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estyrke

TMV World Legacy Member
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  1. You don't have to know the language, just sing the lyrics. Learning the vowel sounds (for example by listening to a recording of a native singer) goes a long way. In my choir, I've sung: * English * Swedish * French * Spanish * Italian * Latin * German * Macedonian * Croatian * Russian * Old Hungarian * Gaelic * Finnish * Sami * Norwegian * Danish And probably more, without knowing anything else than Swedish and English. But the more you practice the pronunciation of each language, the more convincing it is, of course. :)
  2. I am a CVT student, and I agree that it can be hard for beginners. I bought the book a few years ago, and I was like "yeah, this is awesome, but how do I use it?" So I dismissed it until a few months ago when I came into contact with a teacher who knew a bit about it. Now I'm seeing a CVI certified coach, and it's really awesome. I guess it depends on your preferred way of learning. Some people can just read the book and do like it says. I think I'm more of a learn-by-listening guy - the CVT sound samples help a lot, but they are a bit tough to navigate. What I learn the most from is having my coach demonstrate how to do something and then imitating. And it *does* work immediately! It usually takes a few tries to find the correct coordination, but with a coach to say "use a bit more support", "lower the volume" or "adjust the vowel" I haven't yet found a song passage I can't sing. I've only had two lessons so far though, so that might change of course. And I haven't done any scales or training exercies, I have just been working on a song, and the G4:s, A4:s and the occasional Bb4 *are just there*! And for a guy that's been singing bass in a choir with a previous highest note of F4 and usually straining on everything above C4, that's just crazy. I think a key factor is that I've been singing a lot more recently, but I couldn't have done it without help. Basically I guess I'm saying what a lot of people here keep repeating: get a coach! I would like to say also, with regard to "experimenting" that I do think CVT encourages experimentation. The basic rules are that if it hurts, don't do it; and if you fail three times in a row, stop and do something easier instead to prevent the failure from getting into muscle memory. /Emil
  3. I just want to make the point that there's nothing magical about the vitamins in carrots or apples, it's the exact same vitamins as in the pills. Vitamin A is of course toxic no matter the source although, if I'm not mistaken, carrots only contain provitamins, which might make them safe even if you could eat the huge amount of carrots needed to notice. Actually almost anything is toxic if taken in excess, whether it's "natural" or processed. You could die from drinking too much water. I'm not saying that a good balanced diet is not the best thing, because I do think it is. It's just that I cringe when people say that the nutrients in supplements are somehow worse than the nutrients in raw food, just because they are manufactured or "not natural". It all depends on the proper balance, but I agree that nature is pretty good at finding that balance.
  4. Actually, I've been told (by CVT teacher and book) that lifting the soft palate is a separate action. Closing the velum port (sorry, not sure if that is the proper term in English; the passage to the nasal cavity) can be achieved by simply closing off the nose (not sure if this skill is individual or if everyone can do it as easily as me): pretend that something smells really bad and breathe through your mouth only (without pinching the nose). Lifting the soft palate is much harder, at least for me. Pretending that you're surprised or yawning seem to be popular images for that, but I never get these image-based descriptions. When I manage to do it it's usually by focusing on the sound I produce - I think "more resonance", and sometimes it works. I think that a lifted soft palate might naturally close the velum port, but I don't think the opposite is true.
  5. Proton Vibration Alignment is something they have come up with themselves it seems (google it - almost all hits refer to this IPC corporation, no hits on scientific works). The rest of the paragraph consists of more hand-waving and arcane terminology without saying anything substantive. The premise is that protons by default are unaligned (probably true), and that this is not optimal (probably false, I have never heard of this) The proposed solution is to align the protons, but they do not say anything about *how* the protons would be aligned. This is said to improve the properties of the material (*any* material since everything is made up of protons, electrons and neutrons). There is no mention of exactly why this would improve anything, and exactly what properties are improved. I'd be very sceptical of something that is said to make unspecified improvements to everything (this technology is not marketed just for the voice, but also for improving fuel efficiency in cars, improving sound of your HiFi set, etc). I'm no doctor (my only credential is an MSc in computer science), but I'd say any effect from this thing is pure placebo (which is not to be underestimated, but a rabbit's foot is probably cheaper).
  6. Thing is, I sing with a male voice choir (1st bass or baritone), and my original motivation for getting a voice teacher was to function better in the choir. I was straining a lot in the higher parts of the tessitura (C4-D4) and could barely manage any higher notes. By taking some lessons on and off and basically just singing more, I've started to manage those problems, and the last time I started taking lessons (six months ago), I wanted to focus more on pop singing, with the goal of being able to sing pop and rock songs without straining or popping into falsetto on the high notes. A kind of ultimate "reach the sky" goal would be to sing Dream Theater and Iron Maiden songs. But to answer your question, I think that I've gotten to a point where I don't need to practice specifically to do the classical parts required by the choir, so what I'm aiming for with my training now is pop/rock. When I wrote about working on tension I meant removing "bad" tension, in the jaws, neck and back of the tongue. Up until now I think that has been my biggest issue, and learning to relax more has really helped my upper range, but I'm a bit afraid that using that upper range (around F4-A4) in this very chesty/shouty way is not good in the long run (as Owen indicated).
  7. First of all: hello everyone, this is my first post here. This is interesting... I've been meaning to ask something similar, but not gotten to it yet. I've been going to a (classically trained) vocal coach, and she never acknowledged anything like a bridge, head voice, chest voice or anything. I'm a bass/baritone, and she had me doing different arpeggios and working on tension to increase my range. The last piece I did was in a tenor tessitura (Tamino's intro from The Magic Flute) and goes up to Ab4 with a lot of G4:s as well. I can do it, but I have to go really loud, use tons of energy, and the high notes are sort of yell:ish/screamy. My interpretation of this is that I'm "pulling chest" all the way. How would I go about developing this into a more usable head voice that doesn't sound so shouty? Just abandon this strategy and start practicing "bridge early", or keep doing exercises in "full voice" and trying to increase the range further in the same way? My coach has just moved to another city, so I'm unfortunately on my own for now.
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