Sing Like an Angel (Soft and Beautiful)

It’s relatively easy to have a full sound when singing loud. But what happens when we need to sing a phrase softly? In most cases the voice becomes more or less “airy”, to the point of losing completely its identity. You can barely recognize who is singing anymore!

Why does this happen? The way most untrained singers sing softly, is by becoming somewhat passive: they stop supporting the breath, and as a consequence the placement is gone and the pitch drops. They don’t realize that when you sing softly, the same (if not more) amount of energy is necessary to keep the sound full and the voice placed correctly.

My wife and I direct a choir together. She is the conductor, while I focus more on warm-ups and vocal training of our singers. Last month our community hosted an international event, and the choir was scheduled to perform some music. Most of the songs were very deep and powerful, but rather inward, with very few loud passages. During the warm-ups I emphasized a lot the importance of keeping the sound full while singing softly, and I came up with an exercise that proved effective:

1. Choose a note in a comfortable area of your range

·      Sing that note at a regular volume (not too soft, not too loud), and hold it for a few seconds.

·       As you hold it, relax your throat into a more and more comfortable position, but make sure to keep the volume steady. You’ll notice that, in order to do that, you have to very actively engage your diaphragm and belly muscles.

2. Now sing the same note

·       Start at the same volume as before

·       Relax the throat and make sure to engage your diaphragm and abdomen as much as before

·       Now go gradually softer in volume, but keep your abdominal area totally engaged, to ensure breath support

·       Hold the placement in the same spot in your throat. If you let your placement “fall back”, you will notice your sound become airy, which is what we’re trying to avoid.

If this is done correctly, your sound shouldn’t change while you sing softer and softer. I find it helpful to visualize where my voice is placed, and to mentally hold it there when I sing softer.

When you’ve mastered this technique, you will be able to go from loud to soft and back to loud without losing anything of your sound. You can end a song fading out to zero, thus creating a sense of suspense and upliftment. You will simply have many more expressive tools at your disposal, to make your singing richer and more inspiring. Something to look forward to!

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For more details about Voice Lessons Online and to request a FREE introductory voice lesson go to: www.vocalbliss.net

Falsetto vs. Head Voice

A question I’m often asked is “What is the difference between falsetto and head voice?” As far as how they sound, there’s a world of difference! Falsetto voice is usually thin, often breathy, and has a different timbre from the “full voice.” The head voice is rich, resonant, powerful, and when the singer has mastered its technique, you cannot tell it apart from the chest voice, except, obviously, from the frequency (being the head voice higher in pitch than the chest voice).

However, the way that singing in the head voice (or register) feels in your throat is a lot more similar to falsetto than to chest voice. The main difference is that in falsetto your throat is more closed, your larynx is usually positioned higher. Also, the vocal cords are not coming together, but are open and vibrating only on the edges, thus creating a thin, airy sound.
In the head voice the throat is open and expanded (although relaxed), the larynx is in a lower position, and the vocal cords are closed together. As you go higher in the range, they also thin out and “zip up”, so that less and less portion of them actually vibrate. Sort of like a guitar string getting fretted to make the sound progressively higher.

Now, this beautiful “anatomic” explanation will maybe intrigue your intellect (or totally confuse you!), but it won’t give you an experience of what I’m talking about.

If you want a practical experience of falsetto vs. head voice, watch this video.


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Expand Your Throat – Open Your Heart (Part 2)

By Ramesha Nani

Have you ever tried to play a string instrument such as the guitar, while covering the hole in the sounding board? The tone becomes soft and weak: no resonance, no richness, just a dry and uninteresting sound. Similarly, when you sing with your heart closed, your singing will lack resonant heart qualities and you’ll be unable to convey true feeling. You may try to “fake it” by making your performance more emotional, but the audience will be able to tell the difference. People relate to authentic feeling. They may be momentarily swept up in the drama of your emotionalism, but they’ll leave the performance feeling empty (and empty-hearted).

Music, in order to truly benefit us, has to resonate with the heart. If the heart is closed, the voice will tend to be tight, and vice versa. Learning how to relax and expand the throat and how to place your voice correctly will assist you in opening your heart, which will allow you to express more of who you truly are.

A constricted voice can be an indication that a person is fixed in old habits and resistant to change. When learning correct voice placement (including learning to open your throat) you go through different stages. At the beginning, you won’t necessarily understand the point behind everything your voice teacher asks you to do, which requires you to have a certain amount of faith in the teacher. Sometimes, in fact, after a few weeks of training, you may end up sounding worse than when you started! Why? Because the teacher’s job is to help you get rid of bad habits, tendencies you must unlearn before you can learn the correct way, and this leaves you temporarily betwixt and between—gone is the old but you don’t yet know how to do the new!

In my experience it’s often more challenging to teach a student who’s been singing for many years than it is a beginner. The more advanced singer may be attached to the way he does things, which makes it hard to let go of old, less effective ways of singing. Or maybe he simply doesn’t trust his teacher enough to take that necessary leap of faith. BUT—as soon as the student becomes willing to change, the learning process becomes smoother and faster and, ultimately, much more satisfying.

People who keep their hearts and minds open and receptive, who are easy-going and harmonious, will tend to have an easier time letting go and making the shift to a new way of doing things. In their eagerness to learn, they manage to remain free of tension; to avoid excessive expectation and pride; and to operate with no (or very little) ego.

So, what’s my point? Joyfully embrace the process of learning new vocal techniques. Relax and expand your throat and then focus on singing from your heart. As you increase the resonance and heart quality in your voice, your singing and spoken words will become filled with healing vibrations and you will be a blessing to others. And because, as Paramhansa Yogananda, the great Indian master, often said*: “The instrument is blessed by that which flows through it,” you will be blessed as a result.

The more you dedicate yourself to using your voice consciously, the more Inspiration and Power will flow through you every time you sing or speak, making you a channel for a higher Consciousness.

For more details about Voice Lessons Online and to request a FREE introductory voice lesson go to: http://vocalbliss.net

Expand Your Throat – Open Your Heart (Part 1)

By Ramesha Nani

Something almost every singer has to work on is learning to sing with an expanded throat. I’m not talking about forcing your throat open, as if you were yawning, but a subtler, more gradual process of deeper and deeper relaxation that leads to you naturally singing with your throat open.

In working with my students on this I have noticed that expanding the throat can go hand in hand with opening the heart. When we sing with an open throat our sound is deeper, more resonant, and richer in overtones. Also, the sense of putting out a lot of “effort” decreases dramatically, and singing feels easier and more comfortable. Definitely a desirable situation!

But I believe that, beyond that, as singers work on expanding their throat and increasing their resonance, they can begin to experience more openness to understanding and accepting other people’s reality; more compassion; a greater awareness of others’ needs; and—ultimately—more empathy.

As these qualities unfold they become much better performers, because what else is a good singer if not someone who’s able to tune into the audience’s needs and let the healing power of music flow through him or her to reach the listener?

I’ll explore this more deeply in my next newsletter, but in the meantime I invite you to reflect on someone you know who has a particularly resonant singing and/or speaking voice, and ask yourself whether they seem like an open-hearted person…and why.

A lot to ponder this month….

For more details about Voice Lessons Online and to request a FREE introductory voice lesson go to: http://vocalbliss.net

More Is Not (Always) Better

by Ramesha Nani

Have you ever had the experience of singing in a choir, or any vocal ensemble, and it feels like everyone around you is singing much louder than you are? Like, no matter how hard you “push” you can hardly hear your own voice? Indeed, that is the common response—to push your voice out, trying to get louder. But let’s stop and ask ourselves: does that really work??

One of the surprising things you learn with serious vocal training is that the more you push your voice, the less it will be heard from a distance. To truly project your voice so that it really carries, you must place it correctly and be able to give it enough resonance by keeping your throat expanded—in a relaxed way.

Ironically, when you hear your own voice very loudly it usually means that you’re not projecting it at all. You’re forcing it out by squeezing your throat, and that blocks the sound from projecting and quickly moving away from you. That’s why it sounds so loud to your ears!

The opposite is also true: when you place your voice correctly (with a relaxed and expanded throat), and therefore project your sound out, it doesn’t seem as loud to you because the sound is rapidly traveling away from you.

This technique was developed in times when microphones didn’t exist and singers had to come up with “tricks” to be able to be heard over large orchestras, without any amplification. Think of operas by Giacomo Puccini, where the orchestra gets incredibly loud at times and yet you can still hear the soloist’s voice soaring over the top of it.

I remember being at a karaoke place when the karaoke guy invited a trained alto to sing a song. At first she tried to sing in the microphone and that was impossibly loud: the speakers were distorting the sound big time. Then she tried without the mic. The place was relatively small, so even without a microphone her voice was still overwhelmingly loud! She was trained in the art of projecting her voice and making it resonant.

Of course, this is an extreme case; very few of us need to worry about being “too loud”. Quite the opposite! Almost all of us would benefit from learning to stay relaxed—keeping our throats round and expanded, remaining completely free of stress and strain, and powerfully projecting our voices out to the world.

Here's avideo that will show you a simple exercise to help you relax your throat and improve your vocal placement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70GTeKIkEZc&feature=player_embedded

For more details about Vocal Bliss and to request a FREE introductory voice lesson go to: http://www.vocalbliss.net/

Greatest Results with the Least Effort
By Fabio (Ramesha) Nani

It’s an interesting fact that when babies are born they’re able to use their voice correctly. They can (definitely!) be heard from afar; they cry with their mouth wide open, the tongue flat and relaxed; they automatically use their vocal apparatus correctly.

So, what happens when we grow up? Bad habits, physical and emotional tension, or simple laziness, cause us to use our voice unnaturally. We start to believe that in order to produce a loud sound, we have to push our voice.

Another interesting fact, however, is that the more you push your voice when you sing, the more it loses the ability to be heard from a distance. It might sound louder to you, but that’s only because, instead of projecting out to the farthest listener in the room, the sound waves come to a stop near you!

So what to do?

Instead of trying to be loud, relax your throat and sing more softly. Pronouncing the vowels as clearly as you can will help you place your voice correctly and create a fuller sound. If you don’t pronounce the vowels clearly enough your sound will be “breathy”. Good placement is what makes your voice clearly audible from afar, whereas pushing your voice only puts your vocal cords under useless (and potentially harmful) stress. You can compare pushing the voice to turning up the volume of a radio that’s not perfectly tuned to a radio station, hoping to get rid of the static. It won’t work. First, get rid of the static by tuning the radio to the station and then you can turn up the volume.

For more details about Vocal Bliss and to request a FREE introductory voice lesson go to:
http://vocalbliss.net

Vibrato

by Fabio (Ramesha) Nani

Vibrato is a powerful means of expression. Used in the right way, it can enrich and embellish even the voice , even a mediocre one. If misused it can ruin even the most beautiful voice.

Before we get into the discussion of how to develop a good vibrato, I want to mention that the definition of a “beautiful” vibrato varies, depending on the taste of the singer as well as the style of the time period they live in.

Many singers think that you can’t learn vibrato.They reason that you should follow the natural inclinations of your voice. I think this is only partly true. The vast majority of singers I’ve met who didn’t work on their vibrato, relying only on their “natural inclinations”, sounded like their vibrato was out of control. Either it was too fast (sounding a bit like a sheep) or too slow and wide, to the point where you couldn’t tell what note they were singing.
An uncultivated vibrato usually sounds irregular, giving the listener a sense of instability in the sound.

Before you start working on your vibrato I suggest making sure that you sing with relaxation. (Refer to my previous blog post “Singing Made Easy”, November 10, 2009). If your throat is tense your vibrato will tend to be narrow and fast, making your voice sound nervous and shaky.

How To Proceed

Pick any note in your low range that you can sing comfortably. Hold it for a few seconds, and as you hold it, shift back and forth to the note a whole step higher. For example, if you’re singing a C, move from C to D and back several times: C D C D C… Do it slowly enough that you can count the number of oscillations (sound waves) you make. Make sure that both notes are on pitch. Gradually increase the speed of the oscillation. If the oscillations become irregular, slow them down again. The purpose is to train your voice to move quickly and evenly between the two notes in a steady rhythm.

Once you feel comfortable with the process, you can decrease the width of the oscillation, according to your taste. There are no rules as to how fast or wide vibrato should be. It’s entirely up to you.

Repeat the same process on different notes using different vowels.



For more details about Voice Lessons Online and to request a FREE introductory voice lesson go to:
http://musicandconsciousness.com/voicelessons.html