Singing with resonance

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