hey chris liepe here with how to battle discouragement and frustration when it comes to
your voice your singing and the creative aspects surrounding it such a common problem
almost every vocalist has battled with this specifically in the area of vocals there's
lots of ways to be discouraged right in life in general and even lots of ways to be discouraged
in terms of creativity and that's not really what i'm talking about here or addressing specifically
i'm talking about with your voice it's not behaving like you want it to um you're not able to
do the things even though you've been practicing and practicing practicing like you want to do them
you're not getting the sounds you want to get what do you do to get over this
and get excited about your voice and make music with your voice that you can really be proud of
if you are stuck and even if you're not stuck and you'd like more help
working with your voice on a more personal level the best place to start with me is by clicking
the link below and joining my free voice course there's lots of ways we can interact from there
but get started with the free course and we can go further if you'd like to
all right i said just a minute ago that you want to be able to make great sounds
make music that you're proud of ultimately the goal is to be creatively engaged and make
cool stuff with your voice right here in lies my first tip for battling discouragement
oftentimes we get in in lots of different tasks we get so focused on what we want to improve
with our voice i want to be able to sing higher or i want to be able to sing with better distortion
or um i i'm frustrated that i've been i've been trying to increase my vocal stamina
but i haven't been able to we go down this this sort of rabbit trail of self-improvement when it
comes to our voice and we we kind of leave in the dust the things that we are already fairly good at
with our voices and so the first way to battle discouragement is to in a sense
return to your roots return to what your you know you're good at and be intentionally creative
with that yeah you may not have the range you want to yeah there's you could probably you know have
this huge laundry list of things that you've been working on but you know take a vacation from that
for just a minute and choose a creative outlet with your voice that caters to your strengths
then as you're doing this as you're doing this exercise remember you can
always go back and revisit the self-improvement projects with your voice later but if you give
yourself the opportunity to return to your roots and to experience your voice for what it's good at
and engage creatively with it cover a song that you know you can sing make a great recording of it
write a song that is that that the melody doesn't speak to what you
want to be able to do with your voice but speaks to what you can do with your voice
i guarantee it if you go down this road and you make you you make a project that capitalizes on
your vocal strengths it can be so simple as just a cover song a karaoke song whatever
when you go back and try to work on those things that you've that you're discouraged about
you will go back with a fresh perspective and a new bout of confidence i've done this
over and over again i still do it all the time when i'm working on something that's really
difficult i have to balance it with things that i know that i'm confident in and that i can do
well so that's the first thing the second thing that you really want to wrap your mind around
and i deal with this in all sorts of different levels life levels and even and vocally for sure
comparison is the enemy of contentment
absolutely universal life rule and we have so many problems with this in our culture in our addiction
to social media and the fact that we can you know in just one second pull up something on our phone
that reminds us of how lowly and horrible we are and how amazing this other person is
we're bombarded with this by choice so often that this this
really does suck the life out of our creativity and absolutely out of our singing
oh i saw this guy do something on the internet and i've tried and tried and i can't do that
or i've been listening to this guy for years and i i can't get uh to that level with my own singing
remember i said just a minute ago that we need to return to our roots and capitalize
on our strengths we can't possibly do that if we're comparing our voice constantly to other
people's voices it's great to learn from other people's voices and try things with our own voices
and see what happens but at the end of the day we have to accept that we have the voice that we have
and if we go into this this idea of learning from other people but not comparing ourselves to them
we don't know their battles we don't know their journeys in fact most of the time we're listening
to their voices recorded so meticulously and we're comparing with our maybe
somewhat less meticulous methods of recording we just can't bring these comparisons together
and have them do any bit of good in our own musical journey learning yes comparing no
and here's my third tip and the final one for this video although i've got more and i'd love to hear
your thoughts in the comments in terms of how you have battled discouragement with your voice also
but here's a third tip stop focusing solely on singing making the sound
and start focusing a bit more on vocal production now that's a big phrase for
some of us i don't mean that you have to spend thousands of dollars on great vocal equipment
i do mean that even as you're listening to other vocalists and as you're trying things
with your voice don't just stop on how your voice sounds coming out of your face
start recording yourself start taking tips that i've given on this channel uh and in my in my
courses even in my free recording course that i have available start taking some of these
tips on how to capture your voice well doubling harmonies delays effects compression saturation
all these things that we listen to all the time that help make other vocalists sound so great
start experimenting with those aspects of vocal production on your own voice
you can really you can really take something that doesn't sound totally mint that you've recorded
and do a lot with it just by messing with the dynamic range of what you've recorded
or doubling it or putting some effects on it the reverbs putting a rhythmic delay on it
and you know what else it does is when you get in to these these modes of putting effects on
your voice and seeing how the textures work and sound it starts inspiring other creative ideas
that are not solely reliant on your skill as a vocalist you want uh examples of this
oh man go listen to any song that corey taylor has recorded vocals on and really listen to it really
listen for not only what he's doing with his voice but all the subtle production aspects go out on
youtube and listen to the isolated vocals so that you really get a sense for how things are working
i've done a lot of videos on corey taylor and on other vocalists with isolated vocals
on this channel and so you can really hear the subtleties of what's going on from a production
standpoint but this is so helpful because it it not only exposes the vocals for what they are you
get to hear them naked well almost naked because you hear how the production elements that you
don't hear when you're listening back to the album you hear how these support the voice this helps
squash that comparison monster in us so it feeds into the other tips quite a bit we're pursuing
creativity we're not comparing and by studying vocal production particularly isolated vocals
we are we are putting our focus on the creativity and not necessarily on vocal skill with other
vocalists and we're experimenting with what vocal production and tweaks and stuff like that can do
for our own voices and being inspired in those textures throwing a delay on a rhythmic delay
or trying a double or harmony and just noticing oh i didn't think my voice could sound that cool
actually sounds like something i heard on a record well yeah because you're starting to
use some of the same methods this is not a cop-out this is how i've battled frustration
with my voice for a long time when i start trying to get good and i'm not getting good at something
be creative with my strengths and then really dive in to aspects of other vocalists that inspire me
and take it to the vocal production aspect to relieve some of the burden that singing good
uh puts on me vocal production is a great way to do that again you can get into that stuff
really really cheaply these days any daw has tons of built-in effects
any microphone will do just make sure your your space isn't too echoey
again if you'd like more personal help with your voice click that link below
and join my free course hope you've enjoyed these perspectives we'll see you for more