Friday, April 25, 2014

GONNA TRY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS: NATALIE'S VIDEOS ON RIFFING

My friend Natalie Weiss puts these videos out called Breaking Down the Riffs and I wanted to share one with you because I think everybody should try them.  If they can help me they can help you.  I was never a riffer before I started watching these.  I realized that yes, a big part of it is agility, but it's also because I need things planned out for me and/or I could never hear what notes to choose (and that's a lot of the reason most people can't riff, I think) so it's so, so helpful to have Natalie break it down more slowly!  Try this one… And listen to how I did with it underneath the video in the mp3 I posted.  I don't think I did so bad!!!!





  The Riff I Learned from Natalie's Video:




Tuesday, April 1, 2014

HOW YOU, TOO, CAN BE MIND BLOWING

Ok, this is my LAST post EVER (I promise) about Frozen. Because ENOUGH ALREADY! It's April!  Jesus!
I saw a Buzzfeed thing that said "Kristen Bell Sings Do You Want To Build a Snowman and It Is Mind Blowing."  So of course I clicked it.  And truthfully, while it was impressive, my mind was not blown.  I will tell you why.  The three voices had a few too many similarities.  Normally I'm harping about not enough common denominators in a voice and this time I'm complaining that there weren't enough variables.  Like I actually bitched about it for a good 2 minutes in my mind.  "THIS is mind blowing!?," I said to no one.

 While my ears knew the answer, the title of this video made me second guess myself and wonder whether she actually voiced all three Anna's in the movie, too… But I was not fooled, my friends, and Wikipedia confirmed my speculation that she did not actually voice Young Anna and Teen Anna.  BUT what Kristen Bell can do with her voice is admittedly pretty cool and enviable so this is how you can blow your own mind with your vocal abilities and do a one-woman Frozen concert even more skillfully than the mind-blower herself:

Here are your choices
Airy, Not Airy, Airy for Vocal inflection on certain words 
Vibrato, No Vibrato,
Young, Old, 
Sweet, Talky.
(*HypoNasal  - see bonus feature)
We have 10 adjectives… and from what I remember from math class… how many combinations can be made? The answer is 100, I think…10x10 is 100.  100 distinct combinations that are not alike and yet Kristen Bell probably accessed maybe 1.5 of those 100 choices. Sheesh!

These are the combos used by the 3 separate voice over artists for the 3 separate characters :
Young Anna = Not Airy, No Vibrato, Young, Sweet, Hyponasal
Teen Anna = Airy, No Vibrato, Old, Talky
Anna = Airy for inflection on certain words, Vibrato, Old, Sweet



Kristen Bell's combos:  (I have marked the repeat characteristics in red)
Young Anna = Not Airy, No Vibrato, Young, Talky
Teen Anna = Not Airy, No Vibrato, Young (same age as herself)Talky, 
Anna = Somewhat Airy, Vibrato, Older (older than herself), Sweet

The combos she chose just have less diversity than what the actual voiceover artists provided….the first and second voices have basically the same recipe... and this is partly because she's only one person, but it IS also something that IS doable so this is why my mind was not "blown."

This is how you can build your own personal vocal snowman and truly make a viral video that will blow the minds of Frozen fans.  Just have awareness of why each voice provided by the actual voice over artists are perfect for each of these characters and how you can sound that way, too:

Age is obvious.  Young, Old and Older.
Let's talk Vibrato.  There are two "species" that don't use vibrato - children and puppets. You'll notice if you ever listen to the recordings of Avenue Q or Spelling Bee, there is little to no vibrato.  It's just the rule. So this is what makes those two younger voices (aside from the fact that they're provided by ACTUAL children and not an adult) sound like kids.  If you notice, Kristen Bell also takes out vibrato in her kid voices which is a win for her!
How about airiness? I'm not sure if this is why Disney chose a raspy voiceover artist but between the ages of 10-14 is when it is said that girls can have growth spurts in the laryngeal area and sometimes the vocal cords won't touch all the way because they're being sort of stretched unevenly… So who knows if someone at Disney was like, "Oh yeah, Teen Anna needs to be breathy because the glottal closure in girls between 10-14 blah blah blah!" or if they just happened to like that sound and I'm overanalyzing.
Sweet or Talky:  Talky sort of denotes boredom, cynicism or toughness and so the littlest Anna is none of those things, therefore she gets Sweet. Teen Anna is probably all of the above so she gets Talky.  And Sweet is what we identify as ingenue voice so adult Anna gets sweet (and sad in this song which are one in the same…= thyroid tilt which we've talked about in previous Frozen entries).

Bonus feature: Hyponasality or Having a cold in your nose: making Young Anna have hypo nasality or a soft palate so high that it makes you sound like you have a cold and your M's turn into B's and your N's turn into D's...  "Do you Wadda Build a Sdowbad"


So there you go! The dissection of Young, Teen and regular Anna.  So when you want to be the jerk who chooses "Do you Want to Build a Snowman" at a Karaoke Bar full of beer bellied dudes on a Thursday night in Washington Heights, you can at least blow their minds with your vocal tricks!