MY Speech Level Singing teacher gets me to do these scales where I add a 'bratty' sound or a 'crying' cound in order to help with the chest voice. The problem is: when I am practicing alone without my teacher I never know if I am producing this sound correctly. Any tips? I'm lost. Thx
Yeeks, 2 weeks.
Until you have a feel for it yourself, use a recorder both at lessons and at home.
That way you'll be able to compare your sound in both places.
Yes, this list can get sleepy at times!
I would second the recorder thing. It will allow you (if not now, eventually) to hear your voice more objectively and to work the scales and other exercises more effectively.
I also think that regularly recording yourself is the single best thing you can do--after taking lessons from a good teacher, of course--for your voice. It took me a LONG TIME, but I finally got used to the sound of my voice, and now I use the recorder almost every day. (My wife thinks I'm an egomaniac, constantly recording and listening back to myself.) But once I got past the "EEK!, is that really what I sound like!?!" :shock: stage, the recorder suddenly became a indispensable tool. I now use it to experiment with my voice, to try out various tones, phrasings, etc.
And I believe that I'm actually starting to develop a STYLEI 8)
I've even paused my lessons to save some $$$, and so far things are proceeding nicely with me and my recorder. Note: I sing country/folk stuff, so a trained-sounding voice is not such a priority for me. YMMV.
There are some videos on youtube that will help. You definitely want to record yourself.
My biggest advice to you would be to have your voice teacher record your session and then when you go home and practice, record yourself and compare.
Hope that helps!