How can I practice to sing in a rock band?
June 7th, 2010 | by Rarzi |Do you have to be a good singer to sing in a rock band? Like a pop idol singer or something. How can I become good?
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2 Responses to “How can I practice to sing in a rock band?”
By ahmed a on Jun 7, 2010 | Reply
Dress like Elvis always.
By sunshowers on Jun 7, 2010 | Reply
First, I want to emphasize that even though to a lot of people it sounds like rock singers are just screaming or yelling, they’re not. Like many things, it’s harder than it looks (or sounds). Most lead singers in professional bands can actually sing. If you sat them down with an acoustic guitar and they’re not screaming over five instruments, you’d be impressed. Listen to very old Marilyn Manson recordings, before he developed his trademark sound – he sounds like a sensitive little boy singing acoustic rock ballads.
Singing talent is something that you have to be born with. You *can* improve things like power and control by taking voice lessons and with lots of practice. However, if you’re naturally an awful singer (i.e. the natural tone of your voice is hard to listen to, or you’re tone deaf and can’t stay in tune) then you can only hope to improve so much, and even with years of voice training you might still sound ten times worse than someone who has never had any training at all. For example, I had some friends in high school who wanted desperately to be singers. They were TERRIBLE singers. They convinced their parents to dump thousands of dollars into voice lessons, and they came out as only slightly less terrible singers.
You can practice by singing along to your favorite songs for half an hour or so every day – any kind of song at all, just to give your vocal chords a bit of a workout (but don’t push your voice or spend hours belting it out, or you could do irreparable damage to your voice). When you feel confident in your ability, sit down some of your friends and sing for them, a capella. Tell them to give you their absolute honest opinion. If you can’t trust your friends, ask your family – especially little brothers, they may be a pain in the ass, but they won’t feed you compliments unless they really mean it.
If you get good feedback, at this point you could try auditioning for local garage bands. You should decide which style of rock you want to sing, and this should be strongly influenced by which style of rock your voice is best suited for. Prepare to sing a song in the band’s style of music for the audition. If your friends and family were lying to you before, this is where you’ll find out for sure. If you do get in a band and you and your band are serious about trying to make the big time, then go ahead and invest in voice lessons. A good teacher will not just improve your power, range, and flexibility, but show you how to protect your voice as well.
Good luck!