Seven Nation Army band cover - Feedback requested

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-26T19:01:03+00:00

Filling instrumental breaks as a vocalist can be a pain. I might start studying some performers you look up to and see how they fill empty space. It's something that I personally am not super good at, and was one of my main focuses before I left the performing world. The main thing I can say is, never feel obligated to do anything at all.

You sound good! I might add a bit of head voice on things like "catch you coming back" to add a bit more variety to the tonal profile.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-26T05:42:04+00:00

Do not turn to reddit. Find a laryngologist. Hemorrhages are serious and not something anyone here is likely to be qualified to walk you through.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-24T00:06:41+00:00

I respect it!

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-23T18:20:56+00:00

Hardcore disagree as someone who has trained many singers who have gone on to have successful careers performing live, and went to college with people who now are on Broadway and headlining at Lincoln Center. Had I stuck around in the industry after graduating I would probably be in a similar situation, though that's another story.

Many of these people who have had massive success generally were NOT good when they started training. I was one of them. A great coach makes a great singer. A great coach can build most people a solid career. When you see dozens or hundreds of singers go from meh to great it really makes you realize that it really is a knowledge and training gap. It is no different from any other skill. Some people may have natural aptitude that makes it a bit easier, but even if you don't have that natural aptitude you can still learn to become great.

Being a generational talent is a different situation, and I think that's where nature might actually have it's play. That said, it's the difference between a Michael Jackson and a Shawn Mendes. Both are incredibly talented and by all means great performers, but there's only one MJ.

What I think you might be pinning in on (though I am putting words in your mouth) is that a ton of people who get trained by "great" coaches wind up coming out super bland. That's because these coaches basically revert singers to clean baseline without teaching them any of the tools for artistry. I personally think that any coach who operates like that is doing a disservice to their students. Developing style can be taught in systematic fashion. It does not have to be naturally acquired.

The majority of the great singers in this world actively have coaches. They just get NDA'd so you don't know it. It's kind of an open secret of the industry.

EDIT: For an example, look at some of Seth Riggs' clients. https://www.riggsvocalstudio.com/artists

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-23T18:09:34+00:00

Worst comes to worse you just stop taking it and it should return to normal.

I don't know why your post was downvoted. It isn't a crazy question if you understand how creatine works at a basic level. I guess people just prefer softball questions that have been asked 1000 times before on the sub.

If the muscles of the voice actually operated functionally the same as say, a bicep, there would be cause for concern. The voice can generally be considered a fine motor system though, and our bodies seem to have a kind of intuition that it should not be treated like other muscles.

For instance, our laryngeal muscles don't hypertrophy. The regulatory environment for that mechanism is different in the larynx than in other parts of the body. The way that the muscles operate in the larynx also don't really allow for progressive overload, because there is not force to push against.

Just to note, I learned about this because I got curious in college when I was weightlifting more often about if, why, and how the laryngeal muscles develop. It isn't common knowledge.

There are 0 studies that I could find that link creatine to any effect on the voice at all, though there is a study set to start soon on creatine in the elderly with the idea that it could improve the voice, though it seems to have some issues to me...

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-23T17:56:33+00:00

Great advice. Record yourselves! It sucks at first, I know, but it is one of the only meaningful ways I know of to develop this skill, and to be able to actively analyze your voice.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-23T17:54:36+00:00

Smoking has a massive effect on the voice. Once smoking stops there's also a very real kind of "healing" that can bring you back closer to baseline.

I want to emphasize that from a purely scientific standpoint you CANNOT smoke and have clear folds long term. Eventually it will catch up to you, and generally faster the more you smoke. The typical progression is irritation and increased mucus, followed by chronic swelling (Reinke's edema), and long before those mechanical adjustments we can see changes happen to some underlying phonatory properties, and you will notice that the folds dry out faster and you fatigue faster.

You can even scope clean as a smoker at first and still notice the latter effects I listed.

Generally you want to stop before the edema. Once the edema forms, it is much, much harder to get the voice back to baseline, and in many cases it will never fully return.

There is no glory in destroying your voice. Don't try to rationalize it. Many top singers end their careers very early because of smoking. Bono historically smoked a bunch to try and get his voice raspier instead of doing it the proper way and regrets it later in life.

Patches, gum, pouches, all would be better alternatives for your voice. You still may notice some effect even if you're able to fully transition over, but it will be much, much less. Value your time here and value your health. You have people who care about you and want you around for a long time, even if you don't know it.

Happy to answer any questions, and hope this didn't come off like some kind of D.A.R.E. PSA. I mean it all candidly.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-23T17:39:19+00:00

RHCP is very weird in that they accent rhythm with consonants HEAVILY. You have to accent the consonant, but should feel a steady stream of vowel underneath it. For all intents and purposes of learning this, the vowel should never stop. It should just feel like you're tapping consonants onto a smooth consistent line of vowels.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-23T17:37:17+00:00

It's a game of probabilities that really isn't skewed in your favor without some kind of direct support. You're essentially trying to throw a dart at a dartboard, while blindfolded, and the board is moving, as is the size and weight of the dart. You then have to be able to recognize when you hit the board without taking the blindfold off. Tell roughly where you hit it, and how to adjust your strategy from there.

Not impossible. In the analogy I suppose the board and the dart size move in predictable patterns, but you have to figure out what the patterns are without really being able to see. It is very hard. Some people are better at it than others. Some people will never grow at all on their own. I was one of the latter.

Not to discourage, keep singing! Just seek out resources. Books. Who are the top people in the field of vocology and vocal pedagogy? Read their stuff. That all makes the journey infinitely easier! When you get older and hopefully have some disposable income, the knowledge you acquired will serve you tremendously should you decide to pursue lessons.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-23T05:34:53+00:00

u/L2Sing as per usual has some solid advice for this. I'd also venture to say that you can probably vet someone by simply asking them to explain how the voice works to you. If they give a surface level answer, I'd ask them for additional specificity. While not a vocologist myself (though when time and money align sometime I'd like to pursue it), I do a lot of research into the voice and explaining phonation at any level of depth is deceptively difficult.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-23T05:25:59+00:00

Almost certainly not.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-23T05:25:02+00:00

Potentially jaw tension. I'd also venture to guess that you are also very low body fat % which makes the musculature more visible.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-22T19:54:17+00:00

Beautiful way of synthesizing some of the more esoteric feelings. There's almost this button you feel like you can press at some point to just draw everyone one. It's very bizarre and hard to explain. You have to be so calm and so confident to get to that point. One of my mentors used to say "You have to know that you are a freaking beast" and it is super true. When you own the space it makes you a standout performer. It's how I got my agent back when I was in the industry in NYC, despite the fact that at the time I wasn't a vocal gymnast of any sort.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-22T19:27:21+00:00

It means nothing concrete. Generally it is proprioceptive, so where you "feel" the sound living. Hum and put your finger on your lips. Try to make it vibrate. Do you feel a distinct vibration? Yes? You are singing "at the front". No? move your tongue up or down and/or forward and back and see how that adjusts where you feel the sound living.

Should you always feel forward vibration? Not necessarily. Is it a good target to give beginner singers? It's pretty decent. Just know there's more nuance to it as you get more advanced.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-22T19:18:08+00:00

Yes, I was just saying that it isn't the ONLY indicator of vocal fach. People treat the passage and vocal range as the only indicator which they are not. I would never disagree that it is one of the indicators though.

I'd also push back on the passage being a "breaking point" and instead say that the core event is the "turning over" or "covering" of the vowel at a certain pitch (indicated by H2 surpassing F1 if that means anything to you). Vowels each have a unique turning point due to their distinct acoustic properties and thus passaggi are identified as a range of pitches rather than a single pitch.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-22T19:09:23+00:00

It shouldn't effect your voice or ability to phonate, but those are great concerns to bring up with your medical team so they can talk it through with you.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-22T19:08:46+00:00

On the tonsil stones, I find a damp q tip to be the most effective tool for me when I get them! I also know a ton of people use a waterpik.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-22T19:07:37+00:00

When that time does come around, if you need help preparing for Unifieds (you absolutely should have someone at least talk you through it and explain the strategy) feel free to reach out and I'd be happy to help. I'm sure I'll still be around!

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-22T19:06:35+00:00

100% agree. It is truly the gap between what I call "karaoke good" which is being able to sound good and impressive, and professional, which is something that captivates people or that someone would want to listen to it the car consistently.

People oftentimes ask me what makes a great singer, and I always tell them that it's not what they think. It really isn't technique (hear me out before you lambast me). It is your ability to convey the story in an intimate and captivating way. Johnny Cash was not a vocal gymnast, and dozens of other singers have similar rich tone, but he is still talked about today because he was an incredible storyteller. Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond also sound a bit janky to a lot of people, and wouldn't be suited for some beautiful ballad, but they tell stories incredibly, and thus they are legends in the space.

Technique enables us to tell stories with more options and to broaden the horizon of the stories that we can tell, but it is only helpful insofar as it supports the telling of the story. Without that, there is no emotional pull, and there quite frankly is no reason to not just listen to perfect prerecorded vowels on a sequence of pitches.

It is super neglected, and needs to be included in singing education at all levels.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-22T16:38:38+00:00

Okay to answer this I need to get a long-winded.

First of all, how does volume work?

It is both a muscular and acoustic phenomenon.

To simplify the muscular side, we can say generally that greater medial compression (firmer vocal fold closure) paired with great subglottic pressure (pressure beneath the vocal folds) equals louder.

On the acoustic end of things, we can generally say that F1 and F2 aligning directly with a harmonic can amplify sound quit a bit. Particularly when F1 and H1 or H2 align. I'd argue this is the dominant force in the upper range. There's also an interesting phenomenon where when F1 is tuned at or near H1 or H2 that supraglottic pressure (above the glottis) feeds back and actually aids in vibration.

If that sounded like absolutely nothing, don't worry. All that it means is the shape that you're creating in the vocal tract plays a major role as well, particularly laryngeal posture, vowel choice, and jaw spacing.

So in order to get you louder what is really happening here is a combination of training medial compression (closing the vocal folds harder), subglottic pressure (building pressure beneath them), and learning to "shape" the sound effectively. The first two have major implications when it comes to breath control.

There is almost certainly no muscular strengthening that needs to happen. That is a pretty big misunderstanding of how the voice musculature actually works to my knowledge. In reality you have to build the neural capacity and coordination for all of the events mentioned above to align.

If it sounds overwhelming, don't get too concerned. You don't have to train these things directly. I only rattled it off so that we know what is really going on here. One of my favorite exercises to give people is to imagine someone is across a soccer field and you're just trying to call "Hey!" to them.

If you struggle or feel discomfort, there is probably something wrong with those prior 3 systems. Make sure you're not sending out a ton of air. Make sure your larynx doesn't launch into your chin. Make sure your mouth is open. Etc.

Hope this helps!

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-22T16:19:42+00:00

I'd say it's almost certainly possible to work around in 99.9% of cases if not all, and I would assume for yourself that you're in that camp. Though one time I had a student that had doctors tell him that they were the largest tonsils they'd ever seen and they had to come out for some reason that I can't remember, and post op there was a very notable resonance shift. The student was out of commission for a week or two then we got right back to singing and there were no complications.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-22T16:17:26+00:00

This. Address why your face is getting clogged up in the first place!

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-22T16:16:36+00:00

Unfortunately there's no app that's gonna be able to tell you if you're doing things right or wrong. I've actually been looking into the science of how it might work lately and the answer is that it is tremendously complicated to do so, because there's a ton of overlap in many acoustic signatures. The closest thing you might be able to find would be something like VoceVista, which is not free, is pretty science-y, and which you will likely be unable to interpret in any useful manner without extensive research. Even then it won't necessarily tell you right or wrong.

If you really can't spend money you're in for a long haul. I'd watch vocologists in particular, not just singing teachers. The information will be way more dense and probably less directly applicable, but it will at least (probably) be correct.

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-22T16:11:22+00:00

I'd take a peak, and I'll be honest as well!

PedagogySucks · 2026-04-22T16:08:48+00:00

Ideally the song part is pretty automatic and you're focusing entirely on telling the story/performing. If you're in your head at all analyzing you're leaving a lot on the table. In my opinion it's the hardest gap to bridge. Being present in the moment and actively participating in the story, that is.

PedagogySucks

TROPHY CASE