is there some kind of singer workout? (part III)
i promised you an inside look at my own workout, but as long as i’m writing on this handheld-thingy i’m not able to include links. so you’d have to go and find those records yourself – but google, amazon or itunes should usually do the trick.
first of all, there’s some things i work on all the time to stay ‘in shape’. and then there are the less important ones which i work on whenever i have the time… let’s start with the priorities:
precision (as you might have guessed) is the single most important aspect of every instrument. ask any pro or studioguy. you’d be amazed how much they love you if you are precise in your playing. and it makes things easy. so i’m working on precision every day because it has the bad habit of sneaking away if you’re not paying attention. for my workout, i’m using mostly two guys to work on precision: Joey Tempest and Don Henley. both of them did some great solo albums that i use a lot. i’m not a fan of the band Europe, so i can’t tell you anything about Joey’s work with them but his solo albums “A Place To Call Home” and “Azalea Place” are the perfect playbacks to work on precision – for me. (please note, that this is what works for me. there might be much better stuff for you of course. if you want to know more about it, drop me a line through the contact button at the top of this page and we might be able to figure something out together…) back to precision: i use Don Henley’s “Inside Job” record a lot as well, but also the Eagles’ “Hell Freezes Over” is something i like to work on.
then there’s sound. i work on that on a regular basis as well. to me it’s important that the voice is able to carry the song on its own, meaning without any instruments supporting it or together with only one acoustic guitar or piano for instance. so no hiding behind anything, the audience gets to hear it all. to work on this (i call it my built-in equalizer – more on that in a later entry), i’m using records that were made that way as well. two of my favorites, that i use all the time, are Whitesnake’s “Starkers In Tokyo” and Chris Cornell’s “Unplugged In Sweden”, both of them only one acoustic guitar and one voice – so there’s plenty of room for some singer’s ego-compensating ;-)
ugh, the batteries run out – there will be a next part to this, so stay tuned….
