Vocal Techniques Quotes

We spent a long time learning the craft of songwriting, Roger Glover and I, for a few years before we joined Deep Purple. You learn about the percussive value of words, and you learn about rhyme and meter. You learn that you can't transform a poem into a song lyric, mostly because the spoken shape of words is different than the sung shape of words. You wouldn't use the vowel 'U' or the vowel sound 'ooo' for a high note for example, its very difficult.

And my voice now is a struggle, it's a daily struggle to keep it up. Gravity has begun to fight the vocal cords the way it does with everybody. So I have a vocal therapist, and we record the sessions and I use them on tour every day.

I really worked very hard to bring my voice back because I used to have a good voice, and to try to do my exercises that I remember from Yale and all the things in the olden days, clearing your sinuses and all that.

Whitney Houston and Ella Fitzgerald are my musical mothers. I learned everything I know about true R&B, pop and jazz singing from these stunning performers and unparalleled musicians.

When I do my vocal warm-ups everyone calls me the dolphin because I do stupid siren noises.

Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less. Unfortunately, there's a style of acting going round, especially with the younger actors, where they talk without even moving their lip. Maybe it's because my hearing probably isn't what it was 40 years ago but I'm sitting there going "What did they say"?

There's nothing I love more in the world than layering voices.

I am never going to sound like Johnny Mathis.

I studied voice and piano as a child, although, at least with voice, you start over at puberty, because your voice completely changes.

I've been good at creating new textures and new fabrics, like vocal hocketing, or interlocking guitars, or suggesting new ideas for style... that's what the band has really excelled at.

I like to make my voice sound like a piece of tin that's been stuck on the side of a chair, lifted up as far as it would go and then let to spring - "doooiiinng." I like to make it into a piece of metal from time to time and I can do it, both with the movements in my throat and with, uh, my little toys... So I like to take it beyond just a voice, more into the realms of a weapon.

Jewish cantors employ a peculiar art and method of singing in their delivery. They are unexcelled in the art of covering the voice, picking up a new key, in the treatment of the ritual chant, and overcoming vocal difficulties that lie in the words rather than in the music.

So much can be gained from watching other singers, seeing what they do and what they don't do, seeing how they look when they breathe, how wide they open their mouths for a high note.

Would you believe that Sammy Davis, Jr. taught me how to sing a ballad? 'You can be in an arena,' he said, 'and you should be able to hold their attention.'

Destiny's Child literally taught me how to sing.

Every singer has three or four or five techniques, and you can force them together in different combinations. Some of the techniques you discard along the way, and pick up others. But you do need them. It's just like anything. You have to know certain things about what you're doing that other people don't know. Singing has to do with techniques and how many you use at the same time. One alone doesn't work. There's no point to going over three. But you might interchange them whenever you feel like it. It's a bit like alchemy.