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♪ His glory ♪
♪ We shall behold him ♪
♪ Oh yes, we shall behold him ♪
♪ Face to face ♪
♪ Our Savior and Lord ♪
♪ Oh and we shall behold him ♪
♪ Our Savior and Lord ♪
♪ Savior and Lord ♪
So David, so many people hear your voice
and you go up to these heavenly high notes.
They just sound like they’re otherworldly.
And I know a lot of singers would like to know
what are you thinking about, what’s going through your mind,
how do you approach that when you’re living in the skies?
Um, well hopefully I don’t live up there too long but, you know.
Justin: visit!
Yeah when I visit, that’s right.
When there’s something really difficult that I know
there’s only a few ways to get there and get back, you know?
Then there’s some calculating going on up until that moment
so that when you hit it you know you’re in the right place
in order to get that.
There’s a song that I do called “Just As I Am”
that is one of those moments where it slides up there
at the end of the bridge.
And for me, it’s a combination of space, compression,
making sure it’s just not, you know muscling it up there
just won’t work.
On any given night it won’t work.
And so it’s making sure that I’m leading up to that place
where my vocal cords are as thinned out as possible,
I have- a lot of teachers call it the mask- and keeping
the sound “forward” like that.
And then also a place of ease of my breath.
And so more than thinking about it while I’m there,
it’s a lot of thinking about it before I get there.
Because if I don’t do that then what I’m thinking about
on the high note is “oh crap” I’ve got to top this.
[laughter]
So you know, it’s the calculation of it.
♪ I am not afraid to follow you ♪
Where you lead me
I can leave the past behind
♪ I’m forgiven and I’m free ♪
♪ So here I am ♪
So you can see that I’m really trying to narrow what’s underneath,
you know, all this “weight” that I have.
That I’ve got to really make the pool shallow there.
And I work with visuals a lot, I do.
I try to know what’s going on scientifically, physiologically.
But visual concepts help a lot in the moment.
To just kind of lose the weight of that tone, bring it “forward”,
instead of sliding up like this sliding up like this.
So there’s a difference in how I approach different notes like that.
That one was obviously very “forward”, the soft palate was lowered
even when I got up there, you know that kind of thing.
This is an awesome balance of the nasal resonance,
and changing the resonance spaces,
keeping compression, and a steady flow.
What else can you ask for?
You know what’s interesting for young students is
they are scared of what they’re actually hearing in their head.
Because there’s a lot of buzz and vibration going on.
And when you first start to do those kind of techniques,
you start to hear that and you think that can’t be good.
But that’s not what’s happening in the room.
And so, there’s a little bit of desensitizing myself to
what’s going on behind my ears actually.
So much of what we do as voice teachers actually
is encourage the singer to make a sound that they never would make.
And that actually sounds wrong to their ear.
And then we have to say no no no, that’s it, that’s it!
And then grow accustomed to that new sensation
and that sound that is often bizarre.
Bizarre is a great word for it, it is.
And you know the best teaching tool that I had, bar none,
was recording myself.
Because it did not lie, you know.
And it was a great thing that I did,
to record myself and go, oh that’s not what that sounded like, I
see.
That still sounds too dark, or that sounds so bright.
And then you record it again and you do something really forward
and you record and you’re like oh that’s what I want to sound like!
That’s what I’ve got to sound like in my head in order to get that, you
know.
So recording yourself is a great, great tool.
We ask all of our students to record every single session,
but I think hearing it from you is a great encouragement.
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