PROPERTY OF TENSTRINGS MUSIC INSTITUTE NIGERIA – www.tenstrings.org PROPERTY OF TENSTRINGS MUSIC INSTITUTE NIGERIA – www.tenstrings.org PROPERTY OF TENSTRINGS MUSIC INSTITUTE NIGERIA – www.tenstrings.org Knowing Your Voice Perhaps, one might be right to say the human voice is the single most important sound producer in the world. It is the oldest and most versatile musical instrument, and it is readily accessible by every human being. Although the voice is available to everybody, not all can use it professionally. The first thing to grasp in your pursuit of a better singing voice should be a fair knowledge of how your voice works, and then you can proceed to developing it. How the Voice Works When you want to speak or sing, you breathe out, and the breath travels upwards to your larynx, located in the throat (in the area behind the 'Adam's apple'). The larynx is located at the top of the windpipe. The larynx is bigger in males than it is in females, which attributes to the deeper voice in males. You can feel your larynx vibrating by placing your hand on your throat and humming. When you're not speaking the air passes through without any obstruction. But when you speak, the vocal cords are brought close together by tiny muscles in the larynx. When the air hits these vocal folds it makes them vibrate. At this stage, the 'voice' is just a buzz, which is then amplified by the resonating cavities in your mouth and upper throat. This sound is further enhanced by vibration in the bones of your skull and other parts of the body (this is why, if you are ill with a head cold or a sore throat, your voice often sounds different than usual). The sound is shaped into words by your 'articulators' - things like the tongue, lips and soft palate, the shape, size and motion of which create your own unique voice. A person can control the pitch of their voice, by making the vocal cords stretch at different lengths. PROPERTY OF TENSTRINGS MUSIC INSTITUTE NIGERIA – www.tenstrings.org A person does not consciously think about stretching his vocal cords when he speaks. Throughout a person's life, the sound of his voice may change. The voice of a child will deepen as he grows older, due to their larynx increasing in size. Changes in facial shape, also changes the sound of one's voice. Losing or gaining teeth can change the sound of a persons' voice. Breath Support and Management A good voice starts with taking in a full breath, not the kind where your shoulders are involved, but one where your ribcage and abdomen are involved. The goal is to be engaged, not stiff and tense. Releasing the abdominals to let air flow to the lower parts of the lungs is the key to a good breath. Why, your diaphragm, that wonderful muscle, is right under your lungs, and controls the pressure of the air flowing out! So, if you take a breath that is 'high' (in other words with your shoulders involved), your diaphragm has nothing to push out! Thus, no support. Breath support is very crucial to good singing. Inhaling a nice low breath is a task in itself, now, how you release that breath is another skill that must be attained to be a good singer. Like I said earlier, the diaphragm controls the output. Here's an example, place one hand just under the 'v' in your ribcage and one on your belly button. Now, cough. Notice that the hand on the belly button went in, and the one under the ribcage, came out. That is our goal when we sing. Now, take in a good low breath through your nose, and blow with your mouth. Blow as if your breath needs to hit the farthest other point in the room. Really make it go somewhere. This is the fervor needed in good singing. So, how do we practice our breathing exercises if we can't control how our diaphragm moves? We can control the muscles surrounding the diaphragm, namely the intercostal muscles around our ribs, as well as our abdominal muscles. These muscles are under our conscious control, and we will be practicing some basic exercises for these muscles when we do our breathing exercises for singing. Now, let's begin by first drawing in a deep breath of air! Imagine that you are sucking in a strand of noodle (for example, when we are eating Japanese Ramen.. we need to suck the noodles noisily...) or sucking a deep breath of air through a tiny straw, and letting the air go directly into your abdominal area. Try it now and feel the air being drawn into our abdominal area, moving downwards as well as sidewards. Of course, our air does not actually enter our stomach when we breathe. This is only for visualization and instructional purposes! (For those who do not know, the air goes into our lungs...) PROPERTY OF TENSTRINGS MUSIC INSTITUTE NIGERIA – www.tenstrings.org Some important points to note: Our shoulders and chest area should be relaxed when we inhale. If we find that our chest area lifts up high or our shoulders are raised when we inhale, then just rest both hands on your chest and repeat the inhalation exercise with our hands resting on a stationery chest. Raising our chest and shoulders is a common habit, but it really causes us to draw a shallow breath, and this creates problems later when we need more breath to support our singing, especially for high notes or for long phrases in a song. In conclusion, allowing the breath to control the sound, as opposed to the throat, neck, shoulders, tongue, nose, or anything else, will make singing easier and more beautiful, no matter what or where you sing. Relax everything else, and just breathe! Vocal Registers A vocal register is a set of pitches people produce with their voices. The pitches all have the same quality, largely because the vocal cords function in the same basic way, or have the same fundamental pattern of vibration, for each note in the register, and because the pitches cause the same areas of the body to resonate. The six common classification is given below. Vocal fry: The vocal fry register is the lowest vocal register and is produced through a loose glottal closure which will permit air to bubble through with a popping or rattling sound of a very low frequency. The chief use of vocal fry in singing is to obtain pitches of very low frequency which are not available in modal voice. This register is not used that often in singing, and both men and women have been known to do so. Chest: The Chest or modal voice is the usual register for speaking and singing, and the vast majority of both are done in this register. As pitch rises in this register, the vocal folds are lengthened, tension increases, and their edges become thinner. A well-trained singer or speaker can phonate two octaves or more in the modal register with consistent production, beauty of tone, dynamic variety, and vocal freedom. Head: Many singers refer to the head voice as their ―falsetto‖ voice, but the two are very different. Falsetto is an airy, weightless sound made by a very loose connection of the vocal cords. Head voice, on the other hand, is a weighted sound based on proper vocal cord closure. The main difference between head voice and falsetto is tone. Falsetto has little to no tone. Head voice can be full of tone. Mixed or Middle: It's literally a mix of head voice and chest voice. It’s not as high as the head voice, but not as low as the chest voice. It’s in the middle. This voice is the most commercially used singing voice. A singer must learn to blend the head and chest voices to create a pleasant sounding middle register. Falsetto: The falsetto register lies above the modal voice register and overlaps the modal register by PROPERTY OF TENSTRINGS MUSIC INSTITUTE NIGERIA – www.tenstrings.org approximately one octave. The characteristic sound of falsetto is inherently breathy and flute-like with few overtones present. Both men and women can phonate in the falsetto register. The essential difference between the chest and falsetto registers lies in the amount and type of vocal cord involvement. The falsetto voice is also more limited in dynamic variation and tone quality than the modal voice. Whistle: The whistle register is the highest register of the human voice. The whistle register is so called because the timbre of the notes that are produced from this register are similar to that of a whistle or the upper notes of a flute, whereas the modal register tends to have a warmer, less shrill timbre. Women of all voice types can use the whistle register. With proper vocal training, it is possible for most women to develop this part of the voice. Vocal Breaks or Passaggio This is the places within a voice where the cross over between registers happen. In other words, a passaggio marks the end or boundary of one register and the beginning of the next. To sing professionally, you must learn to smoothen out your breaks. It shouldn’t be so noticeable when you’re switching from one part of your voice to the other. Voice Type Voice type is often confused with vocal range by contemporary or non-classical singers (e.g. those who sing jazz, pop, blues, soul, country, folk and rock styles).