A Mini lesson about improving your voice.

allthumbs · #1 April 24th, 2008

A small lesson I wrote. Sharing tips from my voice teacher. They helped me a lot. I hope Some of the beginning singers here will also find them useful.
A Mini Voice Lesson. Let's sing about talking.

Doug · #2 April 24th, 2008

Thanks for posting this Marty. Lots of good info.

thanks,
Doug

eddiez152 · #3 April 24th, 2008

Good stuff.

knight46 · #4 April 28th, 2008

Very good lesson AT, that was especially good about pushing through the hard spots. It is much harder to sing soft than loud, it takes more breath control, so to sing out and then soften the sound is generally easier and gets better tone.

starsailor · #5 April 28th, 2008

Great post Allthumbs

Nutty · #6 April 29th, 2008

That's great allthumbs.

I have a couple of others I can add. I took voice lessons a while ago before I got sick. I should remember them when I sing, but I always forget.

One which surprised me was whether to "focus up or down". For example, when I wanted to reach a high note, I thought if I stepped on my tippy toes, it would help me get there. It is actually the opposite. You think high for low notes and high notes, she said to picture yourself driving the note through the floor. It really does work. Hope that makes sense.

Another one was to pay attention to the punctuation when it comes to breathing. You should only breathe where there is a period, comma or semi colon. Surprisingly, it really makes a difference in the flow of the music.

Posture of course is a biggy.

Again, I'm aware of these tips; I just forget to apply them

I'm also reading "Singing for Dummies" so, they have some interesting tips as well that I can add on if anyone is interested.

Sing away!

Nutty

johnnydoxx · #7 April 29th, 2008

Allthumbs - very interesting lesson. Thanks for it. I'm working on my opera singer's belly every day.

Nutty - I'd like to see whatever other tips you find enlightening from the 'Dummies' book.

Johnny

Europa · #8 May 2nd, 2008

Interesting stuff thanks for sharing.

johnnydoxx · #9 May 6th, 2008

I took this opportunity to add to this thread with some of my thoughts from my experience as a singer.

I’m not a voice teacher, but I do have some hints about singing I’d like to share. I concentrate on these, especially while recording. I also try to practice them in the manner that’s best, but confess I don’t always concentrate that much when practicing.

The attached audio gives some examples of the concepts below.

#1. ‘Attack’ the first note of each phrase.
I don’t know if ‘attack’ is the best word, I don’t mean make it louder. I mean sing the correct tone for the entire length of the phrase’s first note, most importantly its first mini-second.
It is common for people to slur around until they arrive at the correct tone somewhere during that note.
One way to avoid the slur is to take a breath before the phrase and sort of ‘pre-form’ your mouth for that first note, and think ahead about what you want it to sound like.
Slurring within a note is OK for an occasional effect, but sounds tedious if it happens for each phrase in the song.

#2. Sing the ‘little’ notes.
Often the little notes (the ones between the beats, usually) get ‘uttered’ instead of sung. It sounds a lot better if all the notes are sung.
For example, the lower case letters are often just (almost) spoken: ‘aMAZin GRACE how SWEET the SOUND’.
Again, for occasional effect it’s OK to speak some words.

#3. Hold the last note of a phrase.
By ‘hold’ I mean keep it on tone and don’t chop it off too early. Sometimes it sounds good to slur a bit down and up in keeping the note, instead of holding it precisely on tone, but again that is better occasionally.

I hope these hints will be useful to your singing technique.

eddiez152 · #10 May 6th, 2008

Johnny,
Thats a super writing.
allthumbs
mini voice lesson is great info too.

knight46 · #11 May 6th, 2008

Johnny,
Great post...
The lesson begun by AT and the contributions by so many are a prime example of why this forum is go great. Nice job all...

eddiez152 · #12 May 6th, 2008

Johnny,
That was a great lesson, a prime example of your attention to detail
in the vocal awareness. Thank you for those truly fine examples and
pointing to the differences of better vocal creation.

solidwalnut · #13 May 6th, 2008

Thanks very much, AT. This is really a goodly amount of info on voice. The example of the adam's apple made me think (although, check this out. This example will work for a guy, but women don't have adam's apples. What do they do?? Just something I hadn't thought about until now).

You make me want to chime in on my experiences. Maybe later. Thanks for sharing!

Steve

solidwalnut · #14 May 6th, 2008

Interesting re: the adam's apple trick. I was trying it and realized a couple of things.

My first reaction was that I could feel the adam's apple rise when I progressively reached for higher notes, and vice-versa. Then I realized that when I conciously sang with the full-throat voice that my adam's apple didn't move hardly at all.

So I realized that when I first tried it, I was singing in my 'head voice'. When I use my 'head voice', the adam's apple acts as the catalyst to restrict the throat opening to raise the pitch. When I'm singing in my full 'chest voice', the adam's apple doesn't move much and isn't the catalyst. I can feel the opening of the back of my throat being more regulated by conscious muscle control.

Just a couple of observations...

6string · #15 May 6th, 2008

Thanks all for all the info.