Not only am I humming on an airplane, I'm also the friend you'll be walking with and I'll be like The instrument's on your body.
You just play it all day, you know what I mean?
Hey you.
Yes, you.
Is there music inside of you?
We've recruited working musicians from throughout the industry to help you hear it, hold it and share it with this wild and wonderful world.
My parents met in a gospel choir.
They're both gospel singers and they always joke that you know in the Breland family, if you can't sing, you'll get sent back.
My dad showed me a tape of a musical called Les Miserables, and I got hooked.
I was the new girl at a lot of schools and I would just take my guitar to some beautiful location and sing myself into being okay.
The way that I came to singing was through school choir.
And it didn't hurt that I was also surrounded by some of the most eccentric singers songwriters, on the planet, through my family's music shop.
A great vocal performance is first and foremost feeling.
Louis Armstrong does not have a huge range.
Nat King Cole, not a huge range.
No acrobatics, but you could feel the emotion in the words.
Oftentimes it's not the best vocalist that's going to win on a song.
It's whoever's voice is able to best convey whatever story it is that they're telling and whatever emotion it is that they're trying to convey.
Like Alison Krauss, feel like she's not singing notes.
The notes of existence are emanating from her.
Someone like a Zach Bryan, who maybe isn't the best vocalist in the world and he would tell you that, but he's telling these stories and you believe him.
And I love Leonard Cohen, who's got this baritone-speaking, melodic-spoken delivery.
And then you get to your Ella Fitzgeralds, who had all the rage and bad feelings.
So I try to look at other more acrobatic vocalists like Aretha Franklin, Celine Dion Beyonce, Stevie Wonder.
I like to hear vocalists reach and explore in real time.
I'm so attracted to Brazilian music because there's a certain style of singing, in Bossa Nova specifically, that's very intimate and it's like the singer is basically like whispering into the microphone.
I think I was attracted to that A because my voice suited it and also because I didn't always want to perform loudly.
I wanted to write for myself.
The way that I've come into singing and going from learning how to sing as a kid to singing every night on stage is for one.
I've trusted my voice and trusting your range and bravely exploring where your voice can go, because we're all born with an instrument.
Let's figure it out.
Let's put it through the paces, right?
We can all sing Happy Birthday, right?
But what's going to make your singing it different from the way I sing it?
It's how we color it.
It's how we phrase it.
And there are a myriad of choices that one can make.
And that's why I say you have to be curious and you have to be interested.
You have to be excited about all of the many choices that you can have in the way that you tell a story.
Chest voice is the part of your voice that is most natural to speech.
So I'm talking here and this is chest voice.
That's the voice from your chest, literally.
Falsetto is thin and high.
So, hey, you can hear a flip into falsetto if I go, oh, you're kind of thinning out the air.
Head voice is when you go high and you mix.
So it's like a, There's a word called squilo in Italian.
It's bringing chest voice up into your upper register.
You can project very loudly like, or you can do something more breathy like.
Riffs.
All the melismas, I think is the technical word, but not to be used ad nauseum.
You know when someone's doing too much of that and it's really annoying, right?
Great singers give you the melody, and then, once in a while I'm talking to myself, we'll add a little moment, right?
It's experimentation.
Experimentation is a really big part of getting familiar with your instrument.
I decide what part of my voice I'm using based on the song, based on the moment, based on the lyric, based on the feeling I'm trying to emote or the intensity I'm trying to put into it.
Am I trying to be intimate?
Am I trying to be a little sexy?
Then I'll use a little bit more of my breathiness in my voice.
But if I'm trying to be more energetic and more excited or more even frustrated, then I'll get in my high register and go And you develop your voice by finding yourself and finding where singing feels natural.
I might like singing coloratura mezzo soprano, but that's not what my voice likes.
And that's not what my personality likes.
My personality likes the fiery, you know sort of femme fatale women.
You know those bad bad, bad girls.
My dad specifically, was like hmm, I think you should take some voice lessons to hone in your skills and not wear yourself out so quickly.
When you practice and your voice cracks, realize that that's your voice getting stronger.
So it's important to practice offstage, because anytime your voice cracks, anytime you make a mistake and you go over it again and it sounds right, it's actually.
The mistake is good.
It boils down to Are you comfortable?
And are you singing and using your vocal muscle in the most natural way possible so that it's not creating damage?
I have a really soft voice, and I really like the tone that I hit when I'm soft.
And the reason that I like the tone is my vocal folds are barely touching.
But it's really hard to be accurate with pitch when you're singing all soft and quiet and cute.
When you're singing all hard and vocal folds touching and strong, you can actually hit the note much easier.
And so I learned that I have to actually train in strength with the vocal folds completely touching.
When I train like that constantly, when I go back to singing it this way with you know the vocal folds barely touching, I can actually be a lot more accurate with pitch because I'm stronger.
So some of the ones that'll help loosen up your vocal cords can be things like a lip roll or a tongue roll.
Ah.
And kind of warm my way up.
And try to get rid of a little break between the falsetto and the chest voice.
Singing, especially doing a 90-minute set, is a marathon exercise so you got to treat it as such.
The term vocal cord is a misnomer.
They're actually folds of muscle, so if you put a lot of pressure or strain on your, on that musculature, you can develop nodes, and nodes will make it painful to sing.
They'll limit how malleable and flexible those folds can be.
You want to avoid strain Because obviously, like any athlete, if you strain a muscle you have to take time off.
I know that my voice sings better when it's rested.
I know that the quality of my voice is better when it stays hydrated.
The thing is, I sing every day.
So the daily practice of singing is, in and of itself, a caretaking method.
Because you're saying to your voice, hey, build up to this stamina.
When I'm on stage and I'm starting to feel the nerves, your voice doesn't work the same way.
So that's where practice and repetition becomes really important, because it's like I may feel a little nervous, but my voice, for the most part, knows what it needs to do, even in a moment of stress.
Your body changes and your voice changes as you continue to grow and to mature.
The scariest part to me though, about exploring one's voice for a lifetime is that I do feel strongly that, having sung professionally since I was 20 years old to now I'm 55, I feel like I'm just coming into my voice.
Don't waste another moment.
Start exploring your voice today and embark on a journey that will last a lifetime.
For more insights from beloved working artists on what it means to think like a musician, check out another episode in this series.
