Transcripts
1. Introduction : Hi, I'm Gary over a photo. I've been teaching voice
for almost 20 years. I've performed on Broadway, start on national tours, recorded with major labels and headline to the Las Vegas Strip. I guess you could say I've been around over the span
of my 20-year career, I've had the rare opportunity to work with the best
in the industry. During that time, I've compiled the best of the best techniques, secrets of the
trade, if you will, that have given my
singing ability the edge and that I
want to share with you. I get it. There are a lot of
singing techniques out there and it can be
overwhelming to find that one magic formula to bring your best vocal potential
to the forefront. That is exactly why I've
developed something that I wish I had when I first
started off as a singer. A simplified all in one easy to understand
approach to singing. Whether you want to just
sing it a local karaoke bar or toured the world
and sell it arenas. I truly believe that singing is a natural ability we
all have within us. Ask yourself, ever
wonder why a baby can cry for hours without
ever losing its voice? Think about it. We just need to know
how to tap into that natural potential
we all have within us. It will learn how to
properly warm up your voice, how to expand your vocal range, singing for the bottom all the
way to the top seamlessly. How to prevent vocal
damage and strain, how to overcome stage fright and anxiety will increase
your vocal stamina. How to utilize your
breath efficiently, how to eliminate bad a vocal
and performing habits, and so much more low, I'm here to help you unleash
your full vocal potential. But practice really
does make perfect. If you follow along my daily, easy to understand vocal
practices together, we will take our voice
to the next moment. And if you liked this class, I want to continue
leveling up your singing. Take my follow-up class. Singing Made Easy level
to seem like a pro.
2. Welcome!: Hey there gave you bravado here and welcome to my course. First off, congratulations on taking the initiative towards your path to local self discovery. Together we will take your singing voice to the next level. And as I said in the intro video, singing is a natural, innate ability we all have within us on that thought process will be the foundation of this course. There will be a bottoms up approach, building on the fundamentals first, resulting in a much more structured and reliable singing voice that will resolve all sorts of bad vocal habits that may be keeping your voice from fully thriving. I will be providing you with very practical and tangible tools for you to take with you specifically will be focusing on building breath capacity, proper vocal placements and then specific scales. I do personally on a daily basis. Now, as I'm sure you're aware, the male and female voices different in terms of where transitions into different areas of the register. But the fundamentals of these techniques that I will be teaching you are universal, regardless of gender. At the end of this course, I'm gonna have all these exercises on a daily vocal practice sheet so you can take with you as a reference look. I've been around the block. I performed on Broadway national tours and sold out arenas, and over the span of my career I have tried hundreds of methods. I have finally discovered what works. It has helped hundreds of my students and I want to share it with you. Let's get started.
3. Fundamentals of Breathing: before we get to the scales. In the vocalizing aspects of this course, we need to focus on the fundamentals of breathing correctly. A lot of singers tend to neglect this area thinking, What's the big deal? I breathe 24 hours a day. I got this. But have you ever wondered how Broadway singer can sing enormous amounts of material? Eight shows a week or how? Recording artist conceding 12 hour long days in a recording studio. If you support your gorgeous voice with the right breath capacity, it needs not only will you sound better, but your voice will last a lot longer. You'll be singing well into your retirement years. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to go in front of a mirror so you could see about this much of yourself. And I just simply want you to take a big breath in Pretty simple right. Let's try it again. Great. But this time I want you to focus on your shoulders. What are your shoulders doing? Let's breathe in again. Now, if you notice that your shoulders were at all hunched up, anchored up, then we're putting a lot of strain and unnecessary tension on the neck muscles that shoulder muscles and the soft palettes things we want to avoid when we're singing. And this section we're going to be focusing on two very simple exercises that will having breathing correctly immediately will be blown away and how simple and effective it ISS. You'll see instant results. But it's up to you to practice this on a daily basis to build your incredible breath capacity that will turn your singing from that wasn't so back to Oh my God. You see how you held that? No, like forever.
4. Activity: Dangling Marionette: So this is what I call the dangling marionette. It's a very simple exercise. I've been doing it from 20 years to this day. I still do it before every performance to help me build my breath capacity. What it does is it directs the air to go in the right places of your body away from up here and more down here and into your back area, Automatic instantly without you having to force it anywhere, push it anywhere. It just doesn't. Naturally, very simple. Just pretend you're a marionette with ropes attached to you and somebody just cuts the ropes. But we're completely relaxed and from here we're gonna bend our knees just like just so we're hunched over Just attack. And then from here, we're gonna take a big, deep breath. I was like, another big, deep breath, Terry. And each breath you want to take a deeper on deeper breath, getting more attention to where the breath is going to where it's being directed. You notice my shoulders are completely still. They have they're not engaged at all. So what that does it automatically puts the air in the right place away from the shoulders on Maura and sort of a diaphragm. And even the back area back here is well, which is what the pros do and which is what we need to do in order to breathe correctly, user breath efficiently. So prevents this from happening. Instead, Boo and I all the air capacity. I need to sing an aria dissing the whole phrase That's a lot of the next.
5. Activity: Hissing into Sails: now, adding onto the dangling marionette is what I call hissing into the sales. What we're gonna do is we're gonna do the dangly marionette, but from there we're gonna come up on a consistent hiss, if you will. Okay, let me do one or demonstrate it, and then I'll explain that the technical aspects of it. So once again, I'm here, Mr Dangling Marionette. The ropes were cut bending my knees coming all the way down here. Just about here, running my knees slightly forward to take a big, deep breath. Thea, wear where that air is going to have another baby breath this time it on us, Theo. So what this does is an engage your abdominal area, creating a consistent, hissing sound. In other words, I don't want all the air to be blown out first. Like theme. You have nothing left for the remaining of the hissing exercise three. Key to this is to keep it as long as you can. And as consistent as you can, a laser beam from the beginning to the end. Even at the last last breath, you have the last gasp of air. For example, I'm gonna exhale all the right and still give out a consistent, hissing sound, for example. So even that last bit of era have left. We want to make sure the air is consistent on this is where the sailboat comes in. You guys are probably too young to remember this, but it will be called Speed, which storing and Sandra Bullock and canneries, I think where the bus had to go 55 miles an hour if one less, it would blow up. Well, imagine this is a sailboat, and the sailboat needs to go 55 miles an hour with your breath. And if you back off on the breath, that's what's gonna sink. We need to keep that sailboat moving forward. So if it goes over 55 miles an hour, it sank. Difficult is under 55 miles an hour at six. So what we're gonna do is keep a consistent sale, Theo, Right until the end. Every vowel sound, every sound you create needs to ride on a cloud of air. So if that airdrops so doesn't know, that's where cracking comes in. That's where strain comes in. Here's the fun part. You're gonna time yourself. Okay? I would recommend doing this about four or five times a day, each time beating your record, right? Holding it for 15 seconds. Great. Next time for 18 seconds than 19 seconds in 20 seconds on. Keep on breaking records until you build the capacity that's gonna help you. When you're low, Gatto's help you and delivering your notes more efficiently and more beautifully.
6. Good Job!: great breathing exercises. Check. We're gonna combine the dangling marionette and hissing into the sales exercise into one fluid movements. Since we're combining the two exercises, let's call it the Kissing Mary that I'm very visual persons. That's why I like using objects to help me remember important details. Let's add this to the top of our daily vocal practice exercises sheet. I recommend doing this three or four times a day each time your goes to break your hissing record. Keep track of your Progress Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill capacity.
7. Healthy Vocal Placement: When I started off as a young singer, I was obsessed with the placement of my voice. You know, where do I place it for high notes and where do I place it for the low notes? How where I please it to elongate the notes. And I've had a lot of teachers over the years telling me I need to raise the soft palate. I need to drop the jaw. I need to push from the diaphragm So much information that it really my head was spinning. I don't need to be scientists and look at the vocal chords and where the soft palate and how it's raised. When you do this and we don't need to get to technical about singing, we all have that ability to create proper, engaged aligned sound We've all had. This is babies. If you ever look at a baby cry, they never lose their voice. That can go on for hours. And if you ever take a look at the breathing, how a baby breathes, it's all from the die from what the That's all it is. It's a baby cry, and it's something we've for gotten over the years because with all the stress in society and so on. We tend to breathe shallower on that. Everything is up here and sort of tense. And here versus just a nice and natural sound that was given to us by Mother Nature. Let Mother Nature take care of going through all the besides Jos, which means what I like calling the different gears of the voice. We don't need to obsess over. Okay, now, here. Oh, don't worry about that. Mother Nation takes care of that. So after all of my years of singing, I finally came up with a one solution. If it all a very simple fight way to approach the placement of the voice. I'm gonna do something. That's kind of corny, but just bear with me. I want you to take your mouth out and hold it in your hands. This is your mouth. Hi. This is your mom. Hello. I want you to place your mouth here. You know how Ironman has that sort of center with all the energy, that light center thing. That is where your voice will live. You will breathe from here. You will seem from here. Do you notice already? My voice is dropped. It has more residents versus if I take my voice and put it back here. I'm singing for I'm talking from up here, utilizing my neck muscles and so on. But if I drop it down here, it's centralized. Ever look at a classical guitar? Where is the whole? The whole is in the center of the guitar. Why? Because it is a center of this body where the residents has produced. Imagine, if you will, Ah, Big Field. And at the end of the field is a violinist, just a violinist at the end of this big, plain flat field on your way on the other side. Now this violinist wants to carry all of the music to you way down there. But for some reason, the music is not getting across, because obviously, it's a large distance. What is here? She need to do this. You need to play harder. What happens if she plays harder in the violin playing? Something's gonna break right. So what do we do to solve this problem? We just build a dome. We build a dome behind the violinist, so now he or she could play all the interest intricacies of the music and everything will carry to you. So she's playing effortlessly without strain without power. The body, the dome, which is us. Does that work? That's why you're going to see me referring a lot to this as we do the exercises. Go back to your Iron Man or woman back to the Ironman dropped the sound. Guess what? Here's another bonus. The iron matter. Women placement. Guess what's in here. That's right. It's new, your heart. So now you're killing two birds with one stone. You have perfect placements, and it's also connected to an emotional place. Singing is an emotional story telling endeavor. People forget that. Oh, I'm a good singer. Therefore, I should sell out arenas. We're story tellers. We've got to tell the story first. We just happen to have a great instrument to do it so. But if you tell that story at a place that's close to your heart, everything you express will be you will be from a deeper place, and it's gonna have a much more emotional impact.
8. Yawning your way to higher notes : now, one of the major things that's keeping us from hitting the higher notes is the way we place our throats. But we tend to do when we sing higher is you way reach for high notes and that sort of looking counter intuitive things because he we never reach for higher notes. The higher notes come to us, right? This is a misconception of up higher notes. I gotta reach for it. And what that does is it brings the lair, inks up the muscles in your throats up trying to reach those high notes. But what we have to do is the opposite. How much you'd imagine an elevator? Here's an elevator shop. People are inside, and here's a counterweight of the elevator. As the elevator goes up, the counterweight goes down, so I often refer to yawning as that counterweight as we're going up are our mouth. Oh, drop stone. In other words, it's sort of clearing the way and let allowing the air to go through our air passage without it being constricted and preventing the air from coming through. A good way to gauge it is by keeping attention on your lyrics. Try and simple Oh, and try to get a sense of where you are. Your your lyrics is going. If it's moving up, Not good. Let's try yawning up. 00 Aziz, we go up, we on our way down. You're often going to see me as we go through. The scales are dropping my dropping my jaw sort of mimicking that sound. But some people are thinking, Well, I don't want to sound like an opera singer. Oh, but it goes for any style of singing. The throat needs to be relaxed and open. So to do that, we're going to young Oh, oh, yawning. I couldn't possibly seeing those higher notes if my lyrics was up. I don't even attempt it. Oh, damage something. Okay, so just want to give you the heads up on the yawning aspect of it as we do it. We're going to specific exercises to bring that into fruition.
9. A, E, I, O, U Placement: Now, when we sing and we hold on to a note, they're usually valves. In fact, they're always valves, for example, of out of sing I can show were, Oh, shining sharing We never seeing the confidence We always sing the vowels and the five basic bowels that we need to focus on all these exercises are I o pretty simple as we go higher with the sounds we got modify the e that e becomes an air. So for that famous fans of the operate flat, let's also take you where you long todo see I'm not singing e I'm singing because if are saying eat, that's so well, you long Toby, there's no way So we have to open her throw and modify the ease as we go out. Essentially, the egos from a goes from an E to an A As we go higher, those a sound becomes more of a sort of, uh, all kind of combined into one ball blob. I like to call it, uh, versus when I'm down here. Uh, you go because as we go higher, we need to create more space up there in order for the year to go through So, along with the elevator, we're opening our throat and allowing the sound to come up without any obstacles. Because when we speak, especially the English language, these were very close sounds. And we can't possibly seeing that up there because it would close the throat, resulting in us not being able to hit those higher notes. So we gotta modify, uh, things to keep in mind as we go through these exercises.
10. Activity: Humming / Lip Trills Scale: now, as you normally would warm up when you're exercising or going to the gym running. Same thing was singing. We want to start out for the low impact vocal exercise just to sort of get things lubricated and warmed up. Get the joints moving, work up the cobwebs. I always start off with a nice hum on a lip trill or so literal is. And then there's also the option off. Now there's some people can't do either, which is totally fine. You could just stick with the homes. So let's start off with a very simple we owe. Remember to keep that focus on the Iron Man or iron Woman right here. Right was a difference from tightness up here on bringing the focus right here to that guitar room hole here. Mm. Oh, you notice how it's anchored deeper. It's got a deeper residents to it. We're gonna keep that connection rooted to the ground. As we go up the breathing exercises that we did earlier. The hissing is gonna help with the lip trills. What I love about the lip trails is that it tells you instantly whether you're breathing is correct or whether there's gaps So if you're going, it obviously means that we need to work more on the hisses to get that breath going up consistently like a laser being. But if you keep on working on those hisses, I guarantee you the bull and the will improve, along with many aspects of singing. Let's begin. Keep it anchored your nice. Another option is just way. Do either just homes way to temptation by the temptation of going Keep it anchored Way. No way we're gonna change into register different Russian service, but that's we don't care. A saloons were anchored into right man or woman. Changing register will happen naturally, that Mother Nation take care of changing the registers. You don't worry about that. That's Mother Nature's job. You just make yourself available and open on rooted and connected. Good. Excellent. Now we're warmed up, ready to move on to the next vocal exercise. Good job. Keep it up
11. Activity: Ma, Ma, Ma Spoken Scales: thing is what I like calling the spoken warm up. This goes back to what we're saying earlier about how we create proper singing with a natural, innate technique we all have within us as we did his Children. It's the same concept. Let's imagine we're babies again. Okay, we're calling out to her mom. That's it. Mom, I need milk. Mom, I need my diaper changed again. It's a bit corny, but it's again. It's tapping into the natural way of producing the sound. See, I'd rather get a recording instead of getting too technical and explaining this is the point that the soft palate raises and then then that we don't need that. We want to keep it simple. We want to keep it natural. So basically going to just say, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama Nothing pretty about it. It's just a cry to your mom. Simple, but we're still engaging the Ironman, dropping that sound okay, way. So from now, my mom engaging Nice. Now, if you find yourself in a way, you know it's wrong. Your neighbors are probably going What is going on in there again? That reattach is you to the instinctual sound creating ability. We all had us kids. Okay. Do you notice, Theo? It's the same exact thing connecting to your Ironman. Keeping it close to that sort of natural, childlike sound will automatically do all the lifting of the soft palate in the connecting and all the technical stuff that I wasted many years of my life being told by teachers and obsessing over when if somebody would have just said just just cry like a baby, it would have fixed everything. So I'm trying to save you as much time as possible so you could focus on the exercises that work versus spending half a lifetime, about half that time pretending you know all about the physics of voice, right?
12. A, E, I, O, U Legato Scales: Now I like starting off with a nice llegada warm up using the A e o vowels. Now llegado basically means that every note is connected versus staccato, which is separated. So that got me Oh, this works different muscles of your abdominal area. Take the gym of vocalizing, strengthening our abdominals yet relaxing or throat singing from my are man and yawning away to the top And remember the modifications of those ease. So start with a simple Oh, uh, e o. Now, some of you may not be able to do all five vowels because, of course, we have to build a breath capacity. But you keep up with those breath hissing marionette, and I guarantee you your birth capacity will grow. So if you can't do all five hours, do 30 I can't do that. Just dio, but work your way towards building over the birth capacity so you could seeing all five right through the top. Now let's begin focus on the, uh a Yeo Yeo. Nice relax way. Focus here. Way, way. You now way kind of started modifying that bowel, right? A. The opening up the throat and creating a sound versus unease sound keeping your your focus on your legs. Making sure way way, Theo. Oh, no way. They're going, Uh, a far cry from Oh, yo. Closer. So to appear thing. Basically, Just, uh what is it? It's a baby cry. Theo is state natural. Let's use Mother Nature's gift approach it naturally. Versus this is where I need to know the dynamics and the structure of the No, Just keep it simple. Cry. Good job. Let's move on.
13. Activity: A, E, I, O, U - Staccato Scales: So now that we did the llegado, you know, now we're gonna do the staccato e o meaning it's just going to be very short. Oh, now it's still connected in the olden days that pull down the blinds and windows and then it would go Well, that tends to happen for the staccato where we kind of forget that we need to connect to the Ironman even as we go higher and you on the way down, we gotta stay connected. Let's bring down that blind and put a nailed right here. So it's always connected to your iron man. So now I want you to put your hands right on that sort of soft, cushiony part of the sides of York of your of your belly right here. You know what gets soft Just rested in there and imagine China Child is crossing the street . Okay, stop. But see that engagement? Uh, that's the same engagement we need for the staccato exercises. See how it's about engaging with every every up, every staccato sound. This is what we need. This is where it comes from, versus, uh, or very area. Ha ha ha ha. Uh uh, We want it down here from the guy. Here we go. You can't Five. That's okay. Just to as many as you can. Sure you can. Connecting down here. - So you noticed that we kind of go into different gears or pass Agios as they call different gears of the voice as we go up. Did I worry or concern about hope? Now have toe my head, boys. Who after covered up? No, As long as I stay connected to my Iron man or woman and along get that sound, it's going to happen naturally. Mother Nature will take care of those little details. All we have to do is ah, stay connected on elongate the sound.
14. Activity: Legato Scales on "A": great. So now let's add another llegado exercise on. And this is where we really work on the dynamics of the voice meeting way we can go for take Mezzo, forte, mental piano, piano loud, medium soft. Because that's also important as well. Yes, we're working on the range. We also have to work on the delivery, the dynamic, how loud we can go. How stuff and when I usually like to do is the oh the again for you wear down your remembering that connect with that iron man right All the way through as we go higher. So you on the way to the top way we want to prevent, uh, uh, pull down that blind connected Yeah. So whether it's steps soft piano or loud forte, it's still connected. People make the mistake of thinking, Oh, it's piano So they disconnect. On the contrary, if it's piano, we gotta connect even more things. Connection, way, way
15. Activity: A, E, I, O, U Lower scale: great now. Great way to cool down the voice like you wouldn't the gym. Good way to do that as work a little over and because remember the vocal cords. It's like an elastic band when we're doing these exercise and expanding into the higher register were just stretching it out safely with support, little by little, little by little, little by little and then eventually letting it all go. So, in other words, imagine the elastic bands sort of now completely relaxed. It's basically gonna go again. I go. You go down watching. Imagine that you're waterfall and the notes air sort of sliding down deeper, just trickling down into a big lake. Yo, yo, way you way You were going down. I want you to imagine you're singing into a big cathedral, creating all that space way
16. Let's Wrap This Up!: great. Now let's add these exercises to our daily practice shoots. We're going to start off with the humming and lip trails or just the humming If you can't live trills and then the mama, Mama, Mama, Mama exercises Remember crying to your mom and then the i e o llegado and then the evil who staccato exercises. And then we're gonna add the, uh, llegado exercises. Uh, and they were gonna finish off of the odd EEO descending exercises to sort of warm down the voice. This is what I do five times a week. This is something you could do five times a week. I don't recommend doing it six times a week because you need a day of rest for your voice. I would start off with maybe twice a week and then build up. The key here is to make sure that you feel no strain or sandpaper He feeling here at all. If you are, you need to rethink of your approach. Okay? You need to yawn down that sound supporting from your diaphragm at the end of this lecture , I've attached a hard copy of the daily vocal practice sheet for you to have his reference
17. CONGRATULATIONS! you are now ready for LEVEL 2!: Congratulations you did it. You should be very
proud of yourself. Look, I threw a lot at you. I basically crammed 20
years worth of winning singing techniques
into one course. But if you keep up with
these daily vocal practices, your voice will
grow and flourish more and more into
your true sound, not an imitation of
a famous singer. There's only one u
and this world give the one knew his or her
voice to express the truth. This is what I tell
all my students. As singers, we are
storytellers first. Now we have a tangible
techniques that do exactly that. Tell the story as
truthfully as you can. That is why arena sell out or why albums fly
off the shelves, or why broadway tickets
are so expensive, or why you get standing
ovations at karaoke bars. The public relies on us to express the
feelings they can't. Please reach out to me. I'm a very hands-on
teacher and would love to know more about you and your story as you
proceed through your journey of self-discovery. If you liked this
class, I wanted to take your singing voice
to the next level, checkout my follow-up class, singing Made Easy level
to sing like a pro.
Gabriel, Voice Coach
