What is the best tone for my voice?
The most natural one!
Frequently, I work with singers that are trying to design their sound and develop their artistry. We are all influenced by music that we listen to and artists we admire to some degree. Young artists tend to mimic their heroes as closely as possible and subsequently an army of dipthonging, English accent attempting American girls that fell in love with Adele was born. The Unnecessary Extra Vowel Program for Uniqueness is a whole other blog. I digress.
So, lets say you discovered that Adele was your jam when you were twelve and tried to mimic her tone and sound. Or maybe you heard the token “unique” sounding voice on The Voice (its not unique if everyone is doing it). You try to emulate the sound for a while. Eventually, maybe you record yourself. Does it sound silly or does it sound awesome? Everyone is different I guess. Where do you draw the line between mimicry and individual artistry?
Generally speaking, in my experience, approximately 100% of the time that a singer is attempting to copy another artist, they lose their own sound in the process and also somewhere around 100% of the time they are tensing muscles that need to relax when they do it. Ballpark percentages.
To spell it out: You sound best when you’re just trying to relax the muscles as you sing. This is how you will achieve your most natural tone. Let that be your focal point. You can always experiment with tones but the most natural tone to your voice should flow out the more you focus on relaxation as you sing.
You may love how a certain artist sounds but if you want other people to want to mimic YOU then you need to be a unique individual. This is most easily accomplished by letting go of your idea of what sounds good and just working on your own voice and body’s unique sound. The more you relax as you sing, the more natural it will sound, the more unique you will be by simply allowing yourself to be YOU.
Check out my PATREON link here and sign up to try some vocal exercises that target relaxation!