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One of the first goals of any decent voice lesson is to increase the volume for any singer. Even with today's high-tech microphones, we still expect good singers to be able to project well into an audience without amplification. Not only is a powerful singer useful when no amplification is available, a singer with big pipes is also a sign that a singer is proficient in their instrument (assuming they can sing loud without tension).
However, as I tell all my students, our actual instrument is quite puny in terms of a tuba or guitar. Our vocal instrument, the larnyx and its vocal folds, is TINY! The instrument that produces all our sound, the vocal folds themselves, are smaller than the size of a nickel's edge. Needless to say, our vocal instrument is not meant to create a booming sound through pure strength. What we can do as singers, however, is enhance the resonating power of our instrument. You have probably heard most voice teachers say "Sing with your whole body!" While that piece of advice isn't particularly useful in terms of producing a sound, it is essentially correct: a singer who uses all of their resonance - expanding the chest cavity, opening your mouth and laryngeal space etc... - will create a magnificently loud sound without any stress on the instrument. There are lots of ways to develop resonance, but one of my favorites is a simple visualization technique that I learned from a colleague of mine, Kym Reeves at Clear Springs High School. Imagine your mouth is stuffed with really hot potato chips (why and how they got hot is a logical question, but just follow along for now!). Now imagine that you must do everything possible to prevent your mouth from smashing those chips. You will probably feel that your mouth and vocal tract is much more hollow and open than before. If you can maintain this sensation while you are singing, you will instantly have more resonance than before. There are more sophisticated and long-term techniques to produce greater resonance and amplification in one's voice, but I find this 'hot potato chip' visualization to be a remarkably quick way to demonstrate the open sensation needed to produce a loud sound. DWS I get this question a lot: What is vibrato? And is it a good thing for singing?
First, vibrato is a very natural thing for human voices to produce. Vibrato is essentially a wave in the pitch a human voice produces. That wave can be fast or slow, wide or thin, but everyone produces vibrato to a certain degree. Vibrato is so natural to singing that instrumentalists are taught from an early stage to produce vibrato so their instruments 'sing!' Even if you cannot hear vibrato from a singer, it is there - it just happens that the vibrato is so slow or thin that our ears have a hard time picking up on it. Whether vibrato is desirable or not is entirely dependent on the style of music that you sing. Even the quality of vibrato (how fast, slow, wide etc...) changes from genre to genre. In opera, the preferred vibrato is noticeably faster than a country singer. But both genres do use vibrato. When it comes to training vibrato, however, you have to be very careful. If you try to produce vibrato unnaturally, the sound that comes out is typically very forced and unpleasant to listen to. Unnatural vibrato can actually damage your voice! Therefore, a good voice teacher trains vibrato by working on elements that will allow your natural vibrato to emerge. Breath support and relaxing/releasing tension in your tongue and throat will allow the vibrato to emerge. One final note: For the vast majority of singers, vibrato is not produced naturally until you are 15 or older. For vibrato to emerge, your vocal instrument has to develop to a certain point before vibrato comes out when you sing. DWS I received this notice about a local competition. It looks legitimate and the show's star is REALLY, REALLY good. Please check it out and let me know if you would like to audition. Participants must be under 24 years old. The email I received is below.
Good morning, I am a casting producer on a new local PBS TV Show, with WUFT. This is a virtual show and the deadline is January 15, 2018. We found your information online and wanted to know if one of your students (under 24 y/o) are interested to audition for this show. While we cannot guarantee that your students will be picked, we truly believe that you should apply/fill out the form for the creative producers to consider. The show will star, the PBS national artist, Ethan Bortnick who will be advising and judging talent to see who will win. The winner will get to perform Live with Ethan on his concert. If you have any questions, please email me at”Talent@sunandskyentertainment.com". Below are some links and we wish you good luck! Audition Here: https://www.celebrationofmusic.com/audition About PBS - WUFT https://www.wuft.org/ About Ethan Bortnick https://ethanbortnick.com/bio I've taught singing lessons for high school age students for over nine years. With that much time and experience, I've changed how I teach lessons, especially regarding the Region Vocal Competition.
My first All-State singer, Mark M., was a Bass II. In addition to being a fine singer, he was a wonderful actor and VERY intelligent. What made him special as a singer, however, was his sightreading ability. He could read music and sing the pitches and rhythms accurately without any preparation. This was invaluable when he reached the Pre-Area and Area rounds of the vocal competition. Sight-singing counts as 20% to your total score. When the points separating 1st from 5th Chair is in the single-digits, EVERY point counts. Being able to sightread a perfect score can easily give you a few points to beat your competitors. For the first few years of my teaching, I didn't accurately value the importance of sight-singing. My rationale was two-fold: sight-singing does not improve your vocal tone or musicality, and I personally struggled with sight-reading in high school. My attitude was such: if I turned out okay, why would my students need to worry about sight-reading. This attitude was misguided, and not just because sight-singing helps you in the State Vocal Competition. The reality is that good sight-readers make better musicians. In addition to learning music at a much faster rate, sight-singing also improves your musicality, as you learn to anticipate harmonic changes and melodic shapes. In my voice lessons now, I always try to include one sight-singing test. It's a bit like eating your broccoli instead of the chessecake: not many students like sightreading, but it sure is healthy for you. I've noticed my students are goign farther in competition, but they are also better musicians because of it. DWS For voice students and teachers, there are two types of lessons. The first is a 'vocal coaching.' In a vocal coaching, the goal is to have immediate improvement on a certain song. Say, for instance, you have an audition for "Sound of Music" in a month. You don't have the time to go through all the fine points of vocal technique; you just want to sound great on your audition song and get the part! That's vocal coaching in a nutshell; short-term, quick improvement on a certain piece, but not necessarily improvement overall as a singer.
Once you are an accomplished singer, there are even teachers who promote themselves as vocal coaches for specific genres. The best vocal coach I worked with was Tom Jaber at Rice University. He would be the first to tell you that he was not a voice teacher, though he was so smart he could help with technique too! But what he specialized in was operatic music; how it should sound, the style of a certain composer, and very critical language information. The second type of lesson is the 'voice lesson,' in which the goal is to help a student produce a better, more efficient way of singing. This sort of work takes time and progress is measured in weeks and months, not days. While certain short-term goals may be established to evaluate improvement, focus is more on the long-term results of practice. A great voice teacher is an expert in voice lessons. At the end of the day, you want a great teacher who makes singing easy. This takes time; if a person could be a singing sensation overnight, everyone would sound great! The reality is that developing a consistently pleasing tone that causes the singer no vocal stress takes years of work. I started voice lessons when I was in junior high. I continued them through high school, college, and graduate school. It wasn't until my second year of graduate school that I felt I finally understood my own instrument and how to sing well all the time. Think about that: I had taken lessons for ten years, easily, before I felt I was ready to call myself a professional singer. That's a lot of practicing! I had wonderful teachers, but no matter how you slice it, becoming a professional singer takes a lot of time and patience. DS I'm so proud of all my students who auditioned for Region. While always a challenging audition, having the after-effects of Hurricane Harvey made this audition cycle even more time-pressed! Results are posted here.
If you are in choir or have taken voice lessons, you have probably sung in multiple languages: English, Latin, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian etc...However, with almost no exception, the language that really trips people up is French. It sounds funny, looks nothing like it is pronounced, and even has these annoying nasal vowels; how on earth did a Western language come to sound so different from its peers?
The answer is a long class in French politics and history. If you like history, this blog is for you! In the early 1600s, Europe was in a state of turmoil. The old feudal order of lords was starting to be supplanted by larger political organizations - countries. France was the furthest along in this political evolution, and due to its immense military and diplomatic power, came to dominate Europe for a century or so. The French kings were convinced of the French monarchy's and culture superiority. In order to protect the uniqueness of French culture, the French kings took the extraordinary step to setup government institutions that would essentially regulate culture. There was a ministry of music, a ministry of theater, and yes, a ministry of French language! The goal was to codify and establish rules on how the French language was to be spoken and written. While languages in other European countries naturally evolved and absorbed new influences from surrounding countries, France attempted to "wall off" their culture in order to preserve the unique sound of French music and literature. What does this mean, practically, for a singer? Well, in French, there any many sounds that are just not found in other Western languages. French has nasal vowels and mixed vowels EVERYWHERE! In addition, words drop several letters at the end if a vowel is nasalized. Ending 'e's often become neutral "schwa's" while singing, but curiously enough, are not pronounced at all when you are speaking. Basically, singing in French is truly a unique experience that drives students insane! The saving grace is this; while very different in pronunciation, French language has very strict rules that once you get used to, you can predict how a word will sound with nearly 100% accuracy. In this way, French is the exact opposite of English; English has so many contradictory rules that unless you are fluent, learning English is very difficult. DS If you are a serious singer in the 8th-11th grades, I highly recommend you apply for the scholarship below. It is not a college scholarship. It is intended to pay for your artist education (voice lessons, concert attendance, college audition fees and travel etc...) Break a leg and let me know if you are applying and we will work on your application!  When I start voice lessons with a new student, one of the first questions I ask is "What do you want to achieve in the next year?" Almost without exception, one response is to sing high notes better and expand their vocal range.
Expanding your vocal range and improving high notes is more than a matter of repetition; you have to know how to practice to expand your range and sing high notes effortlessly. Singing high notes is essentially the Olympics of singing; it requires a tremendous amount of skill, talent, and practice to sing high notes without tension or visible stress. The first step is to diagnose the issue: what is preventing your high notes from coming out easily? There are several typical culprits and solutions available.
In summary, you can learn to sing high notes easily and with confidence. It just takes a lot of work and a good singing coach! DS This post is prompted by a recent event - District Auditions 2017. While most of my students did very well (results will be posted soon), I had two students who were greatly affected by stage fright and did not sing as well as they were capable of.
To fight stage fright, you have to understand both the physical and mental aspects of singing. Singing for an audience typically produces a "fight or flight instinct." The singer's heart rate increases, knees lock or wobble, palms gets sweaty etc...We have all been there! Dealing with the physical manifestations of stage fright is relatively easy. Once you know how you react, you can plan for it. Just the act of planning and anticipating your nerves reduces the gut reaction to singing in public. In voice lessons, we talk about how to approach some of these symptoms by breathing and stretching exercises, positive visualization and other techniques. The tricky, and life-long project, is the mental aspect of stage fright. Stage fright is ultimately rooted in a fear of rejection. I've never met who a singer who didn't care how an audience or judge would react to their singing. In fact, caring about how others' react is necessary to being a good singer; why would you put the hours upon hours of practice in if you didn't care if people enjoyed your singing? If we are really honest with ourselves, stage fright is a completely RATIONAL fear. Wanting to be accepted and liked for your singing is completely normal. In voice lessons, the goal is not to eliminate this social anxiety but redirect and calm it. Here's how we go about this:
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