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If there's a question you have that's not listed here, please send your question
to us directly by contacting us directly
and you will receive a prompt response.
Yes.
No, that's my natural voice in all of its girlish splendor. It's a common singing technique called falsetto. You might recognize this style from the BeeGees, Queen, the Four Seasons, Tiny Tim, and dozens of other men that sing the notes men shouldn't sing.
In ordinary singing, the full length of the vocal folds are vibrating, much like the free lip of a balloon expelling air. Falsetto is like pinching the lip of the balloon to make higher, squeaky noises- a portion of the vocal folds are held motionless so that the remaining portion vibrates at a higher frequency, raising the pitch of the voice.
Yes. I can usually sing down to the D below the bass clef. However, when recording Shinko Singers albums, the proximity effect of singing close to the microphone causes my voice to sound much fuller in the bass range than it actually is.
Usually about 3 octaves + a Major 3rd with my falsetto, from the D below the bass clef to the soprano's F# on the top line of the treble clef.
Actually, it's not misspelled- it's Anglicized. Aside from the fact that I didn't want to figure out how to type an "e" with an umlaut over it, I rationalized that the equally-valid British spelling, "Nowell," is in fact more appropriate, as we typically sing the song in English.
Nobody. Just me. It's my own voice multitracked several times.
That depends on 3 main factors- A) The length of the song, B) the number of voices to be recorded, and C) how many times I screw up in the recording process. Typically, a four-part song, 3 minutes in length, would take about 2-3 hours to put together.
That's correct.
There are no "instruments" except for my voice. All of The Shinko Singers recordings to date have been a cappella, which is Italian for "as in church"- meaning that they are performed with vocals and no instrumentation.
Actually, it's not all that difficult. The way the process works, it's a lot like singing along with the radio. Imagine recording a tape of yourself singing. Then, you have another tape recorder that records you singing along to the first tape. Then, you record yourself singing along with the recording of yourself singing along with yourself. Sing along with that recording and record it, and you have four of "you" singing at the same time! This is essentially all I do, except on a more sophisticated level. Of course, timing is still difficult with certain types of music, even if I can hear the other parts. This is where a "click track" becomes useful- I can record a separate track that helps keep time like a metronome, and then remove it before the final mixdown occurs. Sometimes this consists of me just snapping my fingers in time; other times I may actually speak the lyrics in rhythm so that I can ensure that all of the consonants start and stop synchronously.
Many of my songs are sung in strange places, including my bedroom, the bathroom, and the closet. After all of the voices are recorded blended together, I run the finished recording through a DSP (Digital Signal Processing) application that artificially adds reverb. This gives it a certain warmth and realism that could not be achieved with a condenser microphone in a 4x10 walk-in closet or a bedroom.
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