Supersonic Songbird - Recording Studio & Vocal Coaching

31/10/2024

I've been a Dream Theater fan since my high school days! When I received an e-mail inquiry about vocal coaching from a person claiming they were James Labrie late April this year, I thought someone was pulling a prank on me and almost deleted the e-mail. 😱 But I decided that there's no terrible harm in replying to a likely prank e-mail and took the chance of looking like a fool by replying! That turned out to be the right choice because it was indeed an e-mail from the singer of one of my all time favorite bands and we soon started working online until James went off to New York to record the new Dream Theater album in July. Two days ago Dream Theater performed a phenomenal show in my hometown and I finally got the chance to meet up with James in person and I gathered the courage to ask him if he'd be ok with me talking about us working together publicly and he wrote this beautiful testimonial for my website! 🥰
Apart from being an amazing artist who delivered beautiful and insanely challenging vocal parts on some of my favorite albums, James proved to posses a very kind, caring and friendly personality and I'm very happy to call him my friend!

29/10/2024

New RockVox analysis video with my friend Aaron Perry and a special guest appearance from Vana Beara who's helped us with some fantastic female sound examples for our analysis! 🔥

Authorized CVT teachers Aaron Perry and Ivan Mihaljevic talk about the approach Lzzy Hale uses in the intro to the Halestorm hit song I Miss The Misery with ...

15/10/2024

It's been well over a year since Aaron Perry and I dropped our last YouTube video. Life was happening and it was hard to make time for making videos, but we're back at it!
This time we're doing a Complete Vocal Technique analysis of Layne Staley of Alice In Chains, specifically in the song Man In The Box! 🤘

Authorized CVT teachers Aaron Perry and Ivan Mihaljevic talk about different sounds Layne Staley uses in the Alice In Chains banger Man In The Box.To book le...

14/07/2024

I can't wait to start this off with Toni Linke and Gregory West! 🤩
Early bird pricing for our Vocal Summer Camp ends tomorrow! ⏳⌛️
Sign up now to secure your access to a full week of lectures and 1:1 sessions before the price increases! The sign-up link is in the first comment! 👨‍🎤

08/07/2024

🚨 From August 5th to August 11th Toni Linke, Gregory West and Ivan Mihaljevic will be teaching the online VOCAL SUMMER CAMP. 7 days of webinar lectures and live coaching over Zoom. Early bird pricing until July 15th!
Link for signing up is in the first comment! 👨‍🎤

03/04/2024

I wrote a new article for my website! 🙂
The concept of vocal modes is one of the central ideas in CVT! A large percentage of vocal technique issues stem from incorrect use of the modes. In this article I explain the logic behind the categorization and point towards further resources for learning about the modes! 🧑‍🎤

Vocal modes are the central concept in Complete Vocal Technique and at least half of all the questions singers using CVT are asking me as an authorized CVT teacher are related to modes. The CVT book and app say that about 95% of all technical issues in singing stem from incorrect use of the modes. W...

07/03/2024

🧑‍🎤 If you have spent some time gathering info on vocal technique from varied sources that don’t just belong to an offshoot of the same school of thought, you have probably noticed that descriptions of what you need to do vary a lot and sometimes downright contradict each other. 🤔 How did it come to that and who is right? 🧐

Seems I'm on a roll, so I wrote another new article! 🤓

If you have spent some time gathering info on vocal technique from varied sources that don’t just belong to an offshoot of the same school of thought, you have probably noticed that descriptions of what you need to do vary a lot and sometimes downright contradict each other. Some say you need to i...

04/03/2024

In the course of practicing your singing technique, it's quite easy to lose track of the bigger picture and confuse one element for the whole thing, not seeing the proverbial forest for the trees. 🌳🌳🌳
Read my new article to get ideas on how to solve this issue! 🎶🎤

Today I’d like to rant a little bit about a very common issue I encounter among singers, and sometimes even very experienced singers, who have spent some time studying singing technique. To facilitate technical discussions about singing, we come up with various terms to explain what we mean. Navig...

22/02/2024

🎶"Sing from the diaphragm, not from your throat!" 🫁🧑‍🎤
That's a sentence even non-singers have heard a billion times, but what does that even mean?
I wrote a new short article on that topic for my website! 🤓
If you like my series of articles so far, please do let me know what you'd like me to write about next!

“Sing from the diaphragm, not from your throat!” is a line you’re likely to hear repeated by everyone from your uncle Carl to your choir leader Betty. But what does that even mean?

15/02/2024

I wrote another nerd article about singing technique for my website! 🤓
Many of the answers that you tend to get online on the topic of laryngeal height tend to be overly simplistic, prescriptive and filled with myths or poor understanding of mechanics involved in contemporary singing! I know I don't have the power to change that globally, but I can probably have some effect on it locally. 🙂 In this short (well, maybe not so short 😅) article, I took a look at various relevant scientific studies to explain how I approach the subject of larynx height in my teaching and why.
If you read this, please tell me if you liked it or if you'd prefer if I kept it simpler in the future! 😅

There are lots of differing opinions on the subject of laryngeal height for singing and you will hear a lot of prescriptive answers like “the larynx should always be low” or “the larynx should stay neutral” or “you shouldn’t let your larynx rise with pitch”. To quote one of my favorite...

09/02/2024

I did some work on my vocal coaching website and I wrote this short article about the number 1 most common mistake singers taking singing lessons make! 🫨
I'm thinking of making this one into a video with specific examples at some point. 🎬

Taking singing lessons with a great teacher is a fantastic way to pinpoint issues with your singing technique, developing strategies for improving your technique, style and expression, and learning new techniques. A competent teacher can quickly determine flaws in your current approach and provide y...

18/01/2024

🤓 LONG WINDED NERD ALERT 🤓 This morning I wrote a detailed response in an audio engineering group where a user was asking why his pitch correction software was having trouble with tuning his raspy singing. Since I already went through the trouble of writing it out, I thought I'd share it as a status as well as I know in my friends list I have lots of singers and audio engineers who could potentially be interested. So here's the copy-paste:

If you analyze raspy vocals with a spectrogram compared to a clean vocal, you'll notice the raspy vocals will have lines between the harmonics. Adding rasp will add subharmonics below the fundamental and sometimes those subharmonics aren't stable and shift around. In my experience, most tuning software will recognize those subharmonics as a fundamental and if the subharmonic jumps around or if the raspiness comes in and out while the singer is actually singing the same pitch, the software will recognize it as a pitch change. Those subharmonics will also have a set of their harmonics visible as the lines between the harmonics of the pitch your singing.
On top of that, raspiness also adds interharmonic noise, meaning there's more noise energy in between the actual harmonics which also makes pitch detection harder.
I'm attaching a spectrogram of a quick raspy example with different subharmonics so you can see what I mean!
And here's the audio file, so that you can hear it and make more sense of what you see - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oQ5q4sLl-epAwMVMDLuM5nSmSwyoYw1J/view?usp=drive_link
So, first I'm starting with a clean note, then I'm using a technique that is called distortion in Complete Vocal Technique. It's the most common thing people refer to when they talk of "rasp". The ventricular folds vibrate along with the true vocal folds and modulate the airflow in a way that creates subharmonics. So after the short clean bit, I add distortion to get an octave subharmonic, then jumping to the second subharmonic which is an octave and a fifth (which gives it that almost power chord sounding vibe), then going back to clean sound, then going into a more chaotic subharmonic thingy, then into a version that creates even more interharmonic noise, back into the octave and a fifth subharmonic and finally ending on a clean note again.
I think the most obvious shift you can hear is at the beginning when the subharmonic suddenly drops a fifth below (from around a C to around an F - sorry I didn't take a pitch reference before, so it's all about a quarter step sharp).
And I'm also attaching how Synchroarts Repitch graphs the pitch of this example! To the human ear it's very obviously just a single fundamental, but Repitch hears it as a changing fundamental!
Sorry for the lengthy explanation, I'm a nerd! 🤓

24/02/2023

I made a new video for our RockVox channel and it's about a very interesting topic. 🙂 You've probably heard some vocal coaches suggest that you don't need to ever sing loudly in contemporary genres because you'll be singing with a microphone. In this video, I'm diving into why that doesn't work (and there are several reasons for it). 😜
Oh, and to everyone complaining about our 50 minute long videos, this one is much shorter - 13 minutes! 😁

Authorized CVT teacher Ivan Mihaljevic talks about whether turning up the microphone can replace the need for loud singing.To book lessons with us, contact u...

02/02/2023

Music by Ante Škurla. Mixed at Supersonic Songbird. 🤩

Written, arranged and recorded by Ante Škurla.My socials:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anteskurlaFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ante.skurlaFor any...

19/12/2022

❄️🎅🎄Do kraja godine 10% popusta na pakete lekcija pjevanja!
Javite nam se u inbox za detalje.🎄🎅❄️

❄️🎅🎄10% off on singing lesson packages until the end of the year!
Inbox us for details.🎄🎅❄️

09/11/2022

Novi video za Bespeco Professional - Music Accessories! 😊
Kratki uvod u koncept vokalnih modova u metodi Complete Vocal Technique po kojoj podučavam pjevanje.
29. 11. u 18:00 u Audio Prou u Zagrebu ćemo Mistheria i ja imati prezentaciju raznih Bespeco proizvoda, pa navratite ako ste slobodni.

24/10/2022

Bacite uho na ovaj odlični cover A Change Is Gonna Come! 😍
Vana Beara nam je prije godinu dana došla na lekcije pjevanja i evo što kaže za snimanje ovog covera:
"Prije godinu dana nisan mogla doć ni do pola pisme pošto san imala skroz krivu tehniku pivanja. Imala san i problema sa disanjem ali mi je Ivan pomoga da savladan te probleme pa san jučer istu barem 10 p**a ispivala. Javite mu se za satove pivanja, snimanje pisama/albuma, mix i mastering itd. Nećete požalit!"

A cover of A Change is Gonna Come based on Beth Hart's version.Vana Beara - VocalsIvan Mihaljević - Guitar, HorsekickRecorded at Supersonic Songbird ...