However, in my years of teaching I have noticed that not all singers notice they are unbalanced or inconsistent in their sound making.

What is the very first goal in training the voice?

RELEASE: The larynx (which houses the vocal cords or folds as they are called) needs to remain stable. It is this posture that is necessary to achieve the balance of resonation.

RESONATION is also called resonance. Many kids think of it as the echo sound. It is the balance of the resonance that is necessary to maintain a consistent tone from the bottom (chest resonation) through the middle (mixed voice) and into the top (head voice or head resonation) with no breaks or “yodels” or flipping into falsetto. This allows a consistent voice up and down with easy release. If the singer tries to sound like some of their favorite singers they will, most likely, use excessive muscle activity during singing in order to achieve what they perceive is the sound of their favorite singer. Thus they lose sight of what we so naturally have in childhood, which is our own voice. Children don’t have to find their own voice or wonder what their own voice would sound like. The children who come in to see me already have their own voices. As we age and have more freedoms and listen to what we want to we generally develop this desire to sound as good as the others we hear or copy them.

CAUSE AND EFFECT EXERCISES are used in the Vocal Ease Training Method. I know as a teacher that if i want more of a balanced tone from chest to top, but the student has no chest or light chest voice, then there is an exercises i need to do with them (cause) to produce the exact effect (singing in chest voice). With practice it doesn’t take long for the singer to have the registers needed to sing; Chest, Middle (or Mix) and Head. As the singing student catches on then the exercises are modified and tailored to what the student is doing and also more Cause/Effect exercises are introduced. This is what helps the voice sing from chest to top and back to chest with release and resonation, thus Vocal Freedom.

It’s always good to know what to expect for your money before those well earned and valued dollars are spent. In the first lesson with me I will conduct a voice evaluation.  I will ask you a few questions and then see what is going on with your voice.  The evaluation isn’t a big challenge, but it tells me a lot about any vocal issues you may have going on.

After the evaluation, I will ask you how it felt to get through the vocal transitions and tell you what I’m noticing.  Then I’ll let you know what we need to do to fix these issues, and proceed to do just that.  I am not saying everyone’s vocal issue gets fixed the very 1st lesson, but there are some people where that does happen.

Expect to learn a lot about your voice and why it does what it does in making adjustments to get to the higher notes and sometimes the adjustments you make to get to lower notes.  I involve you every step of the way to understand what’s  going  on in your body so that you will be able to sing correctly.   Voice anatomy is interesting and it’s good for me as the instructor to know what’s going on at all times so I can use a tailored Vocal Ease Training tool for you so you can adjust and fix the problems.

Typical vocal issues encountered in the 1st lesson:

The Flip: some singers sing fine in chest voice and as they move on up the range they “flip” into a falsetto. You can feel and hear when that happens.  The voice cracks and you widen the vowel as you feel the awkwardness of this bridge or transition and then it flips and an inconsistent sound is made while singing higher notes, much lighter without depth.

Pull Chest: Some singers sing fine in the chest and as they move up the range they feel that “bridge or break” or transition beginning to occur, don’t want to feel it or let it happen, so sing louder and put more pressure on the note while widening the mouth a lot.

They will feel the voice getting stuck and not be able to go further without singing forced and loud and then the voice just stops.

No Chest: Some singers sing so breathy in the chest register that there is no basis for which to go up the range without just staying breathy.  Unless the teacher knows the correct exercises to fix this problem, they will remain breathy or airy in the bottom notes while going up and also when coming back down in a song or when singing scales.

Mixed: Some singers find it easy to mix. When you sing in the chest and you let yourself go into the head voice easily with no cracks , no pull chest, no flips and no breathyness, you are Mixing. You mix when your chest resonation easily gives way into the head voice (very limited definition provided here).

These conditions must exist for singing to be called Mixed:  The larynx needs to be stable (at speech level), as it is when conversing in a moderate tone.  The vocal cords or folds, as they are sometimes called, need to be closing/vibrating. And you need to sing in a relaxed posture without trying to help the note in any way.

Seth Riggs, who started Speech Level Singing International, says that we should, “absolutely refuse to help the pitch in any way” (going higher or on low notes).

When we try to help the note we the note we either raise the larynx and thus stress the voice or try to lower the notes too hard and then slam into the chest voice and again stress the voice. As your instructor, I will watch for this habit that most of you have developed and point it out so you can redirect your singing in the correct way and sing your notes with ease.

In Summary, the purpose of VEM training for all students is to induce and maintain a healthy, naturally produced and relaxed vocal production through the use of “Tools” which create:

* Balanced registration and connection between chest, mid and upper registers,
* Seamless negotiation of the bridges of the voice,
* Appropriate vocal cord closure (not over compressed or under-compressed), and
* A relaxed, low and stable larynx.

The VEM instructor goes through years of specialized learning and long hours studying so we can teach other singers how to sing the best without wasting time making mistakes.

Meanwhile, email me for a lesson so you can get your vocal evaluation.

Thanks for reading my blogs, Jane.