Singing Guide: Howie Day
Vocal technique, exercises, tips and relevant resources
Howie Day is a unique-singing, American songwriter and musician known for his emotive vocal delivery, melodic guitar playing, and incorporation of live looping in his performances. If you aspire to sing like Howie Day, you can learn a lot by understanding his vocal techniques, songs, and emotional delivery. In this article, we'll highlight some of his unique vocal characteristics and recommend some Singing Carrots resources to help you learn Howie Day's singing style.
One of Howie Day's most significant vocal characteristics is his distinctive, emotive delivery. Howie's voice can be soft and melodic at times while being powerful and rich at others. To emulate Howie Day's emotive delivery, you should try to sing with a lot of feeling by understanding the song's lyrics and underlying emotions. Learning to project a lot of feeling when you sing will give your performances the same gut-wrenching emotional impact as Howie Day's performances.
In addition to emotive delivery, Howie Day's singing style is characterized by the use of falsetto and head voice. He often starts his songs in a gentle, high register before moving into his full voice for the chorus and other climactic moments. To practice singing like Howie Day, you should master singing in your falsetto and head voice and seamlessly transitioning between your head voice and your full voice.
Howie Day has many songs that showcase his vocal talent, but "Collide" is undoubtedly the most famous one. The song showcases Howie's emotive delivery, falsetto, and head voice all in one go. It is an excellent song to practice if you want to learn Howie Day's singing style.
Singing Carrots offers many resources that can be beneficial to learning Howie Day's singing style. The Vocal Range Test can help you determine your vocal range, which is useful to know when selecting songs to cover. Singing Carrots also has a Vocal Pitch Monitor, which displays your sung notes on a virtual piano, which makes it easier to identify areas you need to work on pitch-wise. The Pitch Accuracy Test can help you practice singing along to melodies and improve your pitch accuracy.
For Howie Day's emotive delivery, Singing Carrots suggests the "Singing with Intuition, Skills, Emotion, and Thinking" Article. To work on falsetto and head voice, the "Voice Registers and Vocal Breaks" and "Pitch Training" resources may be helpful. Finally, for a complete course on singing techniques and theory, "Singing Beginners" Course is highly recommended.
If you are looking to learn how to sing like Howie Day, you should focus on emotive delivery, falsetto and head voice, and practical musical training. Keep in mind, since no one sounds like Howie Day more than Howie Day, aim instead to take inspiration from his singing style while incorporating your unique voice to create something original.