Rockschool Debut: How To Sing ‘Havana’ Easily!

 Hello everyone. My name is Jorgelina. I’m a singer, singing teacher, vocal coach, and I teach singing online. And I also have a singing school in Auckland, New Zealand called Auckland Contemporary Singing School. So in the previous weeks, I’ve been talking a little bit about what the rock school syllabus is, which is a syllabus that I recommend to my kid students.

And yes, today I’m going to show you one of the songs that they have. So, for the debut grade, which is the preparatory grade, I’m going to leave in the description a link to the overview of the debut grade, but today I’m going to show you one of the songs they have. So one of the songs that you can do as part of a debut grade, is Havana by Camila Cabello.

So, it seems like it has kind of a wide range, and it does, it goes from G3 to D5, if you don’t know what I mean, that’s all good, it means that, it seems like it is not a song for complete beginners, but, the idea here is that you don’t have to have the perfect technique that she has. So, The, one of the characteristics of this song is that it goes from your chest voice range to your head voice range.

So if you don’t know what I’m talking about, your chest voice is if you bring a hand to your chest and you go, ‘Hey’, you’re going to feel that your chest sort of resonates. That’s why we call it chest voice in the contemporary singing world. And if you sing: ‘Woo’ Kind of, you can feel it in your head, so that’s called head voice.

It doesn’t actually happen in your chest or in your head, but that’s how we call it. So, as a contemporary singer, you have to start developing those two different ways of producing voice. And this is a song that makes it more possible. So why? Because the lower range is quite comfortable, but the higher range that the song uses in head voice, it can be sung very soft, and it uses an ‘ooh’ sound, which is quite gentle for the voice. I’m just gonna sing a little part of the song so you get familiar with it in case that you don’t know it. Here we go.

(Sings ‘Havana’)

Anyway, so that’s the song. And yes, you might have noticed that in part of the song I’m singing a little bit with my chest, so that’s a lower range. And the voice sounds a little bit fuller. 📍 It’s like 10:00 AM in the morning. So that’s the best I can do. But yes, it kind of like closer to the voice you speak with.

And then in the chorus part, it goes to this (demonstrates) . That is what is called your head voice. As a contemporary singer, you have to start developing that. And then, as you progress, then you start doing some more fancy things, you start mixing, you start developing the mix voice, and belting, and things like that. But, when you are just starting, it’s a really good thing to just start being able to differentiate these different ways of producing sound.

And now… For this debut grade, they don’t expect you to have full head voice, which is a a a head voice in which there is no escape of air (demonstrates). You can do it with a softer tone (demonstrates) If that’s the best you can do. It’s not super healthy to sing with a little bit of escape of air, but it will help you resolve the song and without Pulling the note.

Okay, because the normal thing to do when you are just starting singing Is usually not always but usually people Try to push the the chest voice instead of switching to a different resonance So in from your chest, It would sound a little bit like this (demonstrates).

So yeah, horrible, struggling to get in tune and because I shouldn’t be singing that from my chest. So that is the benefit of this song for a beginner. It teaches you in a, in a gentle way, in a easy-ish way to access that head voice. So that is what this song is a little bit about. Even if you are an adult and you are not doing debut grade or anything, but you want to learn this song, that is what you have to do. You have to start getting used to your chest voice and your head voice and the difference between that. So you can try if you, if you don’t get access to those notes, just try before you try the melody.

Just try (demonstrates) and make sure that you don’t push it So this is hard for some adults when they they have no singing training. They go: (demonstrates) All right. So as you’re trying to pull your chest see how I had to like move everything and I still didn’t get it All right. So instead of that just let your jaw go Take a good breath and then just relax your jaw go (demonstrates) . That resonance, it shouldn’t hurt and it shouldn’t be too hard to produce. But of course, if you never sung with your head voice, if you never sung and then that resonance is going to be a little bit weird at the beginning, it’s not going to be like. perfectly clean or anything, and that’s fine because you need to develop those muscles and that resonance and that way of singing.

And so the main goal when you are just starting is to just get access to that without pushing, without trying to pull your chest. And that’s how you can start resolving these songs. Once you got used to that woo sound, woo, then you can use the melody. and put the melody using from that resonance rather than… (demonstrates) see how different it sounds, and in the second i’m like that is, just don’t do that. It is very, very uncomfortable and it doesn’t sound good, but that is one of the main reasons why untrained singers usually lose their voices because they don’t know how to blend their voices. And so as a result, they, they push a little bit too much when they should be starting to use a different way of producing the voice.

And that’s what we do in vocal training. All right, I hope you enjoyed this video. If you enjoyed it and you want to know more about this, you can subscribe to my channel. It really helps. And if you are in Auckland and you would like to learn this syllabus, you can come to my school in person. And if you are somewhere else in the world, you can contact me and you can learn this online.