Yippee! Finally got a mention in Dirty Linen (October/November issue). My band, Round the House was one of the highlighted bands in Tom Nelligan's The Reel World column and we even got a picture, which made my mom, the photographer, very happy. Not a huge review, but for an Irish band out of Tucson, 4 fairly long sentences feels pretty darned good.
The fun thing about the review, which I thought I would share, is that they described my voice as a natural unforced soprano. I have to say that this gave me a chuckle - cause I have been working for 10 years or more to be natural and unforced (no irony missed here) -not to mention struggling on my own to learn Irish ornamentation and to incorporate it in a natural way. I guess, I finally got an inkling of it onto this album - though I personally can still hear so many places that I still have tension or too much art-sound in my singing. I also thought it was really cool that the reviewer noticed the style of singing and mentioned it in the review (good news for all us trad singers). Sometimes, I feel like only in-your-face styles of singing get recongnized and it is really difficult to sing with ease as well.
Does anyone else work and train to sound natural? It would be great to hear what you do, or think about, to achieve that sound. For example, I try to feel the pulse of the song, underneath the melody, plus lots of technical stuff to keep as open and relaxed a as possible, but still a fairly closed mouth. And lots of work sustaining breath. Also, have others had reviews where this has been noticed?