John Swan Teaches Us How To Sing

"We're lucky when we play music that we get to take this journey. It's better than sex. Drugs. Rock & Roll. Drink. Whatever it is. Nothing is as personal as your relationship with your instrument. And what do you get out of it? Why do guitar players sit there over and over and try to work out a guitar solo? And then they get up there and it's over in a couple of seconds. They do it because they're passionate about what they do."

John Swan (aka Swanee)

That quote came from John Swan (Swanee) - one of Australia's most talented vocalists. John's musical beginnings were in Adelaide, where he started as a drummer. After a few years he slid into a lead vocal role and he's never looked back. You might not know that John has gone through an amazing personal journey over the past few years: first coming to terms with his alcoholism and then coming to terms with his sobriety. But, his musical journey is far from over - in fact he's pining for the next challenge in his musical career. With a fresh band, he's putting together a compilation of some new songs as well as some new renditions of old favourites for a series of tours in 2005.

In the midst of all the creative work John is doing, he has discovered something else that provides him with a great deal of joy, teaching. And, not surprisingly, he has become one of Australia's most sought after vocal coaches. His own personal technique has been harnessed and he now shares the seeds of his natural gift with aspiring singers all across Australia. John talked to The Metro Gnome - we were hoping to get a few insights into what it takes to be a great vocalist - and we did!

"When I started teaching, I thought it would just get me by when I wasn't working live. But the deeper I got into it the more I realised that I had to learn about it in order to explain what the voice does, how the vocal system is set up. I had to go a lot deeper into it than I expected. So I took about 2 years to study it.

"I went onto every website I could get my hands on. I read every book written by vocal teachers - guys like Seth Riggs, Jeffery Allan - two Americans - between them they coach just about everybody: from Stevie Wonder right through to Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, Al Jerrod - you name it. Their techniques, and mine, are basically to just elevate the tone from your speaking voice into your singing voice.

Swanee Playing in Adelaide

"I was pretty lucky because I was doing the right thing unconsciously. And I didn't know it at the time which was a great thing for me because I didn’t have to adjust. As I went through I found that all the techniques that I was trying to get my students to do, I was doing naturally."

Students

"My students are interested in different music styles from classical to rock. Some use too much falsetto and not enough chest voice. Most don't like the fact that their voice separates - their tone doesn't connect the way they want it to. I start with the basics of how it works physically and then take them on a journey to practice technique and refine their own style.

The Physical Workings

"Your voice is made up of air and vibration. When air is blowing up from the diaphragm through the vocal chords it takes a great sweeping passage right around the top of your head to the mask - the bone around the eyes, the nose, the cheeks - and bone is where the resonation comes from. In the mask, being the top end of your voice, we get all of that brilliance from the tone. All of your bottoms and mids come from your sternum and your rib cage. The air blowing through that is taken up into the mouth. The biggest problem that I find that most people have is the blend of those two.

"To solve that you need to use the whole instrument instead of the parts. Don't close down the back of the throat. If you drop your jaw and allow the opening of the throat to become a little bit bigger, it allows the tone to drop from the head voice down into the mouth, and the tones from the chest voice to be blown up to the mouth to be equally distributed. I think the shortest was to look at it is that you want to get the largest amount of air you can get into your mouth. Your projection point should be about 6-8 inches away from the mount like a reverse megaphone.

"From then own it's your own special gift.

"Some people think [singings is] a great difficulty. My hardest thing is to convince them that singing is the easiest thing in the world. It's much easier than talking. All you have to do is stop looking for something difficult about the process of watching the path that your voice takes. Keep the air constant. Keep the flow open through the throat. Don't restrict the throat.

"And practice, practice, practice so that singing comes naturally."


Practice and Progress

Among a host of traditional vocal exercises, John uses and recommends scales that keep the air flowing consistently through to the end of the note. He also talked about another exercise that is anything but easy.

"There’s a thing called messe di voce; it is a classical exercise and people say it's the highest technical exercise for singing; and it's just one note. You just sing one note for 20 seconds and increase the volume. You start off softly and get louder and louder without any breaks or wobbles - just a pure note. And then you go up to 30 seconds. And then you vary the volume between soft and loud."

From The Gnome: I tried to do this exercise. I worked on it for over 30 minutes and recorded myself. I never made it to 20 seconds and, when I listened to the recordings, I found wobbles - not in pitch so much as in strength - but wobbles nonetheless. I have every intention of doing this exercise until I can do it for at least 20 seconds. Go on! You try it. Let us know how you go.


How do you know how you’re doing? To expose strengths or weaknesses, record your voice alone. Sing into a separate channel so that you can later take out all of the other instruments and expose just your raw voice.

Personal Style - Interpretation

"Get the basics right first. Bring me a note perfect rendition before you bastardise it and distort it into something that you want to call "your interpretation." Just give me a pure tone first; then take it to where you want to. As long as you can show me where it comes from and you can give me a pure note and the note doesn't pitch all over the place, you can then add the gravel to it, or add the blues sound, or you can take it to a falsetto - in a softer voice, but still with the bottom end to it."

John recommends that beginners start with simple songs that have really nice melodies and pure tone; songs like Better Be Home Soon (Crowded House) and Yesterday (The Beatles); songs with nice open ended melodies.


To become a great vocalist - listen to great vocalists

John Swan - Bright Lights

"Some people are really fortunate and they are blessed with a good voice. Well, I don't think it's that they are blessed with a good voice, as much as that they listened to the right people who have good tone, good technique, and they prefer that style of vocals. I think Mossy (Ian Moss) is one of those voices.... You know there're a lot of them around. You hear Jimmy (Barnes) singing some soul stuff and you can hear all the way back to his roots - from Sam and Dave back to the early stuff that we listed to. I was listening to people like Etta James, Nat King Cole, Pavarotti, Donny Hathaway, Stevie Wonder... a whole bunch of different types of artists.

"Go back in time to tested and true vocal greats to look for inspiration and style. And then go back some more. Pick anyone who does it well with good tone expression and soul. Listen to the greats like Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, and Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight...."

Lessons

John has a lot of people come to take lessons for about a month to get their voices into shape.

"When you go to a gym it doesn’t matter how big you want to get, how fit you want to get, how strong you want to get - to be a lean, keen fighting machine you still need to train as hard. Just not with big weights. So I would get them to do exercise and lighten the exercise to what they want to do.

Practice is the Key to Great Performances... Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

"If someone is serious about it they need to practice everyday. This is a repetition thing. If you think you've done it too many times, do it once more and then come back to me and tell me about it. Because repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition.... It’s the key to a great performance.

"If you are panicking. If you are uncomfortable. If you are having an anxiety attack. (Which I do have - since getting sober and getting up on stage - it's a different person that's up on stage.) But I can dig deep into my well of "been there that many times" and pull out something that is not really there. That's what the human spirit can do.

How does a teacher or a coach help?

"I'm going to invade your comfort zone and make your comfort zone as uncomfortable as I possibly can. And stretch you right to the boundaries. Where you may be flustered with me. I'm going to push the limit of your comfort zone to stretch your boundaries. When it's no longer uncomfortable your comfort zone is bigger - and then we do it again.

"It's not the number of notes that come out of your mouth; it's that every note that comes out of your mouth is disciplined."

Gnome Links:

• John Swan has a website where you can find out everything going on in his career. http://www.swanee.com.au
• John mentioned Seth Riggs - Seth has an exceptional reputation for his speech level singing training program. You can find out more here: http://www.sethriggs.com/.
• John also mentioned Jeffrey Allen - Jeffrey is also on the top of the list when it comes to improving vocal performance. Here is his website: http://www.vocalsuccess.com/