The 3 Essentials to Better Singing

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN MOVED TO OUR NEW WEBSITE. GO READ IT HERE.

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Do you wish you knew what to do when your voice isn't behaving? 🤷🏼‍♀️⁠

My wish for you, as a singer OR a speaker, is for you to be smart about your voice, so that when it isn't working quite the way you want it to, you can figure out what to do for yourself.⁠

I want to help you do just that.

In this episode of VoiceTalk you'll learn:

1. What 3 systems need to be in balance.

2. Why this will improve your voice.

3. How to work on each. 

Understanding this will help you know what to adjust for your voice to sound and feel it’s best.

There are three systems that have to work together for the voice to sound its best, and if one or more isn’t functioning optimally, it will likely throw the rest of them off, too.

We have the RESPIRATION, PHONATION, and the RESONANCE.

Respiration is the breath. It’s like the gas in your car. It gives the energy needed to run the motor.

Phonation is the vibration of the vocal folds (fancy for vocal cords). This is what creates the sound wave. If we keep on with the car analogy, it’s the motor.

Resonance is the filtering that happens in the vocal tract, which is the space from your vocal cords to the tip of your lips. You can think of it almost as a resonating tube. In the car analogy, it is the type of car you drive. We all have unique sounding voices because no two resonating tracts are shaped exactly the same.

“When the breath, the vocal cords, and your resonators all work together, that’s what gives us a feeling of stability when we’re singing.”

— Annie Little

These systems are all interdependent on each other.

The Breath

When you breath you send air up to the vocal folds which are vibrating by opening and closing super fast. When you sing an A 440, which is the pitch a violin tunes to when you see an orchestra tuning, your vocal folds open and close 440 times a second. The higher you sing, the faster they vibrate. The lower you sing, the slower they vibrate.

When the vocal folds close they are compressing these air molecules which are like opposing ends of magnets. They like to be a certain distance from each other. These compressed air molecules build up energy and when they are released they create a sound wave.

The Vibration

Sound waves are actually made up of multiple pitches stacked on top of each other. Those pitches are called harmonics, and our ear blends them together so it sounds like one note. All of those different harmonics are what get formed and filtered when they pass through and resonate in the vocal tract.

We want the sound wave to be balanced, so that there is enough information to be filtered when it’s resonating.

If the vocal folds are too pressed together or aren’t coming together enough, that will cause the sound wave to be out of balance. If the sound wave is out of balance, and there is not enough energy in the high frequencies, then voice will sound dull. If the sound wave doesn’t have enough energy in the low frequencies, then it will sound shrill or steely.

The Resonance

This sound wave is filtered by your resonating tract, which is your throat, mouth, and occasionally the nasal cavity, if you are going for a more nasal sound. (Most of the time we don’t want a nasal sound!) We want the sound wave to be balanced because the resonating tract can only boost or reduce the different harmonics that are present.

The resonating tract is primarily controlled by vowels. When it’s all working together nicely, you get a really nice “ping” to your voice, and it sounds good because you are boosting or reducing the parts of the sound wave to get the color or tone you want.

When it all works well, there is then a feedback of energy to the vocal folds that creates a back pressure and this is when singing feels really good and easy!

That means the air needs to be the right amount and be flowing nice and evenly, and the vocal folds need to be working optimally so they create a balanced sound wave, and then the vowels need to be optimized to filter the sound wave.

Let me know if you found this helpful in the comments!

Using Singing for Self-Care

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN UPDATED AND MOVED TO OUR NEW WEBSITE. GO READ IT HERE.

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What if the goal of singing was actually to FEEL GOOD, instead of SOUND GOOD???

Explore the possibility of this in a conversation and mini-training in this episode of VoiceTalk, where Allie Tyler of The Whole Voice and I explore SINGING as self-care.

“I love singing. Period. And I want to do this because it feels good not because I need to be a singer.”

— Allie Tyler

Allie is one of those people who is like a ray of sunshine when you are in her presence. She will give you all the good feels, I'm not kidding.

I know for myself, there have been times when I would be so down about my voice, that I would not even want to use it because I was so frustrated.

What if we really could turn those negative emotions into something that would actually make us feel better??

Allie is a vocalist, songwriter, and the voice empowerment coach behind The Whole Voice, which focuses on the mind, body, soul aspects of both singing and self-care. She has her master's degree in vocal arts and has been teaching for the last 11 years. Allie is on a melody making mission to elevate human expression.

You can follow her on Instagram HERE.

Give the melody mantra exercise a try and let me know how it FEELS!

Top Tips for Successful Online "Skype" Lessons

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN UPDATED AND MOVED TO OUR NEW WEBSITE. GO READ IT HERE.

DO ONLINE VOICE LESSONS REALLY WORK? THE SHORT ANSWER: ABSOLUTELY.

We are so lucky in this day and age to be able to learn a huge variety of skills via the internet, and singing is one of them.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, singers often had the choice of whether they wanted to go to an in-person lesson or take it online. Now, many teachers don’t yet even have in-person lessons as an option, and some have said they aren’t going back to in-person lessons.

Before the pandemic, I insisted on driving an hour each way to go have an in-person lesson, and I did it despite the issues I would often have.

I’ll admit, at first, I was skeptical of online voice lessons.

Finally, there was a day when I just didn’t have the time to make the drive, and I was blown away at how good my online lesson was.

In many ways, it felt even more effective than being in person. I was more focused, not frazzled from traffic, I had all of my materials organized and ready, and it was all in the comfort of my own home. It felt easy.

Currently, I teach ALL of my students online. Most of them I’ve never even met in person.

Online voice lessons give people access to the kind of teachers they seek no matter where they live. They have the opportunity to study with the best and most highly skilled teachers in the world.

online lesson downsides (and solutions)

The only real downside I have find with online lessons (aside from the occasional unstable internet connection), is that there is a bit of lag time with the sound of the piano and the student singing, so as a teacher, I’m unable to accompany you because of that.

So, the workaround is that I will play the exercise pattern for you, and then you’ll sing it back a’cappella (that’s Italian for “without instrumental accompaniment”).

For song application, you’ll have a device on your end to play your accompaniment track so that you have something to sing along to during that portion of the lesson.

I also have recordings of the scale patterns so you can practice and learn them before your lesson. This makes singing the scales a’cappella much easier during your lessons.

tips to help you get the most out of your online lessons!

1. Make sure you have a GOOD internet connection. I like to plug directly into my modem via an ethernet connection so that there won’t be any wifi interference, but with a good fast connection, even if you don’t plug straight in, you should be okay. A public connection is not going to be as fast as your connection at home, so keep that in mind.

2. Find a quiet, safe space to have your lesson. You don’t want people walking through to get a snack from the kitchen while you’re in your lesson. Finding a bedroom or office where you can close the door is most ideal and it will also help with external noise.

3. Turn off your phone or place it on “do not disturb” mode.  Ringing, dings and buzzing are quite distracting during a lesson. Close any other apps and silence notifications incoming calls so you don’t get disturbed. They’ll still be there after your lesson :)  

4. Prepare your sheet music, lyrics, and tracks.  I recommend having them printed out on paper and organized in a binder so that you can make notes of vowel adjustments, breaths, or dynamics. Have them out and ready so you aren’t taking valuable lesson time to get them set up. 

5. Use a separate device for lyrics and music.  Please DON’T try to read your lyrics or music off the same device you are using for our lesson. If you do, especially if you’re using a phone or tablet, then I usually can’t see you anymore.

6. Use a different device for your song tracks. If you are using a laptop or computer for your lesson, then you could have a phone or ipad to play your tracks. This way it doesn’t interfere with the sound of your voice going into the device.

7. Check your device power before you start.  Make sure your device or computer is plugged into power or starting with a full battery. Nothing worse than your phone or computer dying in the middle of a lesson and missing part of it to run off and get a charger.

8. Have your water ready! Have water within reaching distance, so you don’t have to run off for that either! Bonus points if you also have a straw we can use during your lesson :)

9. Check your angles. Make sure I can see you clearly and from a good angle. Prop your phone up on a bookshelf if need be. If you’re using your computer and can’t get your head in frame without angling the screen way up, then just step back slightly so there is a bit more distance between you and the lens. Keep in mind what else in your room might be visible in the frame too.

10. Sitting is an option. You can choose to sit for your lesson, but imagine that you are standing from your “sit bones”. That lifted posture will help keep you breathing optimally for your singing.

11. Prepare your mindset to sing. Just like you would for an in person lesson, make sure you are fully present when your lesson starts. Because you are in the comfort of your own home instead of someone else’s studio it can be easy to come less prepared or in the mindset to work. Remember, you only get as much out of your lesson as you put into it. 

which platform to use as a teacher/Student:

There are many online video chat platforms out there, but the most common for voice lessons seem to be Zoom and Skype. I used Zoom for a very long time, but have recently switched to Skype for convenience. Ultimately it’s up to you. Here are the pros and cons for both platforms.

SKYPE

Skype Pros:

• You can use a free account.

• You don’t need any special audio settings, and it sounds good.

• You can record the lesson as a video and it can be downloaded from the chat window for 30 days.

Skype Cons:

• You can’t pause the recording. If you stop it, Skype will create a new separate video file.

• Skype does not create a separate video file. Scroll down to Pro Tips to learn how to extract the audio.

ZOOM

Zoom Pros:

• It’s free to sign up.

• It’s easy to record your lesson or enable recording for the student on their end.

• It gives both a video and a separate audio file. That way neither the teacher or the student has to horse around with extracting audio from video if the student wants to save the audio file on their phone.

Zoom Cons:

• I had the free version, so I used to save it into a Dropbox folder, which I would then share with the student, so that they would have access to all of their lessons. This created more steps for me as the teacher.

• You have to have the student set their audio settings so that Zoom isn’t trying to “suppress background noise”. Otherwise it will mute the singer on sustained notes or semi-occluded exercises.

• If the student is on an iPad, they CANNOT change the audio settings, so they will sometimes sound muted. I have tried to do it from the iPad settings and from Zoom, and I have yet to figure it out. Have the student get closer to the mic.

Pro Tips

Creating an audio file from your Skype video recording:

1. Download the video file from the chat window to your computer.

2. For Mac users:

   1. Open the file in Quicktime.

   2. Go to File > Export > Audio

3. For Windows users: Use a media player like VLC Media Player (free, open source).

   1. Open VLC.

   2. Go to Media > Convert/Save.

   3. When you click Convert/Save, it opens a dialog box where in you can select the video file which you need to convert to MP3.

Optimizing Audio for Zoom:

This is important! If you are running Zoom from a desktop or a laptop, follow these steps before your lesson.

1. Go to Zoom preferences and find “Audio”

2. Scroll down to

3. In Advance settings DISABLE (or set to the lowest setting) both of these options:

   • Suppress Persistent Background Noise

   • Suppress Intermittent Background Noise

4. You can check the box where it says “Show in-meeting options to “Enable Original Sound” from microphone”. You’ll leave that ON.

See video below for an example.

optional Purchase:

If you really want your teacher to hear all the tiny nuances in your voice, any microphone will be an improvement to sound going straight into your phone or computer.

• Here are a couple of reasonably priced USB mics:

  • CAD U37 ($59)

  • SHURE MV51 ($149)

For more equipment recommendations, visit my Recommendation Page!

Let me know if you have any questions about any of this! I want to help you have the most successful online voice lessons possible. Also, if you have your own tips that I haven’t included here, I’d love to hear about them. Share in the comments or send me an email!

Big thank you to Alida of Alida Vocal Studio in Vancouver, CANADA for helping me with my online demo video!

NPR: From Upspeak To Vocal Fry: Are We 'Policing' Young Women's Voices?

Fascinating interview on Fresh Air about women's voices and how we are perceived because of they way we speak.  I personally like the idea of not being imprisoned by my voice.  In other words, I like having a choice in how I speak and that I don't just speak a certain way by default or because I don't know any other way.  Vocal training gives us choices.  I know for myself that working on my singing voice has improved my speaking voice and vice versus.  And, maybe it's not about controlling the way other people perceive us, but more that we have some choice in the way we feel about how our own voices.