Singing Guide: A New Brain

Singing Guide: A New Brain

Vocal technique, exercises, tips and relevant resources

Are you a beginner or advanced singer?

A New Brain is the title of William Finn's autobiographical musical, written after being diagnosed with a rare brain illness, arteriovenous malformation. It's a complex show full of wit, heart, and intricate melodies that showcase Finn’s unique approach to music composition.

If you want to learn to sing like William Finn, it's important to analyze his vocal technique and his subtle use of humor, irony, and satire infused in his lyrics. Here are some tips to help you achieve this:

  1. Discover your voice type. Every singer should know their voice type to correctly identify their vocal range and match it with the right songs. Consider taking Singing Carrot's Vocal range test to discover your voice type and to know what notes you’re comfortably able to sing.
  2. Improve your breathing. Good breathing technique is essential for singing. Take some time to study Singing Carrot's Breathing basics and Breath support articles.
  3. Create a proper warm-up regimen. It helps activate your vocal muscles before you start singing. Consider Singing Carrot’s Pitch Training, which is an educational singing game helping with warm-ups and establishing good pitch practices.
  4. Open your mouth and throat while singing. Doing it correctly helps you hit those high notes with ease and avoid strain and constrictions. Check out the Open mouth & throat article on Singing Carrots for more information.
  5. Learn a song effectively. To sing like William Finn, it’s important to understand the structure of the song and delivery of lyrics. Study Singing Carrot's How to learn a song effectively article.
  6. Master contemporary vocal techniques. William Finn's songs often require unique vocal coloration like Belting. Check out the Contemporary vocal techniques: Heavy modal, Twang, Belting article for guidelines.
  7. Perform with intuition, skills, emotion, and thinking. You must connect with the lyrics and rhythms emotionally as well as intellectually to perform well. Check Singing Carrot's Singing with intuition, skills, emotion, and thinking article for more information.
  8. Warm-up with relevant exercises. Singing Carrots offers a lot of skill-related videos, including Twang, Growling, Vibrato, Articulation, Chest Voice/Voice Registers, Breath/Warm-up/Practice-starter, Posture, Emotion-control/Performing, Breath/Sustain, Nasality, Onsets-offsets, and Performing. All of these techniques can help you improve, and some are specific to William Finn's music.
  9. Monitor your progress. Singing Carrots provides Progress statistics to track your singing improvement and identify areas that require more focus.

To sing like William Finn, it is essential to listen to his compositions to understand what he’s like and practice with his music. His songs, such as "Heart and Music," "I'd Rather Be Sailing," and "Change," showcase his vocal range and unique style. You can find vocal ranges of famous singers, including William Finn on Singing Carrots' portal.

With motivation and careful practice, you can learn to sing like William Finn. Check out Singing Carrots’ educational singing course to further deepen your knowledge on singing theories and techniques. If you follow these tips and practice regularly, you’ll be well on your way to performing like William Finn in no time!

Learn more about this artist vocal range, voice type and repertoire.