Ready to stretch your vocal creativity and discover more of who you are as a singer? 🎤 In this episode of Your Vocal Evolution: Tips in 10, I’m sharing an exciting new Vocal Artistry Challenge happening inside the Vocal Pro Membership!
This challenge invites singers to deeply analyze other artists’ vocal styles, explore their unique nuances, and creatively experiment with mashups of cover songs to unlock new parts of their voice. It’s about play, exploration, and pushing your artistry to new levels—all in a supportive, encouraging space.
If you’ve been feeling stuck in your sound or want to grow beyond technique into true expression, this challenge is for you.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
00:00 – Introduction to Vocal Artistry Challenge
02:37 – The Power of Play in Vocal Development
04:39 – Exploring Vocal Styles and Mashups
06:59 – Encouragement and Community in Vocal Growth
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Hello everybody, welcome to Vocal Tips in 10. I'm Amber Mogg Cathey and today I want to tell you about a really cool vocal artistry challenge that is happening right now in my Vocal Pro membership so that you can play with this challenge in your own voice. One of the many awesome things of the Vocal Pro membership and there are so many, I love it so much.
It is my close-knit community of singers genuinely all over the world. I will just put details about it in the show notes if you want to learn more about it. I would love for you to check it out. But one of the really cool things about it is we have a private community of genuinely singers all over the world. There's just about 100 of us right now, which is really exciting and we're continuing to grow. And one of the things that happens in that private community is every single month...
Singers have a new vocal challenge that I give them at the start of the month that then they will work on and share with everybody else in the group. And it's such a supportive group. And also in the challenges, everybody who participates can win free stuff, voice lessons, which also is extra incentive. But the point of these challenges is to really get all the singers to up level their skills.
to maybe get outside of their comfort zone, to try some techniques that they don't feel as rock solid in, to try some new things artistically, and just grow and get better. And this challenge in particular has been so fun because it is a lot of play, it is outside of a lot of comfort zones but so many singers are finding aspects of their voice that they didn't even necessarily realize they had.
And so that's why I decided I really wanted to share it with all of you today. So you can play with it as well. And play is a key word for me when it comes to upleveling your voice and getting more ease and really figuring out what your style is. Part of it is just play and experimentation. So here's the challenge. You're going to take a cover song. So you don't want to use an original song for this. You're going to take a song from any other artist and you are going to sing that song.
but using the vocal stylings of two opposing artists or two different artists. Opposing makes it extra challenging. Think Billie Eilish and Stevie Wonder. You would take aspects that you like or that you really feel like stand out in each of their voices and incorporate that into the song in your own voice. and so what happens with that is you get this mashup.
right, of style, really three different artist style in many cases because you've got the artist who wrote the song and there's a stylistic component to that. And then you've got both of the artists vocal styles that you are trying to kind of imitate and play with in your delivery of the song. And so many times what happens is in that weird mashup,
magic happens. Singers find aspects of their voice where they're like, ⁓ this was me doing Stevie Nicks with a little bit of cranberries mixed in singing a Grateful Dead song. Yes, that's one of the covers that's happening right now. That's one of the challenge entries. And they felt like they were so outside of their comfort zone and really kind of weren't sure what they were doing. But taking that leap and playing and exploring those different styles of these three very different artists.
mashing them up into one song but then being sung by their voice in their body which is going to make it different right off the bat because we all have different voices we all sound differently so even if i try to sing like Stevie Nicks and do my best to imitate her i'm still very much going to sound like me
trying to use stylistic aspects of Stevie Nicks, whether that's tonal quality, phrasing, you know, riffs and runs that singers do. I really kind of left it wide open
So everybody in the challenge would kind of have their own take and we would get all these kind of creative, unexpected entries where singers hopefully started to explore things that they hadn't explored before or realize that certain mashups
sound pretty fab in their voice and in some cases really sound like them.
Another one of the entries was a singer covering a Paramore song. And she used some of the vocal stylings of Hayley Williams, who's the lead singer of Paramore, who was a killer singer. And then some vocal stylings from Adele, who is, again, an amazing singer and so different from Hayley Williams.
And in doing that, she thought Hayley Williams was really more her wheelhouse. And once she shared it with everybody and kind of did her take on Adele, which very much sounded like her, but she had kind of more soulful tonal quality. She had some riffs and runs that she doesn't normally play with. All of us were like, ⁓ my gosh, that sounds amazing. And she said, I'm so shocked, but that felt the most like me.
of anything that I've done before. I think that really is the direction I want to lean with my own artistry. Which how amazing if she hadn't done this kind of what seemed unusual mashup challenge, she might not have even found this kind of actually quite natural sound that came out of her when she sort of moved outside of that comfort zone and just played.
And the other thing I want to say is when you play with this, like I said, I like to leave it wide open. Play with it in the way that works for you. Some singers did like the first verse and chorus in one artist style, the next verse and chorus in another artist style, just so could really hear a stark difference. And they wanted to play with it that way. Other singers combined everything together and you would hear
little bits of one style and then here comes another artist take all within their voice
So really open-ended for you to play with, but I think the key here is taking the time to really listen to and analyze other artists. Like I said, either artists that you love or artists that you just think are really interesting, or you can go way outside of your comfort zone and go, I'm gonna go with this artist that is completely outside of my style and just see what happens when I take some of those stylistic things that I hear in their voice. And like I said, that could be everything from
how they phrase things, how they articulate things, their tonal quality, little stylistic things they do, right? Little scoops and slides or hitting it dead on
every little aspect of their delivery, you're just kind of picking and choosing how you want to challenge yourself or what you feel like works for you in this particular song. Make sure you record it because you might be like, my gosh, what I did on that bridge, I love so much. And you very likely won't remember it. So that's the great thing in the Vocal Pro membership to participate in the challenge. You have to upload the video and share it with the group. That also gets people to kind of get outside of that comfort zone of if you really want to be
sharing more of your voice, sharing more of your artistry, really pushing yourself in that way, but you feel little anxious about that. It really kind of forces you to do that in a really safe, super supportive way. So I just really wanted to share this challenge with you because the success that singers are having, and I think it's more the surprises that are coming, not just for them, but for me too. A lot of these singers have been, you know, in this membership where I've worked with them for a
good long while and I'm pretty familiar with their voice and they feel like they know their voice and then they took on this challenge and we're hearing aspects that are really cool that they all want to explore a little further. Side note and disclaimer you also will probably hear some stuff that makes you giggle or where you're like my gosh that sounds like me.
covering Stevie Wonder, singing a George Michael song, and that's okay, right? We're not expecting the whole thing to be perfect. It's about trying different things, experimenting, taking the time to really listen to and analyze other artists, other voices, other styles, and then trying them in your own voice and seeing what comes out of that.
I hope that you will play around with this. I hope it's helpful for you. If you are interested in the Vocal Pro membership, like I said, this like scratches just the surface of this membership. it is unlimited video coaching with me. It is live coaching calls every month. It's an expert workshop every month. It's all my online courses, including Erase Your Break. It's so much stuff. And for me, just the communities.
one of the most awesome aspects. So all that information will be in the notes. You can try out two weeks free if you are interested and you can cancel at any time if you're not. I hope you will play with this and I hope this just kind of sparks more play and creativity and experimentation for you because I feel like when we are willing to kind of stretch into some of those places, some really great stuff can happen. Okay, happy singing everybody and I hope to see you in the next episode. Bye.
