Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi guys. Really nice to meet you. My name is Ben and
I studied music here in the UK at the
University of Oxford. I now live in London, and I work as a
teacher of quires, and I teach piano, and I work with singers
all around London. I wanted to take this opportunity to
do a class on how you might go about warming
up your voice before you go to a rehearsal
or a concert. It's so important that you are already so you don't
do any damage. And you are well-prepared for any singing opportunity
that comes up this class. I think it's suitable if
you're a member of a choir, but also if you are a
solo singer as well. My background is in
classical music. Classical vocal style is
that the training that I've had and the introduction
that I will give you today. So if you want a little bit more about how you warm
up your voice, then do stay tuned
for this class.
2. Posture and breath: So the first thing
to think about in terms of singing is the posture. Now, it's probably best if you are able to stand for this, if you will, when
you're standing, you want to be thinking
that your feet are shoulder width apart and your
knees are slightly soft. Don't lock your knees back. You can actually sit. You find that the UK, a lot of professional choir
singers remain seated. But they sit really
purposefully. So if you are seated, you can still do quite
a good vocal warm-up. Just have a think about how
you're seated, your posture, and then just give the shoulders
a few rolls backwards. In vocal warm-ups,
people often don't think about how the
body is feeling. It's so easy to just
go straight into singing loads of scales up
and down and lots of that. But actually, the
posture and how you hold yourself is
so very important. So you're imagining
you have a wire coming out the top of your head. And that's just
elevating you slightly. And give the shoulders
a nice roll backwards. That's really great. Now the first essence of
singing is the breath. The breath is so important
in everyday speech, we take lots of sort
of short breaths, but we never really fill
up fully with breadth. So I want you to
place your hands on your, on your stomach. I want you to firstly
get rid of all the air. So now I wonder if he felt that
sensation right at the end of the breath
when you let it all out, that the body immediately
wants to draw the bucket. And that's really important. Let's call it a splat breadth. Singers please lose
abdominal tension. So important if you've sung a really long phrase
in music that the body just immediately draws
the breadth back and try that again for me so we'll take
another breath out. Nice, It's quite
a nice sensation. Actually, if you if you're
doing a lot of work, you're under stress and you've got a really
calm the mind. It's a really good
exercise for that as well. I think singing and well-being
and mental health at all, so well-connected in
the bigger picture. So all these exercises
are really useful, right? We're going to focus now
on taking the breath in and then out for a
number of beats. So we're going to
start by taking the breath in for four and then on a launch for four. Okay, so let's take the breath in and then out
to keep it going. I'm breathing. Alpha 4234. Very good. So this
is just checking that the breadth is coming
out nice and evenly. What can happen is, excuse me, if you don't
take a good breath in, then you find that
you don't have enough sort of sustaining power for the voice
on the way out. So you're singing
will be very choppy. We want a nice long
flow of breath that we put the consonants and the vowels on top
of that airflow. Now practice breathing out
for a little bit longer. So we'll take the
breath in and then we'll go out for eight beats. Breathing in. Out for eight. Here we go. Too. Sure, keep going. Five, say I have an eight. Good One more breathing
in alpha 8235678. Really good. Yeah, impressive. So as you're taking breaths out, make sure they're
really powerful. Thing about the Tommy
is that you want it to, as you take the breath
in to expand and we're creating space for the
breadth down here. And I think when we're
just going about our daily business
talking during the day, we don't have the
opportunity to take those Fuller and deeper and
more enriching breaths.
3. First gentle sounds: So we thought a bit about the posture and we've released
a bit of tension there, and then we focused
on the breath. The next part of this is to
make the first vocal sounds. And I think sometimes people
can be guilty of diving straight into a nice
full singing voice. Actually start with
something gentle like a, like a hum, a closed mouth. Hmm, let me demonstrate. So just going up and down five notes is quite a
good starting point. Just gonna be on a closed mouth. Hmm, so we're gonna
go like that. Try it with me. Cool. So we're not focusing too much on
each individual note. If you're finding
you're going like this. Now, you want to link
all these snakes together so it's
like one long shape, if anything, you all my slide
between them a little bit. So you try three for good, really nice starting point. So the key is with the first
few sounds that you made, that they really gentle, you don't dive into
full rich singing. So what we'll do now, we'll just keep that home game, but we'll we'll work up
a little bit higher. Say We'll start here. 341 more over to you. Take a breath. Well done. Good as this gets higher, I want you to stay connected with the
idea of the breadth. And you remember that idea
of expanding down here, creating space for the breadth so that as you get higher up, those notes are still
sustained and nourished. Okay. What we don't want is as you get higher up
people, so again, shoulders coming up and
a very small breath, but keep the breath
low and rich. And you want to just keep re-energizing as we get higher up that we've
done a bit of humming. Let's open that up a bit onto some kind of more
open vowel shapes. Let's try v and var. So like this, we're
gonna go evolve, evolve, evolve the alternating V and
the var Over to you. Sweet. Little bit higher. And again, good breath. Well done. Well my time. And the last one. Well done there. Now,
we've never met. But if you're finding that
sounds a little bit higher, then that's absolutely fine. You could, you could
try your own range. You could start a
little bit lower, but the key is that
you're going up and down five nodes, d, d, d, d t, t, t, t, t is you're exploring
different parts of the voice. They're really good stuff.
4. Arpeggios to extend the range: That's great. We've looked
at a bit of posture. We've looked at, done
some breadth work. We started with
something very gentle, some humming just so that
everything can get warmed up. Let's just think a little
bit about releasing tension. So let's just give the jaw a little bit of
a massage like this. People talk about this idea that the mandibular
joint where the jaw connects and often
there can be a bit of tension there and then
the back of the neck. Giving yourself a little
bit around massage. Now what we're gonna
do, we're going to expand the range a little bit. And we're going to do
this on some arpeggios. So an arpeggio is like this. Quite nice. One I use with my students is I am on top of the world, right? Okay, So this I am on top
of the world's going up. Yeah, you try 0123. Now the real important
thing here is that you keep all of those notes
really connected. What we don't want
is why I'm really separate like with the five-note scales
we were doing earlier. We want to avoid them
being too jumpy, so really nice and connected. Now a little trick
in order to do that is to imagine
those vowels shapes, all having a are
shipped to them. So the words are, I am on top of the world, but the shapes are on top
or they're very taller than they are very reliant on that nice shape to keep them
all nice and connected. Let's, let's do that again. Look a little bit lower and
will slow it down a bit. I want you to be aware
of the shape that your, that your jaw is making them. Again. I am on top of the world. 123. The good breadth though, 123. Good breath in 123. Good. The one that can be
dangerous is the very top. The very highest note, I am on top and we close it. I am on top, almost becomes I am on top of the world and
the words change a bit. Singers are always doing this. They're modifying the vowels at the top of the voice in order that they can come out more
freely and more smoothly. Okay, let's go a
little bit higher. If this gets too high. Obviously, when you're
approaching saying you've got to be
really careful with the voice and protecting it. So if you do feel you're stretching for
these higher notes, you can always, I'm seeing it lowered down the octave and
push it that little bit low. Let's try one more. 23. Good Breath in 01. Final one.
5. Diction and text: Well done folks who've
done really well there. So we've spoken a
bit about posture, a bit about breathing. We've looked at
some gentle humming and we've expanded
the range at the top. The final section, I think we're going to look about diction, about words and about
enunciating the text, which is really,
really important. I've got a little fun exercise for getting everything moving. The first thing, well,
there's two elements. This, the first thing
I want you to do is make your face as small
as you possibly can. Call this raisin face. And then as big as again,
terrifying great pumpkin, pumpkin face to face and face, pumpkin face, raisin
face, pumpkin face. Now, you might go. Why is Ben asking me to do this? Okay. The answer to that is
that all of these muscles, everything here, the face, it, it's all part
of the instrument. The voice isn't just what's inside and it creates that it's not like we just have a
clarinet or a violin. Hear the voice. Is all of us that all important. And the more engaged you
can make all of this, the better you are
singing is going to be. I worked with a lot of singers and they'll hold the
music and they look very serious and those are the sound then comes
across as very serious. But if you can just
engage everything, brighten everything up,
then it really helps. So it's just good to be aware of using all of you as the
instrument as it were. Now this exercise
goes like this. It's a tongue twister. It goes many, many, many, many, many, many mama, mama, mama, say that. Many, many, many, many, many, many mama, mama
up one more time. Many, many, many, many, many, many mama, mama, mama. Yeah. I know you've
got that 100%, but just in case I'm going to
slow it down a bit, right. So it goes many, many Mar Monday,
Monday, March 1st bit. Try it. Many, many, many, many
mar the next bit. I can't remember altogether, is many, many, many,
many, many, many. Mama, mama, mama, You're done. Many, many, many, many, many, many mama, mama, mama. So we speed that up
and we get this many, many, many, many, many, many mama, mama, mama. Yeah. You try one to many, many, many, many, many, many mama, mama, mama. It's really energizing, working everything here, which is great. Now, when people come to this, the first thing they forget is to take the good breath in. So still remember, stay
connected with the breath. Many, many, and you find that the sound is richer and fuller. Let's go up a bit.
I 123 and many, many, many, many, many, many. Mama, mama, yotta and ready. 1234. Many, many, many, many, many, many, many. Mama, mama, mama, mama,
mama, mama, mama. Good. How quickly can you do that? Many minimum and the minimum
many, many mama, mama, mama, many minimum and the minimum many mini
mama, mama, mama. Well done if you can do it that quickly, that's
pretty impressive. So all of these are
very connected from the arpeggios to test the upper point of the
range to this exercise, to test the annunciation, the key thing is to take
it all very gently. Weather.
6. In conclusion: I hope you found this
short-course really helpful. It's been really fun
working with you on some of the elements of warming up the voice that
we need as cool or singers, or also as solo singers. So the thing is
there's no set regime, but what I would say
is when you're going into rehearsal very quickly, a lot of these kind
of good techniques, good positive techniques
we've set up can be lost as soon as you have
them music in front of you. And we return to that. Just key things to remember, focusing in on the breath, staying very connected
with down here. Also the posture, staying
really nice and upright, keeping the shoulders open. Even when you get
rid of all the air, keeping very nice and open. And also remember the exercise we did with the raisin
face, pumpkin face, keeping everything here really energized and engaged because it's all part of the
apparatus of singing. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I'll see you again soon.
Ben Lewis-Smith, Musician
