Last time I talked about the vocal cord and the reasons why we flip when we reach higher pitch. Today I'm gonna talk about ways to ease you, help you reach higher pitch without flipping. Bear in mind that singing cannot be taught from reading. You need example and guidance from teachers. But here are the tips to help you especially if you took vocal technique course, this will remind you of what your lesson was about.
1 refrain from shouting and intentionally tucking your stomach in
2 Try decreasing volume and narrowing vowels for example from a to e
3 Encouraging air flow from your mouth when you sing ( you can easily feel air flow by feeling breathe coming out against your palm during sound producing or by hearing it when using a microphone.
4 drop your jaw when reaching higher notes that starts to make you feel uncomfortable
5 realizing that your voice will appear smaller when reaching higher notes (think of piano)
Vocal technique is the experience your teacher guiding you to have through vocal exercise (personally designed especially just for you and your problems) and ,later on, songs. You need to repeat the process that you succeeded during the process so that your body will ,eventually, memorize how to achieve this type of voice over and over again.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
How our vocal cord works and why we flip
Before anything, I need to show you this image.
Okay I know it looks weird! but that's singers' musical instrument. Our vocal cord. And this is how it works.
It vibrates everytime we make sound. Number 1-6 indicate when we don't make sound. Number 7-9 is when we start to make sound. You can see that the vocal cord coming closer to eachother.
*please consult you doctor for full detail*
How does it work when you sing loudly?
And from my understanding in speaking or singing louder is that if you want to make it louder, you just need to hold your vocal cord against your breath longer before releasing it. The longer your vocal cord hold it together the louder sound you can produce. So imagine what will happen if your vocal cord needs to hold against too much breath? It will flip or it gets injured because it overworks. That's why your throat hurts after shouting.
How does it work when you sing higher pitch or lower pitch?
Think of a rubber stick. It becomes thinner when you extend it. And if you try to make sound out of it, the sound is gonna be in high notes or , you can say, smaller size.
Think of Piano, harp, or strings. The lower pitch is made of a shorter material and the high pitch is from the longer one. This is true about our vocal cord as well. It extends and vibrates nicely, tightly (not too tight) to create a nice strong high pitch. If it vibrates loosely but still extends, you will get the breathy high pitch. And you will get your nice low pitch when it's not extended and vibrates tightly (again, not too tight), and a breathy one when vibrating loosely.
Okay I know it looks weird! but that's singers' musical instrument. Our vocal cord. And this is how it works.It vibrates everytime we make sound. Number 1-6 indicate when we don't make sound. Number 7-9 is when we start to make sound. You can see that the vocal cord coming closer to eachother.
*please consult you doctor for full detail*
How does it work when you sing loudly?
And from my understanding in speaking or singing louder is that if you want to make it louder, you just need to hold your vocal cord against your breath longer before releasing it. The longer your vocal cord hold it together the louder sound you can produce. So imagine what will happen if your vocal cord needs to hold against too much breath? It will flip or it gets injured because it overworks. That's why your throat hurts after shouting.
How does it work when you sing higher pitch or lower pitch?
Think of a rubber stick. It becomes thinner when you extend it. And if you try to make sound out of it, the sound is gonna be in high notes or , you can say, smaller size.
Think of Piano, harp, or strings. The lower pitch is made of a shorter material and the high pitch is from the longer one. This is true about our vocal cord as well. It extends and vibrates nicely, tightly (not too tight) to create a nice strong high pitch. If it vibrates loosely but still extends, you will get the breathy high pitch. And you will get your nice low pitch when it's not extended and vibrates tightly (again, not too tight), and a breathy one when vibrating loosely.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Problems preventing you from reaching higher notes
Welll well well so what is your so called problem to reach a higher pitch??? I think you probably disagreed with my previous post. You might say you have so many problems stopping you from reaching higher notes. Let me guess...
"your voice just "flipped" into falsetto or even worse, it just disappeared. You cannot carry on your chest voice to higher pitch."
"You can still sing that note but it sounds shaky. Sometimes people notice, sometimes they don't. But you're aware of it and you don't like how it sounds"
"You can sing but you wish it would be stronger and more powerful"
"You can sing it but it tends to be flat or off tune when you can sing in tune when singing lower pitch"
"Sometimes you can sing that note just fine (loud and powerful,too) but sometimes you fall into the above problems"
" Umm.. cough cough it hurts your throat and the doctor said you abused your vocal cord"
Different problems come from different root of causes. Next time I will talk about each problems seperately.
"your voice just "flipped" into falsetto or even worse, it just disappeared. You cannot carry on your chest voice to higher pitch."
"You can still sing that note but it sounds shaky. Sometimes people notice, sometimes they don't. But you're aware of it and you don't like how it sounds"
"You can sing but you wish it would be stronger and more powerful"
"You can sing it but it tends to be flat or off tune when you can sing in tune when singing lower pitch"
"Sometimes you can sing that note just fine (loud and powerful,too) but sometimes you fall into the above problems"
" Umm.. cough cough it hurts your throat and the doctor said you abused your vocal cord"
Different problems come from different root of causes. Next time I will talk about each problems seperately.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Believing in No Limit
Every singers or just us who loves to sing has been talking all the time about vocal range. We want to extend it, strengthen it, explore our limit. Let me tell you one sweetest thing "we have no limit" NO LIMIT!!! well..... some limit after 4 or 5 octaves, though. BUT hey!!! we are human beings! Of course our vocal cords contains limit. We are not musical instrument (even musical instrument contain limit). Enough blabbling. I will just post how to extend our vocal range in later days.
Long story short
1 believe in your voice
2 understand the nature of your vocal cord
3 vocal exercise vocal exercise vocal exercise in a healthy way
4 song application
see y'all later for details.
Long story short
1 believe in your voice
2 understand the nature of your vocal cord
3 vocal exercise vocal exercise vocal exercise in a healthy way
4 song application
see y'all later for details.
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