Module Four Lesson Seven: Essential Tools For Your Vocal Practice
Recording Apps:
AUDACITY:
YouTube Tutorial for removing vocal track
GSnap: Audacity plugin for autotuning
If you’d like to give GSnap a try, here’s a wiki how tutorial.
Misc. Tools and Transcription Apps:
VLC: Free open source media player for Mac & PC that can slow down an audio or video track without changing the pitch.
TRANSCRIPTION:
There are many helpful tools you can use in your practice — apps to sing along with, record, transcribe or even create charts. The possibilities are endless and overwhelming. Which ones will be worth your time and money?
Software and apps come and go, but the best stick around because users love using them, and their developers make regular updates and improvements based on customer feedback. So they just keep getting better.
In this lesson, I’d like to share some of my favorites with you.
iReal Pro
Let’s start with one of the most helpful and robust apps I’ve ever used — iReal Pro.
iReal Pro is fantastic to use for practice. It does so many things!
Rather than tell you what they are, let me show you.
[iReal SCREENCAST]
iReal Pro works on iOS, Android devices, and Mac desktop computers.
What you see here is my desktop version.
The app comes preloaded with a few practice tunes, but what makes this app unique are the 1000s of charts you can download for free from the iReal forum.
So let’s head over there. https://www.irealb.com/forums/forum.php
The forum is where iReal users upload song charts they’ve created. You can find almost all musical styles here — jazz, funk, pop, blues, and country.
Here are the Main Playlists: https://irealpro.com/main-playlists/
I’ve downloaded most of them already. But I don’t have the country playlist yet, so let’s download that one now.
[Show how to download individual songs or the whole Playlist]
Now the fun begins! Once you’ve got some charts loaded, it’s time to start playing around with them.
PLAYLISTS
I’ve got a song that I’d like to practice called Bye Bye Blackbird.
I’ve already placed it in a playlist called Practice Charts. So let’s go there.
You can keep your charts organized in folders like this one. Create as many as you’d like with as many charts as you need.
This folder doesn’t have a lot of music in it, but if it did, there’s a handy search bar at the top that I could type the song name into to find it.
You can also sort the songs in each file by Title, Composer, or Style. This is handy when you’re creating a setlist and are looking for songs in a specific style.
CHARTS
OK. I’ve found the chart I’m looking for. When I click on it, a chord chart appears. You can change how you see the chart up here in this font bar. Just click on it to see your other options. (SHOW) The default setting is classic, which I like because it’s nice and clean. Easy to read. So I’m going to leave it there.
Let’s see what this chart sounds like.
(PLAY)
Not too bad for fake instruments, right? iReal Pro shows you where you are in the chart with a yellow highlighter.
KEY
Each chart tends to be in the key it was originally written in. Not a great key for you? You change it!
FEEL
One of my favorite features of this app is this style button. Click on it, and you’ll see some options for changing the feel.
When I’m first learning a song, I practice it using the same stylistic feel as the recording I’m listening to as a model. But once I’ve got the song in my head, I like to change it up and create my own interpretation of the song. iReal makes it easy with this feature. [Show how to change the feel. Sing a little too!]
Latin — Brazil: Bossa Acoustic
Pop — RnB
TEMPO
When the style changes, the tempo usually does too. But you can always adjust the tempo settings here until it feels just right to you.
Let’s go to another cool feature — the mixer.
MIXER
The mixer is another cool feature that I use a lot.
Here you can see all the instruments that are playing and adjust the volume of each one.
If I’m focusing on a rhythmic feel, I’ll adjust the setting so that I’m only singing with the drums. If I want to get a feel for how the melody fits over the bass line, I can just sing with the bass.
Maybe you have a gig without a bass player or drummer. You can practice for those soloing the piano, keyboard, or guitar.
Later, when I’m working on arrangements for songs, I can experiment with instrumentation. For instance, I can hear what it would sound like to sing the first verse with bass only and have the rest of the band come in later.
COUNT IN
You can also set how many bars you’d like to have for a count in. Four bars are great for a medium or up-tempo tune, but for this song, in this style, it might seem like it takes forever for the track to begin. Let’s change this one to two bars.
HIGHLIGHT TO LOOP
If there’s a section of the song you need to repeat to learn it better, just click and drag over the bars of that section, and it will start and end where it’s been highlighted.
In fact, just click on any bar in the song, and it will start there.
EDIT
Speaking of arrangements, you can create your own here. Just click on the edit button to alter the chart you’ve downloaded or create your own from scratch.
SHARING
Once you’ve made changes to your chart, you can share it.
When you open up the sharing menu, you’ll see a bunch of options.
Click on Share Chord Chart. Here you’ll see ways to send the chart via email or text or save it to different programs on your computer or mobile device. You can also save it as a pdf file or print it.
When you click Share Audio, you can save a recording of the backing track for the chart as an AAC, WAV, or MIDI file.
You can share your Playlist or even record from this menu.
I love to research songs, so one of my favorite features here is the Find On The Web option. Click on it, and you’ll find yourself on a whole Google page with a Wikipedia article, videos, and more to dive into.
All of this is great stuff.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MELODY?
You might have noticed there’s one thing missing from these charts—the melody. Unfortunately, including it would be a copyright issue. So, what do you do if you don’t know the melody of a song?
You’ll have to find it elsewhere.
Remember that button I just showed you that takes you to the song on the web? That’s a great place to start.
ON THE WEB
Let’s go back to Share and open that menu.
Click on Find On The Web.
And then replace the word SONG in the search bar with sheet music, like this.
There are three sheet music companies that usually pop up here.
Each company has its strengths and weaknesses. But if you’re not a great sight singer, no worries. Some songs also have some form of interactive capability.
For instance, Music Notes has a downloadable app that you can play the sheet music in once you purchase it. Let’s take a look at Bye Bye Blackbird their website: Bye Bye Blackbird.
Before you buy, you can check out the song with their handy web player. It sounds kinda like a kid’s piano but will give you some idea of the original melody. You can also change the key here.
Once you buy the song and download their free app, you’ve got a few more options.
[OPEN APP AND BYE BYE BLACKBIRD]
You can adjust the key here, tempo, and supposedly the balance between the chords and melody, but I haven’t had good luck with that feature. But at least you can hear the melody without the chords and slow the whole thing down — which is helpful when you’re learning the notes.
BACKING TRACKS
Another fun way to practice songs you’re learning is with backing tracks.
The cheapest and easiest way to do this is to find recordings on YouTube. Here are the results of a search I did for Bye Bye Blackbird.
Here’s my favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSZ3Bfgc60A
This one’s from a jazz singer who decided to share the arrangements she was creating with something called Band In A Box.
BAND IN A BOX
I’ve not used Band In A Box myself, but some of my students and singer friends have. It sounds amazing — much better than iReal because the sounds in it are created by professional musicians. Some people even use it to create backing tracks for professional recordings. It sounds that good.
I’ll leave a link for it in the lesson notes in case you’re interested in researching it further.
RECORDING APPS
In this section, I’ll share some recording apps that my students have found useful and relatively easy to use. Because I’m not an expert on any of these, and there are so many great tutorials for them on YouTube, I won’t go into as much detail here as I did with iReal.
But there are some tips for singers that I’ll highlight for you. Feel free to skip over the apps you’re already familiar with.
AUDACITY
Audacity is a free, open-source, multi-track audio editor and recorder. It works on any operating system, and it’s been around for 20 years!
One feature that I’ve used with my students reduces the vocal in a recording. It works best with vocal tracks that aren’t drenched in effects like reverb. The vocals aren’t taken out completely. But if you want to practice with a backing track and one doesn’t exist in iReal, or you can’t find a karaoke version in the key you want to sing a song in, it works well enough.
You’ll find a link to a YouTube tutorial that will show you how to do that in the notes for this lesson.
YouTube tutorial for removing a vocal track.
GARAGE BAND
If you have an Apple computer or mobile device, GarageBand is great for recording yourself while practicing.
WORKING ON PITCH
And, if you’d like to get better at singing in tune, you can use the app to record yourself, autotune your vocal track, and then sing along with the in-tune track. As I mentioned in the lesson on listening in your practice, there’s something magical about hearing your own voice and singing in tune. It embeds the model more deeply.
If you’re not an Apple user, you can download a plugin for Audacity called GSnap that will do the same thing.
If you’d like to test it out, just look for the wiki how tutorial link in the lesson notes.
OTHER HELPFUL STUFF
Goofy looking, right? These are called HearFones. They’re designed to help you hear yourself instantaneously when you’re singing. Unlike headphones, there’s nothing in between your voice and your ears. No microphone. No effects. It’s just you and the sounds you’re making.
Whether we’re speaking or singing, we don’t hear ourselves very well because the sounds coming out of our mouth are moving away from our ears. HearFones are designed to direct the sounds coming out of your mouth back to your ears.
It’s not an inexpensive device, but if you’re having trouble with the more subtle aspects of singing at lower volumes, HearFones are a worthy investment.
They’ll also help you get used to hearing yourself before you record. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked with singers who’ve had trouble making the leap from live performance to recording. If you’re not used to hearing yourself well, it can be shocking to have headphones on. Every little vocal imperfection that comes out of your mouth sounds larger than life.
Getting a feel for performing in the studio is critical. HearFones and recording yourself with headphones during your practice sessions will go a long way toward preparing you for studio singing.
SLOW IT DOWN/SPEED IT UP
In lesson number three, you learned about changing the tempo of the song you’re practicing to make sure the mental map is fully formed and dependable. But how to do it with a backing track?
Both Audacity and Garageband are great for changing the tempo of a tune without altering its key. The Amazing Slowdowner is another app that will change the speed of a track for you.
The Amazing Slowdowner is a simple-to-use app. All it does is change the tempo of the recording you’re practicing with. If you’d like to try it out, you’ll find a link in the lesson notes.
That’s it for practice tools. If you have some favorites that I haven’t covered here, please share them with us in the community!
