[Guest Teacher]

After years of playing about 5years ago I got some moulded in ear monitors and now use them all the time. It’s such a worthy investment. I recommend your band going down the in ear route to save the onstage volume as you won’t need onstage monitors or at least not so many most modern mixers can accommodate. You will also not feel the need so much to overshoot your voice as you can have your mix dialled into your ears.

[Guest Teacher]

Even those of us who teach them everyday don’t always implement the practice ourselves.. I know I don’t lol – I sing in a hip hop soul band and if you told me to sing some rock tunes like I used to in the day I’m almost certain it would be fantastically crap haha!

[Guest Teacher]

I would definitely be more inclined then to say that actually you may have lost a lot of the techniques that you naturally had at a young age to reach those high notes – we have a tendency as we get old to find ‘cheat’ lazy way to get the notes we want and then when we got back to wanting to belt higher notes with some real gusto we struggle and end up getting the whole set up wrong. I would definitely say you need to get yourself either some ear plugs and deal with the struggle hearing wise or get yourself some in ear monitors or headphones plugged into the desk because honestly your hearing is so important!!! Also go back to complete basics in terms of belt set up and do lots of practicing at home. Try not to dive straight into the deep end hoping for the best because it’s deifnitely understandable that you may have lost some of those higher notes in belt if you’ve been doing more comfortable pop for a few years x

[Guest Teacher]

Beckie Oldham do you have ear plugs in, in these rehearsals? I find wearing earplugs prevents me from shouting during rehearsal time plus the obvious reason to wear them. Not only that are you sure you are warming up the right bits of your voice and not overdoing it in the warm up itself? Also to carry that on is the style of these specific songs different and would you say your style has changed singing to backing tracks? With a change of style you’ll find a change in tone preference which may also mean a change in placement and shape which ultimately could be making this specific style more difficult to go back to? always free for a chat if you have any thoughts on the above x

[Guest Teacher]

I was just thinking, “I bet it’s a response to being in a loud rehearsal room” then I read Matt’s comment lol. I struggle working with a big band mix too. What is your foldback like? If you don’t have any, get some, even basic foldback through a decent set of sound isolating headphones can make the world of difference to volume control.