For this example, I chose the song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star because it's a worldwide known tune. I picked a few techniques that were explored during the class and created an arrangement of the song without using any of the words. I'm using a blue baby bottles studio condenser microphone, Apple's logic pro software, and running the mic through Apogee's duet audio interface. For your project, you can achieve the same effect with any other microphones, audio interface and software. If multi-track recording is not possible, consider making an A capella arrangement of an existing song or original using your favorite vocal techniques. First I'm going to be working with a very, very simple drone. For drone Number 3, I'm going to sing the same pitch. Again, no vibrato it's going to be a little bit like an atmospheric effect that I want and then I just want to go ahead and add a little texture to it. Possibly like an overtone or something like that. If I just basically want the drone to continue and I don't want to record myself over and over again, I probably opened up another channel and then do a copy and paste of these drones together and have them connect so that it sounds like there is a continuation. Let's just try to do that for now. Now I have a few things to work with. I have a drone which has an accompaniment and then I have a melody. I'm singing different syllables on top of the melody. Of course, nothing is mixed yet, so we can't really hear the difference between the lines so much yet but the point is that I was able to create something with very simple elements here. I'm just doing a drone, a little bit of effects in my voice and in the melody, humming the melody with different syllables. The reason why I'm doing that with different syllables is because I am definitely going to be singing in a different space than the drone. It's just a way of differentiate the sound color of it. Now what I'm going to do is I am going to click this outside of offline, I guess, and then go back to it and start adding another element to it. I think that now that we have a drone looks and sounds very much like introduction to something. It is time for me to pick an element out of the stuff that we've been doing during the course and add to this. Because there was this entire chapter on the base, I am going to be doing something with that sound right now. I'm going to create a base accompaniment and loop that a few times before I go ahead and add some mouth percussion to it. Here it is. I can go ahead and loop that as many times as I want. I'm going to add a few layers of precaution into that track of base right now. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this. I can really work with this in many different ways. For example, I can just start with the baseline and loop that and add the precautions one by one, so that way I stretch out my arrangement. At the end when I have everything together, I'll see how and when I would like to add my melody on top of that. So let's work on creating that space. Now that I have laid the tracks that I want to use, I can cut and paste it however I want. I'm just going to go ahead and do some of that now. I have no idea what I'm going to do until I started doing it. I'm going to call this harmony number 1. Harmony 1 and see what happens from here. I have the little choir going on, which is fine like that. I can live with that. See, if I can create a harmony out of that without clashing too much with everything else that I have going on, very nice. I'll do a fourth below. Just for fun. Add a third voice just because I have to channel open. I'm going to add like a dissonant note to be like a second minor length, we'll see. That's quite cool. I'll stop here for now and hear everything that I've done back.
Clarice Assad, SINGING OUTSIDE THE BOX
