[MUSIC PLAYING]
As you're developing your sound and you're specifically
looking at the style of music you're singing,
there are two details to be very aware of.
One is legato, which is a long held note,
versus staccato which are short, punchy notes.
And so for example--
[SINGING]
That's legato.
[SINGING SEPARATE NOTES]
That's more staccato.
Well, true staccato would be really short, but I'm not connecting it.
So sometimes, depending on how you're trained,
people might hold out the note really long at the end of a phrase
in a legato style, which is not appropriate to a lot of sound.
So for instance, pop music--
there's a lot of staccato.
[SINGING] Oh, oh, baby.
Don't you want to know.
I'm just making this song up to show you what I mean.
So it's not going to go--
[SINGING] Oh, baby.
Don't you know I'm just making this song up.
That's all legato.
Or the end of a line--
[SINGING]
You might want to go--
[SINGING]
So just be really aware of that.
Another big difference is whether or not you use vibrato
or you do straight tone.
One thing about a vibrato, everybody's voice is different.
If you have no vibrato at all, that probably
means you've got tightness in your vocal mechanism.
Some people have a very wide vibrato.
Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders comes to mind.
[SINGING]
That kind of a thing.
Mine tends to be a little faster, maybe from the traditional technique.
So I intentionally will slow it down sometimes depending on the style,
or sometimes use totally straight tone, meaning no vibrato.
So for example--
[SINGING]
So all that was really manipulated on purpose.
I just hold the note, let it go into vibrato,
kind of moved around, held the note, let it go into vibrato.
Sometimes you'll have a legato with no vibrato.
Staccato is just going to be short.
If I'm doing something say in a bossa nova style--
[SINGING]
[SINGING] It's gonna to tend to be straight, maybe short.
Not with really much vibrato.
I'm gonna keep my tone straight.
In this style, some kind of mellow--
I'm singing a kind of singer-songwriter.
Or--
[SINGING] I am singing a pop song--
[SPEAKING SLOWLY] --in a mellow style and it's
more like I'm talking so it doesn't really have vibrato.
How do you slow it down?
How do you speed it up?
The easiest way to practice it is to hold a note
and then relax a little bit to go into vibrato,
and then sort of straighten it out.
So--
[SINGING NOTE]
It's a good breath support exercise too.
[MUSIC PLAYING]