How I Learned to Sing - Episode 1

one question that I get a lot probably more than any other one is can anyone learn to sing now I've addressed this the short answer is yes but I've addressed this in videos in the past you can click on any of the links in the description box below and you can review those but lately the question I've been getting is how did you learn to sing Eric like did you learn everything in college did you go to college for this did you have voiced teachers before when did you start how long did it take you to get good who were these people who taught you these things so this series how I learned to sing is all about how I learned to sing along the way I'll be sharing tips like what I learned from each experience and I hope you enjoy it so this is like a story of time vocal the video I feel like a real youtuber now so okay let's get to it one thing that's funny is that I never wanted voice lessons I did not want voice lessons the way I saw it voice lessons were for classical singers or for musical theater singers so in my mind that's what I thought but I wanted like I wanted I wanted like huggly sounds and around the time I was 14 I had fallen all the way in love with singing now I was not good at it in any capacity but I really wanted to learn and don't ask me why or how but I always had this idea that I could figure it out I don't know where that came from because no one else around me held that belief but I believe that could figure it out and I could learn I didn't want voice lessons but I was not above seeking help and so my um choir directors at the church that I was at they would offer me advice because one problem that I had was at the end of every choir rehearsal at the end of every Sunday service I would be hoarse so I would lose my voice at the end of every rehearsal at the end of every service and I had one choir director who told me you know don't worry about it your voice will heal back stronger like push your voice to the limit and your voice will heal back and his vocal coaches in the background like what the hell yeah I didn't have any point of reference for how wrong this was in my 14 year old mine these are adults who are professionals so they must know and I was all about being a good student and not really questioning Authority at the time and so um it seems smart and so I would sing myself hoarse every day I would just belt things out to the top of my lungs and eventually I'd develop nodules on my vocal folds so and the thing is at the time believe it or not I had no concept of head voice or mixed voice or any of this stuff so I'm just like I'm just screaming everything out and I know people laugh when I do the demonstration but that's it sounded like someone was murdering me or something like that but that's what I would do I I thought that was the way to build strengthen the voice but one day I woke up and I couldn't speak clearly anymore and my parents thought that you know is if sinus and allergy I was like no it's not I don't have any other symptoms this is just my voice and to make a long story short and if ever you want me to go into details on any of this extra stuff just comment but I'm gonna skip through some fluff basically I had the early formation of nodules that were really affecting my voice you know dramatically because I already kind of sucked at singing um and my doctor told me you can either do voice lessons or steroids or surgery and I think he was trying to scare me a little bit and I chose reluctantly voice lesson so at 14 years old I began working with my first voice teacher named David he was great and he was a true master and he helped me out a lot and so I'm gonna explain to you the ways in which he helped me so for one believe it or not when I first went to David I had no head voice so well of course I had the potential for it like any other human being but I had no concept of how to access it which might be hard to believe since I use it so much nice [Music] so the Bible says and it still is new perhaps one of the biggest reasons why I flaunt it so much is because it was the hardest thing for me to learn so I kind of it's kind of a trophy element of a heart voice but um he was the first person to make me aware that falsetto and head voice were two distinct things growing up in the Southern Baptist Church in New Orleans everything was chest voice everything was ah yeah yeah you screened it out and it was encouraged it was encouraged so I would just squeezed my larynx with all my might I would squeeze my throat I had no idea that I was doing damage because I was literally told that this is how'd you get stronger so I would just scream scream scream scream scream and so I didn't know that you can blend this points up into this vise and David was the first person to teach me that now this is the funny thing I was a crappy student and I had I've had students like this too and what I mean is I wasn't disrespectful definitely not I've been raised properly in that respect um I listened and I nodded and I smiled but he told me a lot of things that I didn't want to hear so one thing I learned from him and I'll put this across the screen is that voice lessons healthy vocal training can be counterintuitive so the way it seems like something should work is not actually the way that it works so to give you an example um I wanted more power but he had me pulling back in singing softly singing softly I could not sing softly Sabich get more like new new I had no like sense of how to get focus with singing softly so it was though worse in the beginning and so here I am in this voice listen for like half an hour I'm doing new and he's like yeah that's what you do I was getting frustrated and I was so sometimes I was just never and I was like just why can't I just do that well if when I was ugly and strained and my body was really resisting me so this is a really gold start point that I want to leave you with in this in this video I didn't practice for like weeks I didn't practice any of the exercises he gave me I just I didn't sing as hard so my voice did recover and I was still pretty young but um I didn't really practice his techniques I did them in my lessons with with David he was really nice he didn't press me too much um I think he could tell that I wasn't really practicing but I just didn't understand how singing softly knew [Music] I didn't I didn't get how that what good was that gonna do me like I had lost my voice I wanted my clarity back and I wanted my power back um the idea that singing softly was the key to growing my range to seem ridiculous to me but at this time I also sang with the group what did we call us I don't even know if he had a real official name but we do talent shows and stuff and so my friend Darryl shoutout to Darryl if you're watching um he asked me one day like how the voice lessons going I was like you know okay I guess my nodules are gone but I don't really I'm not enjoying these lessons and I had these exercises in this stupid and Darrel was like can I try them but they're so stupid I was like sure you know waste your time if you want and I gave him the cassette tape like maybe like a week or two later we had a rehearsal and Darryl is like no doing all these head voice he things but we never could like the stuff that like boys to men and even like Justin Timberlake or whatever we're doing and I was like what the hell he could never do that either and so I remember I had no head voice ability at this time and I and I really admired singer especially R&B singers and pop singers like Mariah Carey boys to men Brian McKnight even uh sure like people who could do that I didn't understand how they did it and now here my friend a regular guy like me the regular is in not a famous recording artist was able to make these sounds and he was like I did the exercises and I was like what they work they they work the exercises work and he and I was like how how much did you do him he's like I did him every day and little by little you know I could feel the connection for my head waist in my chest voice and it was it was a big revelation it really was the start of my career as a student and it would set the foundation for my future career as a vocal coach at the idea that there was something you could do that there was really it became real to me in that moment the idea that you could do some thing and make your voice better because prior to that I didn't really take it all too seriously and I had I had had no I had witnessed no success stories I hadn't seen anyone else growing this way at the time I believe that my favorite singers had no vocal training I now know how untrue that is but at the time I thought it was all natural and so but here Darrell is doing all these little riffs and head voice to stop me on being you know funny about it he probably found it better than that but um it was a powerful lesson that daily vocal exercise yielded results and I became obsessive about daily vocalization I liked until this day I'm still obsessed because I know how powerful it can be and so after that I began putting much more work into daily practice and over the following three months my voice truly transformed so quick recap important lessons I learned from that first voice lesson pulling back can be a way pulling back in terms of volume and pressure can be a way to access the passaggio that passageway that connection from chest voice up in the head voice and sometimes pushing pushing pushing actually will shorten and restrict your range over time instead of growing it but if you start off softly you can whip them hidden mic you can then go back and add on weight gradually more and more as you grow in skill and as you grow in strength um lesson number two exercises work good exercises work and that daily vocal exercise is a thing even then I still didn't fully understand the physiological aspects so much and in the future video I'll tell you who taught me that and where I started to be introduced to the world of voice science at this point I was still kind of just learning from experience and from everything was just my sensory experience of like oh I'm doing these exercises and my voice is getting clearer my voice is getting stronger and everybody at church noticed because I was able to for the first time ever I was able to sing softly nah I remember a saying a song that I was able to sing out and then pull it back and still float it and that was new for me and I loved it so those are lessons that I take with me to this day and I still much just talking to a coach recently about how powerful pianissimo singing is and how it could be a wonderful tool for building range and building vocal freedom and how daily vocal exercise is so important because we now understand things about the thyroid muscle and crack a thyroid muscle and all the different muscles the vocal folds in the diaphragm but that was my start and hopefully some of this stuff has been informative in a way and intriguing if you have more specific questions I was afraid to ramble forever with this because they're definitely things I kind of skipped over but if you want to know more leave questions in the comment section I'm gonna do a few more videos of like other teachers and other mentors I've worked with and things nuggets of truth they dropped on me what I learned in college so um yeah hit me up follow me on Instagram if you want to know more about me as a person i'm on instagram at eric Arceneaux if you just want the vocal stuff which is totally fine if you don't want to see my selfies and stuff um go to a approach we're on instagram regular vocal tips and videos from not only me but from my associate instructors and of course you can go to the website i approached comm if you want to book a lesson with me from anywhere in the world through skype or facetime you can book everything all the informations there and uh i think that's it so until next time peace that was good Kinney but more more Firenze will space like lifts the soft palate and kidneys like oh yes you know and then he's like John like now you more support ah and they're making these tones and I'm freaking out he's doing like these mini voice lessons like on the spot so he gets to me and I'm like nah and cracking yeah

Channel: EricArceneaux

Views: 211,368

Rating: 4.9737473 out of 5

Keywords: learn to sing, how to sing, high notes, mixed voice, head voice, voice lessons, story time, vlog

Id: oblgXq2vZ1c

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 02 2017

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[u/Sceprent]

I do Eric’s exercises daily.

[u/Alphaesk]

Thank you!

[u/X-Krieg]

OG vocal coach on YT.

[u/ForeverAtYourCommand]

Is he self thought?

[u/Blackdollya]

Eric is one of my favs! Great teacher and musician.

[u/lofiman225]

singing softly is how you get better? what does that mean like quieter? how can I practice that?