How to Sing Louise Dearman's No One Mourns the Wicked

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:

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!

To Infinity and Beyond: The Vocal Ceiling… and How There Isn't One

I pride myself on how rarely people have NBD's (nervous breakdowns) when they visit me for a lesson but of course there will be the occasional teary moment or two because we're all artists and we're emotional people.  It's to be expected… but often times when this brief half-meltdown occurs it's because people are way too hard on themselves.  When I ask what's wrong the response usually starts with, "Sorry, I'm just frustrated with myself because I just can't …"
Think of this video the next time you feel like you'll never be good enough.   I clicked it in the first place so I could have the same "feel good moment" everybody else on social media was having…and then I laughed my ass off at the end and shook my head, "Wow!"

The video shows a mom teaching her baby her first word which was "Happy."  They both laugh hysterically and celebrate the new milestone together…. for all of 1 minute and 31 seconds.  And then do you hear what happens in the last 2 seconds? Just the last 2 seconds.  Hilarious (though I secretly feel as if I have to talk to a therapist about it immediately lol).

None of us will ever be COOKED as singers and I implore you to realize this as we see this poor kid about to meet the harsh reality that "Happy" is not the only word she'd have to learn to get more of that fleeting response.  We're always working on something … whether it's some difficult concept like anchoring or mixing or vibrato; or whether we're trying to get to Broadway, have been on Broadway 10 times or have won a Grammy.  When we hit singing milestones we should celebrate for more than just 1 minute and 31 seconds and take the time to give ourselves the well-deserved pat on the back because we're never going to "graduate singing."  There's always more to learn and more to work on.  Just as there are about 600,000 words in the English dictionary (according to Siri whose only skill is giving consistently incorrect information so don't quote me) , there are probably 600,000 things you can do with your voice as a singer, as well.  Know you're not the only one overwhelmed by the thought of having to keep up with the ever-changing expectations of casting directors, coaches and …yes…sometimes even your mom….  and nobody including your teachers or vocal idols will ever touch the vocal ceiling.  Ever.  So just be happy while you try!


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SOMEDAY MY PRINCE WILL COME …TO LET ME KNOW MY EXPECTATIONS ARE WAY TOO HIGH: Idina's Live Performance of Let It Go

This song is such a hot topic in the MT world right now I couldn't really resist doing another post about this particular performance.

We see funny BuzzFeed pages popping up on our news feeds all the time about how Disney Princesses have been setting us up for disappointment since their incarnation (22 Lies Disney Princesses Told You About Hair, Did Disney Princesses set us up to Fail in our Relationships?  15 Terrible Love Lessons We Learned From Disney Princesses) but let's talk for a second about how Disney's sound editing room gave us unreasonably high expectations for tonight but set us up for major success in the decades to come.  Here's what I mean:

Idina Menzel (otherwise known to John Travolta as Adela Dazeem? WTF)  had to perform "Let It Go" tonight on the Oscars.  Now, we all know she's unbelievably talented and I think anybody in the Musical Theatre community recognizes that this was a really difficult task at hand even without all of the modifications made for TV land.  It's also just common sense that Frozen was a film and, unlike live theatre, voices can be edited to the point that they are basically inhuman.  This is great if you never have to perform the song ever again because the world would hear your most ON performance ever and assume that's how you always sound, but like we just saw a few moments ago, the song was nominated for an award and had to be performed live.  The version we were bound to hear had no chance of surpassing what was done on the retouched recording.  With all factors considered:

• it was faster than usual 
• there were cuts in the music 
• it was probably a track she was singing to? 
• she was using a hand-held mic 
• she said in a few interviews that she was really nervous 
• she had just flown there so she could have been dehydrated 
• the climate was different from NY
• she was wearing an insane outfit and heels
• Meryl Streep was sitting in front of her,

 I would say she did a nice job!  Most of us know what she usually sounds like because we've seen her live before… and we realize how hard that song is to begin with.  That being said, there will still be some A-holes who say it wasn't like the movie so it wasn't good.  Disney gave those people unrealistic expectations because they made the movie version of the song TOO perfect to even come close to live.


Now, as we know, an announcement was made that Frozen will have a Broadway run within the next few years.  Someone is going to have to perform this song live 8 times a week.  The possibility of them needing to lower the song a step or two for consistency sake is quite strong (a la Astonishing for Sutton Foster) but let's think about how this whole auto-tune situation could actually be a good thing in the long run:

Growing up, we listened to and learned to imitate what was available to us.  We painstakingly learned to sing "Take Me or Leave Me," "On My Own," and "Someone Like You," and those were considered the tough songs. Now in 2014, the expectations are even higher than those placed on the people who graced the Broadway stages of the 1980's and 90's, so the "high notes" aren't C's or even E flats anymore; they're F's and G's.  Idina Menzel didn't really have other Idina's to try to copy when she was a little kid.  I know Bernadette Peters sure wasn't belting that high. The only thing that really ever touched those notes in that quality back then was Evita and it's just not exactly the same. Therefore, she's figuring it out for herself as an adult and taking a lot of flack for it while the kids of the future will reap the benefits of having had an imperfect performance to try to perfect.


In my mind, Frozen is (and I can't believe I'm saying this) pretty much God's gift to the next 2 decades of Musical Theatre performance because every child in the universe is now aiming for (and coming pretty damn close to) high E's when they attempt "Let It Go."  Remember my little student Amelia?  We've been working a lot on "mixing" which she's conceptually really digging and she brought the sheet music in… AND she can totally do it! And so can a few of my other pre-teens because they've been listening and trying to imitate like crazy! It's pretty wild!

Now that there is such a superhuman example of vocal work in the style of Musical Theatre out there and accessible to kids, we're going to be hearing some pretty sick vocals in the years to come, and the high notes written into the musicals of the future are going to be in the stratosphere because those kids who practiced "Let It Go" in 2014 will be crazy singers in 2030 and composers will recognize that!

So while Disney gave Idina Menzel an almost impossible task tonight, her courageous performance (seriously now... admit you'd be having a major IBS episode if that were you) is pioneering a movement of Musical Theatre that will be unreal once it happens in like…10 years.  She teaches us to remember to appreciate live performances and reminds us that if we DON'T sound like the recording that we shouldn't be too, too hard on ourselves.  It's something to strive for but it's not something that's exactly realistic.  It's quite literally immortal, so Let It Go!

I leave you with this video of a segment from Good Morning America that was aired this week!  It's kind of magical that this many kids are inspired to sing!  (But whoever raised the song a step or two is evil!!!!)  If you liked my post, check out my previous posts and sign up to get updates delivered directly to your inbox!