for a long time my range was capped at about a g4 being in my parents basement with my keyboard e
and then an f f-sharp g pushing harder and harder to try to get those notes my throat would tense up
and i'd get really tired and i felt like i was just shouting i wasn't able to create that freedom
that i heard in other singers but i had a huge season of breakthroughs let me turn back the
clock a little bit to my college days where i was studying music and vocal performance and recording
there were lots of opportunities for me to study with doctors of vocal performance and i remember
taking the cd sound garden super unknown the track the day i tried to live to one of these vocal
coaches and i put that cd on cued it up i queued it up to the verse and i said look i can do this
i can make my voice sound like that and then i queued it up to the chorus
i said what is chris cornell doing it doesn't even sound like the same person there's so much
freedom and aggression and purity even though it's this distorted wonderful powerful sound
he was hitting those c sharp fives and he was hitting them on vowels as well just nuts and
to my massive disappointment she hit pause on that cd boombox she looked at me and she said
you don't want to sing this way it's going to ruin your voice plus this singer has a higher voice
than you do you should work on singing and developing your range
your voice don't try to sing like this person it's a losing battle i was so incredibly disappointed
if chris cornell who appeared to have a lower speaking voice than me the title of the song
waited for music that seemed like it might fit that title could sing these notes there had to
be a way to do it well a couple weeks went by and a buddy of mine who knew i loved soundgarden
gave me two cds this was really the first exposure i had had to hearing chris cornell live and at
the same time i was subscribed to this unofficial soundgarden mailing list compile articles written
on soundgarden and send them to us via email once a week and then people would respond to this
and there'd be all sorts of neat discussion it was kind of before social media and so this
was kind of the way to stay in contact with other soundgarden fans and see what the press was saying
about him without having to search a bunch and i remember reading this article from some sort of
critic this critic said chris cornell sounds great in the studio but he sounds like a dying cat live
when i heard him sing live all the production layering and doing the
same take over and over again to get that perfect tone out of your voice all of that was stripped
away and i began to hear his raw approach i thought i can make some of those sounds
then you stare oh i wouldn't go so far as to say he sounds like a dying cat but yeah kind
of i stopped imitating or trying to imitate the perfection in the studio recordings and started to
do more of what i heard him do live and on earlier recordings like little joe from screaming life
incredibly raw and experimental things that chris cornell was doing with his voice
these sounds became my gateway sounds to understanding that expanding your range
is less about hitting notes and working up towards notes and it's much more
about pursuing variance in timbre character and resonance if i can make my voice more expressive
through lots of different tonal possibilities playing with the way my voice resonates all over
the place in almost cartoony and voice actory ways i can stumble upon notes i would have
never been able to hit if i was just sitting there on the piano creating these brick walls for myself
none of the exercises that my vocal coaches gave me back in college helped me to break through that
ceiling that g4 ceiling that i had in fact they just frustrated me they just made me tired and
tense once i stopped the old approach and embraced the new approach i was hitting notes
all over the place that i never dreamed of hitting and ironically years later that song
the day i tried to live that i gave to one of my vocal coaches in college and said how do i do this
would be one of the first chris cornell tributes i did on my channel i was able to hit all the notes
sing the song all the way through with lots of freedom by the way i've got a free singing
course that you can access by clicking the link in the video description below
if you'd like help expanding your range in the ways that i'm talking about in this video
click that link and join the free course so cast that keyboard aside stop doing vocal
exercises and runs that peg the top of your range stop caving in to tense throat syndrome
and discouragement because you can't break through the ceiling that you've made for yourself
and start embracing tonal variance character crazy sounds and imperfections
and the best place to be inspired to do this kind of thing is by listening to some of your
favorite singers mess up live that's what did it for me it can work for you as well
you