DIFFICULTIES A SINGER COMES ACROSS

 

Pitching : Hitting the notes accurately, employing  the sound of the headphone as the pitch cue. Accurate pitching is possible only if the idiosyncrasies of the headphone are understood.  Adjustments of volume, Selection/ elimination of specific tracks on the music, preference for single or double headphones( this is relevant to hearing one's own voice acoustically  if convenient ),etc.

 

Voice Production: How to understand one's own natural timbre, and how to modulate it in keeping with the structure and emotion of the song, line or phrase, use of correct  volume and voice pressure on the range, Understanding and eliminating  defects in voice production such as excessive hardness or softness, roughness, excess nasality or the lack of it, etc.

 

Use of Microphone : Optimum distance from the microphone, depending on one's voice quality, angle at which to throw the sound, manipulation of the distance to suit  pressure changes in the voices as pitch rises or falls to extremes, avoidance of distortions such as pops like 'bha'  and 'pha', understanding of the behaviour of different types of  microphones etc.

 

Diction: Correct and aesthetic enunciation of vowels and consonants.

 

Breath control : How to organise the available breath. In the well organised lyrics' archives in the studio, every single line in every song is marked with indications of where the singer should take a breath again, in the course of singing.

 

Phrasing : Correct and aesthetic execution of the phrases of each line, which is where the beauty of every Indian song lies.

 

Beats and Timing : Light music, especially in recording, is a precise art. And the need for precision shows up most  of all in the area of timing. The weaker candidate can have difficulties in remaining on beat.  But even  trained  classical singers can face difficulties in precisely adhering to the beat like a machine, trained as they are in 'flowing ' along the tala canvas. Picking up the first line if the song or stanza  after a music piece is also a  task which requires  training.