Guitar Article Written by “Friend Of Mike Walsh” 

Tones and Textures of the Voice, Part 1: Rock Vocal Textures

By Chris Glyde

            This article series will attempt to explain to you the different ways that you can change the style of your voice in order to best suit the venue, gig, or event that you’re singing for. Realize that many of these styles require that you train the voice to make full use of these styles, but many can be practiced and put into use right now if you’re so inclined. Remember that singing lessons should complement your voice and build it in a way that you’re happy with. They shouldn’t pigeonhole you into a specific sound, leaving you feeling like you just don’t have the voice for the music that you want to sing. Any advice like that should be ignored. Just find the right teacher who can help you!

            In this article, I’m going to address a few of the easier tones to produce, which you can actually produce without the need for training. The tones that you would need training in order to produce (compression and hyper glottal compression, for example) I will eventually talk about, but I will do so in the third article of this series. If it’s already been published, simple Google “Chris Glyde + Tones and Textures of the Voice Part 3.” If you’re impatient to learn them or don’t want to spend the money, then I’m sure you can find something about them on YouTube, but please be careful, because it’s very easy to hurt yourself with that vocal style.

            Now, this is written rather than spoken, and obviously that’s going to make it harder to replicate the sounds I’m discussing. That being said, I will do my best to go into some detail and, if worst comes to worst, you can still seek out a vocal coach who can tell you how to manipulate some of these elements. Let’s start by discussing some of the more common vocal textures.

Crooner - 90s rock star voice - “Over-dampening”

Surprisingly enough, these two sounds have a lot in common. They both encompass a dark sound called “over-dampening.” Your main goal when you attempt this type of style is to lower the larynx, because this darkens the sound of the voice. How much you darken it and how you use the sound will of course change the quality and tone of the voice.

If you desire to get that 90s rock singer vibe like Eddie Vedder, then you’ll simply lower the larynx, but not as low as possible. You’ll need to play with the positioning. If you lower the larynx too far, you’ll get that crooner Bing Crosby/Frank Sinatra sound. You will also want to make sure that you focus on the front of your mouth while singing, if you want the rocker tone instead of the crooner tone.

You can play with this style by adding a little bit of nasality to the sound. The nasal sound produces a slightly different tone. This is very hard to do with the crooner tone, but with the 90s rock star sound, it’s very easy. It will produce a lot of other 90s tones that you’re probably already familiar with. We’ll talk about the nasal voice and how to get into that sound in a bit.

Make sure, when doing this dark sound, that you’re not showing your teeth. This will take practice—you won’t get it right away, but once you notice the difference and the right muscle memory, you’ll be good to go.

Nasality:

            This is one of my favorite basic tones to play with. Everyone can probably list tones of nasal singers that they don’t like (a la Bob Dylan), but there are plenty of singers that use the nasal cavity to produce cool tones and phrasings in their voice. This list includes Layne Staley, Myles Kennedy, Otis Redding, Myles Davis, and many other singers. Sometimes, it’s also referred to as the 90s yarl. Although most people see the nasality and the lowering of the larynx as the same sound, they are actually quite different.

            The easiest way to use this sound is to simply sing the end of song, the NG, which is a nasal consonant (since it uses the nasal cavity). Then, you’re going to switch to an AH sound while maintaining focus on that part of the nasal cavity, which creates this really cool bluesy rock sound.

            You can brighten the sound to get something more modern and different, and you can lower the larynx and go the traditional 90s route. You can even go even a little more over the top with it, too, if you like singers like Serj Tankian from System of a Down.

            Either way, this is one of my favorite tones within verse. However, please note that this tone does slightly raise the larynx. It’s best to use it in different places for a stylistic add-on. If you’re looking for that high note, you’ll have a hard time maintaining the sound.

Final words:

            It will take some time to get these vocal styles down, but with some patience, you could be singing like some of your favorite vocalists in no time. Note that to use these styles to the fullest, though, you’ll need training so that you can learn the proper ways to learn to sing.

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About the Author:

Looking to learn how to perform rock-styled vocals in Rochester, New York? Chris Glyde is one of the few contemporary vocal coaches in the area.