Last week I wrote about how to avoid getting caught in your chest voice by learning to identify tension sooner than you used to, using an octave scale down, then up. This week is about keeping a fuller, stronger voice, but without yelling. Yelling is an unpleasant, strained, tense way of making loud […]
You probably know how it feels – you’re singing higher and higher, and your throat is getting tighter and tighter, and you feel like you’re going to break unless you push harder and harder to hold it all together. You wish you could figure out how to sing in your chest voice without straining. But […]
How long do YOU do vocal warmups – ten minutes? Twenty minutes? How long do you think OTHER singers like you need? A half hour? An hour? Try two hours. I take occasional voice lessons from Jesse Nemitz, associate at the Brett Manning Studios in Nashville. He’s guiding me toward a new technique which […]
I used to work as a waterski coach. I coached all levels of skiers, from absolute beginners to competitive tournament skiers. Guess who tended to learn and improve faster? The beginners, of course. Beginners tend to have fewer bad habits to undo. Beginners know they don’t know much. Beginners listen and try new things. Experts […]
Want to make a leap forward and sing better fast? Sometimes it helps to just go back to basics! I had a fabulous voice lesson last week. I brought my teacher the song “Use Me” by Bill Withers. It has one note that jumps up high – not that high, really, and I can hit […]
In high school, I was in track and cross country. I ran the 400, 4×400, 800, and sometimes even the 100m sprint. Do you think I warmed up with some jogging, stretches, and light running before racing as fast as possible down the track, or before taking off on a three-mile race over scrubby, rocky […]
You’ve done the experiments in Part 1, right? Hopefully you found that each day you returned to this exercise, you found a little more clarity (less breathiness) in your voice. Now it’s time to make it easier, and better sounding. 1) Say the word “sing” and hold out the “ng” part, so that the back […]
Those of you who know me personally, know how I can get carried away with trying to accomplish too many things at once. And I know that some of you are the same way. We are the kind of people who get so obsessed with making progress, that we don’t make enough time for rest. […]
Everyone seems to want to sing high notes. You probably have a lot more unused high range than unused low range, but it’s a little trickier for some people to access that high range than to access the low range. One reason it is tricky is because there are a lot of different ways to […]
For most people, the low end of their vocal range is the range they’re most comfortable in. This is mainly because we constantly talk in the low end of our vocal range! But you may be able to access yet a few more notes on the low end of your vocal range than you currently […]
