George – A story about how to relax a tight voice

George is a wonderful and very popular guy from the Centre Stage Academy. He is part of the oldest group (Take 3). As I’m doing master classes with all my groups George was singing “Feeling good”. George has a warm [...]]]>

George – A story about how to relax a tight voice

George is a wonderful and very popular guy from the Centre Stage Academy. He is part of the oldest group (Take 3). As I’m doing master classes with all my groups George was singing “Feeling good”. George has a warm personality, but the warmth didn’t come through in his performance. George’s muscles in his throat were swelling up when he was singing, what really strangled his voice. It sounded very tight indeed. George had 2 half an hour lessons a while ago and decided to book another couple.

What we did  first was  to relax his larynx. The larynx is a flexible organ and should be able to go up and down a little, but some people push their larynx up so much when they sing high notes that sometimes it stays there, so they always sound tight. There is an exercise that I do in those cases, which I call “The Larynx Free Fall”. You pick a high- ish note, just any note and make a glissando(gliding note) down. When you go down low keep your mouth open and don’t push your head down! You should hear a funny almost gargeling noise  ( this is where you reach the bottom of your range) and then there is no more sound. I f you do this twice your larynx has come back to the default position.

After that I had to go over how to make a sound without using your throat. So the first thing is to take a proper breath so your lungs fill up and your diaphragm goes down and then exhale the air letting the vocal chords create a note. This is usually not so easy to begin with as loads of people are so used to using their throats to sing. With George it did take a little while, but we kept persisting and in the end he suddenly made sound from air, nut using his throat muscles at all. When he could do that a couple of times, we did ” The Tri -vowel exercise” a brilliant exercise that starts with three vowels on one note, and then it adds another note, and another and then it goes down. it is a lovely melody on vowels, it is like a song without words. It is the favorite exercise of most of my students. Now the good thing about doing this exercise was that it is so gentle, so George could still sing the melody without using the muscles in his throat. What happened then was that his chest resonance, that was not coming through before, because his throat was so tight, came through and suddenly he had a warm, rich singing and speaking voice, just like his personality. George then sung ” A whole new world”. This was so beautiful that I asked him to sing that the next week at the CSA. The kids couldn’t believe the transformation and one of the guys said that he shivers all over his body. This is what I call “Singing from the Soul”. Your soul can’t get through when your voice is tight, but when your voice is relaxed and free, combined with true emotion, you can touch the world! We did record it the week after to make sure that the transformation was captured.

Next week more. Have a good week!

Michael

Hello world!

Whilst I’m working on my method “Singing From Your Soul” ,  I am also the director of The Voice Academy, give singing lessons from my home/studio in Brighton (UK) and work as the head Voice Coach at the Centre Stage Academy in Midhurst. I intend to share my experiences with [...]]]>

Hello world!

Whilst I’m working on my method “Singing From Your Soul” ,  I am also the director of The Voice Academy, give singing lessons from my home/studio in Brighton (UK) and work as the head Voice Coach at the Centre Stage Academy in Midhurst. I intend to share my experiences with you so you can learn from true stories about students that progress rapidly with their voices using the tools of my method and I will be explaining the way to create freedom in your voice so you can start to sing from your soul!

LIBBY: A story about breathing

Libby is a student from the Centre Stage Academy who has been with us for a couple of years. Theatre schools tend to teach in groups and so does the CSA. We do breathing and singing exercises every week in 3 groups: Take 1: kids from 5-10, Take 2: kids from 10-15 and Take 3: young adults from 16-21 (ish).  However after the group lessons have finished, the students can book private half an hour slots with the teachers. Although I talk and explain every week about the importance of breathing and exactly how to breath properly, when students come for private lessons the first thing I have to work on is breathing.

I haven’t had a new student who could breathe properly. I have had professionals who were 30 years in the business, yoga masters, but nobody could breathe. So this is how you breathe:

The first thing I do with  a students is lie them down on their back, let them put their hands on their tummy and ask them to close their eyes and feel what happens.  This way you go back to where everybody used to breathe from. What I’ve learned from Dutch manual therapist and author Niek Brouw, who wrote the book “VOICE AND BODY, the effect of posture on the voice” (unfortunately only available in Dutch) is that when you lie down , you go back to the baby phase, when you sit upright, you go back to adolescence and when you stand up you are in adult mode. So it easier to find your breathing lying down and after a little while you’ll feel your tummy going up and down. This is called tummy breathing or diaphragmatic breathing. Then I’d put the students on a chair. First I tell them to open their mouths wide and let them breathe into their tummy. This is already harder: lots of students bring the air up high in their chest,  the air doesn’t go down into their lungs and the diaphragm is not engaged. The highest point of breathing is your sternum. (breast bone) When you can breathe in and feel your tummy stick out a little  you breathe out on a TSS sound: first 4 counts, then 6, etc up to 14. This will activate your diaphragm and teaches you how to control the air flow. Usually within a month everybody has mastered this.

When I had the half hour with Libby, we started with the breathing exercise, but this time she was standing up. (during the group lessons the kids would normally sit down and do the exercises) Because Libby was standing up (and went to the adolescent phase) she wasn’t breathing properly. I had to sit her down and do one breath, let her close her eyes and then stand up and do one breath. We did this for a little while until she got it and then the song she sung afterwards sounded fantastic, because it was supported by air!

Hope this helps,  I’ll be there next week with some more stories

Michael Woudstra,

All the exercises you can find in my method “Singing From your Soul”. The method includes a workbook, a CD with all the singing exercises and  a DVD that will show you exactly what to do and how to do it. ( I’ll keep you informed when it will be available)