Arts & Entertainment, Music

Playing With Textures and Tones

Christina Aguilera

Lesson time 15:24 min

Christina demonstrates how to use different textures and tones, from gritty growl to haunting sadness, to emotionally charge a performance.

Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars

Topics include: Exploring tone • Case study: Genie in a Bottle • Case study: Fighter

Preview

For me, I love in the paintbox, right, having a lot of different outlets for creating a mood and an environment. And I call it textures. I even reference the lead singer of Korn. He has a very interesting voice. Bjork. They have so many different colors and textures in their paintboxes where they can just explore a variety of sound. I'll go through my songs. But for instance, "Ain't No Other Man." That's going to call for a big, soulful, juicy, meaty, gritty, fun vocal for me. So it's a matter of the-- (SINGING) Hey. Ain't no other man can stand. And that whole thing projects from down in that place where I say the center and the core and the place where you do crunches from and all your emotion boils and comes together and gets connected. And so that gives you that really grounded foundation to then lift up and out. Everybody has their own tone. My specific tone sometimes is having a-- there's like a real intensity to it. It just comes from a natural place. What I was taught and what I practiced with my vocal lesson-- and there's a specific spot in it where you can hear the vocal teacher's voice saying, OK, bear down on it, but don't hold it in your mouth. Don't hold it there. Relax your mouth. Relax your face. Bear down on it. "Bear down" meaning compress. Compress from below, that same, like, as if you're doing a crunch or a sit-up or something like that. So bear down on it. And literally visualize the note before you sing it. There's one that I do, (SINGING). So it's "lun-gee." And then it goes, (SINGING) Lun-gee. So here's the difference I guess I can see in this one. (SINGING). Now right there, I'm kind of in my nose. I'm doing that eh-eh thing, so (SINGING). Now, if I open up my throat a little and my nose, if I'm visualizing this, (SINGING). It's more muted. Can you see how it's more like-- I don't know. There's a slight difference. I don't even know if it makes sense. But to me, I can feel it when it's more in my throat. You don't want to go in your nose. You have to go from a more throaty point if you want to-- I'm talking up here right now, but if I want to (SINGING) go low, I don't really want to sing in that tone. (SINGING) Go low. To have a nice, rich, bassy tone, you kind of want to throw it back in your throat. I'm almost caving in my chest a little bit. (SINGING) Go low. It's almost hot tea or something going down. It's smooth, just to have that bassy sound. But there's such a difference if I sing it through my nose and don't think about going to my throat. (SINGING) Go low. That would be through my nose. But if I open up my throat and go into my chest, take a bigger breath, so I give myself that expansion and that room to go in, it's almost that place, again, almost like when you're going to yawn. It's like (SINGING). It's almost that. It's exp...

About the Instructor

Christina Aguilera teaches you how to expand your range, find your voice, and master the techniques that have earned her five Grammy Awards. In her first-ever online singing class, you’ll learn warm-up exercises, breath control, vibrato, her signature growls, and hear Christina break down her biggest hits. You’ve never had vocal lessons like this before.

Featured MasterClass Instructor

Christina Aguilera

Christina teaches you her unique vocal techniques in over 3.5 hours of voice lessons and exercises.

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