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auntblabby
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28 Oct 2011, 8:35 am

ToughDiamond wrote:
I guess in theory it would help to hyperventilate a little before starting to sing. I never did aerobics......just Pranayama. It was mostly about learning to inhale and exhale fully, to breathe more slowly and calmly. I don't know if there's much overlap with aerobics. Pranayama has a mystical explanation which makes little sense to my modern Western brain, but it was also explained in very down-to-earth terms....that one of our greatest mistakes is that we don't bother to breathe.


a key sign of aerobic fitness is that your resting heart rate is well below 60 beats per minute. it means your heart doesn't have to deliver as much oxygenated blood to your extremities and core, so it can loaf a bit. that means you can hold a note until ALL the air is gone with no quavering due to the urgent signals from your brain that it needs more O2 NOW!! !

ToughDiamond wrote:
Sinatra sometimes seems a little inaccurate with his pitching.....it would be interesting to see if the notes that gave him the most trouble in that respect were at the ends of long lines.


when he got old everything went largely to pot. when he was young a bit of casualness in exact pitch was part of his "ring-a-ding-ding" thing, especially after the late 40s. his best [technically] singing was when he was with tommy dorsey.



BurgherKing
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28 Oct 2011, 12:36 pm

peaceloveerin wrote:
Speaking of singing, I really need some advice. My community chorus concert is coming up this weekend and I'm a little bit nervous. Not because of the singing part, but because of the way I present myself on stage. I'm worried I'm going to appear too boring or serious, which is true for the most part since I don't make very good eye contact. Hopefully with 50-60 other people on stage with me, no one will notice but its still concerning, especially as an Aspie. Any other Aspie singers out there who can help me deal with this? Thanks!


I was in various chorus groups for about 30 years and can hopefully offer up something useful. First off, don't sweat not being able to hold out notes to the bitter end. That's a function of lung capacity, which is genetic and only tangentially related to body type. Just lip sync/open mouth it to the finish and nobody will notice. Far better to cut it short than to overextend an end note and start coughing (been there, done that).

Depending on the type of group and whether you're using music will determine visual reference. If you're reading music and have a director up front, focus on the director's hands when you look up and nowhere else. Using a sports analogy, stare a hole through the director's chest. If your group is performing without music, or doing it without the director front and center, use the old stage technique of "looking at the clock", basically finding a point in the wall in the back above all the heads (as with vertigo, don't look down). In either case, from the long view of the audience, it looks like you know exactly what you're doing.

Oh yeah, and suggestions about smiling and "looking happy" are way overrated for AS and NT alike. Even if your natural singing demeanor resembles a mix of Scrooge and Marley, it's better to concentrate on singing naturally than trying to force some facial gymnastics into the proceedings. That is a talent better left to others.

With regard to singing in general, I was and still am more mechanic than artist. I do force myself out to a karaoke bar every once in a blue moon, and find that if you do something that just requires accurately banging out the notes (e.g., "Bad Moon Rising" by CCR) rather than, say, something from Kenny Rogers Greatest Hits, drunk people will generally think you are pretty good. And with karaoke, you just look at the screen anyway, even if you know the g-d lyrics better than the songwriter.



peaceloveerin
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28 Oct 2011, 1:39 pm

ToughDiamond wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
peaceloveerin wrote:
Also, for some bizarre reason, I cannot hold notes too long and I think its either because I might have asthma or I'm very small-chested. It seems like the female singers who are big-busted have more powerful voices and can hold notes longer, unless someone can give me some examples of singers who aren't like this.


frank sinatra built up his aerobic capacity [holding notes on a given lungfull of air] by swimming underwater laps at the pool until he could swim 6 laps underwater. he did this so he could emulate the long unbroken phrasing of his employer at the time, tommy dorsey the nonpareil trombonist. by all accounts frank was not a big-chested man. he might've had unusual lung capacity, though, in terms of density of alveoli. nevertheless, the length of his phrasing was unparalleled in pops.


I have a fairly modestly-sized chest but I can hold my notes longer than most singers, as long as I remember to take a deep enough breath first. I also scored as having the highest lung capacity in our biology class when we measured it back in the 1970s. I used to do Yoga breathing exercises, so maybe it's something that can be improved, though you'd think it was pretty much fixed by the lung volume.

See, if I had a larger chest, I'd be able to hold notes for a long time!



peaceloveerin
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28 Oct 2011, 1:45 pm

BurgherKing wrote:
peaceloveerin wrote:
Speaking of singing, I really need some advice. My community chorus concert is coming up this weekend and I'm a little bit nervous. Not because of the singing part, but because of the way I present myself on stage. I'm worried I'm going to appear too boring or serious, which is true for the most part since I don't make very good eye contact. Hopefully with 50-60 other people on stage with me, no one will notice but its still concerning, especially as an Aspie. Any other Aspie singers out there who can help me deal with this? Thanks!


I was in various chorus groups for about 30 years and can hopefully offer up something useful. First off, don't sweat not being able to hold out notes to the bitter end. That's a function of lung capacity, which is genetic and only tangentially related to body type. Just lip sync/open mouth it to the finish and nobody will notice. Far better to cut it short than to overextend an end note and start coughing (been there, done that).

Depending on the type of group and whether you're using music will determine visual reference. If you're reading music and have a director up front, focus on the director's hands when you look up and nowhere else. Using a sports analogy, stare a hole through the director's chest. If your group is performing without music, or doing it without the director front and center, use the old stage technique of "looking at the clock", basically finding a point in the wall in the back above all the heads (as with vertigo, don't look down). In either case, from the long view of the audience, it looks like you know exactly what you're doing.

Oh yeah, and suggestions about smiling and "looking happy" are way overrated for AS and NT alike. Even if your natural singing demeanor resembles a mix of Scrooge and Marley, it's better to concentrate on singing naturally than trying to force some facial gymnastics into the proceedings. That is a talent better left to others.

With regard to singing in general, I was and still am more mechanic than artist. I do force myself out to a karaoke bar every once in a blue moon, and find that if you do something that just requires accurately banging out the notes (e.g., "Bad Moon Rising" by CCR) rather than, say, something from Kenny Rogers Greatest Hits, drunk people will generally think you are pretty good. And with karaoke, you just look at the screen anyway, even if you know the g-d lyrics better than the songwriter.

I am far from a bad karaoke singer, but I'm no Mariah Carey!



auntblabby
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29 Oct 2011, 4:32 am

peaceloveerin wrote:
See, if I had a larger chest, I'd be able to hold notes for a long time!


no, you need better aerobic conditioning like what frank sinatra did, to get more notes from each lungfull of air whatever your chest size, by reducing the body's need for oxygen, so by dint of that having to respire less. :idea:



ToughDiamond
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30 Oct 2011, 4:59 am

auntblabby wrote:
peaceloveerin wrote:
See, if I had a larger chest, I'd be able to hold notes for a long time!


no, you need better aerobic conditioning like what frank sinatra did, to get more notes from each lungfull of air whatever your chest size, by reducing the body's need for oxygen, so by dint of that having to respire less. :idea:


I agree.....in my case it seems to be nurture rather than nature. Most people aren't accustomed to using more than a small fraction of their lung capacity. Interestingly, according to Selvarajan Yesudian, swimming is a good "lazy" way of doing pranayama, because the natural human instinct when in water is to breathe properly. He knew a guy who thought that surfing was an alternative to pranayama, but he said really it was the same thing.



peaceloveerin
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12 Nov 2011, 12:04 am

Also, are there certain songs I shouldn't sing if I've never experienced the meaning of them? For example, I want to sing the song 'Someone Like You' by Adele but have never experienced the meaning of the song, so IDK if I should do it or not. There are tons of other songs that I want to sing that have similar themes that I've never gone through. Should this prevent me from singing them?



LoweredSeventh
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12 Nov 2011, 1:24 am

I'm actually studying music and training to be an opera singer. I want to get paid to stim.



Teredia
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14 Nov 2011, 4:40 am

Ive been singing since i was 2, I have had training and yeah i sing pretty good. I know this threads a few months old sorry. xD