r/singing • u/wicked-conscious • 1d ago
Conversation Topic Singing into a mic is changing EVERYTHING
By singing into a mic I can finally hear myself while I sing.
I’ve always been breathy with a lot of strain and would sing my voice out within an hour or two of singing.
Singing into a mic has resulted in using significantly less air, exponentially better chord closure, and vowels that actually sound rich and full.
At last I can sing like I speak and the coordination feels like I have found my voice alas.
Not to mention by vibrato started kicking in (I’ve been training voice for 4 years now and it’s been uphill)
Has anybody else experienced this?
I’ve also sang into a mic that feeds into headphones and that’s even more potent.
EVERYTHING IS IMPROVING.
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u/No-Pepper7582 22h ago
If you just cup your hands behind your ears while singing, it dramatically changes how you monitor, and thus project your voice. Microphones with monitoring is great, but in a pinch without equipment, the cupping thing is pretty effective.
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u/Will_okay 18h ago
Palms facing outward? As if your hands are acting like big ears?
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u/Unverifiablethoughts 17h ago
Either works. You just need to trap some resonance there. Even putting your hand directly over your hears will cause you to monitor
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u/Terzaity 6h ago
WOAH WHAT? THAT'S WACK MAN, THAT'S WACK. I SOUND SO DIFFERENT! I CAN'T STOP DOING IT NOW HAHA
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u/RestaurantCandid5274 Self Taught 10+ Years ✨ 22h ago
Just wait until you start playing with a DAW with plugins, takes it into the stratosphere.
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u/Mytrapsaregenetic 10h ago
This is covert sabotage 😂
You're either going to induce a meltdown over the raw uncompressed voice,
Or start a production addiction.
Not that i can relate, ahem 😏
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u/maybeigiveafuck 4h ago
wait what happens with the "raw uncompressed voice"?
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u/Mytrapsaregenetic 4h ago
Usually shocks the shit out of people upon their 1st time
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u/maybeigiveafuck 4h ago
you mean just completely unprocessed audio recorded with a mic into the daw?
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u/Mytrapsaregenetic 4h ago
Sure do!
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u/maybeigiveafuck 3h ago
don't understand how this could cause a whole meltdown lol but it is "different" enough than what you'd expect i guess
at the same time, our recorded voice isn't exactly 100% what others hear (perceive as our voice) irl, is it? so there should be no cause for an identity crisis just because you kinda don't recognize your voice lol
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u/AffectionateFail5046 18h ago
this, so relatable, just started doing this recently, a lots of issues just pop out when recording….
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u/jnemm34 18h ago
yeah but this is also extremely detrimental. Or can be. You start depending on the plugins. Which at the same time... plugins like compression-gate-auto tune- if the right parameters are used, it in a sense can be used as an instrument... IF you have the right audio engineer that can set the right plugins/settings TO YOUR STYLE of speaking/rapping (like T-Pain) But -I speak for myself... if you start using this plugins TOO much you start depending on them. It's odd. I started recording recently WITHOUT the monitor setting on/hearing myself back in my headphones. Does ANYBODY understand what I'm talking about?? It kinda has messed me up a little bit. There's other issues i'm sure... It's an odd phenomenon/syndrome... I can't be the only one that has struggled with this??
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u/RestaurantCandid5274 Self Taught 10+ Years ✨ 13h ago
I can’t relate tbh, I can sing in an empty room or with 15 plugins without feeling I’m leaning on them. I don’t use the autotunes though, just things like EQ, compressors, smoother, de essers. Things that polish, but don’t alter to much. Adding things that alter can be fun too though! :)
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u/icemage_999 1d ago
This is one of the things that I oppose over people who insist classical vocal training is necessarily superior.
Those methods are designed to train you to project across a room. This is nice to do, of course, but ignores the fact that we have technology that largely makes needing those projection techniques obsolete except in limited situations.
There are some methods that are unthinkable to use in classical singing stage craft as well. You can sing down to a whisper and still have the audience hear it with microphone.
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u/cutearmy 1d ago
Having classical training I can never bear my self on stage. In the chorus all I hear is the orchestra or the person behind me. However, I know I am on pitch and that my voice is projecting well because you get used to going by feel I’m classical. In fact when viewing the record mine was the only voice you could hear Bense I knew how to sing in the situation. That itself is a big advantage.
Even with a microphone you will not hear yourself in a noisy venue. Now you are back at square one. You are going to be relying on and fussing without an ear price and not having a good time. Technology fails constantly.
If you can sing be feel you will be fine and don’t need to tell of fragile technology.
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u/icemage_999 22h ago
If you can't hear yourself on a stage with a microphone, then the sound engineer on site has failed miserably because there should be a monitor aimed at you, or you're using an in-ear monitor.
Sure, tech fails sometimes but it's pretty rare and it's certainly not something to bend your entire musical curriculum around if you don't want to.
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u/cutearmy 21h ago
I have seen some pretty famous pop singers crash and burn over it. Have it your way.
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u/PrimeIntellect 20h ago
have you never heard of monitors?
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u/cutearmy 20h ago
Don’t need it. Don’t need a sound technician, staff or sound engineer either but again, suit yourself.
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u/blue_island1993 Self Taught 10+ Years ✨ 18h ago
Yeah, good luck projecting your voice over 100 watt guitar amps lol
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u/cutearmy 4h ago
Didn’t say you wouldn’t need a microphone dear. If a place is not built for live sound you always will. I do believe in trying to be as independent as possible. You will find yourself in a situation where you will not have an ear piece, monitoring or live feedback unless you get lucky enough to be very successful.
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u/Symmetrosexual 12h ago
Umm babe I can outsing a metal band without breaking a passaggio, with my ears plugged… I’m classically trained!
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u/elebrin 4h ago
There are three or four scenarios that are VERY different. Now, I'm fairly new to singing, but I've played in bands for 20+ years and I've had quite a lot of classical training.
If you have a large ensemble of voices, which is something I have zero experience with, then you are going to have to go from feeling. You're right, for that scenario. The same holds true when you play a horn or an acoustic stringed instrument (or a piano or something, but you can't exactly retune those on the fly).
In my band, we have two people singing and it's usually harmony. We both have songs that we take lead on, and we use a wedge monitor so we can hear ourselves. If the room conditions aren't working out or tech isn't set up right then we drop the backing part simply because we want that instant feedback on if we are right or not.
Besides, what's "right" changes. Sure, we may tune the instruments to A=440 but tuning drifts, and the vocals need to be in tune with the instruments. What feels correct on Wednesday at rehearsal might not be right when we go play outside on Saturday.
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u/MatthewRahl 21h ago
Agreed, my fav form of practice is into my mic with headphones so I can hear directly where I need to adjust.
Glad your seeing/hearing progress keep it up! 🤘
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u/Long_Tumbleweed_3923 20h ago
What software do you plug in your mic in? Do you add any effect?
Anyway I tried but I found it disorienting. Maybe I just need to give it time
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u/MatthewRahl 20h ago
I have a TC-Helicon, I can run a few simple effects like Delay, Echo, Reverb & Pitch Correction and you can plug headphones directly into the Helicon so you can hear yourself quite clearly. It was a game changer for myself, as I try to play guitar whilst singing it made me focus a bit more on how accurate my singing was.
Ps take this with a grain of salt I am also a beginner singer for only the last few years, I’m self-taught and just use what works best for me and I should mention for some reason I only wear one headphone, I like to hear the difference/adjust accordingly.
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u/jnemm34 17h ago
ya good description of it... it's disorienting. I commented about it above. It's an odd phenomenon. The effects fuck you up cuz it isolates you to a certain sound/way you sit in the track. And since it's set to THAT ONLY it limits to how you can sit in the track. I feel like it's a double edge sword cuz IF you find the right settings (eg. -EQ, compression, gate, autotune, DEFINETLY reverb) you can sit so beautifully in a track...better than if you had no setting applied.....BUT if you are trying to free up your mind and see how else you can sit in the track the settings could fuck you up... you get what I'm saying? Or am I crazy?
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u/midlifemuso 21h ago
I have found this too. I’m a novice singer and have struggled with projecting and hearing myself unless the room has decent acoustics. I get that I need to continue to work on my support and projection but using the microphone and listening to the mix in one ear (I keep the other ear open to hear myself in the room) has done wonders for my self confidence and also closes the loop faster on adjustments I need to make. Another benefit is I find it easier to adjust my singing and playing when accompanying myself on guitar/piano at the same time.
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u/FermataThisWorld 10h ago
When I was teaching middle school choir and I could hear something going wrong in a section, I'd have everyone plug one ear. It's a quick and easy way to hear yourself, and it always solved the problem.
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u/sapiolocutor 1d ago edited 23h ago
How exactly does singing into a mic change anything? Do you mean that the microphone projects the sound back to you with a speaker so you can hear your mistakes better? Or do you mean that it causes you to no longer have to sing so loudly, which makes singing “correctly” easier for you?
I’m new
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u/Zestyclose_Page_7932 18h ago
Well for me, it helped my voice sound clearer. I could hear when and how my voice shifted depending on how I sang it. I also recognized that I was pushing the back of my throat, so I adjusted that. It was just helpful to hear my voice more clearly.
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u/elebrin 3h ago
The issue itself isn't so much the mic itself, rather you are probably playing with other instruments that are amplified and you need to hear how your voice is in the mix.
As with all music, your ears are a huge part of how you play in time, in key, and in tune. I know how to finger a note on some 12 or 13 different instruments, but on all of them there is some fine tuning you do with your hands or embouchure to take the note from being the right note to being EXACTLY the right note, in an intentional way. Beyond that, sometimes tempos vary and sometimes people decide to change a song's key without saying anything to make singing it easier (sigh). You gotta be able to hear. Voice is the same darn thing but even moreso. There isn't a valve, key, fret, or even a string to hit to help you.
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u/aiworld 16h ago
YES - your instrument is amplified! Add some compression, which will allow you to do much more with softer / lower notes as well as allow you to get really loud without clipping / red zoning the output. Compression is widely available on mixing boards, garagaband (free on mac), in pedals, etc...
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u/VoiceofCrazy 12h ago
I've had the opposite experience. I hardly ever sing with a microphone, and the few times I have have been really weird and a little disturbing. I was singing on a stage with a monitor behind me, so my voice came out from the wrong spot, at the wrong time, and sounded wrong. It freaked me out. Probably just need some more practice to get used to it, I guess.
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u/Zestyclose_Page_7932 18h ago
This happened recently for me! We have a karaoke machine in our house and it's been in my room for ages. I finally started using it and feel so much better about my singing. It's made me feel more confident and happy about what I'm doing. Highly recommend and helps when no one else is around!
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u/r2landim 17h ago
Indeed, but without a microphone practice using this device https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT4Jl3Gr00eyO8uCbMXJ7tEaCipAuQ_PCX3jpY7hHdOsw&s=10 It helps a lot!
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