'Cry', Yawn, Support and Lifting of soft palate

[Rockstar]

Okay I've been training with Brett Manning's programs for about 3 years now. Got better but I'm frustrated with my vocal range. A vocal range upto A#4 is all I want for my singing. I'm a Tenor.
So I've been hearing these concepts related to high notes. What I've realized is that people refer to the same thing by saying stuff like yawn, lift soft palate, cry and support. Also is the 'cry' necessary to hit the high notes in full voice cuz it sounds weird to me when I keep a cry on my notes.

What are they doing? Singing in mix? Belting? Also would that be more towards SLS or classical typa technique.
 

2nd
 

Thanks!

[Sexy Beast]

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Okay I've been training with Brett Manning's programs for about 3 years now. Got better but I'm frustrated with my vocal range.

Maybe it's time to get a real teacher?

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So I've been hearing these concepts related to high notes.

Yes there are a lot of concepts out there. People loooove concepts and fancy words... You think there's some magic ingredient you are missing when in fact you simply need to train the fundamentals correctly: air, muscle, vowel.

 

[Gneetapp]

2 hours ago, Rockstar said:

Okay I've been training with Brett Manning's programs for about 3 years now. Got better but I'm frustrated with my vocal range. A vocal range upto A#4 is all I want for my singing. I'm a Tenor.
So I've been hearing these concepts related to high notes. What I've realized is that people refer to the same thing by saying stuff like yawn, lift soft palate, cry and support. Also is the 'cry' necessary to hit the high notes in full voice cuz it sounds weird to me when I keep a cry on my notes.

What are they doing? Singing in mix? Belting? Also would that be more towards SLS or classical typa technique.

Thanks!

Hi Rockstar, I have to agree with Sexy Beast on this. What is your current usable/singable range? Where are you currently breaking? Cheers

[JonJon]

you are being very technical when you start to name all of these "techniques" and all of those physiological terms. Keep in mind that thousands of people can sing great who have never even heard those terms. Little kids can listen and mimic singers and noises in nature without knowing the position of their tongue or what their soft palate or larynx is doing.

I use those terms and things when I am experimenting to find new sounds, or, when I find a new sound I will then go back and think about the physiology and techniques so that I can then categorize and repeat the new sound.

That being said, I can sing a lot of different tones and decent range etc and I pretty much NEVER get into the position of this or that inside my mouth. So far it hasn't been necessary to do so.

 

You can group sounds into broader categories. You generally don't need a microscope. In broad terms, the singing is either "heavy" or "light". A "heavy" sound would generally be way more supported and have a lot more compression like a heavy rock sound or heavy metal. When you think of

[JonJon]

omg, I posted out a nice long explanation and so far its not showing. The forum has been acting a bit weird lately with eating long posts. Caching issue?

It was autosaving it but when I posted it, only half is showing so far

wow

[JonJon]

Sorry, the forum ate my post lol.

 

Basically those guys you posted are just singing in basic head voice. you need to learn to get the sound out of your throat and up more into the hard and/or soft palate.

IMO they are not belting or even supporting THAT much. That just basically a light head voice sound.

[Gneetapp]

4 minutes ago, JonJon said:

Basically those guys you posted are just singing in basic head voice. you need to learn to get the sound out of your throat and up more into the hard and/or soft palate.

IMO they are not

[JonJon]

yeah, seems the forum is eating my posts whenever it involves auto formatting or links etc

[Gneetapp]

Yeah! It just happened to mine too. Actually, it didn't eat my post, just changed it...

[Rockstar]

I would not be posting here if I could actually get a real teacher but my current circumstances don't allow it.

That is headvoice? What!? How do I achieve that sound anyways. I am on my own for few years so I'm trying my best to achieve a working range upto A#4.

I can sing upto C5 without breaking but it sounds weird and unbalanced. I can sing beautifully till E4 after that I have to change my vocal tone to stay connected not that the sound breaks into falsetto or becomes shouty but the resonance dampens and feels closed off.
I'm confused. In SLS they say to not lift the soft palate yet advise to lower larynx and cry into the notes which actually raises the soft palate.
 

[JonJon]

1 minute ago, Rockstar said:

That is headvoice? What!?

Well its not chest voice is it? Whats left? lol

To me its just basic headvoice. They have bridged thru the passagio into the headvoice.

They are singing with a light voice, its not really heavy

 

Im confused, if you can sing to c5 then you can sing what they are doing easily

[JonJon]

5 minutes ago, Rockstar said:

I'm confused. In SLS they say to not lift the soft palate yet advise to lower larynx and cry into the notes which actually raises the soft palate.

if I had all that in my head when I tried to sing, id be confused to lol

[Gneetapp]

9 minutes ago, Rockstar said:

I would not be posting here if I could actually get a real teacher but my current circumstances don't allow it.

That is headvoice? What!? How do I achieve that sound anyways. I am on my own for few years so I'm trying my best to achieve a working range upto A#4.

I can sing upto C5 without breaking but it sounds weird and unbalanced. I can sing beautifully till E4 after that I have to change my vocal tone to stay connected not that the sound breaks into falsetto or becomes shouty but the resonance dampens and feels closed off.
I'm confused. In SLS they say to not lift the soft palate yet advise to lower larynx and cry into the notes which actually raises the soft palate.
 

Hi Rockstar, may I humbly suggest you to post a clip of you singing parts of a few songs that you feel you do well, and other that you don't, and even maybe octave sirens spanning your passaggio. I have to agree with JonJon, if you can actually sing up to C5 connected, without flipping into falsetto, you are in your head voice/mix already.

[Rockstar]

8 minutes ago, JonJon said:

Well its not chest voice is it? Whats left? lol

To me its just basic headvoice. They have bridged thru the passagio into the headvoice.

They are singing with a light voice, its not really heavy

 

Im confused, if you can sing to c5 then you can sing what they are doing easily

I should not say 'sing', squeal is a better word lol. They sing it like beautifully, easily and consistently.

[JonJon]

6 minutes ago, Rockstar said:

 I can sing beautifully till E4 after that I have to change my vocal tone to stay connected not that the sound breaks into falsetto or becomes shouty but the resonance dampens and feels closed off.

Sounds to me just what ive said 3 or 4 times now. You need to learn to leave the throat resonance and learn to vibrate the sound off of the hard and/or soft palates (the roof of your mouth, not down in the throat)

for me it was a 2 step thing. I could not "bridge" because I didnt have the feel of resonating on the palate. When I tried to sing higher notes I was just trying to take my chest voice (throat voice) up higher and higher and eventually you just choke doing that.

Finally I just figured out that I had to find some other way to make sound lol. So I learned how to get the sound up above the choking point in my throat and up onto the palates.

Once I got the feeling of singing those higher notes I then started trying to "bridge" smoothly from chest up to head etc (or from "throat" up to "palates" or however you want to look at it)

 

Essentially once you learn to get the sound out of the throat and into the palates etc, its then a matter of thousands of repetitions of sirens and other singing exercises with various vowels etc to make that transitions effortless and smooth. IMO thats ALL those guys you posted are doing. I didnt hear anything inherently difficult there unless i am missing something. They have simply learned to sing lightly thru the passagio etc

if you are singing really heavy, or husky, on the low end, it makes it harder to get thru the passagio up to those higher notes etc.

[Rockstar]

I do not choke on the high notes, I left that thing years before. Now the sound gets weird but there is no strain. What do you mean by "resonating on the soft palate"? So the soft palate must rise which gives you that yawn like sensation and the resonance ascends. right?

Any exercises you recommend? cuz I'm on my own for now. Can you post a clip of you doing a siren that I may imitate? 

[Gneetapp]

4 minutes ago, Rockstar said:

I do not choke on the high notes, I left that thing years before. Now the sound gets weird but there is no strain. What do you mean by "resonating on the soft palate"? So the soft palate must rise which gives you that yawn like sensation and the resonance ascends. right?

Any exercises you recommend? cuz I'm on my own for now. Can you post a clip of you doing a siren that I may imitate? 

Dude, I honestly think you should be the one posting a clip. Without an audio it gets really hard to identify the problem you are going through just by text. You say you can sing up to C5, but it sounds "not beautiful", right? You could be singing too heavy below your passaggio and when you go through or try to sing just past it (above it) you might be singing in falsetto, or not even that, as you used the word "squeal". Post a few octave sirens going through your passaggio, and people can give you better tips and fixes. All the best

[Sexy Beast]

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I can sing upto C5 without breaking but it sounds weird and unbalanced. I can sing beautifully till E4 after that I have to change my vocal tone to stay connected not that the sound breaks into falsetto or becomes shouty but the resonance dampens and feels closed off.

Ok then work on getting a clear, free, resonant, strong tone in your chest range (up to D4). Get the basics down. To get higher you don't have to do anything different it's mostly a matter of tuning your vowels correctly. If you wanna learn those things you need a good teacher I'm sorry but it's the truth...

[JonJon]

 

2nd video really explains it well. You have chest voice and you have head voice. (yes, im comfortable using old outdated terms lol)

there is that range where the voices overlap. At first, an untrained singer has a big gap and he has to flip to yodel to get up to the higher notes. With trainingtraining, the singer is able to smoothly work through that whole range without any huge or sudden changes in tone etc

Later on, the singer can learn to work thru that range in different ways. He can sing notes in that range using different techniques.

for example lets take the note A4. The trained singer may have 3 different approaches to that note:

1) gradually let go of the chest voice and let head voice smoothly take over. You get a blend of chest and head voice. IMO that would be whats called "mixed voice", though I never personally use that term. I usually just call that "singing in the bridge" or "the bridge area"

2) belting. use more compression etc and forcefully sing the note using more of a chest voice feel. Also called "pulling chest' lol. This is the opposite of what the guys in your vids are doing. Do they sound like Bruce Springsteen or Bono or John Fogerty? no

3) bridging early. This means the singer went ahead and let go of the chest voice feel and embraced the head voice at a lower note than he might normally do. This is what I think of when I hear the term "light mass" singing.

 

Its a stylistic thing to. Some people NEVER belt because they arent trying to get that type of sound. IMO the guys in your vids arent belting, they are using either early bridging or just natural bridging but in any case they are keeping it pretty light.

Some people NEVER use head voice because they never learned how, or because they want a loud, chesty, shouty type of sound.

other people use various voices as I described. a good singer might use all 3 of those bridging methods in the same song or almost in the same phrase

[Sexy Beast]

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You could be singing too heavy below your passaggio

I would bet on the opposite but I might be wrong.

[JonJon]

24 minutes ago, Rockstar said:

I do not choke on the high notes, I left that thing years before. Now the sound gets weird but there is no strain. What do you mean by "resonating on the soft palate"? So the soft palate must rise which gives you that yawn like sensation and the resonance ascends. right?

Any exercises you recommend? cuz I'm on my own for now. Can you post a clip of you doing a siren that I may imitate? 

again, I have no idea if the soft palate rises or not. I dont know if my eyes dilate or if my hair looks good lol. I yawned when I woke up but that was a little while back

 

like SexyBeast said, are you getting a good strong vibration etc in your chest notes. Are you getting a decent breath before u try to sing a note?

An untrained singer, if he gets a good breath and he sings a decent note, he will generally choke at some point if he just tries to carry that up higher and higher.

if you arent choking, then I wonder if you are ever actually getting a decent breath in to start with? Almost sounds like you are using a falsetto chest voice

 

your answer might be to get a good strong chest note going, push it up until you choke, THEN learn to let go of the chest voice and gradually bridge up thru the passagio

[Gneetapp]

21 minutes ago, Sexy Beast said:

I would bet on the opposite but I might be wrong.

That is exactly what is going on now: we are just beting on what is going on based on Rockstar's description, which might not even be accurate.

[JonJon]

23 minutes ago, Gneetapp said:

That is exactly what is going on now: we are just beting on what is going on based on Rockstar's description, which might not even be accurate.

I got $3 say the chest note aint got good breath to start with

[MDEW]

1 minute ago, JonJon said:

I got $3 say the chest note aint got good breath to start with

I have to agree with that. SLS is not know for their support and energy work.

 

 

[JonJon]

sirenssirens  

okay, I have these really junky ones that I did on the actual day I learned to bridge lol. or, the day I became conscious of singing up on the palates as I call it. Singing in headvoice, letting go of the tight throat resonance etc

its actually fun to look back on these...they are not quite 6 months old and to me now they sound totally horrendous! My range and control has gotten so much better

In any case here is what a novice siren might sound like. You gradually leave the chest resonance and embrace the head resonance or vice versa

up https://clyp.it/ceg054c2

down https://clyp.it/zkqvnmqi