I am an early riser, regularly getting up early in the morning every day. Though it is more of a habit now, but if I think carefully, since I started doing it, the practice has given me many benefits, keeping my motivation intact. Let me list three key benefits that I have experienced from it.
1. My Way of Staying Healthy
Waking up early has a very positive impact on my health. It gives me time to exercise, to go for a walk, do yoga exercises, or go to the gym with plenty of time at hand.
It also ensures that I have time in the morning for a proper breakfast. If I started my day late, I may have to rush for work, and may land up skipping breakfast. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day for me, and I strongly believe that it prepares me to face the day and keeps me healthy.
Proper routine of exercise and diet are vital factors in ensuring good health in the long run. Therefore I can safely say that getting up early is my way of staying healthy. 2. Start the Day on a Positive Note
I have found from experience that to maintain a positive mindset, it is helpful to start the day on a positive note. The fresh and serene early morning hours, the quietness in the air, the chirping of birds, the absence of traffic noise, and the majestic sun rise really brighten up my mood.
Getting up early gives me this much needed positive start, and charges me with a sense of optimism for the rest of the day.
3. Boost My Productivity
Starting my day well also helps me be more productive during the day. Studies have shown that early risers are more efficient and productive at work.
One think I strongly dislike is to rush myself. By getting up early, I manage to get ready on time, beat the traffic and drive to work at ease without rushing myself.
It also gives me time for myself in the morning, time to read newspaper, solve daily puzzles, or just do meditation. This time for myself helps calm my mind and sharpen my reflexes to arm myself for the busy schedule later.
Just try it out for a few days yourself. Get out of the bed early and you will experience the advantages of being an early riser.
I have a love-hate relationship with stress. I can’t stand it, but I can't live without it either. There are times when I convince myself that the tension I feel actually helps me perform better. At other times when I am bogged down with excessive stress, I wonder if it is really all that helpful.
When we are under stress, our body gets tense, and we can feel the tension in different parts of our body. Our heart beats faster, and this causes a rush of blood circulation in large group of muscles like arms and legs. This tension is what makes us uncomfortable, and over time takes its toll on our health, giving us hypertension, ulcers, and much more.
Why does our body behave like this in stressful situations? This is our body's natural response to prepare us for a fight-or-flight response in a threatening situation. The tensed muscles and greater blood supply gets our body ready to take a physical fight or run away quickly from the threat. This was perfectly appropriate and necessary for man’s survival in primitive age. However, we live in information age today, and such response is not at all helpful for the mental tasks we have these days. When we are under tension, the blood supply to brain is reduced, and our capacity to think goes down. We are unlikely to take the right decision under extreme stress. In other words, to be effective, we need to learn to handle this 'extra' stress well, and keep it from going out of control.
Can you do something to bring this stress down and to be less tense in day-to-day life? From my experience, I can say that there are several steps you can take towards this goal.
Learn to Relax
Since stress causes tension in your muscles, an effective antidote to it is to handle the tension directly and learn to relax your muscles. Since relaxation is exactly opposite of tension, when you learn to keep your body relaxed, it gradually gives signal to the mind to calm down and be less stressful. Yoga and meditation are very helpful in lowering stress levels. So is progressive relaxation technique, in which you deliberately tense and then relax different muscles in the body and observe the feeling of relaxation. This trains your body to relax on demand and stay relaxed. There is a lot of material available about it on the net. Try following the instructions in the following video:
Address the Underlying Cause
Relaxation techniques are helpful to directly deal with the stress, but the stress may come back if you do not address its underlying cause. Most often, it is a negative emotion, that fuels stress – fear, anxiety, envy, anger, or hatred. Learn to cultivate a positive mindset to attain a sustained state of relaxation. If you ask me one step that is most helpful in controlling negative emotions, it is to have an attitude of acceptance.
Fear
When we refuse to accept risk and uncertainty in any situation, it gives rise to fear. We imagine the worst, and shudder at the thought, and feel afraid and tense. Instead, try to accept that uncertainty and willingly take the risk, and it will turn into an adventure. You will find the stress evaporating.
Anxiety
Non-acceptance of failure makes us anxious. Let us mentally embrace the failure, and our feeling will change to one of confidence.
Envy
When we do not like good in others, it gives rise to envy and jealousy in our mind. Instead, if we whole-heartedly accept other’s achievement, it becomes inspiration.
Anger
There are many things in life that are beyond our control, and it makes us angry if we fail to accept them. We can reduce the emotion of anger by just accepting what is beyond our control.
Hatred
We feel hate toward a person, when we do not accept her as she is. We focus too much on the things about her that we don’t like, and ignore all other good things in the person. Just try dropping the expectations and accept the person unconditionally, the feeling will change into a feeling of love.
To conclude, stress is not good for your effectiveness and health, and you should get it under control before it takes its toll.
As a Karaoke enthusiast, I am fortunate to belong to an on-line community of music-loving friends who enjoy each other’s music, and provide an encouraging environment to all. We all agree that a good quality recording can really support and boost a singing performance. Sound recording in the past used to be a complex endeavor attempted by experienced sound engineer with expensive audio equipment in professional sound studio setup. Over time, revolution in digital audio technology reduced the equipment required significantly, and made it affordable for anyone to do it at home with a computer and Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software. However, it remains a very technical job that needs skill and practice. Some time back I wrote a post “My Recipe for Home Recordings" to serve as a step-by-step guide for sound recordings at home. However, most singers find it too complex to use a Digital Audio Workstation on a computer for recording and mixing. We need an easier alternative that a singer can use to record his Karaoke performance easily.
You may have tried playing the Karaoke music track, singing along the music, and recording the performance on your mobile phone. It is an easy method, but you may not be happy with the resulting sound mix quality for several reasons:
You have no control on tempo and pitch of the Karaoke track
There may be too much of background noise in the recording.
The music may be too loud, drowning the vocals in it.
Or the music may be too soft, sounding distant and remote.
The voice may be sounding too flat and one dimensional.
As a singer, you want your recordings to sound as good as a professional one, with a simple non-technical solution to help you with the following steps:
Record your vocals with a Karaoke music track with little background noise
Have a way to adjust the tempo and pitch of Karaoke music for your singing comfort, like you do in a karaoke performance
Adjust the volume of music and vocals to get the right mix that sounds good
Add reverb to the vocals, and adjust the level of reverb so that it sounds spacious
Adjust any delay between the music and vocals to get it in sync
Finally, mix everything and produce an mp3 of the mix to share.
The good news is that it is possible today to do all the above steps using your mobile phone, and the process is simple. So, get ready, I am now going to reveal the secret recipe for creating professional sounding recordings from your mobile, and I am going to break it down into easy to follow steps. My illustrations are for an Android phone, but you can do the same on an iPhone as well. This can help you do quick recordings on the go even if you are a sound mixing pro.
Step 1: Set up the Recording App
We will use the SingPlay app from NexStreaming Corp for this exercise. As a first step, download and install the SingPlay app on your mobile, start it, and check that you get the screen shown here.
Step 2: Select the Karaoke Music Track
Make sure that the Karaoke music track for your performance is in the music library on your mobile. From the menu of SingPlay, select the first item – Music Library, and it will display all the songs in your music library.
Now, Locate your Karaoke music track in the list, and tap it. It will start playing and two buttons will be displayed on the right.
Tap the mic button to load this selected track in SingPlay for your performance. It will take you to the SingPlay recording page and the track will start playing.
Step 3: Set up for Recording
The SingPlay recording page has four buttons at the bottom. The CD image (center button) button is to control playback and pause. The mic button (on the right) is to switch Karaoke mode on or off. The Karaoke mode is used to reduce the original vocals from the song. Since we are using a Karaoke music track for our recording, tap this button once to turn off the Karaoke mode. It should make the music sound louder and clearer.
Now, tap Control button (above mic button) and a Control Panel will be displayed. Use it to adjust the tempo and pitch of the music track. Come back to the main page and listen to the music now. Repeat the steps till you reach a tempo and pitch which is comfortable for your singing.
Connect a headphone or a hands free kit to your phone. This is because while singing, you want to hear the music in your earphone to ensure a clean recording of your vocals. Now, play the track and practice singing with it till you get it right.
You are ready to start recording now.
Step 4: Record Your Performance
Tap REC button, recording will start after a short countdown, with the music track playing in your ear. Sing along the track.
It is better not to hold the phone in hand while recording, but keep on a table to avoid noise. Make sure you are in a quiet room, with not too much noise.
When you are done with singing the song, tap REC button to stop recording. You will get three buttons on the screen. If you are not happy with the performance, tap Cancel button, and do the recording again. When you are satisfied, tap Listen button to save and listen to the recording.
Step 5: Adjust the Mix
When you are listening to your recording, you can adjust the mix to make it sound better. Tap the Control button on bottom right to open a mixer panel that has four controls.
Music Volume – slide this control to adjust the volume of background music. If music sounds too loud or the vocals sound too soft, lower the music volume.
Vocal Volume - slide this control to adjust the volume of your vocals so that it sounds good with music.
Reverb Volume – slide this control to make your vocals sound more spacious. Its range is from 0-6, a value between 2 and 4 will give you good results.
Music Delay (Sync) – slide this control if you feel that the timing of music and vocals are not matching perfectly. If not sure, leave this setting unchanged.
After every change, listen to the mix again. It is easy to do, but the quality of the final mix depends on how carefully you listen to different sounds in the mix. Do it repeatedly till you get the recorded mix to right.
Step 6: Render the Mix as an Audio File
Finally, you are ready to render your performance. Tap the export button, and your recording will be saved in your music library. That’s it – you are done with your Karaoke performance recording and mixing. If you want to create a video for sharing on Youtube, tap the Share button and save the performance as a video in your photo album.
I will leave you with an example recording that I created using the above steps in SingPlay. Have fun recording your performance!
Ifyou
are reading beyond this point, you are likely to be interested in
finding out more about this topic. Some time back I wrote a series of posts on how I went about learning
about digital recording process at home. You can read these posts here.
These posts also include samples from the recordings I made on the way.
