Posts Tagged ‘singing exercises’

Singing with Emotion Part 2  

In part two of this article we will cover 6 popular Vocal/ Music Styles and some of the techniques used for each style. There are many different styles of singing. Some singers excel at one or two particular styles while others can round the scope on various different styles. This will be a personal choice that you will have to make as a singer.  I always liked versatility so my goal was to become as versatile as my talent would lend.  That meant extensive study in various different genres. You may decide you love Jazz for instance and do more study on techniques and style for that genre, or some of you may decide Rock ‘n Roll is what your voice is suited for and it’s your only interest, or you may decide you want to be able to sing Opera, or Pop with some R&B.  When it comes to your singing style, there is no right or wrong. These articles are designed to help guide you down whatever your musical path is and enjoy the journey while achieving your vocalizing goals.

Rock n Roll

Whether it be the heaviest or the lighter side of rock n roll, vocal technique and breathing are key to any style.  I cannot stress enough how important learning to breath and project your voice properly are, in assuring a long vocal career in this genre of music.

Bad habits, sloppy mouth formation and singing entirely from the throat not using the diaphragm will result in strain and in many cases, permanent damage to the vocal chords. Remember if you feel pain in your throat when you sing then you are not approaching the notes or phrases properly.  The majority of every live vocal performance should be done in proper singing form in order to preserve the singers voice.  You need to learn to preserve and pace the voice, especially if you’re touring. If you have to perform 4 nights in a row, all heavy style rock that requires a rasp technique, octave jumps, ascending and descending sirens with power, and some switches to the head or even a falsetto will need to well thought out and practiced in advance. To be able to make these transitions not only smoothly but be able switch from a rasp technique to an octave jump takes work. Using rasp too often can cause damage however when used stylistically in conjunction with proper breathing and singing techniques, rasp can be an effective way to create your unique style of singing. 

Ascending and Decending Sirens

In other articles and in our FREE Video Singing Lessons, I wrote about head voice and falsetto, and how the sound and vibrations resonate around the middle of the forehead to the top of the nose area, with an open flow of breath from the diaphragm straight to the forehead.  Another technique commonly used in rock singing is the Ascending and Descending Sirens; The ascending technique will take you from low to mid range right into the highest of head-voice notes smoothly while Descending is the reverse, taking you from the high head-voice notes to some lower bass notes. The desired affect will have no transition noises; no breaks in breath and can carry an octave or more in one swoop. 

Another effective technique used in rock singing is Octave Jumps. Basically that is when you are on a note, for example middle C and you jump to the next note – one octave higher, in this case to high C. To do this requires a good push from the diaphragm and an open throat to allow the sound and air to pop from the lower note to the higher with an open sound, while your voice is very controlled. The technique of Octave jumps is usually done quickly.

Rasp Technique

The rasp technique is used in many different styles of music and can be effective in creating the mood of the song or accenting certain words to create an emotion. The rasp technique can be done by squeezing the back of the throat tight and making a raspy sound with your voice. The more effective and less damaging way to do this is to use that squeeze technique sparingly, along with using saliva to coat the throat so the vibration is being made by the saliva in the back of the throat (similar to a gargle), thus creating a raspy sound with less damage. This takes some practice and if you feel any pain, you should stop immediately.   To save your voice and vocal chords you don’t want to be using this affect all the time or you will not have a voice left by the end of a tour, not to mention you will be in a lot of pain and can cause permanent damage to the vocal chords. The less strain and squeeze on the throat – the better! I have included some You Tube links of each technique done properly by some of the world’s best rock singers. These singers are great to practice along with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHl_SLD2nlQ.  This song will give you an example of Rasp used to create emotion, style and intensity.  You will also hear open vocal scale runs which are great to practice along with. All the notes are open and in specific places the rasp is incorporated.  This song requires good breath control and endurance and provides a great example of all the techniques I have been talking about in this article, as well as many more.

Octave Jumps

 Check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LuP6LjaKNU This song has examples of octave jumps, how the singer creates atmosphere with softness and more aggressive sounds as the song builds. The notes at the end show a great example of a descending siren that starts on a higher note and descends to a lower with little to no transition noises, while the notes flow smoothly in one breath.

 NOTE: the first note hit in this descending scale attack that top note dead on with power and confidence; it does not swoop into the note. The higher passage in the middle shows a great example of notes having an open sound in the higher head-voice register. This song requires great breath control and diaphragm control and uses many great rock n roll techniques for you to try .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNDO6dYxkmk This song has everything I have been discussing in this article, great use of emotion, the vocal dynamics (volume and power) build in intensity throughout the song, a proper use of rasp, and uses a quick technique of a quick squeeze of the throat with a burst of air from the diaphragm to support the top note, as well as the use of saliva and vibration in the throat to create a raspy sound. This should cause you no strain or pain at all to achieve. The higher notes should resonate in your upper nasal cavity. A full open sound from the diaphragm to the upper nasal cavity where the vibration should be resonating and you will feel a tingling in the upper nasal cavity and forehead. 

Check out these great examples that you can try to sing along with 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d51IRlf_Xdw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPW1xBwm1WI great use of rasp accents and feel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8s3A-B4oas great use of natural vibrato and note extensions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGbVoDVWZsc

Try this …

Take a song and practice it in sections. Don’t be discouraged if you can’t complete the song on a first or second try.  Sing the song all the way through, find out where your trouble areas are and practice those areas in sections until you are comfortable with the full song. Remember you need to be able to hear yourself so refrain from using the popular style head phone units like the ipod for practice purposes. You cannot hear properly when you are listening and singing along with headphones.

You should be able to hear the music your listening to and what you are singing in order to remain consistently in key.  

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The job of a great vocalist is the ability to make the audience feel everything you are singing about. A great vocalist can capture their audience within the first few minutes.

Vocal style, charisma and the ability to capture  your audience quickly (make them feel and believe what you are singing) are all major aspects to becoming a charismatic and versatile vocalist. 

In Part 1 of this article we will be covering Capturing your Audience by portraying emotion and creating your own unique charisma on stage. Although one of our Free Lessons states that, for working on the fundamentals of singing you need to clear your mind of any emotional debris so you can focus on specific fundamentals such as breathing, posture, increasing range, reaching those high notes etc., performing live is very different. You will be incorporating all the fundamentals of singing along with creating the MOOD of the song through facial expression, vocal emotion and body language. 

 Capturing Your Audience

It’s always easier to perform something you can relate to; such as a situation you have been through yourself or have personally felt.  

"A listener (your audience) comprehends not only the content and grammar of what is sung, but the emotion and melody of how it is sung – what a singer feels.” , Dr. Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D.  “Feelings, be it anger, happiness, sadness, sarcasm, empathy, etc., are often communicated by varying the rate, amplitude, pitch, inflection, timbre, melody and stress contours of the voice.”   

  When there is a void (emptiness) of vocal contour (meaning all these dimensions are missing from your vocals), then the singing becomes monotone, bland and your audience experiences difficulty distinguishing your attitude, context, intent, and feeling.

For instance: if you were to sing the following lyric “Door 612 awaits you” (Lisa Smith) 

By the inflection in your tone and stress contour of the voice, you can describe to the audience emotionally whether what’s waiting for you at Door 612 is something that makes you angry, something that makes you sad, something that frightens you, or something that makes you happy – all by adjusting the timber, tone and stress contour of your voice.

In addition to this, adding body language, movements, and facial expressions with confidence define the charismatic aspect of performing. (Charisma: the ability to inspire; enthusiasm; interest; affection in others.)  So along with all the fundamentals of this craft you also create your magnetic personality on stage. Become what you sing!!  

Try this …

 Next time you practice, try taking a line of a song that can have many different meanings and practice giving the lyric different emotion as you would if you were expressing the emotion in actuality.  There are 16 Basic Emotions. As an exercise, try taking a line of a song and giving it that emotion as if you were truly feeling it. Go to a place in your mind of an event when you’ve actually experienced this emotion and use that emotional energy to make the song come alive with that feeling.  Make your audience feel the emotion you are experiencing. 

Here are some basic emotions below for you to try:

Sadness     Trust     Disgust     Fear    Joy     Anger     Surprise      Sadness     Anticipation

I also included a great Wikipedia link with a list of many branches of the basic emotions for you to try:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emotions

In Part 2 we will be talking more specifically about using emotions through various styles of singing.

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Singing may very well be a skill, a talent and an art form but can it really be a good form of EXERCISE???

Absolutely YES! 

When you sing, your singing works many muscles and muscle groups in your body. When you sing from your diaphragm, your lungs, stomach and abdominal muscles (abs) will all get a good work out. 

Deep, controlled breathing is great for strengthening our lung muscles and increasing our lung capacity (how much air they can hold). That means, the more often you practice deep controlled breathing, the more oxygen (air) you will be able to hold and the longer you will be able to hold your notes before running out of air.  For the same reason Swimmers practice deep controlled breathing exercises, strong lung muscles take in more oxygen, allowing this increase in oxygen to flow through our bloodstream and leaving us feeling more alert with increased energy and stamina.  

There are many ways to work our abdominals, we can do those neck-wrenching crunches, try some sit-ups, or spend a lot of money on an ab roller or some other funky piece of machinery that will most likely end up in next year’s yard sale! Isn’t it great that something as fun as singing can also give your abs a great workout?

Controlled breathing is not only about holding your breath, it is also about letting the air out slowly and in a controlled manner … then squeezing out that last little bit of air before you take your next breath. The squeezing comes from constricting or tightening the diaphragm. 

Even if you have not had any formal voice training, you have probably heard of the diaphragm. Usually, people point to their stomachs when asked where their diaphragm is located. Some even refer to it as their ‘abdomen’ or their ‘belly’ however, you'll notice in the attached diagram that your diaphragm is located directly under the lungs and extends across the bottom of the ribcage.

If you watch a baby or a small child breathing, you’ll notice a rise and fall of the center of their torso. The centre will rise with each inhale and lower with each exhale. As we get older, improper breathing techniques take over, largely due to a lack of cardio aerobic activities, stress, and awareness of our breathing (when we sleep, most people tend to fall back into this natural breathing pattern).  However, breathing properly through the diaphragm causes it to contract, providing more space for our lungs to expand even further and take in more air.

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Learning to activate and work your diaphragm can also improve your posture. Since it’s located in the centre core region of your body, it provides support to both the front of your body attached to your ribs, as well as the back of your body supporting your lumbar (back) vertebrae (spine). This is why the diaphragm is commonly referred to as “nature’s girdle’. Keeping your shoulders down in a relaxed, natural position while going through breathing exercises will also improve your posture, since it properly guides your body to take air into the diaphragm. With proper breathing through the diaphragm, you will notice an improvement in the positioning of your shoulders and your overall posture.

Singing is also known to:

• increase blood circulation
• improve mood
• stimulate and increase the 'feel good' hormones that flow into the body
• lower cholesterol
• and build confidence (improving mental health)

These are just some of the many wonderful, positive physical benefits you can experience simply by singing - there are far too many to mention here.  Your tongue is also a muscle that can be strengthened with regular exercise and while we may not think about giving our tongue a good work-out, stretching your tongue can not only improve your singing but it will also improve your speech, diction, annunciation, pronunciation, and the overall health of your tongue and mouth.

So go ahead, sing your way to good health!

Your Personal Vocal Coach

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Did you know that you have 3 different voices?

When singing and speaking, there are 3 different types of voices that may be used:

1. the chest voice
2. the head voice and
3. the falsetto voice.

For instance, when talking, people will either use their chest voice or their head voice but it is more common for the head voice to be used, unless someone has had previous vocal or public speaking lessons.

Using the chest/throaty voice repetitively in it's highest range can be very damaging to the vocal chords. Therefore, learning to use the diaphragm to breath properly is crucial for protecting your instrument. There are times while singing that you will use the various vocal styles for effect, and switch between them to create more feel to the song.   This can be done without damage to the throat by being able to switch or transition from one type of voice to the other smoothly. In time, learning to sing in your different voices will all become second nature. 

While practicing the various styles of voice, it is important to pay attention to strain. If you are feeling any strain in the throat, then you should rest your voice as you may be causing damage to either the muscles or the vocal chords themselves.  My teachers always reminded me that when I'm singing, it should feel like there is a hollow pipe running from my diaphragm up to my throat – meaning that my throat should feel open and without constriction.  Your muscles and vocal chords should not feel any strain when singing properly.  If you are feeling strain, then you should stop and rest. Regular practise using propler vocal exercises will improve your vocal ability and reduce strain. 

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Chest Voice

There are 3 main areas that your voice can emerge from. The voice used by many people everyday to communicate through talking is the Chest Voice.  Unless you have been trained in public speaking you are probably using your chest voice when talking.  This is also the voice that is used naturally when you yawn or are partiallyasleep and is the voice that is used to hold notes, increase range, increase power, and overall protection of the voice. 

Head Voice

The second voice is the Head Voice.  Sound is created in the upper nasal cavity and the sensation will almost feel like the sound or resonance vibration is coming from the top of the nasal cavity (top of the nose) through the center of the forehead. This voice is used in addition to breathing from the diaphragm.   The chest voice can also be expanded and used in higher registers but let's stick with learning to sing properly before we move on to expanding the chest vocal register.  

Falsetto

The third voice we use is called Falsetto. Just like it sounds, this is our false voice because most people do not speak using this method unless they deliberately try to. The falsetto is our highest voice but also our weakest voice. Many R&B and Disco artists, like the Bee Gees, Leo Sayer and Hot Chocolate, sing using their falsetto voice. Yodelling, which is common in country music, is also a more obvious way of stepping back and forth from one voice to the other

Transitions

A transition is moving from one voice to another. You can also learn to use combinations of these voices switching from one to the other with a smooth transition to create a more melodic sound and style. Other artists, like Shakira are well known for stepping from one voice to another in a more obvious way. Shakira uses all 3 of her voices in most of her songs and you can hear the difference in her voices as she steps from chest voice to head voice to falsetto and back again. 

I urge all of you to listen to Sarah Brightman http://www.sarah-brightman.com/. When Sarah hits her higher registers, she is using her Head Voice in conjunction with singing from the diaphragm. The air is coming from her diaphragm and the sound / tone is resonating in her upper nasal cavity. Note the placement of her mouth, tongue and facial movements when singing.  A good example of using the diaphragm on lower registers is to check out Geoff Tate, singer for the Band Queensryche. He does a version of Scarborough Fair where, the beginning and end of this song is a prime example of how the diaphragm is being used in lower registers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcwQlGjNqrs

To hear an example of singing from the chest or throat, check out Janis Joplin.  Axel Rose from Guns and Roses also uses this technique a lot, in addition to using his diaphragm. It is this style of singing that really needs to be used carefully to preserve the voice. While it can be used in vocal styling, it also causes a lot of strain on the vocal chords.

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If you are new to sight reading and you want to learn how to do it, then you’ve come to the right place!

The term sight reading refers to the ability to read and sing a piece of written sheet music at first sight, without having seen it or rehearsed it before. I know this may sound scary but it’s really not as difficult as you might think. Many singers can sing "by ear", which means they can sing what they hear and they learn songs by listening to them. But if you want to join a choir, a chorus, or a band, or want to perform as a classical singer, then you may be asked to sight read some music so it would really be to your advantage to learn how to do it. A good sight reader can also learn songs faster. So if your choir is handing out solos, learning to sight read music is not only fun but it can also be to your advantage. Any music teacher can teach you how to read music but not many of them can teach you how to sight read and sing a piece of music you have never seen before. Being someone who naturally learns songs by ear, I had to teach myself how to sight read, so that I could join the choir at my church. Here is an easy method I developed for sight reading that has helped place me in numerous choirs and allowed the opportunity for me to sing solos, duets, quartets, and more, simply because I was able to sight read a sheet of music.

Step 1:

In order to sight read, you first need to learn the basics for how to read music. Again this is not very difficult and you can learn to read music on any number of websites or by watching videos on You Tube. For this exercise, we are going to assume that you know the basics. Basically, a staff (or row) of music consists of 5 lines, with 4 spaces between them. Songs are written in either Treble Clef or Bass Cleff. For this exercise, we will refer to the Treble clef.

The notes on the lines are:

E G B D and F (To remember these notes, you can make up a sentence, such as: "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" – these are the letters reading from the bottom – upward).       The spaces between these lines are: E C A F (Notice that these letters spell "FACE" if written from the bottom-upward)

Step 2:

The second step in learning how to sight read is knowing how to sing a scale – Do, Ra, Mi, Fa, So, La Ti, Do A scale is made up of 1 octave; which is the same as singing 8 consecutive notes in order. For example: from C to C; from A to A, from B to B, etc. Each one of these represents an octave.

Step 3:

To help you sight read faster and easier, it really helps to find your natural singing range and your comfort zone and know what notes they are made up of. Start off by singing a note and saying "Do". Now sing a scale (Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do) Do not try to sing really high or really low. Just try to sing the easiest, most comfortable notes for you – the notes you sing will probably be close to your regular talking voice. Now you need to find out what the names of notes are that you just sang. To do this, you will need a pitch pipe, a musical instrument like a piano or keyboard, or you can listen and compare yourself to the notes sung by Lisa Smith in Lesson 2 of our FREE Singing Lessons series (click here to join now!). Sing your note "Do" again and find the same note on your instrument or with Lisa. Did you find out what the name of the note is that you sang? When I did this exercise, I discovered that my natural singing range is in the key of D. When I sang an octave in my natural, comfortable range and then figured out which notes I was actually singing, here’s what I discovered. I sang: Do – D Re – E Mi – F Fa – G So – A La – B Ti – C Do – D Knowing your natural singing range is critical to sight reading. Having done this exercise, I now know that I can sing a D note without even hearing it because it is the note that is most natural and easiest for me to sing. Get familiar with your natural comfort range. Sing it over and over again.

Step 4:

This is our final step in learning to sight read a sheet of music. Now that you know what your natural notes are, it will be very easy for you to look at a sheet of music and sing along. First, find your natural note on the music sheet. (For me, I would be looking for a D note; the lower Do note is located in the space just below the E note on the bottom line of the treble clef.) Because I know how to sing the D note, as well as sing a scale from my D note (Do, Re, Mi, etc.) I can now start at the D note on the sheet of music, and work my way up and down the staff, finding and singing the notes on the printed on the sheet. If you do this a couple of times out load, you should have the melody of the music in my head and you will know how the song is supposed to sound, so you can sing along with the choir. Don’t be afraid to try this yourself to see how it works for you. Learning to sight read music will expand your versatility, make you more valuable in a choir, and can help you land those leads and solos you’ve been wanting. Try it today!

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