Getting confused with the exercises, this may help things
OK, so let’s say, if you’re a full member, you’ve watched the online lessons, read the manual and are ready to start practicing and developing your voice. The Vocal Exercises were created so that you can use the first 10 exercises as a daily practice regimen (as a free member, you can check out parts of the program here: (links to Chapters, manual and Vocal Exercises):
Full Breath Exercise
Mmm
Mummy/Yummy
‘Nnghah’ One Note Repeated
3 Notes Up and Down
Vowels
Yo Yah
Siren Sound
5 Notes Up And Down
Scale 1 – Shorter
You can obviously download the tracks and burn them to a CD. I mention in the program that the voice is a muscle; so the more you can practice and ‘work out’ with your voice, the quicker you’ll see a result. The idea is to gradually stretch the voice, increasing both the higher and lower ranges. 20-30 minutes a day, especially initially when you’re ‘putting it all together’ is optimum. However, we all have busy schedules, so there are many ways round this if you don’t have time for a few days. Hum as much as you can. Burn the CD and play it in the car on the way to work (not ideal since you’ll be sitting down, hence breathing control will be limited, but it’s better than nothing). If you’re having problems, try to be near a mirror so you can see what you’re doing. It might feel OK, but that’s often the old habits talking. When you take a look in the mirror, the jaw may be jutting, or the neck tense, or you’re looking up as you sing up, thus tensing the vocal cords and neck.
It’s worth mentioning again that the voice needs to be developed away from a song. When we only sing songs, we’re not only limited by the songs particular range, i.e. it might not be stretching us, but we need to connect with it emotionally, i.e. tell the story of the song. To achieve any real vocal mastery, technique needs to be married with emotion. So we develop technique away from the emotion of a song, almost clinically, then putting technique and feeling together. So first of all, let’s take a look at what you’re actually doing when you practice. What we’re aiming for here is to gradually make the voice stronger all the way across the board: low, middle and high registers, i.e. making the voice the same ‘color’ in chest, middle and head voice. And the body has to find ‘where the notes are’ incrementally, so that when you sing a song, it automatically finds the notes without you stretching and straining and so getting out of the moment and losing the story of the song.
The Full Breath exercises help you center the voice and breath together (the center of the breath being the solar plexus).
The resonance exercises (‘Mmm’ and‘Mummy/Yummy’) link the breath with the voice through the resonance, while developing tone and color.
‘Nnghah’ and 3 notes up and down help you find the pure voice and link it to the breath and resonance.
The vowel exercises help you start to use the tongue (and not the jaw) and find the placement of the vowels in the mouth. The sound isn’t then bouncing around the mouth as you sing, making the note difficult to control.
‘Yo Yah’ is a fun exercise and further develops vowel control, the ‘Oh’ vowel being at the front of the mouth, the ‘ah’ in the middle. The higher you go, the harder it gets, so imagine that you’re smirking slightly to avoid the sound becoming pinched.
‘Siren Sound’ puts everything together. It stretches your range, requiring diaphragmatic control for a smooth transition up and down the siren. The larynx is finding the notes for you, the tongue controlling the vowel. This one can take a while to master, so if you’re really having problems, try singing a scale, note by note, up and down, in the middle of your range. Just singing by ear is fine, away from the track, but if you have a piano that’s even better than just singing by ear, i.e. a-capella. Start on middle C (link to picture of a piano) and go up and down the scale semi-tone (half tone) by semi-tone.
The ‘5 notes up and down’ exercise is like a little tune, so you’re singing words, consonants and vowels, together at the same time. This is the first stage of actually singing a song. You can even sing the lyrics to a song to with this exercise to practice vowels.
Scale one takes the 5 notes exercise even further, a whole scale, up and down. You can sing this scale to vowels, vowels with consonants and/or numbers. Or once again, the lyrics of a song.
When you’re warmed up you’ll hear the difference because it’ll sound stronger and warmer and it will ‘feel right’.
All of the other exercises develop these themes and will help you to develop your voice:
Scale 2 – Longer. Much harder than Scale 1. It moves through all of the registers and is also much more challenging breathing-wise.
Arpeggio 1 – Straight Up And Down The Scale. The three arpeggios , being a staggered scale, are the next phase in singing a song. The larynx has to find the notes, the diaphragm controlling them to create an even tone.When you’re warmed up you’ll hear the difference because it’ll sound stronger and warmer and it will ‘feel right’.
Arpeggio 2 – Staggered Up, Straight Down.
Arpeggio 3 – Little Tune.
Consonants – Pah Dah Kah. No matter the genre, you want your words to be heard. The tongue needs to be trained to create the consonants, while still shaping the note at the back of the mouth.
Vibrato. This is a natural vocal phenomenon that needs to be developed for you to have full control of your voice. There is a section in the tutorials ‘vibrato’ that helps to deal with this. Also, check out the article ‘Big Vibtratos’ (link) if you have a big vibrato and don’t know how to control it.
Soft To Loud/Pure Note To Breathy Note. A lot of modern genre songs go from a pure note to a breathy note. Usually the breathy for the verse, leading to a strong, pure voice chorus. These exercises should help you find that part of your voice.
Brooweeooweeoowee. This exercise helps you center the note while developing resonance.
Pitching Exercise 1 – Semitones. The larynx physically finds the notes for you, but you also need to hear the note in your head before you sing. The body needs to be trained to find the notes in your body so that you can automatically ‘go to the right place’ when singing a song.
Pitching Exercise 2 – Every Interval you need when singing a song. Great for pitching and helping the larynx find the different intervals.
The Pop Reverb Practice Note. We often ‘over sing’ when we need to project a song, or a passage of a song, especially when singing pop or rock. This exercise helps you to ‘ground’ the note and then direct it the right place in your resonance so the note has true power. You then use ‘the mask’, the area around the eyes and also the chest resonance, so it stops it from sounding too harsh or shrill.
I mentioned humming, earlier, and how you can develop resonance simply by humming if you don’t have time to practice. Humming between exercises is also a great way to develop your resonance.
Another great little exercise that one of my students came up with (that is also mentioned in the online lessons), is to sing the check list to yourself, to help imprint the correct path of the voice in the emotion memory. So, for example, “I’m breathing from the diaphragm, relaxed under the string, my back and knees relaxed…I’m breathing from the center of the diaphragm, it’s the muscles around the diaphragm making it work…the diaphragm is relaxed SMILING as I breathe in SIDEWAYS. The note is hitting the correct spot in my mouth, the TONGUE is controlling the note, not the jaw… My lips are relaxed, reflecting the shape at the back of the mouth…” Etc, etc. This is especially great for those students who just can’t get it together to do exercises. It really helps everything to start working together.
Try to sing, sing, sing as much as you can. Sing along in the car. Sing along to the radio. Sing in the shower. Sing in the bath. If you’re worried about the neighbors, singing quietly can be just as useful. You’re learning to control your breath and the note. It can be much harder to sing quietly, since you are developing vocal control in a very focused way
It can help to remember WHY you’re doing all of this: When everything works together, as one, relaxed, balanced and yet FOCUSED, then you can hear it in the voice. And the ONLY way to do this is practice, practice, practice. You’re creating a NEW path as you practice. Undoing bad habits, focusing your energy from WITHIN, the whole of you working together, mind and body, to let this happen. You’re then free, when you sing the song, to express it with passion and integrity. Go get em, cowboys and girls.
Tags: how to practice, how to sing, vocal exercises, vocal instruction