Singing Like a Pro: Exercises to Help You Find Your Unique Voice | Eve Williams | Skillshare
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Singing Like a Pro: Exercises to Help You Find Your Unique Voice

teacher avatar Eve Williams, Music: Information and Inspiration

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      2:37

    • 2.

      Singing Exercises: Introduction

      0:41

    • 3.

      Breathing

      6:39

    • 4.

      Range

      7:26

    • 5.

      Projection

      6:24

    • 6.

      Avoding Constriction (Retraction)

      5:28

    • 7.

      Pitching

      2:51

    • 8.

      The Break in the Passagio

      5:43

    • 9.

      Diction

      12:47

    • 10.

      Posture

      2:42

    • 11.

      Voice Qualities Introduction

      0:27

    • 12.

      Voice Qualities: Speech

      3:07

    • 13.

      Voice Qualities: Twang

      4:16

    • 14.

      Voice Qualities: Falsetto

      3:35

    • 15.

      Sob

      2:40

    • 16.

      Voice Qualities: Opera/Tilt

      2:53

    • 17.

      Voice Qualities: Belt

      4:43

    • 18.

      Identifying Voice Qualities

      1:41

    • 19.

      Project: Easy Songs

      0:52

    • 20.

      Project: Moderately Difficult Songs

      0:31

    • 21.

      Project: Difficult Songs

      0:51

    • 22.

      Commn Vocal Problems

      5:03

    • 23.

      Vocal Health

      7:00

    • 24.

      Conclusion

      0:44

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About This Class

Learn to Sing with A Signed, Internationally Performing Singer with More than 13 Years of Teaching Experience

My Press:

'An artist of considerable sophistication' - The Musician Magazine

'Recalling the great lady vocalists of decades past, Eve Williams is a woman armed with a beautiful, powerful voice capable of carrying entire albums with its frank, expressive, engaging timbre. Hypnotic and soulful, we can’t wait to see her live' -   YouBloom Headroom, L.A.

'A great voice'  - John McGlynn, Anuna, Ireland

Named One to Watch twice by Nashville Songwriters Association International

DO YOU WANT TO FIND OUT HOW TO BECOME THE BEST SINGER YOU CAN BE?

In this practical singing course you will learn how to find your own unique singing style whilst maintaining a healthy voice. We will look at

  • Breathing

  • Range 

  • Voice qualities (the vocal techniques needed for singing particular styles of music)

  • The break in the passagio

  • Avoiding constriction

  • Projection

  • Diction 

  • Looking after your voice: safe singing

The course is very practical with exercises in every lecture. It is designed to look at one topic every day, but you can keep going back to the exercises which are most useful to you. You can also ask questions and send mp3s for individual feedback on your singing.

The exercises will help you avoid common singing problems like constriction (a feeling of tightness and not being able to get medium high notes out), bridging the break in the passagio (when the higher part of your voice sounds different to the lower part), running out of breath or lack of stamina.

I hold a Master of Music degree and have been teaching singing since 2005 and am myself a signed artist. I have worked with multiplatinum musicians right the way through to young children. At present my youngest student is 6 and the oldest is 102! There are no barriers to finding your voice. Age, experience and negative experiences in the past don't need to stand in the way. I have worked with people just after vocal surgery, I have worked with people who are terrified, I have worked with people who have had their confidence knocked and together we got through the problems and freed up the voice.

If you email me an mp3 or ask me a question you can expect a quick, detailed reply. I'm here to help you! 

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Eve Williams

Music: Information and Inspiration

Teacher

I'm Eve Williams MMus, professional singer and songwriter. I've been teaching music and music business topics since 2005.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Eve Williams is a singer and songwriter from Co. Down in Northern Ireland.  Eve’s songs have been played in several countries since 2012, including USA, UK (including BBC airplay), Germany, Ireland and the Philippines. As an artist she has performed at several international festivals including Celtic Connections in Glasgow (broadcast live), YouBloom Dublin and Urbankelt in London. She has completed a successful UK tour in 2016. 

 

 Eve holds a Master of Music in Songwriting from Bath Spa University. In 2015 Nashville Songwriters Associ... See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Introduction : Hello and welcome to singing for beginners to advanced vocalists. The point of this course is to help you find your own unique voice and singing style and to maintain good vocal health. My name is Eve williams. I'm assigned singer and songwriter and I have more than ten years experience of teaching singing. At the moment, my youngest student is six, and my oldest student is a 102. And I have a lot of experience of working with professional vocalists and teaching at universities. So I'm hoping that I'm going to be able to help you with your singing and to work towards your own individual goals. Please feel free to message me at any point with any questions that you might have about the course or a byte singing or music generally, I'm always open to that. And we're going to be looking at several key areas of singing in this course, we're going to be looking at breathing. We're going to be looking at safe projection. We're going to be looking at finding on improving your ranch. Looking at voice qualities or in other words, the science that we make that fit into certain styles of music so that you can begin to sing the music that you really love. And we'll also look at vocal health and looking after your voice. Because after all, you don't just need your voice for singing. You need your voice in every area of your life. There's a few things that would be great if you haven't place before starting this course. Nothing very complicated. I only asked that your voice is healthy, that at the moment you don't have nodules or any serious infections such as tonsillitis, laryngitis that your voice is helping. If you have problems with your spine, with your neck or back, take care of some of the exercises. I myself have a form of rheumatoid arthritis that causes fusion of my neck. So these exercises are safe for me and I hope that they're going to be saved for you. But if you feel any discomfort out hall, then please do stop. Sent me a message. If you've got any ongoing pain or tightness in your voice of your voice signs of it. I best please do consult a doctor before starting any singing program. Also, it needs to be remembered that videos like this are there to teach basic exercises, but learning singing is not like learning piano, for instance, where everybody learns the fingering on the scales in the same way. Everybody's voice is different and there isn't really a substitute for finding your own property qualified vocal coach. By properly qualified, I mean, the person needs to know something about the anatomy of voice on high, the voice physically works. You can't teach singing with just a grade seven or eight in music or high-grade and music, you need to know about the physiology of the voice and be able to work with voices that are different than your own. So are you excited to start? Then let's get to the first lecture. 2. Singing Exercises: Introduction: I'm going to teach you some practical exercises that you can do every day. And if you're dedicated to doing the exercises, you're going to notice some real improvements in your voice. We're going to start off by looking at breathing because that's foundational to signaling. And it also has an impact on pitching as well as on support. We're going to look at things like projection. We're going to look at range. We're going to look at how to deal with the brick and the Posada where your voice kinda changes gear between the low part of your voice and the higher part of your voice. And we're going to look at something absolutely essential and not as avoiding constriction, avoiding tightness in the voice. So I hope you're excited to get going and let's begin. 3. Breathing: In this video, we're going to talk about the right breathing for singing. No, I know it might feel a bit all big taught how to breathe because don't we do that not truly every day? Well, yes, but there are certain kinds of breathing that will work for singing on certain kinds that just worked. If you're of a certain age, you probably remember this song from the nineties. Bro llamas, maybe. We don't want breathing that signs gasping and also short sharp breath up here won't sustain solid. And why it's important to have a deep breath here. Twofold. One, because that's how your body briefs when it's relaxed. And you can get a lot of air and not way, you can only get very little air and up here. And another reason is that pitch is related to breathing. So if areas here solid does here, if air goes down, pitch will go down. And quite often when people come for lessons, if they're not completely in chain, it sometimes the rear, but more often than not, it's just the breathing at support. Okay, so what I'd like you to do for this exercise is find a nice amount of space, but you can feel nice and relaxed. I'm using a stretch bound. You can use a scarf if you don't come to overstretch path and we're going to tie it, not graduate just not under your armpits, but somewhere in between. So what we're gonna do is breathe in so that the bound moves sideways. This is called intercostal lateral diaphragmatic breathing. I don't expect you to remember that but intercostal as in between the ribs, lateral as an ICT sideways, diaphragmatic because your diaphragms engaged so deep breath in. And that's actually quite nice. And light. And a deep breath in through your mind. And not know what I don't want you to do is this. You see how if I raise my shoulders, my voice is pinched. We don't want that to happen. So deep breath in. Now the next time as you breathe out, let the air I'm a gentle HIS on time, how long you could do it for? And that will tell you, hi, good. Your lung capacity is most people can take about 15 seconds to get to the end of your breath. So if you get more than 15 seconds, your lung capacity is quite good. And that would be an indication that your cardiovascular fitness is quite good because breathing and lung capacity is related to fitness. If you go from the car to the couched the computer, you can do these exercises, but your lung capacity may not be quite as good as someone who's a bit fitter. Okay, so deep breath in and et cetera, just to the end of your own breath and just time how long you can do that for pausing this video. Okay. If your lung capacity was more than 15 seconds, you should be able to join me in the next exercise. Fine, if not, we'll adopt it for you. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to sing something using this kind of Revit. First of all, I just want you to count how many times I breathe to sing this. What do we do with the drug can say low mob rule we do with the drug can say low walked when we do withdrawn. Good morning. Hi, many times vibrates Sigma. I'm going to give you a big old clue. Just what's not. You will live do the same if your lung capacity isn't quite there yet, if you're impacted by asthma or any kind of conditions, the ribcage, I actually have arthritis in my wreckage, then it's perfectly fine to take more than one breath. The point of the exercise is multi-term purple and Caleb work, so breathe when you need to. So let's sing this together. Deep breath in. What do we do with the drug? Can say, well, what will we do with the drone? Can say low, watch what we do with the dragons. Go morning. There may even have been subgraph left at the end. Okay, so now let's follow that way Dawn, which is going to make it much harder. And this time you definitely won't get it on more than, and this time you definitely won't get it on only one graph unless you're maybe a deep-sea diver, I don't know. So breed when you need to breathe. Okay, so take a deep breath in. And they're random is blood. Will we do the drunken sailor? What will we do with the drum? Can say low wealth. Well, the way I do the dry again, say that mower. So I take three breaths to do that. I normally we take two and what each of them. And so you can see high if you did this little video, if you did that drunken sailor exercise a couple of times a week, you'd be constantly challenging your lung capacity, which would have a knock on effect of pitch and the little exercise breathing into the bat. You can do that while you're on the sofa watching TV. You can just fit that into your day so that your body learns to take a wide VO, breath. Back in the day. And an old school way of thinking there used to be this phrase, breathe from your diaphragm. And the diaphragm is engaged when we use this kind of breathing. The reason that we don't just say that noise is that you don't have conscious control of your diaphragm and people have misinterpreted that phrase is mainly squeeze your stomach in. And so they squeezed in these muscles, the ones you use when you're putting on some genes that are too tight called your rectus abdominis. If you squeeze a tube, what happens? The contents of that truth comes back up. So people squeezed in their stomach muscles and then have acid reflux. When acid from your stomach kid backup. And actually if stomach acid hits, that can't be a serious injury to your voice. And many's an opera singers career was ended in the fifties and sixties through acid reflux. So everything we do NIH as white, having a lack of tension here and a lack of tension here. We're breathing here, and that is very important. So I would recommend practicing this video regularly because breathing is the foundation to sing it. 4. Range: In this next video, we're going to look at range. And we're going to start off by doing a little exercise for you to find your Fock. Not that might sign a little bit rude, but believe me, it's not. Faq refers to the kind of vocal parts that are used when you sing and acquire. So the most common are soprano, which is the highest female voice. Mezzo-soprano, not quite as high as the first soprano. Alto, which is the lowest female voice, or the highest male voice. Tanner, the highest male voice. Baritone, which is a bit lower than tenor, and bass, the lowest male voice. So we're going to find your fact by doing this, I want you to look up at the ceiling and cut. I'd like to 41234. Then slowly lower your head. Did you notice when I lifted my head higher the pitch of my voice foul significantly? That's because that's the nutshell resting position of my larynx when I tilt my head. But because I speak to day, my voice is worked its way into a higher pitch than it would otherwise be. So quite often we don't speak where our voice would most like to be. So I'm going to give you a couple of minutes to do that exercise yourself and find the best range for your voice. So if you'd like to pause this video and just try that. Okay, Normal going to look at a couple of little exercises that will improve the range of your voice to things happen as your voice gets higher, you have your vocal folds that come together like this. When you speak or sing, as your voice gets higher and higher, they vibrate faster and faster. At a concert, a, the notes that they orchestra tunes up to this note. It's called a 440 because your vocal folds are vibrating 440 times the second. And by the time you get to top see, your vocal folds would be vibrating a thousand times a second, so they're moving very fast and high pitch. Also, your larynx travels upwards. As your voice gets higher, your vocal folds get long and thin. Your larynx travels upwards and Azure Boards goods lower. Your vocal folds get closer together. That means that there's a bigger space and your voice when you're singing a high note. And as opposed to a low note, which is why high notes are lighter than loads. Okay, you've probably watched the likes of the x-factor when you hear people singing arpeggios and the light before they go in, the kind of pointless, you wouldn't run a marathon to prepare for running a marathon, There's one little exercise that you can do that will keep your voice sample and add to your range. It's called the siren. So first of all, what I want you to do is say, sing, then take the ass off the start and say, and that puts the of your voice into your nose so that this happens if you hold your nose. That's where we want your voice to be. Then just take your voice through its full range of movement. So it, Yeah, Who'll exercise goes like this. Singing. You'll feel your voice moving through its whole range of movement. And any notes that you can hum through your nose like that, you can sing. So if I can do this, I can do this. Not that I'm recommending you do that. Not a couple of safety notes. If you look on YouTube, you'll see some people doing this exercise with them like open like this. That can damage your voice when it gets to the top. And also it's a horrible noise. Your neighbors would probably call the police. So don't do that. Don't force your voice either higher or lower than it wants to go, take it through a comfortable range of movement. If you do this a couple of times a day, which is quite easy to fit end. You can do it in the car and the car. You couldn't notice as much as an octaves and crease in your voice. And a few months because any muscle that we stretch becomes more flexible, there is another slightly slower way of improving your Ranj. This exercise as particularly good for people who have ever had problems with their voice. If you've had repeated google infections, if at some point in the past you've had a tonsillectomy. This has a nice gentle exercises and gentle stretch of the voice, but it takes time. You would have to commit certain amount of time every day to doing this exercise, especially if you already have quite a full range, It's called sliding face. So what you would do is sing this note. X-naught would hear every note on the way up and the way die, and so on and so forth. You would need a piano or a keyboard for this. If you don't happen to have one, you can download a multitude of free piano apps onto your phone or your tablet, just so you know what pitch you're hitting. Night. When we go up and the voice we start singing higher, we can go out and quite big jumps. We can go. When we come down, we come died and smaller steps because you count actually injure your voice worse. Three, pushing it to load them, pushing it too high and you can distend your larynx, which would keep you away from work for a couple of weeks. So we're going to practice accessing your lower ranch by singing this. Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing saying, saying, saying, saying, saying. So I'm just going Don from middle seat. Again, don't push your voice lower than it wants to go when it starts to start songs to start a little bit rumbly. At that point, you want to stop your voices like the elastic and your pajama bottoms that away. You can't say today I'm just going to stretch this one small portion of it. When you stretch it, you must stretch at all. So don't work on the high part of your voice one day and the low part another, and spent most of the week singing in the middle. You must stretch the whole of your voice every day if you want to see results, the best way to do that is through the siren. So I hope that this section has been useful and that you feel inspired to go into preview range. 5. Projection: This video, we're going to talk a byte projection and Han to make your voice lighter safely. This is never buy just shunting. If I just raise my voice like that, I can actually feel the tension and constriction in it. We've all had that experience of maybe going to a rock concert, singing along with the lights fakers, not realizing highlighted you actually are. And the next morning sounding like this, this is what we want to avoid. So there are two different ways of raising volume in the voice, and we're going to work on both of those in this video. So the first is twice. If I add a 20 sides by voice, suddenly it fills the whole of this room and change the tone of my voice. I've melt shining at, you know, it could be that your accent, like mine, has an actual amount of twine in it. But if you have like a very soft accent and it's not the way that you speak, then it could take your voice some time to get used to this 20 solid. Okay, so what I want you to do it burst is saying for me, yeah. Be careful who you frontal. But let's try that together. That's why. Okay. So let's try that somewhere high. And some were low. No, no, no, no, no, not there is a muscle in your voice culture RE epiglottis, speak to muscle. Don't expect you to remember that when you make this signed your larynx, which is normally one long tube that comes to you concentric shapes. Hence, the sun is just turned up naturally. It's a core to a lot of different kinds of music. Obviously, Country music is very 20 sibilant. Abandon the top of the kitchen. Certain forms of music theater. No, no one's why, but that's pure twice. And rock and pop. I'll see you all is born is a classic twined singer. So that halfway because she had me with my bike and he's got a lot of heavy guitars to sing against. It's also a core component of classical music. Because if you have a 100 and three-piece symphony orchestra behind Jing and the Royal Albert whole world of people and soft furnishings in front of you and a microphone is brought forward and classical music and wasn't invented and certain periods of classical music. Hi, are you going to fill that space? Well, there's more to it than Twine. Twine, It's the core ingredient. So we're going to do that little exercise again with the anion. Anions. And then high. Then blue, no, no, no, no, no, none. We're going to put it into a song. So the drunken sailor that we sung in the breathing exercise, I want you to sing it with words just to twice. So it'll sound like this. So you can pause the video, go back and do that. And once you've done the drunken sailor to Twine so you can feel that kind of nasal twine at the front of your face. Let's then add the words, keeping that big 20 failing on the song should be massive. And she saw it like this. What will we do with the drug? Can say lo lot when we do with the dog, didn't say a lot when we do the drawing board. And there should be no string. When you finish thinking that your voice should fail, completely clear, you can hear there's no hoarseness in mind when I speak. Not the mistake that people make about singing. If they think that their voice is their instrument, we're not actually the whole of your body is your instrument. And a small body is the smallest side. At a big body is a bake side. So that's what we're going to practice, not something called ARM on, right? I'm going to come to it and I'm going to slightly pull my arms back when I get to five and I want you to listen and hear what happens. 1234567. It I did nothing in my voice to turn up the volume there. It all came from my lats core muscles. We won't bake muscles to take the strands, little muscles of the voice. Don't have to. Let's do that together. Not 1234567. It well done. Shake it like now we're going to do with a note. So it would sound like this. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Let's do that together. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Today, there is another way of anchoring that is called our migrate that we've just done. There is another way of anchoring where you use your neck long. I have fusion in the base of my skull to my C5. Rice was brilliant at doing this. Freddie Mercury second we will rocky. There's live video on YouTube. He's a really great example of using both arm on Mac outbreak, neck outbreak tends to be associated with more with classical music. I don't like it so much anyway, because it gives you is like double chin, but it basically looks like this. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. It you see how it also slightly changed the signs, but that can't be appropriate in certain kinds of music. So I'm not going to do that with a moot. 12345678. And you can hear there was a difference to the side. Again, I'm not the best person to be demonstrating it, but I'm sure that you get the point. I recommend the arm. I'm pretty bit more though, in that the muscles are bigger, your lats, and you don't have to bend over backwards to me, a very slight movement just like this. I'm pinching my shoulder blades together and sliding the dog towards my waist. And that is creating a big solid. Again, projection is very important, especially CIF projection methods. If you just push your voice to make it lighter, you're going to hurt. So I really would recommend practicing this particular video several times. 6. Avoding Constriction (Retraction): This is a very, very important thing to master and singing, and that is avoiding constriction and singing with retraction of the false vocal folds. Our constriction and retraction. Constriction is when the voice tightens. And quite often, especially with women, that will happen between high E and F. When we come to the break and the pistachio, the voice just tightens and the notes get sort of stuck sometimes for physical reasons and sometimes because the singer is nervous. And that means that the notes don't reside. They don't ring out. If this continues over a prolonged period of time or if the constriction is very severe, it can result and vocal problems such as nodules, which are little hard bumps like blisters that develop on the vocal folds and stop the vocal folds from coming together properly. So you would end up speaking like this. No, some people saying with constriction for years and have no problems. That very gravelly signs that made by singers like Rod Stewart or Tina Turner, that is constriction and it hasn't harmed their voices. Barlow also sings with construction, but for most of us, it's something that we really want to avoid. And if constriction is used, for example, to make that kind of grilling signed that Tina Turner is famous for. It should be a choice, not an automatic default position of the voice. Retraction is exactly the opposite. That's when the false vocal folds are pulled back so that the voice is open. There's a big space within the voice. I'm not alive signed to be clear and ringing. Let's listen to some examples of constriction and retraction. And for this, I'm going to play you two different singers singing the same song. And that song is made from Phantom of the Opera, which is actually a really difficult piece with some very difficult intervals in it. Now, just to be clear, I'm not saying that one of these singers is a great singer and the other one isn't a good singer. All I'm saying is that one is showing examples of constriction and one is not. And so the sign is ringing item bit more. So first of all, we're going to listen to Emmy Rossum in the movie version singing, think of me, and I want you to especially to listen to the lines. When we said goodbye and listen to the good and goodbye, it goes backwards a little bit, it's tightened. But at that point in the song, she's met decide like she's quite nervous and not doing our best. But then listen to what happens when she sings. Take your hearts back and be afraid to listen to the word heart. It slightly tight, you can hear it moving backwards. The Nope doesn't ring, right? So let's listen to this song. For me. For me. If not, let's listen to the Clare murder version. If you listen to the same two lines we mentioned before, when we've said goodbye, Take your heart back and be free. The notes are wringing out a little bit more because retraction as being employed there. So this side is more consistent. So distant. So we've talked a little bit about what construction is and what retraction is. So let's nylon high to get a nice retracted open space and the larynx. So when you want to listen a muscle, you tighten it first. So if you want to go ahead and drop your shoulders, draw. And there is a way that we can do that within the voice and it has to do this. And I'm using my hands to demonstrate what we're doing inside the voice. And that is to close this and open it. And where it falls open, I want you to fail the open space inside your voice, the feeling of it being way. So Titan, listen. This exercise is called the Darth Vader because it'll signs a little bit like veteran the mass or open status that is called the inner smile. I didn't call it that. Incidentally, that's just what it's known as. So when you have that loose space new voice, just want you to sing as Peano sitemap. See how C9 rings when everything is nice and loose, when there's a nice open space within the voice. 7. Pitching: Most dedicated singers with the grid and title air can lose PECC under certain circumstances if we start to get tired and the breathing isn't what it should be. If your support starts to go poster isn't great, then you can experience lapses in pitch. And some of the most successful singers in the world have on occasion Spain auditing sometimes as well, the technology that you're working with can affect your pitch if you don't have rate monitors when you're onstage and can't really hear what you're doing, you know, that won't help an awful lot. So it is good to work on the breathing, which has an impact on pitch as we discussed earlier, but also to do little pitching exercises. So I'm going to give you a couple of those. This exercise teach us some really basic intervals and it's a good thing to do every nine man just to work in your ear. So that's little three-note scale. That affordable scale. It's just a three-note scale, a four-note scale, and finer scale went up, et cetera, et cetera. Another really important thing to practice because it will help you a lot with improvisation. And just with your gentle air is a chromatic scale. Very difficult. Now that was beginning on C. And I really recommend that you do a different chromatic scale every day. That little semitone interval is obviously pretty fundamental in the whole of western music because we have a major and a minor chord. And the difference tree major minor is this studies. So it's pretty important that you can hear that semitone. I'm actually some people have incredible difficultly pitching a semitone more so than pitching an octave. So just to recap, the three note for note and five note scale exercises. And the chromatic scale, or something that you should be doing quite regularly, at least a couple of times a week. 8. The Break in the Passagio: Brewed with Buzz Day. You show them your true with code. Those do you show? So a big question that people ask in singing on something you'll find asked all of the Internet is high tide bland registers, hydro, I have a mix of chest voice and head voice at. The particular method of teaching singing, I come from doesn't use that terminology because song doesn't come from the chest or the hat. It comes from your larynx out of your mouth. But we'll use those terms Scholar just because some of you may be familiar with them. So basically what happens if I sing a scale in what's called speech quality or spring condom, if you come from a clinical background, this happens Do Re Mi Fa So tightening and to stop by. And that's because my voice is hit a ceiling and in order to travel higher, it has to tilt your thyroid cartilage at the front of your voice has to tell on that is making this side Do Re, Mi, Fa, some of them. In other words, we have to make a slightly more classical, resonant side in order to be able to hit the top note to nor register. So we can't extend that speech quality, which we'll talk about when we look at the boys school dissection to the voice. So your voice Wilson, not truly different in the lower registers when zinc, zinc, zinc, zinc saying, Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing, Zoom. There is a different 2-mer than there is at the top. There are two voice qualities that you can carry through the whole of your range. Opera stroke tilt. I'm twice. We've already looked at Twine when we've talked about projection. We'll talk about opera in the voice quality section of this course. But all I want you to do for the purposes of this exercise is make a resonant sound and try and sustain it through out your Ridge. My, I know that not all if people want to be possible singers, some of you will have different interests. We just learned to make the song so that we can access the high notes and have some consistency. And then we turn it on. What I'd like you to do at first is saying for me is and then out of really hard and saying and then drop your jaw and your larynx and saying this. And listen to their resonance. That's what creates a big resonant side. And in not so and we're just going to sing some Fisk. Not take it through your own range. What's comfortable for you, but you must pass E to F because that's where the break and the massage WE is that place where your voice changes Geher and if your voice is going to constrict to get tight in the female voice. It'll be sort of E and F. I'm maybe sort of D and G are rind that range. Middle voice to our though, perhaps slightly lower if you're a base power too. So taking your voice through its whole range, or most of your ranch as much as, as comfortable in that slightly operatic signed. You will have the consistent solid across the registers, for example. Oh, sorry, it's very similar to tone wise. Not the other voice quality that you can take across registers to bed registers is twice. So adding a side that we practiced earlier. So let's try some fifths, 22. And now we again, take it through your own comfortable ranch. Don't just follow mine. But hopefully you should have a similar side. Knowing twine or opera stroke tilt as that resonant solid is known, may not be appropriate for the pace that you're singing. In which case we have to look at a blend of things and we'll go into that in the voice qualities section of this course. But blending the registers, I'm having this consistent signage across registers as not just a performance thing. Well, we're also trying to do in this video and this exercise is give you a way of singing that will stop tightness, constriction, kicking in at the break and the massage or like a and F because what can happen is your voice gets either nervous, uptight there and then that tightness spreads and we don't want that. So the exercises that we've just done, our very useful exercises to practice a couple of times a week. 9. Diction: In this video, we're going to talk about diction and other words, what makes signed clear to the listener all of your song, because we've all had that experience of hearing a song on the radio and thinking, I can't make out the words to that or I don't know what that last word was. And we're going to make sure that that doesn't happen when you're singing. Okay, so the first thing that I'm going to do is to present you with a sentence that has only the vital signs and not the consonants signs. And I want you to see if you can read the sentence. Okay, I'm gonna give you a few seconds to see if you can figure it out. Finding it a bit difficult. Maybe. Let's try the same sentence, but with only the consonant signs and not the vital signs. Is this maybe a little bit easier? The cat sat on the mat. Night, in English, sense, is conveyed through the consonant signed. If we lose the consonant signed, then the sentence suddenly doesn't really click with us. So if I cut a couple of tes off the end of some words here, that CAS are on the map, doesn't really make any sense. Or even if I just fudge the T and turn it into a day, which some people do when they're singing. The cat sat on the mat. Doesn't sound. Grant, does it? Slightly more difficult to understand? Night? The reason the Italian is the language of opera is it does the opposite of English. It conveys sense and emotion that through a big vital signs, a moray as opposed to love. You can kind of get the jest. So yes, signed is conveyed on the vile signed. It, the resonance happens there. So vital signs are very important. But if we lose consonants, we lose sense, we lose the sense of words. So as y, we're going to start in this video by working some consonants. This first consonant we're going to work on the Amazon, moves our minds for words. Can you see that moves our lives forwards and hopefully your voice should move forward with your life. So we're gonna take a little tongue twister. Let's just read this from the screen. You can pause the video if you like, if that makes it easier. Money making Monday morning, make some Mary Martha full mind. Let's read that again. Money making Monday morning makes him Mary Martha, full mind. So you can see my mouth moving forwards. Let's do that to your rhythm. Bonnie making Monday morning, Nick, some Mary mouthful mind money-making Monday morning mix. I'm Mary mouthful mind money-making Monday morning mix them, Mary Martha mind. So that's slightly difficult. This may take some practice. Norberg going to try singing it because we want to hear how the word signed when they're sung. What I'm about to say may not be in the right pitch for you. You can sing this a bit lower than me. Or if it's not your voice type, you can cut out the very top notes of this exercise. But this is what the CNG version is going to sound like. Money-making Monday morning, they excel. Mind, body making Monday morning begs the Mary Merkel mind. It's a very old skill exercise. This, you can play that again on sing-a-long word, sing it alone if you like. So the AMS side moves our minds for weds and let's try a tricky or vital signs. This file side moves our minds backwards. So, you know, when you have a photograph taken and everybody says, Say cheese, well imagine everybody said, lovely, see high, my mouth moves backwards. When I say lovely. The danger is that your voice could go backwards when your mouth goes backwards. And that's what we're trying to avoid and this tongue twister. So again, let's just read this off the screen to begin with. Lovely Lotus lilies lie along the lilting lyndon Li. Let's read that again. Lovely Lotus lilies lie along the lilting London Li. Now let's try it to your rhythm. Lovely Lotus lilies lie along the lilting london li, lovely Lotus lilies lie along the lilting london li, lovely Lotus Elise lie along the lilting and diddly, lovely Lotus Elise lie along the lilting and diddly, it will take some practice to get there. Again, let's sing it in your own pitch in a way that CTA, lovely low to as lilies lie along the limiting london. London Lee, lovely low too long, the looting lyndon Li. Now let's move on to a potentially really annoying vital signs. When I've taken quires, this is my least favorite vital signs. The signs, you know what it's like when you get a lot of people singing together and it sounds like this. So we want to practice keeping the acids short night and this tongue twister. There are also some tes and modern recording technology hits T's of you really had a really hard at the end of a word that can also be irritating. So we're keeping all the acids and tes in this exercise. Nice and short. Seven swans go swiftly sailing to the sunsets and the West. Seven swans go swiftly sailing to the sunset and the West. Let's try that to read them. Savage swans go swiftly sailing to you this sunset in the West, Savin swans go Swift, place a link to this sunset and the West. Seconds won't go swiftly sailing to the sunset and the West, seven-twelfths go swiftly sailing to the sunset and the West. Now let's try singing. Get seven swans go swiftly, say link to the sunset and the seven swans goes west. Seven swans goes with these, a link to the sunset and the West. And I went, I think. It's the, that's making the resonance because the resonance happens all the vial side. So now we're going to look at the vital signs. Night. I just want to say that there is a school of thought and singing that modifies vital signs in order to change the tone of the voice. I don't personally like that because it's signs on not true. And I think what we're aiming for addiction is to sign natural, to sing words the way that they are spoken, especially the way that they would be spoken by the character telling the story of the song, whether or not it's a music theater song, you know, that also applies to pulp. You won't diction that's appropriate to the genre, to the characterization, and to the message that you're putting across. So should modify vials, I think works against that. Sarah Brighton singing ba instead of bay and Music of the Night. That's the way that singers were taught in those days. And never enough from the greatest showman where the word comes across slightly as man instead of me. I was once at a singing teacher seminar when someone was singing where it's like kale and bail instead of kale and bell. And the effect was decided a little bit affected, but also it was very confusing. So we're not going to do that. Basically. Some noise. Let's practice our vital signs. Ii. All who, let say that again. Ee, oo night, my singing teacher believed that people are either in person or on person. When you say, you're my, elongates vertically. When you say it elongates horizontally and people tend to gravitate towards one or the other. And I have to say, I find that my own teaching practice to the hardest facade here is probably, ooh, if I go, ooh, let chi far, my mouth is moving. You just don't have much space on an OU for side to get it. And if I go ee, oo, ee, oo, same thing. Wide, small, big, small. So we're going to sing these vital signs. And the idea is to try and get the UX at the end as light as the a at the start. You may need to record yourself to make sure that that is happening. Let's try that again. So don't push your voice hard, new lats, your chin, go a little bit soft, drop your jaw and there should be more resonance. Now let's try it somewhere high. And some are quite low. Noise, as well as consonants and vowels. We've got to navigate the diphthong. And if you're doing advanced exams and singing, getting a difficult wrong, we'll lose you a lot of marks. So well is a diphthong I hear you ask, well, it is the I signed, which is basically made up of and a put together and where you change from a to a is actually quite important. For example, we don't want to sing. Helped me make use of the nose. Because we're not, an English, is not the word that we're aiming for. It makes no sense in this context. We also don't want to sing, help me make the music. Not because that's just really annoying. What we want to sing as this. Help me make the mu of the null or not. I just pulled by mouth back very slightly. When I changed the vital signs, I let the ring long enough before I change to the e. I want you to sing that with me, just the word knight. And I'm going to show by little hand sync, signal it where I want you to change from a to a by just slightly pulling your mouth back. No. No. No. Okay. We could also try the same exercise, all the songs, summertime and a big twangy sound. So because we don't want to sing so or so. So let's try summertime. And again, I'll do that. I will signal. So so so so, so hopefully that creates assigned, which is natural, because again, everything that we're aiming for addiction as siding, not true. It's really a great idea to record yourself singing. Leave it overnight, well into the next day. Come, come at it with fresh ears and ask yourself the question. Can I be understood clearly? Are the words coming across clearly? Are they not true in this genre? Do they signed right for the character who is telling the story of the song. And I signed like me do I signed naturally, like mate as anything on this side, unnatural. So to be clear and natural is the m. If you have any questions by diction, feel free to get in touch. 10. Posture: Calls germ can very much impact how your voice signs. Remember I demonstrated earlier that if you raise your shoulders and we don't have a big space here, the sine becomes pinched. So we won't have a few shoulder rolls backwards. Forwards want to keep the shoulders nice and loose. Then raised shoulders. Drop them with the shoulders and drop them in their shoulder. My stretch here, I'm back up here to shoulder, my stretch here. So we also don't want to pay, you know, the human question mark. There's a real thing. If physio told me this is a real thing, it's text neck, where if we become very Ron Dodge because we're constantly using screens. And also guitarists are whiles for putting their music on the floor in front of them. And that kind of practicing like this, have up back rounded. This will do you no good. I'm will actually make your next or after a while. So there's a great exercise that we can do to counterbalance all this. It's calamities exercise. So what I want you to do is find a wall and lean up against the wall. Bandura knees slightly keep the knees soft. Protect your back. Feet. Avoid a foot and a half and walls depending on your height. And I am 55, that works for me. If you're over six feet tall, maybe about 200 feet from the wall. What we're gonna do is pretend that it was a big strip of cell tape behind your hat on. It's being peeled off the wall. So your chin comes onto your chest, then your upper back, your thoracic spine comes off the wall very, very slowly because we don't want to rush of blood to the head that all the way die. So your whole spine is off the wall than just hi, it's a deep breath and tear and hint. Let your tailbone, back of the wolf coming up slow, maybe two at the top and stuck your vertebrae, stack your vertebrae one-by-one, back onto the wall and stand up and shake it out. That leaves you with a good singing posture. And it's also quite comfortable. It's nice. It feels like having your back ironed. If you are guitarist Earth-like me, you're also the keys player and you're often sitting down to saying, think of what we did and the arm anchoring video, heat, your shoulder glands slit, dawn towards your waist, that opens ICT. Your shoulder and chest area allows you to breathe properly and makes assigned to bet stronger. 11. Voice Qualities Introduction: We're going to look in this section at voice qualities, and that's the signs associated with different genres of music. So if you have made a classical singer in the past, but you'd like to learn to sing a bit of rock. If you've been a folk singer, I knew you'd like to learn today, but of so this sections really going to help you. This is really practical set of exercises that you can apply to your singing. So let's far ahead, and I hope you enjoy this section. 12. Voice Qualities: Speech: The first voice quality we're going to look at is plain old speech. And this is a voice quality that's very close to your own speaking voice. My, what's beautiful about this voice quality as it's a pure clear sign that doesn't have a lot of vibrato. So it's perfect for styles such as folk. My lab said to me, my mother alone mind and allows you to, for your lack of care. So high do we make this sound? We're going to come to it and we're going to start singing at five. So I won't cheat to do this with me. 1234567, it almost as if you were speaking at so let's do that again. 1234567. It grit, not through this part of the course, we're going to sing Happy Birthday quite well. So I'd like you to start off by singing happy birthday, just as if you were speaking it to someone. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, Happy birthday, Happy birthday, Happy birthday to you. Now the one thing about speech quality, It's a beautiful song, but it won't go through the whole of your range. If you try and go higher in your range in speech quality, this happens. So I'm going to sing a scale and speech quality and I DO RE, MI, FA, SO LA to see how my voice tightens and just stops. So in order to access the higher part of the voice may have to tilt the larynx abet from that position to make a more resonant sound like this. Do Re, Mi, Fa. So we'll talk a little bit about that later. 13. Voice Qualities: Twang: The next course, Golgi we're going to talk about is twine and twang is awfully important to projection, as we discussed earlier. When I add to my voice suddenly it fails a lot more space. It's obviously a core component of an awful lot of music. What do you think twine, you may think country music. I stumble at eBay and their Tobel do the good law or by South nasals why? And also a core component and a very rocky or pops on. And then this ad may breed that may vary, that has a lot of twine. It's used well, music theater. No. No, it was where I've been. And also, interestingly, a really core ingredient of opera and classical music. Because when you think about it, you're a classical singer. Microphones are bad for him and classical singing, or maybe you were singing in an era where they had been invented. You've got 103 piece symphony orchestra behind you on your voice has to carry over the soft furnishings on the people in the ring. Hockey make the amount of noise. Well, it is by twine there as a muscle and your voice culture, RA epiglottis, fake domicile, don't expect you to remember that noticing those as well. And when you tighten that muscle when you make this side, what happens is that your larynx, which is normally one long shape, it comes to concentric jigs and that makes the side much lighter. In fact, the human voice is capable of reaching frequencies that no other instrument in the orchestra. So essential to projection, essential to certain kinds of signed, hard we make Mossad, well, I won't need to be careful who you do this in front of us. But if you could just saying for me, go ahead and do that. Now try it somewhere high in your image. Now try it. Some were quite low and orange. No, no, no. Great style logo to do some little five-note scales declining, so let me just get remote. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like you to do that exercise. If you don't have a keyboard tone, you can dynode a keyboard up onto your phone, which might help with that startup middle C goes through your own ranch, not mine, whatever your edge, maybe I'm really practices twine because it really is something very essential. Spam, spam find their mean never seen so much more actions. Hi. 14. Voice Qualities: Falsetto: I prefer that. Take a look at this image of the larynx. You'll notice that there are tree vocal folds. I refer to them as vocal folds rather than vocal cords because they're not courts like you again, my guitar, but they're the white things basically. And above them are the false vocal folds. So when you sing and falsetto, the true vocal folds don't become together, hence, air is escaping, but the false vocal folds day, hence, creating that lovely Breath, a sign that we've just heard and the Marilyn Monroe sang. Nine. The next quality, falsetto is a much misunderstood term. Falsetto does not mean men singing really high. The Maryland and row except that I just played is the most famous example of falsetto. See you and you speak, or you say, your vocal folds come together like this. And above your vocal folds you have a pair of flaps called the false vocal folds. When do you use falsetto? Because an awful lot of air is escaping. Your true vocal folds don't quite come together, but the false vocal folds do, hence falsetto night we need falsetto just as we need twine to control dynamic. It's really the only way to hit a high note quietly. Let me demonstrate. If I don't follow, say luggage falsetto and saying, so, let's sing Happy Birthday like Marilyn Monroe. So what I want you to think as half boys, half are in fact, we'll start with some Hobbes because really helps can just go, right? Yes. So that's the Mr. President top. Happy Birthday. Hopefully you'll enjoy doing that. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, Mr. President. Heavy. So Knock yourself by doing that. I had to breathe a bit more than normal in that style because a lot of air is escaping. So let's try a large quiet life using that. You've just made some live by Allied, which would be speech quality, font setting, speech quality. And the higher you get, the harder or gas. But false setter is a sign we really want to master in the context of a song and he suddenly go into falsetto. It can be very, very emotional. It can be sultry like Marilyn Monroe and can actually be very sad. It can be wistful. It's a brick colored to have in your palette. 15. Sob: So, so I'd like you to start out by singing Happy Birthday, like it was the worst burst that you could possibly imagine. The birthday to you. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday, Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you know, can you say, I'm sad? I'm sad about lowers the larynx. And what happens when we lower the larynx like that as a gap darkening of side. Really famous example of this solving style. Birds fly in how, you know, how are you. So, you know, which is making a solving signed, even though the sagas feeling good, that was the genius of Nina Simone. So what happens when you make that solving signed is that your larynx is what's called a sympathetic organ. So if you hear someone choking up like they're going to cry like their larynx lowers, your larynx will lower t and you will physically feel sad. So we are in using this style, this voice quality, emotionally manipulating the lessor to a certain degree. Neither was a point in history with that kind of solving style was very invoke if you think of the whole wins. The early, some of the old 1950s screen musicals, you would have heard the song I often and sometimes a classical music of recent years, it's fallen out of vogue, but if you use it in the right passage in a song, it's very, very effective. You wouldn't sing a whole song this way because you would, you would depress the listener. So have a little go again. I've singing the happy birthday song. Very sad. Maybe try singing the first-person failing goods with the Saab and just listen to how different your voice signs plan have, you know, have we sun in the sky, you know, half of 10 on that, you know, half. It's a new dawn is a new day. It's a new law from me. Some new then new for me. And unfeeling. 16. Voice Qualities: Opera/Tilt: Just a true true true, true. True. True, true, true. So this next voice quality is referred to as opera or tilt, because in order to make this side, we tilt the cricoid cartilage of the front of our larynx forward giving that kind signed night. If you're not intending to be a classical singer, don't be scared by that, but everyone needs to learn to make this resonance sides. And it is sometimes used and caulk, not to that extent, and maybe not to the extent of the Sarah Brighton video that we just watched. The sun, is that The exercise we do later, you will hear it and a very recent pop song. So in order to get this side, we're going to start off with the twine because trying as a component probe, all that. So could you just make a 27 through your nose? Okay. Nine hundred three hundred is very tiny than a hard GAS signed were close the Port I'm forced assigned by it through your mind. The D, Then I want you to drop your jaw and your larynx. So again, that's somewhere a bit higher and your voice and lower your chin on the highest though, some are low and the boys sing, happy birthday in that style. I don't mind you really have it up. Take the mickey out of Katherine Jenkins if you must, but let's go for it. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to have you. And we especially want to hear it on the higher notes have made. That was should really be ringing. 17. Voice Qualities: Belt: You know, when I started looking back, maybe demonstrate. So there is one more book withholding and that is bent. If you watch foods kind of X-factor, the voice shows there are people that believe belting the living daylights out with everything is good singing. Not necessarily, but it is obviously a really impressive song when used in the right place. And so if you've felt to the entire song, It's a bit like typing in capitals. It would make the audience feel yell duck, noise. There is a difference between twine and about 20 with time like this. When words belt will sound like this. It's a high intensity, high volume solid. I think it's completely safe. If you do it with good for it is not safe. A total if you do it with Blackboard or if you just shut. So if one of them you're doing this exercise, we're attempting to belt, you feel any pain, any scratching this new voice, stop. Message me and I'll try and work out what's going on. But I mean, just comfort. You, just don't want to go back. Okay. But until you have interesting too, what I want you to do is to look into the distance, find spoke to stare up and say, Yay. Yeah, let's just say that again, EDA. And then let's turn that in tune. Note. You know, when we make that solid, what we're doing, it's tilting the cricoid cartilage at the back of our larynx. Remember when we made the Arabic spelling here we're totaling the thyroid cartilage at the front. So if life actually helped to lean back them up on your back foot, pull your arms back of it? Yeah. Okay. So let's add some notes to that BA leaning back, yay. Note you can't felt through the whole of your ranch. There is a point where your voice will just flip until felt center because it can't go up high because tilted backwards, your legs come trouble up that far. So let's just try it somewhere, but hire, see if you can do this. Yeah. You count also about to low dying, but try it somewhere lower. Good stuff. And if it's too high for you to bounce me big mountain, just use a Twine, a strong planning. And actually I think that it was, it was about that. So try them at higher. And I just use Twine but the talk because there was no way I was going to be able to belt back Pi. So you should be able to belt. And after UP belting your voice to be clear, there was one pins contents to form the X factor in the UK, who belts evaluate a song. And afterwards she was speaking, I think that was a selling, but you would have used by an odd form. So people often mimic crystalline because they've heard on recordings. But we really do want to pay attention to your form and this side. So if you want to break it down, would do that for a couple of days. If you haven't already mastered this side, then the rescaled adding more nodes, yeah. And then progress on to say no to count and content and belt. That would be a good idea. And remember in the recording studio, mike is just going to hit Bounce be. There are ways of recording it, but it is problematic and sometimes actually to use a strong twine silent can be the better option. But live belt is very, very effective. Yeah. Well, but et cetera. 18. Identifying Voice Qualities: To do is see I don't see you. Just one more. Speak. 19. Project: Easy Songs: Now we've learned the technique. It's time to actually saying, no, I can't actually share karaoke videos as part of this course because I don't own the copyright. But I'm just showing you some searches on YouTube that will get you the backing tracks to the songs I'd like you to sing. So the easier or songs that you might want to try singing, just to begin with, Our for the girls, Ellie Golding's high loan, will I love you? But if you're a guy and you want to sing that, that's fine. And then for the guys, I know it's a little bit cheesy, but it's a great fun song. That's what makes you beautiful. So you can try a couple of different videos. You can do searches for hire and lowercase for certain songs that might make things a little bit easier for you. Find exactly the right key for you. And let's have some fun. 20. Project: Moderately Difficult Songs: So the moderately difficult songs that I'd like to cover are, I can't help falling in love with you. Again, you can search for hire or lowercase for a version that really suits you. Or you can also sing a very up-to-date song. Billie Eilish, is it now she does that kind of baby voice thing at the start. You may or may want to do that depending on your own personal taste, but that's basically a light falsetto. So there's a good bit of technique coming through and the songs and this section. 21. Project: Difficult Songs: So the difficult songs, if you want to work up to them, are, let it go. Now, I know that at 1, every three-year-old in the world seem to be singing it, but it's actually a really difficult song. It's got a lot of voice qualities and especially that big bouts. The pitching. All of it is quite difficult. It goes really low at some points. It's something that really does need some work in practice. So let it go as one option. The other is, who wants to live forever? Again? With songs this difficult, you want to make sure they're an absolutely the right key for you. So spend some time finding the right backing track for you. Of course, if you play guitar or piano or another instrument and you want to accompany yourself, That's also completely fine. And I'm really looking forward to hearing some of your recordings. I'll basophils. 22. Commn Vocal Problems: In this video, we're going to talk about some of the common vocal problems that people email me about all the time. So if you've ever experienced any of these things, don't be to write, these happened to a lot of people. The first problem that a lot of people experience, and I know I've experienced, It's tightness and constriction. And we do have a whole video, all not in this course. So it's something that can be fixed. It usually happens around the break in the pistachio. And once you start getting nervous in one place and your voice, then unfortunately that tightness can spread. So when you fail at first happening, stop singing and, um, do this little exercise that we mentioned earlier, the Darth Vader. So you're tightening and loosening your voice. I'm trying to maintain that sense of an open space and your larynx or a lax larynx while you're singing. Don't worry if you've got constriction, it's something that's easily addressed. The next problem we're going to talk about as a loss of vocal range. That's normally just because you haven't been singing It's much recently. Any muscle that you don't stretch becomes a little bit less flexible. So if you do the siren exercise, some sliding fits, you should get your range back. I am certain occasions there are more serious things that can cause a loss of branch. Acid reflux can actually cause a loss of vocal range because it creates mucus which forms like a plug on your voice can't travel as high. So if you have a persistent loss of branch, it's actually worth checking light with a doctor. There's a number of medical things that can cause that. It's not usually anything serious but you know, any change in your body at all worth running past someone medical. The most serious problem you could have with your voices, hoarseness or lack of clear tone. A singing teachers, we listen when someone comes to us for lessons to hear if they have clear tone, in other words, when they spake as it all voice coming out, that's clear tone or is it part voice, part where now some people just speak like this. But if there is air escaping, that suggests that the vocal folds are not coming together properly. And something and the mechanism of the voice has to be causing that to happen. That has to be checked out by a physician. So if your horse don't say and don't get lessons until the horse, this is result. Now normally it's caused by something fairly simple. Just a standard cold or flu or infection. Not usually anything to worry about, but it can be caused by something called nodules, which are little hard lumps that grow on the vocal folds and stop the vocal folds from coming together properly. And so, as I said before, and a change in the body or any persistent problem, it's worth getting checked out by a doctor. A lack of par and the voice that is addressed by the twang. And you'll find answers to this problem and the projection section. If you don't have much for twang in your accent, if you happen to have a very soft accent, then making a twang sound will feel alien to you. And it could just take some time to pick it up. And if you push your voice a little bit too hard, you can waken it and lose a bit of par if that's the case, and you've got a loss of part with hoarseness, then that's time to seek medical help. Another problem that people come to me with is people who've sung in a classical way or come from a classical training background or sang it in classical acquires who've decided they want to take up other genre and they have a sort of permanent the brothel when their voice and their voice might be tilted forward so they slightly speak like this. So I dig slightly let their swallowing that can be resolved using the Twine. In fact, you should practice all the speech qualities including Opera and tilt incidentally, but especially twang and speech. And that will counterbalance the vibrato and do that little exercise where you take the Twine through the whole of your range. If you want to assign more classical, if you're interested in pursuing that signs, then study the video on Opera and tilt as to high to make that song which is a beautiful signs within the right context. There is point and classical training on to be an opera singer as seven years of training, as long as you've been trained for medicine, where there is a point of no return, your larynx becomes tilted on that as the signed, you will make the very, very, very sure that's what you want to do before you sign up for a Conservatoire on go don not road is all that I would say. If there are any other vocal issues that you've experienced, feel free to post them in the Q&A and we'll chat about them there or feel free to get in touch with me privately if you would like to. 23. Vocal Health: Very important topic not, um, please don't feel tempted to just skip past this one. It as vocal health, if your voice isn't healthy, then your ability to make the sun's light you want to make is going to be very limited. Also, you need your voice for your social life, your working life. It's one of the most important things that you have. The single most important thing you can do to keep your voice healthy is to drink lots of water. And especially if you have a big game coming up. This is because your vocal folds that come together when you speak or sing are coated and mucous membranes called your mucosa. They're obviously mid of fluid, so they need to be kept moist. And when you drink a glass of water, it takes about two hours to filter Roger body to all the different places that need it. So, you know, if you're singing regularly, you need to be drinking water a lot. If your voice is very dehydrated, I bet crochet, and you've got a cold. One brilliant thing that you can do is just to breathe in staying, just fill a mug with boiling water, or you combine that with vocals neighbors, they're not very expensive. A bite. It ponds and the UK. And just bringing them the state because then the moisture passes strip over your vocal folds. There's certain things that you could be doing that might dehydrate your vocal fold on ankles you're signed to suffer. These include smoking, not being judgmental here, but if you pass piping hot smoke straight over a mucous membrane, obviously, it's going to dry it out. So you would need to be drinking a lot of water and anything di erratic, you know, anything full of caffeine. And I must admit that I have a Diet Coke addiction myself will strip your bony of moisture. When I was training to be a singing teacher, they told us that for every cup of coffee that you drink, you needed to drink four glasses of water and to make up for the dehydration that it causes. So just keeping that in mind. Very important when you're singing to both warm up and codeine. The best warmup exercise is the siren. But we looked at earlier on, don't wear your voice ICT and warming it up. You don't need to warm up for half an hour before again, but a couple of minutes is helpful. And also looking at posture, getting your posture nice and healthy. If he calls me, think of engaging your lats. We want to engage core muscles and singing. That's really going to help with sun. Quite often, if you're in acquire your singing and skill, the teacher or chorus master might get you to warm up but not killed on. And it's also important to count on. So if we want to loosen the muscle, this exercise is also great for the African tight and so constriction in your voice. We want to loosen the muscle, we type it bursts. So if I wanted to loose my shoulders, I would do this. Tighten and loosen. The way to do that with the voice is like this. Cory. Did you see the movement my larynx there? Query. So you just go to the end of your breath and that little creaking sound and then that the voice go. Another exercise you can do if your voice is very tight constraint and it's called the Darth Vader at sounds like this. So it's tighten and loosen. And that sense of openness. And you feel that sense of openness when you do that exercise, you want to maintain that sense of openness through audits. You're singing. Whenever you're singing, you always want to feel that space is called the inner smile. I know that's cheesy, but I didn't name it that. So if you have that space, you'll be making a rich goes on if your voice is tight, especially if it's tight when you're shifting gear between the middle of your voice into the higher part of your voice. That's a very useful exercise for you. And coughs, colds, sniffles, students, sort of common ailments of the voice. The general rule of thumb is, you can sing through flam, you know, if there's been a gun just going on, you can shift the gang just by going and going and going and going and going and going. That's also a good exercise for those of us who are imagining and that it will stop that sort of wobble that can sometimes come into older people's voices because it keeps your soft palate breakable. But if you have any flam going on, it should hopefully get rid of that. Do not clear your voice. Do not go. Because that's like taking your vocal folds of sand, papering them together. That's not a good thing to do. Much better to just have a sip of water. You can't do that to swallow, but don't try and hack up plan. Don't mean to be gross. Like there are certain things that would be a sign that something is going quite wrong with your voice. Nodules are a common condition that affects people who are singers, also people who are teachers or lecturers who maybe work in call centers who are talking a lot all day. The sign that something like that might be going wrong is that you don't have clear tone, that there's air coming out as well as voice. Because air is coming out as well as voice. What that means is your vocal folds are not completely coming together. There's something obstructing them from coming together. So if your voice starts to sound like that, you really do need to consult a doctor. Quite often. They'll give you what's called Lauren Oscar bait. I've had at both for medical and for research purposes. They stimulate the three bureaus who get done so they can look at your larynx, your voice peers in the screen. It's actually quite fascinating. Well, I think that is, if you're into that sort of thing, you can see Lauren or SQL-based being done on U-shape. There's some interesting videos where you can see people doing the siren exercise we've just done on making the twang side under endoscopy so that you can see what's actually happening in the voice. So if you search on YouTube for siren, twine, Lauren, Oscar bait, several of those videos will come up. If that's your kind of bag personally, I find that kind of thing fascinating, but I appreciate that not everybody does. And if you have any questions on the care of the voice and high to keep it healthy, please feel free to send them to me. The other point and vocal health that I'd like to make is that many people believe if they're a singer, their voice is their instrument. That's not technically true. The whole of your body is your instrument. And if you have the kind of text neck thing that people get, this dead edge, three big Over screens all day, the rounded shoulders, back kind of thing. But it's also quite bad for your singing. So I'm just going to show you one little exercise that will help with your posture for singing. Okay. 24. Conclusion: If you would be interested in one-to-one tuition or just in finding out a little bit more about my teaching, you can visit my website at www dot singing lessons and I.com. And I, as in Northern Ireland, I have a blog there which is completely free, which covers a lot of different topics to do with singing, songwriting, and the music industry. Once again, if you have any questions, if you'd like to get in touch, you can do so through my instructor's page. And, and I really hope that you've enjoyed the course. Thank you so much for attending.