To sing perfectly in tune, we need extraordinary precision with the voice and exacting recognition of any pitch deviation. In this singing lesson, I share a distinctive exercise which reveals even the slightest changes in pitch and guides us with strong physical feedback toward perfect intonation.
Want the definitive program for perfecting your tuning as well as mastering every other aspect of the voice? Get V60 Vocal System! It’s the most powerful vocal system there is.
My new lesson download Harmony Workshop is all about singing gorgeous vocal harmonies. You’ll learn how to harmonize by ear, on-the-fly! The lessons cover beginning to advanced harmonization techniques including parallel harmony, counterpoint, chromaticism, multi-part harmony, and much more.
Beyond training you to find harmonies by ear as well as understand the procedure of creating a beautiful harmony part compositionally, it’s also just ridiculously fun. Vocal harmonizing is one of the most transcendent experiences in music, and Harmony Workshop is full of musical examples where you can sing along and harmonize with me.
It’s a colossal collection of techniques, instruction and training–over four hours and 300+ audio tracks. You’ll become an absolute wizard at harmonizing. Ready to dive in? Get Harmony Workshop now!
If you’re producing your own music, you’ve likely had recordings ruined by click bleed. You lay down a vocal or instrumental performance you love–it felt like magic!–only to listen back and hear the tell-tale “beep, beep, beep” of the metronome leaking through the headphones. Well, no more! I’ve attached a metronome that’ll give you a rock-solid percussive pulse to follow but acoustically bleeds very little. Victory!
Learn how to sight sing with this in-depth, interactive singing lesson video. Sight-singing is the extremely powerful ability to be able to look at a piece of music and sing it (or know what it sounds like in your head) without having heard it before. This is an incredible way to train your ear, your sense of melody and, of course, learn new songs super fast! Literally at first sight. What you’ll discover is that sight singing really just requires getting good at two totally simple skills. Work with the techniques in this video regularly and you’ll master sightsinging in no time. The neat thing is that even though sight singing sounds extraordinary as an ability, this is an approach that makes it pretty simple–even for total novices. Plus it’s one of those things that’s actually a lot of fun to practice. Enjoy!
High notes are the ultimate display of vocal ability. Nail this and you’re instantly recognized as a talented singer. But many singers struggle with strained, shouty or weak and wispy high notes. Getting that gorgeous, soaring quality that sounds full and feels effortless? It’s actually surprisingly easy…once you know how to do it. There’s a method to it. A technique every great singer knows. And I lay it bare for you in my latest singing download, How To Sing High Notes. Want to sing high notes without straining? This is what you need.
It’s loaded with the most powerful exercises to train your voice to do what’s necessary for stunning high notes. It’ll further expand your range to heights most singers think impossible. You’ll sing the high notes without strain and how you’ve always wanted–with an approach that’s rock solid, reliable and repeatable.
Check out my latest singing lesson video with a couple exercises to jump start your progress. You’ll begin to lay some of the groundwork we need and you’ll start to glimpse what your voice is really capable of.
But that’s just the beginning. If you want to really perfect your high notes–to sing powerfully, effortlessly, beautifully with that heart-rending expressiveness and shimmering tone we find so irresistible in the greatest singers–then you need my How To Sing High Notes lesson download.
There’s nothing quite like the exhilaration of releasing into an intense high note that’s bursting with energy but feels focused, controlled and at ease. Hitting high notes without straining is one of the great thrills of singing and I’m excited to share it with you.
In my latest “How to Make Music” video, I tackle the distinction between mp3 vs wav audio files. The science behind how an mp3 is made–you actually get to hear exactly what sound gets removed to make an mp3 so small–and when NOT to use one. We’ll also go over ISRC, the International Standard Recording Code, which every musician needs to track sound recordings for royalties. Finally, I talk about digital distribution, how to get you music on iTunes, and I also share a VIP discount link for Distrokid. Check it out!
Most people know mp3s aren’t full quality audio files. They’re a handy compromise between small file size and acceptable sound quality. A typical mp3 is about a tenth of the size of an uncompressed CD quality audio file. How mp3’s achieve this feat is a pretty neat bit of science. Mp3 encoders use a psychoacoustic model; a model of our perception of how things sound. The idea is to discard the parts of the sound which are less noticeable to human hearing.
mp3 vs wav. mp3 encoders use a psychoacoustic model which is a model of how humans perceive sound
Listen to the video to hear an example of what gets lost during the encoding an mp3–it’s a fascinating (and somewhat haunting) sound!
But when listening to the resultant mp3, most people won’t notice there’s anything missing. And that’s why mp3s are so popular: the filesize is small and what you lose, often enough, is not so bad. But if you’re going to sell your music on iTunes, or stream on Spotify, or distribute your music to any of the stores or services out there, don’t send them an mp3.
See, not all the stores use the same format. iTunes uses .aac (Advanced Audio Coding), Spotify uses .ogg (Ogg Vorbis) and you don’t want to send something that’s already been stripped of extraneous information to have another process done upon it. That’s making a photocopy of a photocopy! You want to send them the lossless, uncompressed source audio file; that’s your wav file.
So when should you use an mp3 file? Well, you can choose to use one anytime you’re sharing your music direct to listeners; they’re probably not going to encode your music again so you avoid the photocopy of a photocopy effect and your listeners will probably be happy you’re not taking up all of their storage space. But consider using .ogg–in many circumstances, Ogg Vorbis produces files that are as small as an .mp3 but retain better sound quality. You might also look into encoding to .flac which is identical in quality to .wav but achieves a smaller filesize. Pretty cool.
For more on mp3 vs wav files…
As well as ISRC, how to get your music on iTunes, Spotify and digital distribution in general, check out my video!
