Extend Your Vocal Range - Sing with Power & Projection

1. Intro to Extend Your Range: Hi guys, I'm metal and Harvey and welcome to the extend your range voice lessons series. This is gonna be a three-part vocal intensive where we're going to learn all about the muscles that govern range. We're gonna be releasing tension from the voice, giving you more smoothness and effortlessness with your range. And then we're going to be opening and stabilizing your voice, giving you so much more power and projection. In our very first lesson together, we're going to isolate the tongue. What does it mean when we say the tongue is the singers worst enemy? What can we do about it? We're going to isolate the tongue, allowing for more ease through your transitions. You're going to get twice as much range with half as much effort. In the second part together, we're going to be exploring the swallowing muscles of the neck. And we're also going to be positioning the larynx and the nice lowered position. That way you can feel what it feels like to stabilize your neck when you go for more power and projection. And in our final three, third part within the lesson series, we're going to put both of them together and really take it up a notch, giving you so much more openness, so much more beautiful tone and power and projection. So I strongly, strongly want to suggest that it doesn't matter if you're a complete beginner who's possibly learning to isolate these concepts for the very first time. Or if you're an industry Pro and just looking to brush up on some foundational aspects. Stay with each lesson until each lesson feels like it's taken on a sense of muscle memory. That way when we build off of those concepts that we learned previously, you'll have a working frame of reference to build off of you ready to get started. Here we go. 2. Part 1: Tame That Terrible Tongue: Hi friends, welcome to part one of extend your range voice lesson series. Now, today is all about the tongue. We're going to have such a good understanding of how to isolate and relax the tongue as we work with our range. But let's talk about why the tongue is such a adversary. Well, part of the reason is that the tongue is so powerful. It's a very, it's a very strong muscle that governs a lot of chewing and swallowing. So those muscles tend to be very, very strong. On top of that, the tongue is directly connected to the larynx. So let's, let's feel this for ourselves. Take your fingers and just gently pet, pet underneath your chin, then offer some upward pressure. And if it feels gushy, That's the tongue. That's the tongue. Now if it feels hard, you may want to massage it a little bit. And that's not a bad idea. It's a wonderful place to begin with. Just offering up a gentle massage on just to move any blood that may be trapped in the root of the tongue. We're going to feel for ourselves the relationship between the tongue and the larynx. So take your fingers, put them back on your tongue. Feel that gentle upward pressure. That's your tongue. Now come down just a little bit. Don't push down. Just feel how it gets hard. All of a sudden. That's your larynx. So just investigate. Just investigate where it feels that they meet. The larynx and the tongue meet each other. Can you feel that there's almost a seam there? Now? Don't push hard, don't push hard, gentle, gentle pushing. But there's a little seam there where the glossiness of the tongue becomes the hardness of that larynx. Now, right there at that seem, the tongue is connected to the larynx almost like a claw, right? It's got roots to it. So when we swallow, the tongue, pulls the lyrics up and then lowers the larynx back down again, Given a little bit of movement so that we can swallow and our drinks or our food don't make it into our lungs, the very ingenious system. But sometimes that root of the tongue can become so emboldened, so empowered that it's almost in a permanent state of flux. Now let's go back to the idea of the roots. So we want to keep the roots of the tongue relaxed, very much like water. When they, when they flex, they literally get very hard. And it keeps the vocal cords from vibrating freely. So it's very much like throwing a lead blanket over a bell instead. So if you've ever felt that in your practicing before, where it suddenly feels very, very, very difficult. Or you may feel that you have to really push the voice to sing higher. More often than not, your tongue is flexing. So we want to be able to engage what this feels like. Bringing gentle, loving awareness to our patterns, and then reprogram the tongue to stay nice and relaxed in our practice. So now that we've discovered where this meeting place of tongue and lyrics are, we're going to begin our practice today by massaging the tongue. So take your thumb and your forefinger and gently return to the place that seam. You feel the tongue stops and the larynx begins. So it's right around there that you want to err on the side of the tongue by gently pressing, gently pressing up. Notice how it's changed the quality of my voice. Very good, Gentle, gentle pressure, not doing much, much pushing. Now you're going to keep that even on a pressure as you go wide. There you go. And then draw. This is just going to disengage disengage those muscles and remove any trapped blood that may be in there. Because just like going to the gym, sometimes we work out and then our blood can get trapped muscle. We need to stretch it or massage it out. It's the same thing, true here. So we're going to begin our practice by doing a nice little massage just a couple more times. Feel so nice. I'm immediately feeling my voice began to open up. More times. Good. Very good. So now relax your jaw. Let it just Hey, be coming assisted by gravity. And then let the tongue kind of rest outward, feel that the tongue can remain heavy and disengaged as it just lays on your bottom lip. Now the punk and relax. The jaw can relax and the tongue can just lay there and there's not jumpiness, then you're ready to move on to the next exercise. But if you feel like it's, it's kinda jerky or it's kind of twitchy. The go back to massaging. A couple of more cycles of that gentle massage and just relax into it. Enjoy this process of just releasing tension from your neck and then relax the jaw. Good. So now you understand why the tongue is such a nuisance and the importance of relaxing it. So if you can maintain the relaxed tongue position, we're ready to move on to our first exercise together. Okay? So our very first exercise that we're going to do together is called the tongue bite siren. But it's not as scary as it sounds. We're just going to gently relaxed that jaw and really feel if you can feel gravity affecting both the jaw and the tongue. So let's return to that position we were just in. Now you notice that you have to continuously, in your mind, relax the root of the tongue because it's going to want to pull back in and we don't want that to happen. Want to allow those muscles to move forward, creating a little bit more natural space for the voice to do its thing. So let's go back to our position. Now. We're going to rest our teeth halfway down, bite down gently. Just rest your bite on the center of your tongue. A moment there to see again if that root of the tongue has any sort of fuzziness in it, then a jerky tendencies. If it is, continue to relax, it just continued to disengage and disengage. So take a few seconds and just observe that. Now if you want to also, you can take your fingers and gently massage the tongue as you do your work. This will also allow that allow you to feel if the tongue flux is it's going to push hard right up against your fingers. So here is our exercise. We're just going to go in a circle of sound, a gentle circle of sound. We're gonna go kind of slow. As we do this circle of sound, we want to see can we continue to relax the tongue as we complete this circle? Now you might be a little surprised to see how much involvement the root of your tongue tries to get away with in a single cycle of sound. So start right here. I'm going to go ahead and lower my head. In doing so, it's going to help disengage These swallow muscles underneath. And I'll keep my thumb here so that I can pay attention. Now. Now I felt no movement whatsoever happening. That is our goal, that's our objective. But if you notice it goes, I can literally feel and I can hear the influence of the tongue, just like that led blanket interrupting the vibrations of the vocal cords. So let's try this again. Right here. Where the head a little bit. Restaurant byte. Good. Did you feel it move? Good. Let's try it again. Now. Go ahead and move on there. Now. I also want to encourage you. Do not try to save the sound. The sound wants to wobble a little bit. Because understand something. Now that you're relaxing the tongue and it's not interfering with the vocalization process. Those chords are being given the opportunity to finally do their work. So it may expose a few wobbles or breaks in there, but just stay with it. Do not implore the tongue by tensing it to rescue the sound. Just let it happen. Let it happen. Can you feel how the air is free to enter into the headspace as opposed to that is what a tense tongue sounds like. It's going to feel like a little bit on the head voice seat or the falsetto side of things. But let's continue. It's too high dropout and we're telling it feels a little bit better. Excellent. This feels very, very, very, very good. And part of the challenge in an exercise like this is to really just let it happen. Don't try to make anything happen. Just really allow it to happen. Fully embracing any breaks, any wobbles, anything that feels irregular, out-of-control, you're restoring the voice to its, its, its process, it's natural process by removing those things that are in the way. Weird, high C. Now, if you made it, congratulations, that's awesome. If it's too high, again, just joined back in when feels a little bit more comfortable. So here we go. We're going to go down from here. Let's re-discover that feeling of relaxation. Now concentrate all of your attention on the root of the tongue. As you slide upwards. Discover, Can you relax right there at the apex of the sound? So let's give it a go. Now if it's too low, same thing, dropout when it doesn't feel comfortable. Now, on the bottom notes here, it's very important that we do not use the tongue to try to reach down. And when you feel that, you will feel the tongue really try to push a seal that pushing. We don't wanna do that. We just want to relax. However, on unsteady it feels. Teach your body to intonate that note without the assistance of the tongue. Very, very good. Just keep an eye on the prize. That was three octaves of range that we just slid through. The objective of the exercise is do not move the root of the tongue. Partly because we cannot tell friend from foe right now. We can't tell a nice lowered laryngeal placement from contraction and collapse. We'll talk a little bit more about that later, but Excellent job guys. The next, the next track on this, on this lesson will be just the piano so that you can return and practice without me. So here we go. Okay, here you go, guys. On your own. Feel gravity. Relax the jaw, the tongue. Come forward, rest your bite. Relaxed that time. And here we go. It's too high. Which room when it's more compact? Wow. Excellent job guys. So now we're going to continue our work with relaxing the tongue. This next exercise is a little bit harder, but we're going to walk through it and when then we'll do it together. So just like we've been doing so far, we're going to allow the GRAT, the gravity to pull the jaw down hard. We're going to allow the tongue to come forward. Your awareness is going to be situated at the back of the tongue, right where the tongue curves to enter into the throat. Now, here's the doozy. You're going to say the sound. Yeah. But notice how I even said that. I used my jaw. Yeah. Yeah. We're not gonna do that. We're going to let, we're going to let, we're going to allow the tongue to come forward as if we're saying the y consonant. And we're going to allow the back of the tongue to roll forward out of the mouth like this. So we're not going to move the jaw at all. This is a tricky, tricky exercise, but it allows us to isolate the root of the tongue. Not only relax it, but roll forward, sort of getting out of the way of the vocal cords. This is going to expose the vocal cords just a little bit more so they have more room to do their work. So it's going to look like this. It's kinda baby badly, isn't it? So I'm keeping my hands on my jaw to make sure that I'm not yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We don't wanna do that because notice the tongue stayed right where it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we want to teach the root of the tongue to roll forward as a consequence of us making voice so that it gets out of the way. This is going to counteract the normal tendency for the voice to contract inward and hog all of that sonic space, flexing on top of that larynx, doubling the sound. So it's a little tricky, but I know we can do it together. Go ahead and place your hands on your jaw. Relax the jaw downward. Luxe tongue forward. Now first let's just try this this together. Let's just baby babble for a minute. I, yeah. I, yeah. It's like a baby discovering their tongue for the very first time. Also notice too that the sound sounds very much like a baby experimenting with their voice. So it doesn't have any tone to it. That's a very important part. So as we're playing with this, your voice may wobble, it may break. It may really make some embarrassing sounds, but I encourage you to stay with it. Keep relaxing and rolling that tongue forward. Let's try it together. Here we go. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Can you feel as a result of that rolling forward, we have so much more space. Where were the back of the tongue kind of like meets the back of the throat. There's just space there without knocking door. Not yet anyway. So here we go. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. See how easy that is. Nice open sound. That one together again. Yeah. Keep up, keep it. Keep an eye on these higher notes. Don't let it go. Yeah. Yeah. That's the tongue collapsing the entire mechanism. It should be baby badly. Again. The F-sharp should be relatively easy because that telling us kinda busy doing other things rather than interfering with sound. Let's try that one again. What E for those fans will be opera fans. That's the E because she sings at the end of Phantom of the Opera. But again, here's the trick. We're keeping the tongue busy by rolling it forward, literally. Making, I know that that's weird, but we're giving it something else to do, something else to focus on. So it can't roll forward and collapse around the larynx at the same time. And immediately here, how much higher we got. Very, very good. But again, if it's too high for you, don't sweat it, drop out and come back in when it's more easy. So let's go down from there. We've your job. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're working on three plus octaves, so really good. I do not want to push your voice too far beyond what it's comfortable with right now, which is why I'm encouraging you drop out if it's too high or drop out if it's too low, return to the exercise when it feels a little bit more manageable for you. It's not important how high or how low you saying right now, though it's a lot of fun. It's more important that we stay committed to working with that root of the tongue, keeping busy by rolling it forward so the voice can do its thing. So let's continue on with the exercise on your own. Okay, now you're ready to try this exercise on your own. Before we do, I just want to share something really funny with you. Look at Mabel. She is living her best life. Okay. So remember, relax your jaw. But the top talent come forward, roll the tongue forward for each note. I'm gonna play it once for your ear. Illustrator. Okay. If it's too high. Excellent job. All right, we're at the halfway point in the lesson. And we've done a lot with the tongue to encourage it to stay relaxed and stay moving forward as opposed to jerking backward and collapsing that mechanism. So since we're at the halfway point, I just want to take a second and just stretch the tongue. We've been isolating the root of the tongue and it wouldn't surprise me if it's starting to get a little tired for you. So we're just going to stretch out that root of the tongue. Imagine you're going to grab something like You're going to stretch out your tongue and grab something with it like I am. And just stretch that outfile. They'll gentle stretching in the back, restore a little bit of blood flow before we continue on. Let's try that together. Again. Good. Now stretch to the side. Good. Now we're going to draw circles with their tongues waste less than the eight yet, isn't it? Very, very strange, unknown, creepy. But we just want to encourage nice long length in that root of the tongue, especially as we engage in a little bit more. So do you remember in our last lesson when we went and it kinda sounded baby bad English, we're going to continue with that theme and are right now. So just like we've done before, we're going to relax the jaw, the tongue, come forward. Take a quick moment with your mind's eye, just to be with the root of the tongue and just let it just sort of relax and lay for just a second. Now, we're going to say like baba, baba, but we're gonna do it like a baby babble. Just like that. This is amazing for any kind of infusing that sing mechanism to speak mechanism. It's just going to feel like we're going to speak really, really high. Yeah, it's gonna be really, really amazing. So we're going to use the jaw now, NGA, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Now I just want to encourage you that this whole lesson has encouraged. Do not pay attention to the quality of the sound. We can't really have much in the way of tone when we're keeping the tongue out. But it does give us the advantage of being able to isolate more space for the vocal cords, giving them a lot more room to be free and effortless. And I bet you're already feeling the benefits of your range extending. So as we do our baby babble exercise, I just want to encourage you to pretend. Like you're kinda fussing at someone. They just play, play. Do not focus on the pitch, focus on the sensation. Okay, so here's our exercise. Then. You will probably spit all over yourself. Just fair warning. But here we go. You ready? Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Then you have open and free that is bad. Notice also, as we're going higher, you feel as if the nose is offering and assistance. That's what's giving that baby quality now that's part and parcel for the tongue being out of the mouth. Like all the sound goes up into the nose. This is very helpful because it removes all the pressure from the throat. So let's try that one again. Speech like that feels nice, very, very easily. Dropout if it's too high, come back and when it feels a little bit more comfortable, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. You have to have a little bit of a sense of humor and a sense of adventure when doing these exercises, I tell you. Yesterday I feel like as we went higher and higher, That was feeling more speech like rather than then I'm going to make something happen. It was more like we are already positioning everything to be co-operative. All we have to do is exhale, lengthen. So let's try it on your own. Okay, Here we go, guys, right here. Here's our pattern. Remember to keep it baby. Good job guys. Okay, so now we're at the point of the lesson where we see if our hard work has paid off. So far, we've encouraged behaviors with the tongue that are consistent with relaxing and moving forward. The message that we want to send to the root of the tongue is that we want to operate under some space and that we no longer need its influence. We don't need it to Boolean anymore. So now we're going to have the tongue in the mouth and we're going to say the sound. So let's try that really slow and see what happens. Yeah. Good. Can you feel that when you make the ER, if you go nice and slow, the tongue comes up and then it gently comes down. And as it comes down, it opens some space in the back. Feel that. Let's try it again. Let's see if we do. Yeah, good, good. Now we've just been working on those interior behavior, so the tongue should still be operating under that premise. So I'm going to take a descending scale pattern. One. Yeah, at the very beginning we'll go nice and slow. Yeah. Yes. Want to feel that space that we've been working so hard to achieve is present and that the tongue goes slightly down and forward in the back. Let's try it together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Take your time. Especially if you notice that you're telling wants to go. Yeah. Yeah. That's trying to pull Let's do that one again. Oh, just looking to see, can we retain that space? Can we stay open on that space? Be so committed to your sensations. The pitch does not matter. I really want to encourage you to really aimed for this sensation and let the pitch sort of unfold for you. And I see Let's take a break. Good job, good job. Ready to try this on your own? Okay. You go on your own. Remember to keep that tongue just gently offering that space and keep it relaxed as you're working. Excellent job. Congratulations guys. You have just completed part one of extend your range. I really hope you enjoyed today's lesson. It was made for you with before you go, I just want to give you a couple of things to keep in mind while you're practicing. Number one, stay as curious and curiouser as you possibly can. What I mean by this is stay invested, state interested. It takes a lot of a lot of attention and a lot of focus to just become aware of just how much influence the tongue has over the entire vocal apparatus. So we're going to need to stay, stay with it, but keep a gentle curiosity, gentle, playful curiosity about it. If you want to use your fingers while you're developing more fine tuned sensations like your ability to just stay focused on the root of your tongue as you make sound. That may take a little bit of time to develop. You can use your hands to kind of keep you accountable, keep yourself focused. And it also lets your body know that you are watching. So it's more apt to behave while you do that, but just stay curious. There's lots to explore. Number to go. Slow. You will be so surprised at just how triggered the tongue is. Once we get voice going, it may want to move like five or six times, like in a couple of seconds. It may be so jittery. So we're going to need to be able to catch those patterns as soon as they happen, and then gently disengaging them so that way we can establish new behaviors. So I'll just say that again. Go slow. We're looking to establish new behaviors. We want the voice to stay calm, open, and relaxed. So we have to have to pay attention. Okay, best way to do that is to go slow. Number three, use your hands. I've alluded to this one in the first one, but I just want to give it its own special do. Now, while we develop those inner senses of just kind of like watching and being lovingly aware. Can I relax? Can I relax? Can I relax? We may need help with that. So we can use our hands to state to stay focused. And I encourage you to do this. Let's say while you're singing a song, you can put your thumb gently up on that tongue. That way. It'll catch your attention if it tenses because it will push down hard against it. You may not have felt it do that during the song, but if you feel it push down hard, you can catch that and maybe try that again. But this time with a relaxed tongue. So it's just another way of holding your body accountable. Your body becomes very aware that you're paying attention. So again, it's more apt to behave. And number four, definitely saw this in today's exercise. Today's lesson. Be as playful as possible. We took on so many almost character voices with our work today. And it's really important that you do not judge your sound. None of these exercises were about creating beautiful tone. They were more about generating the behaviors that will then create the freedom to create the beautiful tone. So you've gotta be more concerned with the sensation and less concerned with the sound. Okay, so stay curious. Go slow. Use your hands and be playful. Feel free to come back to this lesson as often as you need to. If you want to just brush up or if you want to build these behaviors like get them down, I encourage you to stay with it until it feels like second nature total muscle memory. Thank you so much for hanging out with me and spending your valuable time and attention with me. I'm so grateful to just be included in your vocal journey. And I can't wait to see you again for part two. Bye guys. 3. Part 2: Lower Your Larynx: Hi guys. I'm Madeline Harvey and welcome to part two of the extend your range less than series if you're just joining us now. Welcome. I'm so glad you're here, but feel free to check out less than one before jumping into listen to. These lessons are meant to be stackable, just like playing the game of Jenga. So altogether they form a solid interior structure for you to create more power. Range, projection, tone, and release, release tension from the voice. So when our first lesson we talked about why is the tongue known as the singers worst enemy? Well, it's really powerful. It's really big, and it's always in the way. So during that lesson, we work by reconditioning the tongue to move forward in response to the sound, creating more space and more 0s throughout your range. Today, we're gonna go even deeper. We're going to play with positioning our larynx. We want the lyrics to be in a slightly lowered position, which is the best position for creating sound. It's going to cancel out even more of the muscles that surround the tongue, giving you so much more ease, clarity, and not to mention some crazy power projection and a beautiful tone to top it off. So it doesn't matter if you're completely new to singing or if you're an industry pro, there's something in these lessons for everyone. I want to, I want to encourage you to come back and practice with these lessons as often as possible. These concepts may seem weird, but I want to encourage you to practice them until it feels like muscle memory. We're conditioning small sensations that make a very big impact on your voice. You ready to get started? Here we go. We're going to get very intimate with our throat. Today. We're going to really feel our way through the mechanisms of the throat. And I'm gonna go ahead and start you off with a really fancy phrase that you'll hear me use throughout today's lesson. And that is in holiday level che to inhale the voice in lab or j. So what that essentially means is that when you come into, when you prepare for the sound, you're wanting to train the muscles to include a sense of openness as you prepare for the sound. And that's what inhale add a level J is all about. Now we're going to dive into all the reasons why that is. So. But let's go ahead and discover for ourselves what this thing feels like. So take your, take your fingers and put them on either side of your larynx. So we said the tongue was right here. Then the size of the larynx are right here. So just feel, feel what that feels like to just rest. Rest your fingers. It'd be very curious about that. Now in your mind's eye, gently observe your inhale and exhale process. Just relax everything open. You're not going to pull anything open. You're just going to relax. And observe that your fingers are there to just kinda see if you can see anything moving in response to that, to that breadth process. Okay, Good. Now can you feel as you just observe the coolness of the air coming in and coming out as like a circle, right? It's very quiet, very, very quiet. But there's nice neutral space in that. Good. That's a nice neutral breath. Inhale Latino vote, shame. As a gentle stretch that feels more like a yarn. So we're gonna take that, we're going to gently, we're going to see what we can get away with on the subtle range. First, we're just going to gently yawn and watch my larynx right here as I do. Can you see the larynx dip down just a little bit, just a little bit. Good. Now let's give this a try together. Let's just observe a couple of feelings of yarn. Very subtle, isn't it? Good, Very good. Now let's go ahead and take a yawn feeling and see if we can hold it open. And we're just going to hold it open anywhere 10-8 counts. I just want you to stay focused in your mind's eye that you can feel the gentle, gentle stretch in your throat, holding that throat open. As you pretend yawn from about eight to ten counts. Here we go. Ready? Again. Last time. Good, good. Usually when we yawn, were just and then it's done. So we we feel that mechanism at work. We feel that opening of the throat, but then very quickly it releases. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to teach that mechanism. The muscles that govern that mechanism, too, open the vocal tract and hold it open. Now that's the only thing we're thinking about right now. Gentle, gentle stretch as a yawn open, and then keep it open. Because as you sing and you encounter a melodic phrase, you'll have a beginning and an ending. So you want to make sure that it's open on the beginning, but it stays open all the way to the end and beautiful release. Okay, So now, now that we've got a little bit of a feeling about what this feels like. We're going to open that vocal tract is just another way of saying your throat. And we're going to hop just this middle C for about eight counts. Not very big at all. But notice bringing loving awareness to your tendencies. This is what we're looking to rewrite today. Let's say if I'm a singer and my pattern is, as I come into my voice, I will open my throat, but then I'll very quickly collapse it like this. Ah, can you kinda hear how that vocal tract is now compromised and the tone, you can really hear it in the tone. Now if I go to a higher note, you really, really hear that compromised vocal track. So we're trying to gently open it, hold it open as we just exhale. It's literally like doing this. So don't fault yourself for if it actually seems hard to do, we're going to manage this together. All we wanna do, open that vocal tracks, feel that your gentle, gentle, gentle stretch. And then ah, that's it. Let's try it again. Ah, good. Now could you feel that throat working to stay open the entire time? Good. Let's try it again. Ah, excellent. One more time. Ah, very, very good. This is so not easy to do, but this was a nice introduction to the sensation. What the sensation feels like. We want to include as we come into our sound that's called intonation. As we intonate, we want to include that openness of the throat almost like a reflex. Okay, so now let's see if we can put this in an exercise. Now, believe it or not, what we're trying to achieve with the voice is actually very hard. A lot of you will feel like you've actually got to re, write your instincts, that you're gonna go against something that feels instinctual. So to keep it really easy and to start on our best foot, we're just going to come into a single note, intonation, which just means one sound because we've got a lot to do, don't we? We've got to concentrate on feeling that throat open so that we can anchor that feeling of yawn. And I would love for you to keep your fingers on your larynx that way you can at least be aware if you get that knee jerk pull upwards. Because that's our second thing. We want to offer as much stillness within the larynx as possible. Now, when I say stillness, I, when I want to give plenty of room to actually breathe on this. So you don't have to be so committed to, I'm not going to move my larynx. That is, It's making you tense. I would prefer that you play with at least going low with the larynx. Because what I do not want for you is to go high with the Linux, e.g. if I'm going to start here, if I go, high larynx placement is undeniable. It immediately compromises a sound. It absolutely sabotage is the sound, but a nice lowered larynx. So while we work our way through various places within the range, our mind, our eyes on the prize, and our mind is focused on that sensation of a gentle young. And a nice slightly dipped, a little courtesy, a dip down of the larynx. So we're going to start here and we're going to move through various, various places in range. If it ever gets too high for you, just drop out and come back and when it feels a little bit more comfortable, okay. Same thing goes for the low. If it's too low, come back in when it's more comfortable. Going to start to write here. Each one we're going to feel that gentle openness of the throat. And psi yon the sound outward. You're going to hold the, the throat open, that vocal tract open as you gently exhale that single, single pitch. Another word, do not save your sound. If it starts to wobble all over the place, let it be misled. Be don't try to save it. Don't push to go louder as you go higher. That's, that's a big tell-tale that your body's trying to overcompensate. We're just holding some space. Very boo boo. I'm just holding that space. Gentle open. Ah, that's it. That's it. Here we go. A Good Now we're keeping our eyes on that prize of just keeping that gentle stretch and trying as best as we can to steady our breath. Well, notice some fluctuations here and there, that's totally normal. You may notice that as you go higher, you may have to literally push against that instinct for that larynx to want to go. Next is trying to pull upward. And you could feel that. So you may have to take all you're focusing all your might to just gentle open. Still home. Here we go. Let's start with that. Fluctuate. Feeling of yarn sounded like a flatline. Your heartbeat doesn't. That's high, That's really high, but let's take it down. You may really feel those muscles. If you're seeing this high, you may really feel that larynx working to stay down and these muscles working pretty hard, like you're swallowing slowly. Oh, hello. Good. Now this is a very tricky exercise and extremely tricky exercise. Part of the reason is we're trying to send the message to the larynx that no matter how high we go in our range, no matter how low we go that we're trying to stabilize your larynx. Your larynx doesn't need to go up for high notes. Although we do want it to kinda talk down, we don't want to eat to tug down into a foggy sound like like that. That's when the tongue pushes that larynx down way too far and forces the chords apart. And that's why it sounds smoky like that. But we are trying to integrate a behavior that always includes that openness and that tuck that little courtesy, that little tuck down of the larynx, this one. Sure that your vocal tract is open and it's nice and stabilized on the first note of your phrase, firstNode of your phrase. Now, are you ready to try it by yourself? Okay guys, now you try it by yourself, but to offer some consistency and structure, I'm going to play the single pitch for you. And then I would like for you to count to eight. In your mind. I would love for you to work, work it up that you can sustain all these pitches for eight counts. Now, don't call it yourself if it's too high right now, maybe one day. So just drop out one is more comfortable. Come back in when it feels a little bit dropout. If it's too high, come back and wins more comfortable. So I'm going to play your personal for you. Jeff guy. Okay, this exercise, this exercise is where the rubber meets the road. We're going to take two pitches to pitches. And we're gonna put them relatively close to each other, but we're going to simulate a musical phrase. We're going to bend the notes. But that is going to simulate what we're going to encounter in music like a musical phrase, a continuation of notes. Now, usually what happens when we're singing songs is that we're using what's known as an interval. Now, all an interval is, is just a space between notes. Sometimes the interval is small, like this, and sometimes it's very big. So what we want to reorient in our work within this exercise is that once we place that larynx in that Kurt seed lowered position, we want to keep it there for that second note, because we're trying to create a stable atmosphere where we can go up and down, especially as we extend our range and the larynx is not going to jerk up. Jerk, jerk around is it makes those changes. So we're going to really stay focused on keeping our larynx as still. As possible, we're going to go very slow with this. I want to give you as much opportunity to feel your sensations as possible. So because we're going slower, do not be surprised if some gaps and coordination just suddenly appear. It is a consequence of how slow we're going. We're gonna go. It takes a lot of breath, but my mind's eye is focused on did my larynx moves up at all? Now? It didn't. But let me show you what it sounds like when it does. Ah, get a little brassy, right? You're going to really be able to feel, especially if you got your hands right here, you'll be able to feel if that larynx goes up now because we're going so slow. If it moves up, just reset, just try again. It's almost like you want to encourage that behavior of stillness. Which means that we have to become aware of our pattern and just have no judgment. We're just bringing loving awareness to our patterns. If we notice that larynx lifts up, stop, just stop and reset. Once your body gets an idea of, oh, you want me to stay still, then it's going to start behaving accordingly. And on your larynx, focusing on that inhaler. A. Ah, He's in crazy. How much breadth is takes? Here is as we move through this middle section of our range, it's a funky section. So as we tried to negotiate this mix, you may feel that larynx is really trying to move up, so just stays low, stay relaxing. So if it's sounding that lyrics trying to pull up, so stay relaxed, stay calm, move slow. So we may just do one bend as we go higher because we're going to need even more breadth to do that. So because we're gonna be continuing with just one bend. As we get this high, we're gonna go even slower so that we can pay attention to those fine-tuned sensations. This field. As best you can, feel, as best you can. How much spaces in-between that interval as you can navigate that movement, especially this phi. Remember, relax your larynx still. We did that. I think air bubbles. There we go. I do think in this place they're arranged. Now we can go back to doing dose. Ben's, Ben's two bands. Let's try it here in this gene approach that Jeep with relaxation in your throat. Okay? Uh, uh, uh, uh, my Girish is me. These exercises are so simple, but there's so elegant. Trying to train that larynx and the muscles within the throat to just go ahead and assume, assume that open position and continue to navigate and manage that open position as you gently move a very small interval, ready to try it by yourself. Remember that the objective of this exercise is to maintain the exact same placement of the larynx on the second note that you put it in on the first. So it would feel like it is not going to move much at all. You just want to keep relaxing in-between these very small intervals. So take your time and go slow. You can manage this movement slowly. You'll be just fine when you make it quicker. So I'm going to start to hear on for your ear first. We're going to continue going for two bins. If the best you can do is the one. Go ahead, don't compromise your breath or your position to try to make it to those two bands. But I wanna give you something that you can grow into. So let's keep. Good job guys. Here we go, guys. We're heading into our last exercise for this lesson. And I just want to reiterate that this is all about the inhale at level j and the tucking down of the lyrics. Now both of those things should happen simultaneously. I just want you to be actively aware of kind of doing the systems check before you begin each each note that we do. So this last exercise is a simple drift. It's almost like humming, but we're going to increase our interval. Our last exercise, we didn't know this interval we're gonna go, we're just going to spray drift like a ghost. We're not going to put a lot of weight on the voice. It's more about the muscles surrounding the larynx and the muscles within the neck themselves of learning how to stay still as we navigate in ever widening interval, going 1-21 to five. So we're just going to gently stack our byte just like this. And then close your lips. Just like we're actively listening to someone. We're really, we're gonna, we're gonna go so slow and we're just gonna kinda check and check and we feel upward move it. Do we feel upward movement? And if we do, we're going to relax it right there. Okay. I go felt some upper movement, so I would try again until I can complete that circle without the larynx moving at a at all. No upward movement, movement at all from the legs. Here we go, guys is very therapeutic. It's going to be nice. Let's try it again. Hi. Control the slide going up and control that slide going down. You'd be amazed at how quickly your voice wants to relax. So really try to control what you're feeling and keep that looks nice. Still, just relaxed. Yes. We're not letting you use muscles, get involved, Good work at staying relent. Hi guys. Okay guys, remember the objective of this last exercise is to go slow and to go soft is we'll give you plenty of time if your hands are resting on your larynx to use relaxation to encourage your lungs to stay still, gently relaxed, still, so slow and soft. There you have it, guys. You have successfully completed part two of the extend your range less than Series. I'm so proud of you. Today's lesson was hard, but you showed up and you did it. So feel free to come back to this lesson as often as you need to use it to facilitate a daily practice for yourself. These concepts, they take a little bit of time and they take a little bit of development before they fully become muscle memory. So go easy on yourself. Move it that paste that feels comfortable for you. That way you can fully embody all the benefits that today's lesson can give you. I would love to see you upload a link of you showing off some of today's concepts. If you would love to choose your favorite exercise, the piano version, and do the exercise and demonstrate it for us. We can all appreciate and really celebrate your progress. So thank you so much for including me in your vocal journey. I'm so happy to have you along with me, and I can't wait to see you again for part three. 4. Part 3: Relax Your Gag Reflex: Hi guys. I'm Madeline Harvey and welcome to part three of the extend your range less than series. If you're just joining in. Welcome, welcome. I'm super glad that you're here. But I do want to encourage you to check out part 1.2 before continuing on to part three. In those lessons, we learned some very specific helpful behaviors that will give us a frame of reference for today's lesson. But if you've already completed those lessons, hang on to your hats because we're going to get in there today. We're going to learn about the mechanism that governs the intense stretch that makes those really, really high notes possible. We're gonna be releasing more tension and strain from the voice. We're going to be stabilizing your throat in preparation to meet that vocal power and that pressure that we're going to be encountering. And then we're also going to be reducing the swallow muscles, giving us a much more richer and fuller sound. So it really doesn't matter if you're a complete beginner or if you're an industry professional, I want to encourage you to come back to these lessons on a regular basis. Use them as a frame of reference for your practice. That way you can get those long-lasting results that you want. Are you ready to get started? Here we go. The primary mechanism that we're going to build the entire lesson around today is the gag reflex. Now before you go dry heaving, we're going to gently work with it today. We're going to look for micro movements. The reason why it's important that we do this now after we've relaxed the tongue and the swallowing muscles is so that we've got a good working sense of this area. Anyways, we've relax those muscles and we've learned how to isolate the movements within this area. So that will give us a lot more control without having to over-exaggerate anything. So let's continue our work with our mind's eye and focusing in on subtle, subtle movements. So go ahead and feel you are awareness. Drift from like down the middle of the tongue until you reach the heel of the tongue, continued to go back there. For now, keep it neutral. And just observe a couple of neutral breaths without too much exploration. Okay? Can you feel how the root of your tongue is relaxed right now? Good, That's very good. Now we're going to see if at the very back of the tongue, very, very back of the tongue, there's a small area right in the center that we want to pretend is like a button. And we're going to push that button. And as we push that button, we're going to create a very gentle but somewhat intense yawn in the back. So let's go ahead and see if we can do that. No, it's not even entirely necessary for your tongue to like that. It will later. But right now, we're going for, we're going for subtlety. So try that very back of the tongue. Little button, nice little yarn back their holiday. Relax. Good. Now it takes a little bit of takes a little bit of strength to be able to engage that reflux and hold it. This is what our work is right now, right now. So go ahead, Let's try that again. How small can that little Yan BI? Hold it. Slowly relax. Because I also want you to feel there's, there's range of motion in the relaxation. So there are degrees to which you can open and relaxed that will give you a lot more variation of really cool tones. More on that later. One more time, one more time. Minds. I go all the way to the back, back of the tongue. Back of the tongue. Pretend there's a little button there that you can gag. Little yellow and a little holiday. Slowly relax. Very good. Now there's a couple of reasons why this gag reflex is so important to main ones that we're really going to see for ourselves today. One is that when we do this slight, slight stretching, it prepares the way on the vocal cords themselves with adequate tension. Now, I don't mean bad tension. I mean the right amount of tension for the courts to stretch, like a guitar string that's been tuned. If it's tuned. It sounds really clear. If it's not tuned in, it's a little loose. The string is going to flap around a little bit and give a like a flat sound. So this ensures that as we work to prepare for our note, we have the adequate amount of tension as we do that work. The second thing is that just like in our second part two video, it allows the larynx to be lowered, which cancels out the swallow muscles. But here's where today is different. It opens that throat with a great sense of authority. Preparing the throat to be able to withstand increase pressure. We get both an increase of pressure and tension. Air pressure as we go for those higher notes and chord tension as we go for those higher nodes. So we need a little bit of both, but we don't want to over-exaggerate too much. Yeah, you can pull a muscle. I've done it. I've done it, doesn't feel very good. So we wanna go very subtle, subtle winner work, easy does it? So now that we've got a good sense of what this feels like, we're just going to easily intonate because it's enough to try to manage the stretch and then blow the air through, create the tone. So we're gonna start with middle C. Just hear it in your mind's ear. Can you still hear it? Go ahead and gently stretch. Now, breathe past. Let's try that again. One more time. Gentle, gentle stretch. Good, Very good. Let's keep going. Good. Very good. Now I just want to say one more thing before we continue. If you've already caught me doing this, you might hear, I let some air bypassed. First. This is going to keep any gripping away. So if you have a tendency as the singer to go, you want to create a nice current of airflow first. Let's give this a try. Good. Are you feeling that subtle stretch a little bit more intense than it was in part two. We're really bringing in a little bit of tension, that tension that goes this way. They create openness. Be very subtle. Good, very good. So you're doing this. Essentially. You're holding your throat open. And you have to continue to hold it open through the duration of that sustain, nice and easy exhale. But that's the other thing you're doing. You're exhaling and allowing the sound pass. Just pass through the throat. You're not gripping anything in the throat. It's like blowing a horn. Let's try one more. Good. Now, you can relax and you feel, you may feel that it's as if I've swallowed something like a marshmallow, I feel the benefit of that stretch as if it's still happening. If you're not, that's a good thing. But also fear not. If you feel like the sounds are creating sound a little on the classical side. This is a very, very common teaching method in bella conto singing styles. So we're gonna be using this as a frame of reference, but I'm also going to show you later on how to just relax off of it a little bit and give you more of a contemporary flavor and feel. Good. You ready to get serious with our next exercise? So now that we have a working feeling for what we're doing, we're going to use a phonetic combination of a consonant and a vowel to help us out with this next sound and really frame this next exercise for us. So say for me the word yeast, weird word, right? But give it a try. And notice what your throat does. Yes. Yes. It uses the exact same motion that we were just working on. We're going to experiment a little bit. As we play with yeast. We're going to play with different variations of pitch. So let's give it a go. Good. So all you really need to think about is just say the word yeast. What this is gonna do is it's going to dip that larynx while maintaining that stretch, reducing the effectiveness of these muscles here. So what we shouldn't be hearing is that's going to pull the larynx upward and that's a good heads up that some exterior tension is manipulating your sound. So we want to train your voice to come in to the sound to intonate with that lowered larynx placement and that stretch. So if we just say, yes, it really helps us do that. So our exercise is just we're gonna SLI from high to low, slide from high. Easier said than done for so many reasons you'll see for your sweet selves. But I just want you to control that slide down. You're coming in on the higher note with a lot of beautiful power. But you don't have to overcompensate. All you have to do is hang onto the word yeast. And then just like we just did, control the relaxation as you come down. Don't just relax it. Let me show you what that sounds like. Just see how it becomes unstable if I relax too quickly, yeah, we wanna be able to control that relaxation as we descend. Good. Let's try again. And don't be alarmed. And don't feel like you're doing anything wrong. Your voice really wobbles towards that middle. That's perfectly normal to perfectly normal. The exercise. And you'll be able to iron that out. Really feel You're right. Good. Now if you need to take a second and feel that stretch before coming into that high note. Because the tendency for a lot of singers is to try to reach up. As we go higher. We don't want to go here. We want to go. We're training that mechanism to lower with a little bit of that stretch, a little bit of that tension. So we're ready to meet that when we blow the air past. If you need just a minute to practice that, always feel free to pause and return. Control that relaxation. See. Good, Very good. Do not underestimate the difficulty of this exercise or any of the exercises that we're gonna do today. They may seem simple, but we're trying to manage multiple things simultaneously. That's why we break it down in parts, right? So we're looking to feel that lower stretch and then below the air. So the better, the more you practice this, the better you'll be at just letting it feel it goes. Things happen simultaneously as you come into your sound. So now you try it on your own. Okay, ready to try this on your own? Remember to stretch your lower that tongue and blow the air through. Here we go. Control that relaxation. It's too high dropout. Control that descent. Who to connect all those notes in between? If it's too low. Awesome job. We're going to continue with our yeast, Steve. Yes, but we're going to change the direction that we're coming from. In our last exercise, we went from high to low, controlling that feeling of relaxation as we descended plenty hard enough. Now we're gonna go from low to high. We're going to step it a little bit so it'll be a little easier. So I'm hoping that your muscles have gotten a sense to memorize this, this motion, this movement. But, um, we're gonna go slower so that you can do kind of a system's check as you work this next exercise, because I'm going to split your attention. Most often. When singers sing from low to high, the muscles that are connected to the larynx, the swallowing muscles have a tendency to jerk upwards. And when they do, the high notes become very shrewd. Right, very shrill as they move upward. So we're wanting to train the body to stay the focus downward. So when we do this exercise together, I'm going to have you point towards yourself. And as you're moving through this exercise, as we're going high, you're going to take your hand and draw a line downward. This is, so, this is for your body to understand that it needs to go down into the body for what it needs, that nothing is really up. This is going to reduce that tendency of reaching for the nodes. Everything is down, all your support is down. You want your muscles to move downwards. Okay? So let's try this together. Stay on the yeast. Just imagine you go to speak it as staunchly as you can. Good. Let's try that again. Good. I'm hoping that you can feel that the everything, yeah, really reduce that strain and reach. Here we go. Let's try that one again. Really. Good guy. I help you manage that. Okay. You ready to do it by yourself? Remember to open the throat, lower that larynx and think, down. Here we go. I don't know. So now we're going to come off of that yeast and work with you. Slightly different, slightly different. But we're gonna do an exercise extremely soft Lee. This is going to reduce two things. One, squeeze from the vocal cords as we go higher and to access pushing of the airflow. So instead it's going to teach your muscles to still be hold. The configuration that we've been working on that slightly stretched. Get your own GAG, GAG. And a nice, nice refined chord closure. So our sound is this. So we're going to open and close the course. We're going to touch that abductors cores five times on the top. And then we're just going to walk it down. But as quietly as we possibly can expect, it is highly possible that as we come on these higher notes, that you'll get almost a phasing out sound, like almost a phase out sound. That's okay. Just keep trying to open and close those chords as if you're like laughing. Yeah, as if you're laughing. This helps your chords be quick, quick, and extremely refined in their work because they don't have that excess push to rely on. So let's try it a little bit higher than we'd been working so far right here. Now, you try. Good. Can you feel that very same stretch that we did at the very, very, very, very first exercise. Where we felt as if there was a small button at the back of the tongue. Feel that slide, slight, slight stretch in that particular spot. Let's, let's, let's see. Let's discover that together. Shall we go ahead and if you need help, as we get higher and higher, really let go of that y. So that will give you some speed to work with. Keep it quick, keep it quick as you can. Good job. Okay, here you go. You're on your own. No way that town use that you and keep it as quiet as possible. Hi. Are we ready for our last exercise in today's lesson? We're going to treat this puppy like a warm down? Yes. Like a stretch after a good workout because you put in the work today, you certainly did. We isolated a lot of muscles that your body may not be accustomed to, so we need to restore it back to ease. Hello. So our exercise is a lip trill, fluctuating back and forth. Just like a sheet and the wind drift drift reflect a sheet. And the when we don't remember seeing this one super quietly, we can go kind of medium conversational on this one. But I want to encourage you to really resist that tenancy if you have it, to push a whole bunch of air as you attempt those higher notes. We want to encourage a nice balance between those chords, making a nice refined edge, like coordination and spinning that air into the gossamer threads. So we don't want to give too much. We're going to find that happy middle between the two. So we're gonna be doing a lip trill, but if you prefer a tantrum to go for it, if you need assistance, also on your lip trill, just tilt your fingers upward at the corners of your mouth. This will help encourage relaxation in your mouth. So remember to drift and take it easy. Really use this time to relax. You did wonderful work today. Here we go. Air there. Here's the stakes. Maple gets harder as it gets lower, doesn't it? Yeah, we'll count that one. Will count that one. My goodness. Fluctuating back-and-forth. Between the lower note. A higher note allows the breath to be restored to the voice and the core tension to be nice and balanced. There's a nice balance from that. Keeping it at a mid to lower volume will reduce even more pressure and even more strain intention from your voice. You ready to do it by yourself? All right guys, Here we go. You're on your own. Remember to keep it as soft as possible. Reach for that feeling of ease and movement. If you need assistance, keep your fingers up at the corners of your mouth. Here we go. Excellent job. There you go. As you've just concluded part three of extend your range. You showed up today and you put in a great workout. I'm so proud of you. I hope you've enjoyed this lesson as much as I've enjoyed making it for you. Just a couple of things to remember in your practice, this entire lesson series has been about how to isolate and relaxed specific muscles. So before you begin each practice, take a moment or two or three and just feel with this gentle stretch feels like just a little bit of movement can have big, big lasting results. We're training our muscles how to behave in ways that are nice and open with strength rather than closed as a reaction to the sound. So feel free to come back to this video as often as you need to. It doesn't matter if you're a complete beginner or an industry professional, there's something here for everybody. Use this in your daily practices to really get those long-lasting results. Thank you so much for including me in your vocal journey. And I can't wait to see you again next time. Bye.