Jazz Vocal Technique

This is Abram with 30 Day Singer and today we are going to go over some tips and exercises that will help you sing Jazz.

1) Smooth Tone

Exercise: Wah, Weh, Wee, Woh, oo (123,234,345,4321)

Jazz singers are notoriously flexible when it comes to vocal tone. Depending on the instrumentation and vibe of the music a singer can use anything from bright belting to a deep sultry and whispery tone. 

Start by finding a smooth straight tone as your default sound. Smooth tone means there is a balanced transition of vowels compared to something more Rock that uses a more abrupt shift of vowels like this. 

Straight tone means we use very little vibrato for the core of our sound compared to something with even vibrato. We will experiment with adding in a bit of vibrato at the ends of our phrases in the next exercise.

Let’s try an exercise that helps us smooth out our vowel transitions. First we will use a “w” sound to help us glide from one vowel to the other. Once we get the hang of this, then take the “w” out and see if you can find a smooth change from one vowel to the next. 

2) Stylize

Half Exercise: Why Not Vibrato 3-1

Alright now that we have let’s play with our vibrato. Start with that smooth straight tone, but at the end add some faster vibrato called a flutter. Let's use the phrase “Why not”. Make sure you start with that smooth straight tone and then add your flutter at the end of each word. Also notice how the diphthong in “why” helps us speed up our vibrato. We can still make our vibrato flutter with the word “Not” if we collapse the vowel a bit like we did for “why” at the very end as well. 

Exercise: Riff on Fly (2-32176) 

Awesome! Let's try a riff with some jazz style. It’s important to note that when it comes to finding the right style choices, jazz can be all over the place, which makes sense with its strong tendency towards improvisation. If you aren't adding a personal touch and playing around with the music, then you aren’t quite in the spirit of Jazz yet.

When improvising vocalists often imitate the sound of instruments playing around them so think of a trumpet, saxophone, trombone, bass, guitar, and even the percussive quality of the drums. 

We won't cover scatting today, but a great step towards this ability is to practice some “licks,” which in Jazz stand for short practiced bits of material that can be added to the melody or inserted into transition points and larger improvisations. You get to decide in the moment how they all come together. When you get good at this, it just flows out from the feeling you get from the music and your muscle memory from your previous practices. 

Let's use a turnaround to get us started. I added some short detached notes that we call staccato. I’m playing with the articulation or way that I hit each note to make it more instrumental. 

Add that vibrato flutter where it feels right as well as some scoops and vocal fry.

3) Swing the Beat and Blue Skies

There is one more thing that we have to cover if you want to sing with proper jazz style. We need to swing the beat! Swinging the beat means you play around the main beat, rather than directly on the beat. 

I’m going to sing a short excerpt from a jazz standard called “Blue Skies” and show you what I mean. 

Em              B7     Em      A7          

Blue Skies Smiling at me

                    G   F7     D7    G     B7                                      

Nothing but blue skies do I see 

Em                B7        Em               A7  

Bluebirds singing a song 

                    G                   F    D7    G   

Nothing but bluebirds all day long                

Swinging the beat is as natural as breathing in jazz, but it takes some pointing out for a beginner and lots of practice and experimentation to master a deep swing. I'll show you what it's like If I play and sing on the beat with no swing. Feels awkward!

Awesome work! Jazz is all about being playful so keep exploring and as always listen to some Jazz music and imitate what you hear!