Description:
When we use the word tone referring to someone’s voice or a musical instrument, we mean the quality of the sound. A synonym would be timbre: the characteristic sound of a voice or instrument. Because it’s such a general term, and because tone is difficult to describe in a concrete way, we use words like dark, bright, strident, smooth, broad, or heavy to describe singing tone.
Now - your singing voice is an extension of your speaking voice, so your anatomy is the biggest factor impacting your tone. When it comes to singing, you will not sound exactly like another singer, because we’re all built a little differently. BUT - you can learn a lot by imitating the tone, inflection, and style of your favorite singers. Our singing tone is heavily influenced by the music we listen to and grow up singing, since we first learn to sing by imitation.
Now - your singing voice is an extension of your speaking voice, so your anatomy is the biggest factor impacting your tone. When it comes to singing, you will not sound exactly like another singer, because we’re all built a little differently. BUT - you can learn a lot by imitating the tone, inflection, and style of your favorite singers. Our singing tone is heavily influenced by the music we listen to and grow up singing, since we first learn to sing by imitation.
This tutorial is all about exploring different tone qualities so that we can be versatile within a variety of styles. Our first video will focus on warm, rich tone, followed by a video on bright, present tone. We’ll finish with a video on consistency of tone throughout your range. These sounds, as with a lot of warm-ups, are what we call “unfinished” sounds; so, don’t worry about sounding beautiful in the first two lessons. Let yourself have fun as you experiment with some new parts of your voice.
Lessons:
Instructor: Abram Poliakoff
Abram Poliakoff is a singer, guitarist, pianist, teacher, conductor, and composer. He received a Bachelors of Music in Vocal Arts from USC’s Thornton School of Music and has been teaching music for 8 years. He is currently both the Associate Artistic Director and a tenor in the L.A. Choral Lab, which recently released its first studio album Sonic Visions in the fall of 2019. Abram teaches and performs a wide range of genres including Classical, Jazz, Folk and Popular music in the Los Angeles area. He has also sung with the San Francisco Opera and Pocket Opera in the Bay Area. His teaching mission is to help his students utilize vocal technique to find their authentic and healthy voice while maximizing genre flexibility and a naturalness of expression.