TMV World Team

Brand new research shows that pop singers value their voices as much as classical singers do, but are much less likely to get medical help. Most fascinating, pop (I'm using the term very broadly to include rock, alt, studio, etc.) singers are more likely to go to the doctor for other medical problems, than for the voice. Here's a checklist to help you get clear on what is and isn't normal: YES or NO: WHICH OF THESE HAS BEEN A SIGNIFICANT PROBLEM IN THE PAST MONTH (other than times you've had a cold?) I have trouble talking loudly or being heard in noisy situations. I feel a lump in my throat, like extra phlegm or something sticking there. I am losing work, or afraid I might lose work, because of my voice. Talking or singing takes effort or makes me tired. I have to repeat myself to be understood in normal conversation. My throat feels sore or achy even though I'm not sick. I'm losing notes at the top, bottom and/or middle of my singing range. I feel anxious or frustrated because of changes in my voice. I have trouble using the telephone. I have to strain, or compromise my technique in order to sound the way I used to. If you answered YES to 5 or more questions, see a voice doctor as soon as you can. If you answer YES to 2-4 questions, work on taking better care of your voice (rest, steam, hydration, good nutrition and exercise, and dutiful warm-ups!). If your voice doesn't improve in 2-3 weeks, see a doctor. If you can answered NO to nearly every question, congratulations! You are in good vocal health. Keep taking good care so you'll stay that way. This quiz is adapted from questionnaires used in many voice clinics, but has not been validated by itself. Please check out my book and website for help staying healthy. This essay was first published April 19, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

Every singer knows that wonderful feeling of truly flying on wings of song. The voice obeys ones musical and dramatic wishes, is powerful or soft at will, breath seems endless and the piece of music and the text fit like a glove. Who needs technique and know-how on days like this! Perhaps no one: but on all those other days, during those other years and decades? How should we handle times when our voices are affected by music uncertainty or ill preparedness; times of pressure through conductors, directors or composers who seem to demand the impossible of us; times of singing too much or -- equally problematic -- singing too little; times of travel stress and jetlag; or professional disappointments or conflicts with colleagues? How should we manage these times of personal turmoil and of inner and physical change? We have been blessed with good voice teachers and we have learned our technique, but as any excellent teacher -- especially one who has had substantial stage experience -- will admit, that just scratches the surface of what we really need to sustain long and happy careers. We singers need practical, practicable solutions for a myriad of ever changing challenges and we need the right mind-set to search for and recognize these solutions. The challenges of a young soubrette singing in a Mozart opera for the first time are going to be different from those of an older singer being confronted with acrobatic stage directions or microtonal music or polyrhythms or a concert piece in an unknown language. Challenges can, of course, be less dramatic. For example, just learning to sing with a conductor’s beat or learning to sight-read or to memorize effectively. Early on I had the good fortune to collaborate with dancers and observe their ways of work. A good dancer is perfectly in tune with his body and recognizes the body as a perfect memorizer. Later on I concertized with several excellent percussionists and could observe their manner of constantly dealing with practical things and continually enhancing their own coordination. However, both the dancer and the percussionist are primarily interested in the aesthetic result, but they are in no way too proud to look for (sometimes simple) solutions. Too often singers feel helpless in the face of adversity. Rehearsal pianists often teach them their parts and learning by rote is not uncommon. The singing artists whom I find most fascinating all come across as independent, creatively thinking individuals. In short, artists who have found their solutions and will continue to do so as new ones are needed. Yes, of course, the beauty of the voice is wonderful, but in the end it is the complete artist that the audience wants. Often the solution is much closer than one might guess. Through my artistic acquaintance with dancers, percussionists and many other inspiring colleagues, I started to recognize that the learning and singing of music compositions need not be abstract or a game of chance, that the connection body motor functions memory is extremely reliable as is the connection motor functions rhythm, which might not seem intrinsic to lyrical singing. I also recognized that that the attributes of the instrument (the voice) and its player (the singer) are quite different from those of any other instrument and its player. No, it is not that singers are less musically inclined than instrumentalists it is that our instrument functions differently. For the last few years I have been offering workshops under the title of "Tools for the Independent Singer". In most cases I made a point of saying in advance that I would not teach vocal technique at these courses. Happily, though, I almost always hear lovely vocal improvement which comes with the certainty of better musicianship, more reliable memorizing, more vital rhythm and more understanding of the practical things of a music score, however complicated it may be. So what do we do in these workshops? We discuss productive practicing; we learn to invisibly count on our fingers; we learn the great value of being nice and kind to our subconscious so it will serve us well when we are singing by memory; we learn to give ourselves cues; we learn to produce our own internal rhythmic structure over which we can sing as legato as we wish without dragging; we learn how to reliably get our pitch and keep it; we learn to study full scores (because they are a help and very interesting); and most important of all-- we learn how to learn and how to work independently. Of course, we singers need our basic technique, and we continue to work on it as long as we sing. But for the many times when it is not a matter of truly flying on wings of song and when we perhaps just simply need to be professional we must find solutions or tools. And lo and behold: The more tools we have at our command the more likely we are to fly on wings of song for a long, enjoyable time. This essay was first published February 9, 2010 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

In the male voice's lower and mid ranges, what has been traditionally called the "chest voice", the harmonic structure of the sung tone contains many partials harmonics, which fit nicely into the pattern of resonances for any particular vowel chosen. Introduction Throughout this range, the strong, lower harmonics are reinforced by the first vowel resonance corresponding with Formant 1, (F1), mid-range harmonics are reinforced by the second vowel resonance from Formant 2 (F2), and higher harmonics are emphasized by the higher "twang" or "singer's" formant resonances. The combination of multiple, powerful low, mid-range, and high harmonics present in all vowels is a distinctive characteristic of this section of the male voice. In contrast with this, in the male high range, what has been traditionally called the head voice, the harmonics produced by the voice are higher in frequency and more widely spaced. Here, few of the harmonics fit into the vowel resonance pattern. For one particular span of notes in the head voice, there is no significant resonance available to amplify the lowest two harmonics produced. To achieve vocal power and consistency of tone in the high voice, the male singer uses what he has available: "twang" (singer's formant) and the resonance from F2 strengthening harmonic 3 or 4, depending on vowel. Between these two resonance strategies is a region of transition, too high for the chest voice strategy, and too low for the F2 alignments of the head voice strategy. This transition region is the passagio. Acoustics of the Rising Fundamental Throughout the voice, as the fundamental frequency moves, the alignment of harmonics and resonances for a vowel change. On an upward-moving scale or leap, the fundamental and all the overtones rise in frequency. Since the harmonics are spaced at multiples of the fundamental, the harmonics also get farther apart, too. For most of the chest voice range, this is not an issue, as the resonance from F1 covers a wide frequency range, and mid-range harmonics are close enough together for at least two or three of them to get some benefit from F2. These conditions apply to all the vowels. However, in an upward pitch pattern, as the voice passes middle C (C-F, depending on voice type) eventually the scale reaches a region in the voice where the alignment of harmonics to formants is no longer advantageous. Overall vocal power and tone quality will be lost if an adjustment is not made. The particular point in the male voice where this occurs is as the 2nd harmonic passes F1. Visualizing Harmonics and the /e/ Vowel in a Spectrograph As illustration of this, what follows is a series of spectrographs made with different fundamentals sung to the vowel /e/ (ay), made using my own, baritone, voice. As representative of a lower chest voice tone, the first is of the A natural just a bit more than an octave below middle C, also known as A2. Each vertical blue line represents the intensity of a particular harmonic, where up = louder. Low frequency harmonics start on the left side. The leftmost peak is from the fundamental, and if you look at each peak to the right of that (increasing frequency of harmonic), you can see that the 4th harmonic is the very tallest, and then the peaks become successively shorter. This peak volume for the 4th harmonic, and the emphasis of those surrounding it, is the result of Formant 1, F1 in its position for /e/ in my voice. Harmonics to the left of the formant center get progressively louder as they get nearer to it, and those to the right of the formant center get softer. Proceeding to the right is a section of quiet harmonics, not so tall in the display, and then there is another build up to the 13th harmonic. This is the area amplified as a result of the location of Formant 2, F2. The spacing of F1 and F2 is what makes this vowel sound like 'ay' to the listener. After another gap, there are two more areas of emphasis, which are the result of F3 and F4, clustered together. These formants move very little vowel-to-vowel, and form the high-frequency brightness resonances of the singer's formant. The reason we start with this: for any given vowel pronunciation, (like /e/) the formants stay at the same locations even while the fundamental, and the associated harmonics, are moved during the production of different notes. Especially important in the understanding of the male passagio is the relationship of F1, F2 and how the harmonics align with them. A2 on /e/ vowel Harmonic Spacing As mentioned earlier, for any given sung note, harmonics are always the same frequency distance apart. That frequency spacing is the same frequency as the fundamental: the note being sung. So, if a fundamental is 110 cycles per second (like that A2,) all the harmonics will be 110 cycles apart from their neighboring harmonics. You can see this equal spacing in the picture above. Because of the closeness of the harmonic spacing, you are able to see pretty well the shape of the formant regions. Up an Octave The next picture is of the same /e/ vowel, but singing the A up one octave, the A just below middle C, A3, which is 220 cycles per second. Notice that the peaks are farther from each other than in the prior picture; now, they are 220 cycles per second apart. Looking at the peaks for a moment, you can see that the amplification effects of F1 and F2 are still in the same place (left to right), but now different numbered harmonics are boosted, and fewer harmonics are affected by each individual formant. In the case of F1, the 3rd harmonic is now the most emphasized, with the 2nd harmonic also getting some help, while F2 is emphasizing the 7th harmonic tremendously, but not much else. This excellent alignment of F2 with a harmonic makes it really ring distinctively, and is an example of 2nd-formant tuning, which will get discussed later. Finding the Exact Location of F1 for /e/ Are you curious about the exact location of F1? Look at the bottom of this next picture, right between harmonics 2 and 3. See the blips? All voices have some soft, non-harmonic noise. When that noise falls under a formant, it gets amplified enough to measure. These low blips on the spectrograph are the giveaway to the location of the formant. A3 on /e/ vowel Continuing the Scale Upward As I continue up the scale from A3, three things happen due to the musical intervals represented by the harmonics: My 2nd harmonic gets closer and closer to F1, strengthen that harmonic. This makes the warmth of the voice bloom in this region, and the resonance makes it possible to over sing some and still get away with it. My 3rd harmonic gets higher above F1, and so it gets progressively softer. In combination with #1, this changes the tone quality somewhat. F2 tunes to successively lower harmonics. These three trends are very important in understanding the male passaggio. More on What Happens When a Harmonic Rises Above a Formant As a particular harmonic rises above a formant center, it rapidly decreases in intensity. In this next picture, now singing Bb3 (up just one half step from the A), you can see the effect on the 3rd harmonic. It is quite softer now when compared to the 2nd harmonic. For this note, the principal power of the vowel is being carried by the 2nd harmonic. You may also note that the F2 tuning is emphasizing harmonics 6 and 7 more or less equally. That is because F2 is between them. Harmonic 7 is no longer in the 'ringing' position and harmonic 6 is not yet high enough to be there. Bb3 /e/ vowel The Male Upper Chest Voice My voice is now in the fattest part of the upper chest voice, where most of the vowel power is coming from the 2nd harmonic. This range is just about a perfect 5th wide, because that is the spacing of the 2nd and 3rd harmonics. The region begins as the 3rd harmonic passes F1, and ends as the 2nd harmonic passes F1, in other words, for my /e/ vowel, from the Ab below middle C, to the Eb above middle C. This is what makes my voice a low baritone quality. Note: you can still see the noise blip. It's getting closer to the 2nd harmonic the higher I sing. Now, the Db in the following picture: Notice that there are little noise blips on each side of the 2nd harmonic. This indicates optimum alignment of the harmonic with F1, the place where the 2nd harmonic is exactly aligned with F1. Db3 /e/ vowel The Effects of Strong Resonance on Ease of Singing Through the entire compass of my voice, up to this point, lower harmonics have been boosted by F1, which has provided for some cushioning effect for the vocal bands. That situation is about to change significantly as the fundamental rises past this point. A very important challenge to the singer as this happens is to resist the temptation to maintain vocal power via pushing. And now to the Eb: The 2nd harmonic has just past F1. It’s still very strong, but will lose ground very rapidly as I proceed upward. This is the beginning of the tricky section of the passagio, where the resonance provided to the 2nd harmonic decreases rapidly, and I must, to retain vocal power and tone quality, find another way to shape the vowel. Eb3 /e/ vowel My next post, "Male voice passagio 102" will discuss the various strategies that can be used to retain resonance through the passagio. This essay was first published May 19 2010 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet;s #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

chuy67 wrote: [When I think about singing from the diaphragm,] I picture support as a balloon. It is filled with air and then you can push it with your hands and air comes out. The only problem is, I can picture it, but I cannot do it. Do people really push it [the diaphragm] like a balloon? Also another problem I have is pressure in my throat and upper chest when trying to breathe in heavily. It can also be painful at times. Could someone please give me an explanation of this? It is driving me nuts! Steven Fraser wrote: I'll be happy to answer your questions. There are also some resources on the main site -- articles about the location and action of the diaphragm -- that are pretty good. The image of support as a balloon only goes so far. Let me give you a more accurate, and hopefully, useful one by describing what is actually going on in your body as you breathe normally and then when you sing. Very generally, inhalation happens any time you make your chest cavity bigger, expanding it. There are a number of motions that can do this, more or less effectively. Some work very well for athletic endeavors, and some work well for singing. Setting aside any notion of voice for a moment, here are the motions that cause air to go in the lungs, beginning with the one that almost always happens: The diaphragm, which forms the bottom of the chest cavity, flexes, and flattens downward and a little forward from its relaxed, arched position. This makes the chest cavity bigger, creating a lower pressure in the lungs, and outside air gets pushed in (by the higher outside air pressure) through your mouth and/or nose. As the diaphragm descends during this motion, it presses downward and forward on your abdominal organs, pushing them downward somewhat. This is the motion you see when the diaphragm lowers: the belly expanding. Sometime, watch a sleeping baby breathe. The motion you can see is the abdomen moving as a result of the diaphragm flexing, and then relaxing. You expand your ribs side-to-side, and lift them. This expands the chest cavity circumference.It's very likely that the diaphragm is also flexing, too, but it is less obvious. You raise your sternum (breastbone). This expands the chest cavity height. It's very likely that the ribs expanded, and the diaphragm flexed at the same time. Exhaling happens when the effort used for any one of these motions is relaxed.The reason is that the motions store energy in the body. This happens by: Expanding the belly: abdominal muscles are stretched, as are the elastic lung tissues.When the inhalation stops, the tissues which were stretched want to spring back to where they were. In a sleeping child, it's these forces that power the exhalation.When conscious, a person can add even more power to this exhalation by contracting the abdominal muscles, resulting in an inward motion. Letting the ribs come back in, somewhat helped by gravity, air is forced out. Letting the sternum down. This one is also helped a lot by gravity. Again, forces air out. Ok, that is how basic body-breathing happens in normal life. Most of the time, we use breath motion #1, and for a sigh, maybe add #2. If we are running for our lives, we do everything we can to move the air rapidly to stay alive. We may do all three under those circumstances. I explained all this for a reason: breathing for singing is not about moving air rapidly for life; it's about supplying just the right amount of air for the vocal sounds you want to make. In singing, we train the enormously powerful #1 action of breathing to be more subtle, and we lessen, or eliminate, the motions of #2 and #3 so that they do not overpower the teeny, weenie laryngeal muscles. In singing, the way that #2 and #3 are lessened is to make them part of the posture.If you don't move them much as you breathe in and out, they don't add unwanted or uncontrolled breath energy. It's very hard to do either thing subtly. Keeping the sternum in one place prevents gravity from powering air out of the body. It does not necessarily have to be high: just not moving when you breathe in and out. For your information, classical singers very often adopt a high sternum chest position and leave it there all the time. It looks a bit better on stage. When #2 and #3 motions are stilled, breathing happens entirely by #1, the diaphragmatic action in coordination with the abdominal muscles. This is very often called belly breathing, low breathing, breathing from the diaphragm, etc. All those terms mean that only motions of the diaphragm and the abdominal muscles are involved in moving the air.This takes us back to the kind of breathing your body does when you are asleep. The same thing as a baby does. You have breathed this way your whole life. Now, what is support It is two things: Maintaining some of the flex of the diaphragm during the exhale. In a normal, easy breath, the diaphragm relaxes at the end of the inhale, and the stored energy in the abdominals presses the air out by pushing the diaphragm up. Check out that sentence again. The diaphragm is just along for the ride on the exhale. It is not powering the exhale. It moves up because the abdominals are making the abdomen smaller, and the guts are pushing up the diaphragm. Also, because the stretchy lungs are collapsing a little; this helps to pull the diaphragm up. Keeping the diaphragm active slows down the exhale, and reduces its force. You likely can do this almost without thinking about it deliberately. If you take in an easy, #1-style breath, and then just exhale as slowly as you can, your desire to exhale slowly will cause the diaphragm to stay active. You can even stop the exhale momentarily, just by wanting to. You have even more control than that. You can take in a 3/4 breath, and then limit your inhale/exhale motion to be from 3/4 to 1/4 full. The diaphragm responds very readily to your will in this matter. This kind of outward breath is slow, warm and moist. Secondly, support is: Providing extra exhalation energy after the abdominals have released their stretch-energy. Without doing this, you cannot sing on the last half of tidal lung capacity. As an exhalation proceeds, the stored energy lessens, and the exhale force decreases. To keep the breath energy going continuously, the abdominals must also contract. In summary, support is the term we use to describe the bodily actions which provide long, consistent, appropriately-powered breath energy to the voice. Here is a very important, useful clue. One of the most common problems for singers is too-much breath energy. Remember, the body is capable of moving lots of air, very rapidly. The abdominal muscles are huge compared to the laryngeal muscles. The sensation of breath balance you get when you do the slow exhale is the right sensation for starting a sung note. If you do that, the desire to make the vocal sound upsets the balance just in favor of exhaling, and the voice gets the air it needs to make the sound you are wanting. If you think a loud sound, a bit more air is supplied. A way to practice this is to take a 1/2 breath inhale, and breathe outward slowly, with your jaw dropped about 1" (check between your front teeth in a mirror) and just start some short notes in the middle of your range. See if you can keep the sense that you are still breathing out slowly, even when you are making the sound. I think you'll experience something cool: that you can make a very clear, easy, relaxed sound with little or no throat tension or pain. The more you practice it, the better you will get at it. This essay was first published April 22, 2010 on The Modern Vocalist Forum of The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

Of all the dynamic effects used in singing, one of the most challenging to do elegantly is the "messa di voce" (pronounced by English speakers more-or-less like 'mess ah dee voh chay'. It is the combination of a smooth crescendo (getting louder) for some amount of time, followed by a smooth decrescendo (getting softer) for the same amount of time, on a single vowel, on a single note. Using musical symbols, it can be represented this way: Why is This Challenging? The exercise requires that the singer be able to: Start a note cleanly and vibrantly, but softly. Crescendo a smoothly, progressively adjusting the balance of breath energy and laryngeal muscle action so that the tone gets louder, not going sharp or flat, and maintaining the vowel color until a specific louder level is reached. Decrescendo a note smoothly, with similar requirements as during the crescendo, while approaching the end of the usable supply of breath. End a note cleanly and vibrantly, but softly. The Easiest of the Skills For most singers with some training, the skill that can be most readily managed is the second one, the crescendo. Even so, the requirement to maintain the vowel and the pitch consistency represents a challenge. If the breath energy is not balanced with the laryngeal muscle action, the pitch will go astray. The Intermediate Skills Next in line of difficulty is the soft starting and stopping of the vibrant tone. This skill requires the singer to be able to manage breath energy at very low subglottic pressures, with the requisite light laryngeal muscle action levels, while at the same time keeping the tone free, clear and accurately pitched. The starting of the note is challenging, because there is usually a surplus of breath energy for the first onset, and the ending of the note is challenging, because there is very little left for the release. To correctly do these two skills, the singer must have mastery of soft dynamics with full lungs, and with nearly empty ones. The Most Challenging of the Skills Is the smooth decrescendo. As the singer begins to do this on the latter half of the breath, there is a great tendency to make the action too swiftly. If, for example, the crescendo is taken for five seconds, the singer will tend to make the first part of the decrescendo very much too rapidly, returning to the original volume in three or four seconds. Additional difficulty lies in the need for the singer to perform the decrescendo smoothly, and while doing so, gradually decrease the subglottic pressures by coordination of breath energy and laryngeal muscle action, maintaining pitch and vibrancy on increasingly smaller lung volumes of air. This presents a breath management and/or support challenge. And, to Top it Off The exercise should be able to be performed throughout the complete performance compass of the voice. Pedagogic Use of the Messa Di Voce The exercise is useful for both voice evaluation, and for training. When performed, it immediately reveals where the singer's issues are, by the characteristics of the individual skills, which are combined in it. When first performed, the student takes a small breath, begins and ends at mezzopiano (mp), and crescendos to mezzo forte. (mf) over a few counts time. When smooth and accurate with these levels and times for all vowels, the teacher may either: extend the dynamic range (starting softer, i.e., at piano, or ending louder, i.e., at mezzo forte); and/or lengthening the time for the crescendo and the matching decrescendo, with a slightly larger breath. As the singer becomes more accomplished, the teacher may vary the dynamics and lengths independently, so that complete facility of dynamic control is gained. Examples of Use If you listen carefully to some of the longer notes in "The Prayer" you can hear the messa di voce done very subtly. Also, you can hear good examples of the sustained notes in decrescendo, which is the second half of the exercise. Probably the best example I have found of this effect in theatre is the sustained, almost in perceptible decrescendo on the last note of "The Music of the Night" in Phantom of the Opera. Michael Crawford does it very well. Among the singers of the standards, excellent examples are in the singing of Tony Bennett. In "Fly Me to the Moon". You can hear some very subtle ones. Messa di voce is not an end in itself. The abilities it requires, and which it helps to develop, are essential in the dynamic shaping of phrases, the ebb and flow of vocal volume to create arched, legato lines. In Tony's singing, you can hear how he nuances these volume relationships note-to-note, so smoothly. In classical music, especially pieces in Bel Canto style, this effect is very readily found. For example, in the "mad scene" in Donizetti's Lucia, you can hear some of the longer notes with it done subtly, but also how the singer uses dynamic control to connect the coloratura in long, shaped phrases on a single vowel. Interesting note: This is the same aria which begins the "Diva" section in the Bruce Willis movie "The Fifth Element" before the 'dance' section. Conclusion By varying the dynamic levels and the lengths of the crescendo/decrescendo pair, the singer becomes very familiar with the way their own instrument responds to these demands, and how they must be thinking to achieve the effect in the various ranges of their voice. The end result is a wonderful ability and sense of mastery that comes from the familiarity of these aspects of singing, and which is directly applied to the artistic use of dynamics in performance. This essay was first published January 27, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

In the Opera world, one of the most exciting things to anticipate and hear is the brilliant, climactic high note of the tenor soloist in an aria. Not only does the voice carry well without amplification, but takes on a distinctly thrilling, impressive quality of resonance that other parts of the voice do not quite have in the same way. In this post, I will explore the ways that these fine singers manage their voices to enable such singing. Introduction Since we will be objectively discussing vocal tone quality, I will be using spectrographs to assist. With some of these particular ones, I will include annotations to the images so that the reader can make the connection between the visual representation and aural experience of harmonics within the vocal tone quality. The spectrographs I use will all be of the final note in the tenor aria, 'Celeste Aida', from Verdi's Opera Aida, which is on the syllable 'Sol' on the Bb above middle C. To give credit where credit is due, my investigation in this area was inspired by the published work of Donald Miller at www.vocevista.com. The spectrographs were produced with Spectrogram16, by Richard Horne. Bjoerling and Domingo The spectragraph to the left shows that note from recordings of two of the most popular and capable operatic tenors of the 20th Century, Jussi Bjoerling (represented with the blue line) and Placido Domingo (represented with the white line.) To help orient you to the image, I have annotated it with lines and text to show the locations of the harmonics of the sung tones. On this diagram, left = lower frequency, right = higher frequency. Up = higher intensity, down = lower intensity. The frequency range represented is 0 to 4000 cycles per second (Hz). So that these notes could be compared as well as can be from recordings, I equalized the volume of the fundamentals. What We Can See and Conclude With this equalization, the fundamentals and 2nd harmonics (H2) are about the same strength when comparing voice-to-voice, as evidenced by the nearly exact overlay of the blue and white lines. However, a very great difference is noticeable in the intensity of H3. Bjoerling's H3 goes way higher on the intensity scale than Domingo's, indicating that it is very much stronger. H4 and H5 are also more intense than those of Domingo, though their intensity in Domingo's voice increases until they are in rough parity with that of Bjoerling at H6. From there, the intensity of harmonics falls off dramatically in both voices. So, as a proportion of the overall sound of the recorded voice, Jussi Bjoerling's tone quality and power are created mostly by H3, H6, H5 and H2-- in decreasing order by intensity -- while Domingo's tone quality and power are created mostly via harmonics H6, H2, H1 and H5: again in decreasing order by intensity. These different balances, while they both sound like tenors, make them distinguishable to our ears. What We Cannot Conclude Does this mean that Bjoerling's voice was "bigger" or more resonant than Domingo's, or perhaps the other way around? Neither one! Engineers who make recordings adjust volumes and balances at their own discretion, to make recordings have a satisfying overall effect for the listener, while not overwhelming the recording or playback machines. There is simply no way to tell from a recording what the original sound intensities were, only how they were after they were recorded and mixed down. Sometimes, though not much with Opera, some EQ is added to overcome a recording problem, or to sweeten the effect a bit. Some of that latter can be seen in some of the images here, and is discussed below under the section "Engineering Artifacts". So, even though we cannot learn the size of these voices in absolute terms, we can learn (in general) how the sound energy of the harmonics is distributed relative to one another within a single recorded voice, and can compare recording to recording. Vocal Resonance Strategies Vocal power that is distributed across the various harmonics is perceived by the listener differently, according to the frequency range of the particular harmonics. In the case of the Bjoerling and Domingo notes, the reason that there is such a dispartity in the displays of the blue and white lines is that these singers have balanced their resonances differently for this note in the recordings selected. Surveying recordings of more than 40 of the top tenors of the 20th Century, these voices predominately use one or both of two strategies to create the powerful top voice. In this next section, we will explore the strategies that they used, and comment on the overall effect. The "Singers Formant" Region Looking back at the picture for a moment, you may notice the two vertical red lines which bracket the frequency range of the 6th Harmonic, very strong in both voices. These lines show the center 400Hz of the singer's formant region, and also indicate the area of highest hearing sensitivity. When harmonics are strong in this frequency region, they are very audible, adding to the carrying power of the voice and to the listener's perception of voice quality as well. For the singer without amplification, presence of these frequencies allows the voice to cut through above the sound of a piano easily, and even a full orchestra in the concert or Operatic venues. These frequencies also help the audience member locate the sound source very specifically on stage, a big help when singing an ensemble. Both Domingo and Bjoerling have this important feature in their voices. Incidentally, the frequency of the 6th harmonic is two octaves and a major third above the sung fundamental. The first most common strategy for vocal power and audibility is to have a strong singer's formant, as strong or stronger than the fundamental and 2nd harmonic. We could also call this the 'high ring' strategy. Lowest 3 Harmonics The perception of the "darkness" or "warmth" of the voice comes from the intensities of the lowest two harmonics, H1 and H2, which are the fundamental of the sung tone, and the octave above it. For these, both singers have about the same proportion, and this forms a solid core to the sound in both voices. To the listener, these two harmonics are very difficult to distinguish individually when they are approximately the same volume. The presence of the proportionally louder H3 in Bjoerling's voice introduces an interesting difference. H3 is the frequency an octave and a perfect 5th above the fundamental, what (to a classical organist) would be called a 'quint'. This quite strong harmonic colors the tone distinctively, and, because it is an odd-numbered harmonic, it stands out in the awareness of the listener, adding brilliance to the vowel. When the 3rd harmonic is the loudest in the whole voice (such as it is for Bjoerling) this becomes a significant feature of the tone quality, and carries a great deal of the vocal power. The second most common strategy for vocal power and coloring is to have a strong 3rd Harmonic. The strong H3 is obtained by singing a vowel which tunes the 2nd formant (F2) to just a little bit higher than H3, a process sometimes called vowel modification, or vocal tract tuning. We could also call this the mid+high ring strategy. (Note: For other combinations of note and vowel impression, the tuning of F2 is more advantageously made to H4.) In professional voices, both of these individual strategies can be found, and also combined. Jussi Bjoerling is a fine example of the combined, and Placido Domingo is an excellent example of the "singer's formant" or low+high ring strategy. Another Singer for Comparison - Franco Corelli Franco Corelli is known for a heroic tenor voice. This spectrogram shows the relative strength of the harmonics in his voice for the same note we were examining with Domingo and Bjoerling. Though there is a bit more orchestral clutter in the sample -- sharp spikes here and there -- and on the left end) you can see clearly that the 3rd harmonic is very prominent in his voice, . Looking to the right, you see some strength with H4, H5 and H6, and then a strong H7 as well. This would make his approach a combined one. Here are some other spectrograms for comparison. See if you can identify which strategies they employ: Alfredo Kraus Benjamino Gigli Luciano Pavarotti Special note here: Pavarotti's voice is very interesting in that he uses the H3 formant tuning, but does not combine it with a strong singer's formant. The overall effect is very distinctive. Enrico Caruso Mario Lanza Engineering Artifacts - Possible The clustering of the formants F3, F3 and F5, which combine in the singer's formant region ordinarily produce somewhat jagged peaks in a spectrographic display. When recorded and displayed as is, without any sweetening EQ, they do not often take the shape of smooth curves, rounded on top, but will ramp up and down fairly sharply across three or four harmonics. Go back to the Kraus spectrograph, and look at the shape of the curve created by the tops of H4, H5, H6, H7 and H8. Disregard the leading (rightmost edge) pointy peaks that show up, that is an orchestral note. The "wide" part is from the voice. In my opinion, the slow ramp-up of the harmonic intensities in this region, peaking at H7, and then diminishing a bit to H8, just looks too regular. I think this is a likely example of some EQ shaping to allow the voice to cut through the orchestral mix. Though I cannot be quite so sure on this one, the suddenly very strong H7 in the Correlli spectrograph looks a bit out of place, with the intensities of the immediately three lower harmonics at the levels they are. Now you know what you might look for, I will leave the judgment to you. It's not likely, while listening to the recording, that you would be aware of any of these harmonics individually, anyway. None of these latter points reflects on the quality of the singer in any way, nor would the singer likely have been aware that tweaks were done on their behalf. As I said earlier, the Engineers work to create an effective recording of the voice that fairly represents what the performance sounded like to them. Summary We've seen with these examples the most often occurring resonance strategies for creating the ringing top notes of the Operatic Tenor voice, and readily accessible examples from some of the most popular singers of the 20th Century. We've also discussed the limitations of using recordings to make these conclusions. If you'd like to see more articles of this type, studying the vocalism of other voices, please send me a comment as to your interests. In any case, I plan to do a parallel discussion of the resonance strategies of the Operatic Baritone (Warren, Milnes, Tibett and Bastianini!), the female high voice, and discuss in detail the challenges involved with the transition from mid-voice to the top in both types. A Christmas Egg The following spectrogram is of Michael Bolton (in blue) and Luciano Pavarotti (in white) singing the climactic note of Puccini's aria 'Nessun Dorma' from Turandot. These were public, large-hall performances, and the performers were close-miked, a very interesting way to hear Pavarotti's voice. The note being sung is the B natural above middle C. A problem I encountered in comparing the voices with these recordings is that orchestra is playing quite loudly, so the first harmonics are cluttered by those sounds, so much so that we cannot really distinguish what component of the sound is the singer, and what is the orchestra. To do this particular equalization, I matched volume of harmonics H2 (right above the 1 on the bottom scale) and H3 (midway between 1 and 2), since the vocal vibrato in both voices makes the trace wide enough to see. Interesting, that Michael Bolton and Luciano Pavarotti have almost exactly the same resonance balance ratio for these two harmonics. Remember, this sort of comparison does not tell us about the absolute volume of the voices, just how the resonances are balanced. You can see some places in the higher harmonics where Bolton's voice has relative strength, too. He has characteristic singer's formant strength that peaks at H6, (right in the sweet spot of our hearing) which would make his resonance strategy for the note a "combined" one, from our former terminology. If you are interested to listen to these performances, they are at Michael Bolton to about 3:15 into the song and Luciano Pavarotti. This essay was first published December 12, 2008 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

I'd like to introduce you to a tool that very valuable when discussing vowels for singing - the International Phonetic Alphabet, commonly called IPA. If you remember learning to read using phonics, (sounding out letters, etc.) you've had an informal introduction to one of the IPA's core ideas: that each spoken sound can have a written symbol. In IPA, all of the sounds of languages are assigned a unique symbol, one symbol per sound. When languages share sounds, that is, when sounds occur in more than one language, the same symbol is used to represent the sound. In this manner, someone who knows IPA can read the IPA of a text of a song in another language, and get the pronunciation very close to, if not exactly correct. I had my first introduction to IPA as an undergraduate vocal music student, in a two-semester class called 'Foreign Language Diction'. We applied IPA to the pronunciation of Italian, German and French songs, and it worked pretty well, even for the bunch of us from the Midwest. These days, I use the 'typewriter' version of IPA mostly in discussions of vowels. If you see /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ or /u/ in something I write, you should have no difficulty interpreting them as sounds in these English, Italian, German or French words: ah as in father, caro, gestalt, par ay as in pay, che, gegeben, pays (note here, not the dipthong. That takes two IPA letters.) ee as in free, cosi, spiel, qui oh as in blow, bello, hohe,clos oo as in blue, pura, du, doux There are many resources out in the Internet for the IPA, and simply wonderful books of phonetic readings of song texts for hundreds and hundreds of classical songs. To begin to explore this vast world, simply Google IPA, and follow any references you may find. This essay was first published December 1, 2008 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

A spectrograph is a picture that tells us about the frequency and intensity of the different parts of a sound. Here is one that contains two vocal sounds graphed, a 'vocal hum' in blue, and a 'vocal buzz' in white. Both sounds were produced on the same pitch, with the mouth closed. In my last blog post, I introduced you to the idea that there are multiple sounds in a sung tone, and that the resonances determine what vowel we perceive. Even sounds that are not vowels -- this hum and buzz -- have resonances, which we interpret as tone quality. Let's learn a bit about how to read a spectrograph, so we can discuss the physics of vocal resonance. On this picture, all of the sound energy from 0 cycles per second up to 5000 cycles per second is graphed where: Left = low frequency Right = high Up = louder sounds Down = softer sounds The scale is even left-to-right, much like the inches or centimeters on a ruler are all the same size. When you see a peak up fairly high on the picture, then that means that a sound of a particular frequency is quite loud. Go ahead and count the white ones you can see. You should get more than 20. Just for fun, count the blue ones, and notice if there are any that go higher than the white ones. The note that the singer (Robert Lunte) is producing is the very lowest (leftmost) peak. In musical acoustics terms, this is the called the 'fundamental', or the first harmonic. All of the peaks to the right of that are the 'overtones', or the 2nd through the 25th harmonics. The relative strength of these harmonics is what we perceive as tone quality - the way our mind differentiates sounds for us. Here is a different spectrograph, this time of two vowels, ee and ay. ee is in blue, ay is in white. As I mentioned in my prior post on vowels, the two lowest resonances are the ones primarily responsible for the perception of a particular vowel. Let's find them, starting from the left, look for the highest blue peak. It's the second one. Find the highest white peak. It's the third one. This shows us that the lowest resonance for ee and ay are not the same. Ee's are lower than ay's. Now, let's find the second resonances. Moving to the right, find the next place a blue one sticks up fairly high above the white. This is the second resonance for ee. Just to the left of it is the second resonance for ay. The second resonance for ee is higher than the 2nd one for ay. When compared in combination with the lower resonances, the ones for ee are farther apart than the ones for ay. Between the two resonances, there is a fairly deep 'valley' where the harmonics are much softer. In a given voice, each distinguishable vowel has particular spacings for these two resonances, and that is how we tell the vowels apart as listeners. This essay was first published November 23, 2008 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

This blog post is an extended version of a response to a question in The Modern Vocalist Forum from Mr. Steven Bradley, who wrote requesting some analysis of the scream as done by Steven Tyler in'I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing. Discussion - Finding a Cool Video of Steven Tyler's Vocal Cords During a Scream I was not really able to do an analysis of the particular section he had in mind of that song, but I did find a wonderful little section of a National Geographic special on YouTube, in which Steven Tyler's ENT (Dr. Steven Zeitels, of Harvard Medical School and Mass General Hospital ) was interviewed, and which included some video of stroboscopic laryngeoscopy with simultaneous audio, which makes the vocal cords look like they are moving in slow motion while the listener is able to hear the sound that is being made. Yes, that's right, a slow-mo of Steven Tyler's vocal bands during a scream that you are also able to hear at the same time. Check out the whole story to get the sense of the article. The whole thing is very much worth watching, even if the narrator calls his scream 'falsetto'. At about 1:10 in this video, which was made with a combination of performance and ENT's video and audio, you can see some very interesting things. Right at that time, (with the strobe on) you see the cords vibrating slowly and hear his tone quality in the ENT's office while he is singing that top Ab. There are a couple things to note: Location of Oscillation: Right before the narrator cuts back in, Steven sustains the Ab he is screaming for a moment, while it is being scoped. It's at that point that the close observer can see fairly clearly see what is going on, including what part of the vocal folds are vibrating. The scoop here: The vibration is at the 'top' part of the picture, which during the exam, is the posterior part of the vocal bands. In a word, this is not 'zipped up' so that vibration is only at the front section of the vocal cords as one sometimes sees, but taking place at the back close to the arytenoids. Phonation Motion The motion of the vocal bands is not uniform during the scream, but can be seen to have some complexity or variation . This kind of phonation results in complexity of the glottal pulse wave shape, which will be reinforced by the vocal tract if some of the frequencies are close to vocal formants. Here is what that looks like spectrographically: The Scream, Spectrographically To understand what this shows us, follow along from left-to-right: The first upward peak is the sung fundamental (also called the first harmonic, or H1). Its about the Ab above the treble staff, (at 820 Hz, for those interested - I measured it). It is a very narrow peak, indicating that he is singing it with no vibrato. Look to the right now, and find the highest peak on the chart. This is at 1640 Hz, exactly twice the frequency of the fundamental, which makes it a harmonic as well, in this case, the second harmonic, H2. It is also narrow. Find the third narrow peak, and you will see the third harmonic (H3), which is at 2460 Hz. Above that, there is not much intensity of sound. NB At this point: If these three harmonics were the only sound present in the vocal tone, it would be very powerful, and sound very pure to us... clean and clear. But, Steven's sung tone is not that simple. It has a complexity, which is a part of his 'scream' vocalism. Let's look at that. Between the H1 and H2 peaks is another one, with a fairly wide base that ramps up to a peak almost as tall as H1. That peak is fairly wide (when compared with the harmonics we have been discussing up to this point,) and then it ramps down in a way that the harmonics do not. This display is characteristic of a multi-frequency cluster of sound energy, which is being amplified selectively by a vocal resonance, IMO probably due to the lowest vowel formant, F1. The line traces the shape of the resonance influence of the formant as it selectively amplifies the pink noise input. Just FYI: The frequency 'center' of this sound energy is about 1218 Hz, which is not a harmonic multiple of the sung fundamental. These partials are therefore 'non-harmonic partials', components of the sound, which are not in the expected harmonic series, so our brain interprets them as noise. The overall effect of the combination of three strong sung harmonics, with the loud noise component, gives us this particular version of the 'Steven Tyler Scream'. Request for a '2nd Opinion' I am by no means an expert in either the analysis of vocal screaming, or of interpreting the nuances of phonation characteristics as revealed by stroboscopic laryngeoscopy. However, there are TMV members who are very familiar with both of these territories. My request: Write comments to this blog, to affirm what I have offered, or to give other opinions about what you see or hear. I am very interested to know your reactions. This essay was first published January 9, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

This article will compare the 'belt voice' production as used by female singers, the 'robust head voice' as used by Operatic tenors, and the male 'Rock' pharyngeal voice. These types of vocalism share some characteristics that make them similar to each other, but also have some characteristics, which differentiate them. As I have done before, I will use spectrographic analysis to assist in the understanding of how these voices can be compared and contrasted. A First example: 'Top Line F', Belt and Robust Head Voice The following spectrograph shows the harmonic content of two voices singing the F natural usually written on the top line of the treble staff, that is, the F at the upper range of both the belt and tenor voices (the F the octave and a perfect fourth above middle C.) The female singer, represented in blue, is Patti LaBelle, from a televised recording of "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel, recorded in the mid-'60s. The tenor is classical tenor Nicolai Gedda, from a 1973 recording of "Credeasi Misera" from I Puritani. Patti http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTAOD-2Fnqw at 2:19 Nicolai http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w_TTK7UP1c at 4:50 As I have done with prior recordings, I have matched the volumes of first harmonic (H1) so that the relative intensity of the upper harmonics can be identified. With this matching, we see the following: There are five strong harmonics displayed by both voices, and for both of the notes, the 3rd harmonic is the strongest. This gives the voices power and color. The relative intensity of the harmonics is approximately the same in both voices. H1 and H2 are lower in intensity than H3, but strong enough to make the core warmth of the tone quality very solid. The 4th harmonic in both voices is within the 'red lines', the most sensitive part of our hearing range. The white trace sections are 'wider', indicating that Mr. Gedda's vibrato is as well. Ms. LaBelle sang her note with almost no vibrato, so the peaks are very pointed. A Second Example: Middle line B, Pop Belt and Rock Pharyngeal Voice This second spectrograph, which I have annotated for harmonic identification, is of two voices singing the B above middle C. The two voices are Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, singing 'A Whole Lotta Love', and Whitney Houston singing 'I Will Always Love You', on a vowel approximating /a/. I have matched the fundamentals as before. Robert Plant's voice is in blue, and Whitney Houston's is in white. The spectrograph shows the following: With the fundamentals equalized, the loudest harmonic in both voices is H2, and approximately the same intensity in both. With fundamental matched, and H2 so similar, the core of the tone for both voices on this note is identical. H2 in both voices carries the bulk of the volume for both. H3 in Robert Plant's voice is somewhat louder by comparison to Whitney Houston's, but for both, it is louder than the fundamental, and the second loudest harmonic overall for both as well. Recall that the 3rd harmonic (an octave and a perfect 5th above the fundamental) as an odd harmonic, adds color to the tone quality. The relative strength of this harmonic in Robert Plant's voice helps us to distinguish his from Whitney's tone quality. H4 for both voices is about equal, but H5 and H6 in Plant's voice are stronger than Whitney's. This may be the result of "Singer's Formant" in Plant's voice. H6 is particularly well situated, as it is not only strong, but within the sweet spot of hearing. Example Three: Broadway Belt, and Operatic Tenor This one is a fun one. The following spectrograph is of two very famous singers, Ethel Merman (the quintessential Broadway belter of the mid-20th Century) and Luciano Pavarotti, Operatic Tenor. Ethel is singing the last note of 'There's No Business Like Show Business' from Annie, Get Your Gun, and Pavarotti is singing the last note of 'Celeste Aida' from Aida. As usual, for comparison I have equalized the strength of the fundamentals so that relative harmonic balance can be shown. Can you tell which is which? Without giving away yet which is which, the following can be observed: With the fundamentals equalized, the Blue voice has a louder H2 than the White one, which makes the core of the tone quality just a bit brighter, but not much. H3 in both voices is the loudest harmonic, so they both have the color this harmonic brings to the tone, with a small advantage for the White voice. H4 for both voices is quite a bit softer than H1, H2 and H3, adding some brightness, but not much to both. The higher harmonics have less energy in both voices, but overall the White voice has more than the Blue one, which gives it more ring. Both voices have vibrato (as evidenced by the 'wideness' of the harmonics), with the Blue voice having just a little bit more than the White one. Have you determined which is which? Pavarotti is in White. Merman is in Blue. Conclusions In looking at these representative voices, there are some commonalities that we can identify for this pitch range: In each voice type, the principal strength of the tone is in the 2nd and 3rd harmonic. The fundamental is often 4th or lesser in strength, meaning that other harmonics align more closely with the resonances of the vowels chosen than it does. Some voices display presence of singer's formant, and others do not. Each of the singers shows strong voice production characteristics, but not equal balances of resonance. This essay was first published December 21, 2008 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

This post is a 'by request' from some of the other members, extending our vocal acoustics analysis to one of the most famous arias in the Tenor repertoire, 'Pour Mon Ame' from Gaetano Donizetti's opera La Fille du Regiment (aka, the Daughter of the Regiment). The note that we will examine is the last high C in the aria. FYI, this aria is famous for having nine of them. Along the way, I will extend some of my comments made in an earlier blog post about 'Engineering Artifacts' that can work their way into a recording through the use of EQ applied during the recording or production process. In the case of two of the recordings, the effect is clearly visible to different amounts. The tenors I have selected for this comparison are Juan Diego Flores and Luciano Pavarotti, both of whom have enjoyed success with this aria and the stage role. Each recording was taken from a live, staged performance before an audience. Here is the spectrograph of Flores' two renditions. Since this note is sung unaccompanied, I was able to use the noise floor (that is, the loudness of the silence) between the first 2 harmonics to match the relative volume of the performances. The 'blue' tracing is from YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8spp0nCrKH0 The 'white' tracing is from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aS6M8j3pvQ If you recall from my blog post from a few weeks ago, I mentioned that one of the artifacts of EQ tweaking is a 'too regular' appearance of harmonics in the display. Normally, each harmonic has its own intensity, and we do not see regular 'curves', 'arcs' or 'flat spots' in the response. We do expect to see peaks when we compare harmonic-to-harmonic, as this is a characteristic of vocal formants and resonance tuning strategies by singers. We do not expect to see the noise floor rise appreciably, and then level off. With that in mind, examine the white and the blue tracings. In the neighborhood of harmonic 1 (fundamental, H1) and H2, the noise floor (the low spots between the peaks) is almost identical, and the peaks of those two harmonics closely resemble each other in intensity, with a little advantage to the white recording. Perhaps the recording mic was a little closer, picking up the ambient noise at about the same level, but a bit more of his voice. That is to be expected when a staged performance (not a studio recording) is being used. Now, look at how the white and blue lines diverge between H2 and H3, not just the peaks, but the troughs between them. These areas are elevated in both recordings, but the white recording more than the blue. I think this is an indicator that both of the recordings got some EQ help in this frequency range, with the white recording receiving more than the blue. For comparison, here are the same notes from Luciano Pavarotti, both from live performances, in white at Covent Garden, and in Blue, at the Met in NYC. At the Met and at Covent Garden In these two recordings, there is very little change in the noise floor across the displayed frequency range, though it looks like there is just a bit more room noise in one. Neither one of these two recordings show any artifacts of EQ boosting at all, perhaps because they are already pretty good at vocal clarity. Since the white trace noise floor actually softens, perhaps the engineers turned him down a bit above 2500 Hz. :-) It's interesting, too, to see the effect of performance miking on the audio. To the ear, the Covent Garden recording sounds a little less 'present', as if the mic is farther away from the stage, or off-axis from the soloist. You can readily see that the blue recording (from the Met) shows substantially more energy in the singer's formant region, which (for Pav) is harmonics four to six. These four recordings (two of Flores, and two of Pavarotti) show that they both use the 2nd-formant tuning to the 3rd harmonic (as discussed a few posts ago) and also singer's formant, the combined resonance strategy. This essay was first published January 6, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

This article delves into the basics of vowels: what they are, what makes them and how we influence their characteristics. The formation of vowels is an area common to all singers, and in many ways influences the listener's experience of the voice. There are a multitude of approaches taken by singers to making vowels: some based on grunts, groans, wails, screams and sighs; some based on spoken language; some based on concepts of 'Bel Canto', chanting, 'toning' and just about everything in between these. Even 'overtone singing' can be described in terms of vowels. What is a Vowel? For the purposes of this discussion, vowels are two things: a) spoken or sung sounds (not written letters), and impressions in the mind of the singer and the listener - caused by experiences of the sound through the sense of hearing. By shaping (producing) vowels in a particular way, the singer influences the experience of the listener, and creates a communications connection person-to-person. So, What is a Sung Vowel? As a general, non-technical description: A sung vowel is a sustained sound, sung with the mouth and throat open enough so at least some of the sound comes out of the mouth. The particulars of the vowel sound depend on the shape and dimensions of the vocal tract, which is usually considered to be the spaces from just above the vocal bands to the outside of the mouth. Sometimes voice scientists include the part of the trachea below the larynx to the point where it branches in two sections to go to the lungs, but for out purposes today we will not include that section. What Makes Differing Vowels? A key principle is worth mentioning now: Anytime the vocal tract changes shape or dimension, it produces a more or less different vowel, depending on what has been changed by the person. The vocal tract aspects that, when changed, have an effect on vowels (more-or-less in order of importance in the singer's technique) are: the position of the tongue the position of the soft palate the vertical opening of the jaw the shape of the lip opening the height of the larynx in the throat the diameter of the pharynx Resonances and Vowels By way of explanation - To modern language and voice scientists, the perception (on the part of the listener) of a vowel is the result of a combination of resonances in the voice, especially the lowest two resonances. The six items mentioned above, when combined, cause these two resonances to have specific frequencies. Any vocal sound components that fall near these two frequencies will be emphasized in the overall spectrum of sound energy. The sense of hearing of the listener 'decodes' the overall sound into a conscious experience, and (according to current psychological theory) the mind interprets the relative intensity of the sound components as a vowel. What Does This All Mean? All this relates to singing in that we can make very many different kinds of vowel sounds. By changing the positioning of any of the vocal tract components listed above, even if only slightly, for the pronunciation of a syllable or word, we change the way they are perceived, and, by extension, the quality of the connection that we have as singers with our listeners. This essay was first published September 10, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

In its most general definition, phonation is the making of phones or vocal sounds. This general definition includes voiced sounds, which include quasi-periodic oscillations of the vocal bands, and unvoiced sounds, which do not. The focus of this post will be on the voiced sounds produced during exhalation, which is the subset of the general definition most often meant when singers talk about 'phonation'. From here forward, when the word is used, it will be used in that sense. Basic Motions of the Vocal Bands During breathing, the posterior ends of the vocal bands are moved apart, making a triangular-shaped opening for the passage of air. This motion is called abduction. Here is a labeled, magnified picture of the vocal bands, taken from above, with the vocal bands abducted. The inverted white V shape is formed by the vocal ligaments, which are also called the 'vocal cords'. They are on the inner edges of the vocal bands. The opening between the bands is called the glottis. When the person is about to phonate, the posterior ends of the vocal bands are moved together, narrowing the glottis, often to the point of closing it. This motion is called adduction. Here is a magnified picture of the vocal bands of a different person, from above, with the vocal bands adducted to the point of glottal closure. The Start of Phonation Phonation starts when the vocal bands are adducted enough that they cause air pressure to build up below the glottis, and that air pressure is sufficiently high (when compared with ambient air pressure) to cause the glottis to open and narrow (or shut) repeatedly. This repeated motion produces pulses of air pressure to be released into the spaces just above the vocal bands, called the glottal pulse waves, or taken together, the phonated tone. (For the time being, we will not include vocal tract resonance in the discussion.) How Adduction Affects Phonation The phonated tone is directly affected by the amount of glottal closure, which occurs in each cycle of motion. If the glottis does not completely close, (because the adduction is incomplete) then: the voiced phonation sound will be mixed with the sound of air turbulence passing through the larynx; the glottal pulses will not be very intense; and the listener will hear 'breathiness' to more or less extent, inversely related to the amount of glottal closure. If the glottis closes completely in each cycle, then: there will be very little sound of air turbulence; the glottal pulses will be more intense; and the listener will not hear breathiness. The percentage of the total glottal cycle time during which the glottis is closed is called the closed quotient. Vocal Pitch Control The pitch of the phonated tone is influenced by multiple factors, but is mostly the result of the actions of two muscle groups: muscles in each vocal band, which when they flex, shorten and thicken the vocal bands, tending to produce lower frequency glottal cycles; and muscles on the outside of the larynx, which, when they flex, lengthen and thin the vocal bands, tending to produce higher frequency glottal cycles. The two sets coordinate to produce the full range of frequencies that can be sung. The activity of these muscles is often called registration. Inter-relationship of Adduction and Registration The amount of adduction that occurs is affected by the thickness of the vocal bands. When they are stretched long and are thin, the muscles which adduct the bands must move them farther toward the middle in order to get the same amount of glottal closure as is achieved with less motion when they are short/thick. If this additional adduction does not occur as the pitch ascends, the closed quotient becomes less as the vocal bands thin, and eventually the glottis does not close at all during the cycle. Thus, the progression is heard by the listener, as a weakened vocal tone. Conversely, as the singer goes lower in the range, the vocal bands shorten and thicken, and progressively less adduction motion is needed to bring the glottis to closure. If this lesser adduction does not occur as the pitch descends, the closed quotient rises as the bands thicken, and eventually the glottis does not open and shut with a constant frequency. This latter situation is called vocal fry. The Influence of Breath Energy on Phonation The air pressure below the glottis during the phonation cycle is called subglottic pressure. At the beginning of a phonated tone, the energy of exhalation is resisted by the vocal folds during the closed phase, and causes a specific level of subglottic pressure to occur which, as we have seen, varies based on the adduction and the registration used for a note. If adduction and registration remain consistent, but breath energy (force of exhalation) increases, the closed quotient will progressively lessen. If adduction and registration remain consistent, but breath energy decreases, the closed quotient will progressively rise. In the former case, the voice eventually becomes breathy, and in the latter, the periodic oscillations cease, and a vocal fry results. Conclusion By training the voice to correctly balance and coordinate the laryngeal muscle actions and breath energy, the singer can achieve consistency of vocal tone and power throughout the entire range of the voice. With this balance, the singer is free to vary dynamics to suit the music being sung, and is also free to produce subtle tone changes by varying the closed quotient at will, in ways suited to the artistic expression desired. This essay was first published February 7, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

Here is a cool video on diphthongs I found just for the fun of it. AFTER THE JUMP (You can also watch my own video about vowel modification here) Why are diphthongs important for singers? "Ok Robert, why is this important"?Well, when singing English, you will often need a command of certain diphthongs in order to reduce constriction, bridge earlier and articulate vowels when extreme singing in the head voice. Diphthongs are part of the answer to a very popular question I often get from my clients: "Hey Robert, I can twang in the head voice on the sirens and TVS workouts, but how do I maintain that compression and fold closure when singing songs?!" Yes, once you begin throwing consonants around and lyrics into your singing, maintaining fold closure, overtones and articulation of the text becomes more difficult. Learning to sing diphthongs For the most part in my training at TVS, we have to learn to stop singing closed vowels (oo and ee) in the belts. When you sing a closed vowel in the high chest voice and in and around the passagio, you will trigger the constrictors and get chokey. If you are ever singing high in your chest voice and it keeps getting chokey, take a close look at the vowel you're singing. Is it an "ee" or an "oo"? If so, that is likely the reason you are constricting. So how do we fix this? You learn to sing diphthongs, which starts by understanding the open vowel cousin (relationship) to the closed vowels that are choking you on the high chest voice notes. Singing diphthongs: How does it work? Let's take a quick look at it: "ee" - open vowel cousin = "A" "oo" - open vowel cousin = "Ah" In the belts and around the passagio: Sing an "ee" vowel as an "A-ee". Sing a "oo" vowel as an "Ah-oo". Hope this helps. I look forward to hearing all of your input on this, especially from our TMV vowel guru, Maestro Fraser. This essay first published March 15, 2010 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

The last time I participated in the National Association of Teachers of Singing MD/DC Chapter Auditions was in March of 2005. That day I returned from four hours of adjudicating and writing comments, as all teachers who enter students are required to do, an hour helping out in the tally room, lunch and brief, friendly encounters with colleagues, reading the announcements of the winners and then sitting in on the winners recital a full-day affair. When I got home my husband asked how it had gone. I spewed venom. Well, for the first time in eight years, I had no winners. as if that was the primary reason I participated. All the way home I had been complaining about the comments my students received from other teachers and questioning the relevance of a project which takes so much time from everyone, with major loss of income for the teachers who work Saturdays. Liz drove. She is my colleague, friend and mentor, and had had a long day herself, including selflessly making lunches for the entire N.A.T.S chapter membership and tending her numerous winners though the final concert. She listened sympathetically, but I am pretty sure she was enormously relieved to drop me at home and speed away from the black cloud that is a voice teacher on a self-righteous rant. I told myself over and over that the important thing was that the chapter provided for students of singing the much needed experience of singing in a supportive atmosphere. For us, the teachers, it was also fun seeing old friends and meeting new people and the chance to join the group process of learning and making music. Why then, was my ego so ruffled? Was it because THEY didnt know what THEY were hearing from the products of MY most brilliant teaching and musicianship MY students? (Notice the huge investment of prideful ego in that statement) There was a huge disconnect between what I was feeling and my awareness of the wonderful validity of the whole N.A.T.S chapter auditions experience and the importance of the service each voice teacher selflessly gave that day. I have pondered this over time. I have learned over many years that if I ignore my feelings, they eventually wreck havoc with my health, like a child having a long-winded tantrum by dismantling the living room. I eventually realized that the key to my discontent lay in what colleagues continually tell me: Cate, your comments for my students were so right on and helpful. Really insightful. But the comments my students received from their judges were so vague, conflicting and canned that I realized the problem was not that I didn't have a winner. I was angry that the teachers judging my students did not have the verbal skills to communicate anything that was of help to me or the singers. Even if I had disagreed with them, if their comments had been written intelligently I would listen to and benefit from another's way of hearing. Here is a sampling of the comments my individual students received that year: Category: High School Beginning Women/Classical Category 1. Adjudicator's Comment: Pay attention to vowels! Cate FN's view: What do you want them to pay attention TO? Is the soft palate inactivated? Is the back of the tongue moving too much? Is the vowel distorted because the middle of the tongue is stiff? Do they not have the sound of the language in general? 2. Adjudicator's Comment: Watch those vowels! Cate FN's view: This is such a defensive comment, as in, look out for those vowels! Beware! Is it all vowels or is it just 'ah' or 'ee'? Is she riding on the wrong part of the diphthong What, specifically are you hearing? This is a very beginning student for Pete's sake! And if you cannot explain it you do not belong in this profession! High School Advanced Women/Classical Category 1. Adjudicator's Comment: "Keep breath support Cate FN's view: Where? How, specifically? Or do you mean you like the way she is managing her breath and want her to keep doing it just that way? 2. Adjudicator's Comment: Release for the top notes Cate FN's view: Release what? Jaw? Tongue, and if so, which part of the tongue? Shoulders? Bowels???? High School Musical Theater/Women 1. Adjudicator's Comment: keep vowel sounds tall and slim (this in the musical theater selections Meadowlark and The Lady is a Tramp) Cate FN's view: Now, did the judge want to hear a classical aesthetic in musical theater by the way, whoever you are, please listen to Patti Lupone singing Meadowlark before you judge this category again.Or was the general shape of the student's throat just closed? 2. Adjudicator's Comment: You need more air and spin through your top Cate FN's view:"I find this a lazy comment, although the meaning behind is was probably correct. What about how she attempted to express the music to the best of her ability at the time, and how this is related to her use of breath? Did she show any connection to the spirit of the text? Is that the best you can write about her? Please take the pole out of your butt and become a human being!" Subjectivity of judges subjective comments made for the same student: Use text for more energy and expression vs. Diction excellent and well directed Make sure lower middle stays round (another lazy comment as far I am concerned) vs. the middle is great! (What is great? The coordination of middle voice registration with other registers? Freedom of tone and expression? What?) 3. You understand the basics of breathing vs your breathing needs a lot of work (I am sure this last comment came from a proponent of abdominal breathing only.) What irked me was not the general validity of these comments, most of which were probably correct observations, or the fact that we all hear things differently, as we should. What irked me was the blatant inability for these teachers to demonstrate verbally what they heard. These are the kinds of comments that Richard Miller spent his lifetime trying to help teachers to avoid. And in our MD/DC chapter, until recently, we had teachers who knew nothing about musical theater and the myriad of sounds, techniques and styles required for this art form, judging the musical theater categories. (As a side note, my son, a recent graduate from Berklee College of Music, was reading a N.A.T.S Journal article about musical theater singing, and he said to me, "My God, mom, this is so elementary and vague. Are you people THAT far behind general knowledge in musical theater singing??") Ok, so I remember when I had graduated from college and knew everything, too, but his point was made. But, time has given me perspective. I feel things are much better now. More of us are growing out of the vagaries of general mediocre voice teaching. We are more curious, more open and more eager to learn about things we know nothing about, without feeling that it reflects on our abilities or talents. As a matter of fact, I feel it shows we are smart and willing to step up to the plate in order to learn what singers today need to practice their craft. It is why I started The Washington Vocal Consortium 23 years ago, and it is why I am ready to participate with my N.A.T.S chapter again. I have experienced the extreme frustration of hearing something I had to learn to express, so I am sympathetic to all voice teachers who are trying to do the same. All we can do is keep trying. This essay was first published March 5, 2010 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

Recently a young soprano brought the Pie Jesus from Faure's Requiem to work on in her voice lesson. Her church choir director had asked her to sing it this Easter season, and she was very concerned about breath support. We know that breath management is dependent on the coordination of the body with what happens at the level of the vocal folds, vocal tract and articulators. They are all dependent on one another even though we sometimes work things separately. But instead of working this coordination, I suddenly decided to veer in another direction and have the student listen to some great French organ works of Cesar Franck, who lived about the time of Gabriel Faure. Some of my students know that I grew up as the daughter of a full-time church musician, but rarely do I reveal the pipe organ geek that lives in my soul. My crib was behind the wall of the organ in the first church my dad served. I grew up hearing weekly, if not daily, the King of Instruments. I attended high school summer choir camps and studied organ in college; one of my brothers earned a masters degree in organ performance. So in a flash, I knew that if this student could hear the French reed organ pipe sounds that were developed during the Romantic era in Western Europe, played on a good pipe organ, she might be able to develop an inner compass to execute the lines of the Faure that she wanted to sing. And by developing that part of her ear, she could take what she already knew technically and start to apply it without my leaping around the room "teaching her how to support. During the Romantic period, French organ builders introduced a type of wind chest which was able to control higher wind pressures. The new sounds could imitate the woodwind instruments of the bassoon, oboe and flute. So between the new mechanical action of the organ, and the new woodwind sounds, the organ could produce lovely legato singing. The student, who is very talented anyway, instantly got the connection of Cesar Franck's Prelude, Fugue and Variation to the vocal line of the Pie Jesu. She and I were both amazed at what an instant difference it made in her singing. And I was humbled at how my shutting up enabled the student to learn more! This essay was first published March 8, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008

I remember once, when I was a kid in junior high, I walked in on my choral director trying to teach another student to sing on pitch. He was a fabulous teacher, and she was a diligent student. Both of them wanted her to "get it" so badly, but both were becoming more and more frustrated by the second. He would play a tone and say, "Try singing that." She would try, and he would say, "No, it's higher." She would try something else. "No, it's still higher." This went on an on. Before developing my method for correcting off-pitch singing, I approached pitch correction the same way. Then one day I realized that many off-pitch singers have no idea what it means to sing higher or lower. I would tell students to sing higher, only to have them sing louder. Sometimes they would lift their chin or just raise their eyebrows! An Exercise in Inflection Before you can talk to a beginning singer about singing higher and lower, you first have to get her acquainted with those concepts as they relate to vocal pitch. The best way I know to do this is to perform a simple exercise in inflection. Tell your student you are going to speak three sentences that you would like her to repeat back to you. Then say, "I'm going to the store," and cue your student to repeat. Next say, "You're going to the store?" and sound really incredulous. Cue your student to repeat. Finally say, "Yes, I'm going to the store," and cue your student to repeat for the last time. In the English language, we often distinguish a statement from a question simply by a falling or rising inflection. Your student will be familiar with this, though she may not have thought about it as it relates to vocal pitch. Explain to her that the rising inflection at the end of "You're going to the store?" was an example of rising pitch and that the falling inflection on "I'm going to the store," or "Yes, I'm going to the store," was an example of falling pitch. This will help her to make the association between direction (higher vs. lower) and pitch/frequency (more vibrations per second vs. fewer). "Try Something Else." When you begin to work with your student to match pitch, stay away from the words "higher" and "lower" for a little while, when asking her to make an adjustment. Instead, simply say, "Try something else," and leave it to her instincts to guide her. Soon, she will actually say to you, "I'm too low, aren't I." And then you will know she's ready for you to talk to her in terms of higher and lower. Another very important determinant of your student's success, which must work hand in hand with her awareness of frequential direction, is her ability to recognize when she is on pitch. I'll speak to this in my next blog post. Paul Cuneo is the founder of NotToneDeaf.com and the author of Correcting Tone Deafness . This is the ONLY completely sensible approach I have ever encountered to resolving the problem and stigma of "Tone Deafness. - Jeannie Deva Paul is also an actor and teaches Movement for Actors at the Stella Adler Studio, Los Angeles. He blogs on the topic of Performance and Movement for Actors at MovementalLA.com . This essay first published April 25, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

I am a voice teacher who specializes in correcting what is casually, though mistakenly, referred to as "tone deafness." I wrote a book on my process called Correcting Tone Deafness. My hope is that what I share in these pages will open a larger window on some of the most current, advanced practices in vocal training (I was going to write "vocal pedagogy," but I thought the rock stars would never return) and help voice teachers to correct off-pitch singing in their students. In order to work with off-pitch singers, I had to develop new definitions for "to hear" and "to listen," terms often used interchangeably. I think you will find these beneficial. They allow me to make a case for eliminating the term "tone deafness" from the English lexicon forever, as "tone deafness" has nothing to do with an individual's ability to hear, but everything to do with her capacity for listening. To here are my definitions: To hear -- Only to sense sound waves (air pressure waves). To listen -- To assign value to and make use of what one hears. Right now you are hearing sounds all around you to which you are not listening. Perhaps the sound of a light humming, a heater vent blowing or traffic outside. Now that I've called your attention to them, you are both hearing and listening to them, which is to say, you are: sensing the sound waves produced by the vibrations of the light, heater vent or traffic; assigning value to those air pressure waves [you value them as examples to validate my point]; and making use of them [to validate my point]. So, 1. constitutes hearing; 2. and 3. constitute listening. In my workshops, I've had students argue that because one isn't aware of a heater vent blowing in a room until his attention is called to it, he is not hearing it. But that would mean his ears and brain were selectively rejecting the vibrations of the heater vent, while allowing other vibrations to stimulate the ear drum. These definitions are critical to working with off-pitch singers effectively because they allow you to begin the work from the premise My student is able to hear everything I need him to hear. He is not tone deaf. Paul Cuneo is the founder of NotToneDeaf.com and the author of Correcting Tone Deafness. This is the ONLY completely sensible approach I have ever encountered to resolving the problem and stigma of "Tone Deafness. -Jeannie Deva Paul is also an actor and teaches Movement for Actors at the Stella Adler Studio, Los Angeles. He blogs on the topic of Performance and Movement for Actors at MovementalLA.com. This essay first published January 11, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

The muscles controlling and surrounding the larynx represent one of the most important control systems affecting the human voice. For most singers, learning to stabilize the larynx is essential for their vocal health, their increase of range, and the proper blending of their chest and head voice. In this article I will attempt to shed some light on larynx position and offer some exercises that can help you improve your voice by stabilizing your larynx. Keep in mind that full-time voice students may spend years on this! But a little awareness goes a long way in saving your voice from the harm caused by singing on a high larynx. The Problem of a High Larynx Consider the larynx to be a basket floating in a complicated web of tendons and membranes inside your throat. Your goal is to not allow the larynx to rise too much as you sing from low notes to high notes. To find your larynx, put your finger on the V that you feel in the front of your throat (commonly, the Adams apple: the original problem J) If you swallow, you feel it rise. We refer to this as constriction, because you are squeezing the space around the larynx. Good for eating, bad for singing! You can tell if you're singing on a high larynx if you notice: A heavy chest voice and a large break between your chest voice and head voice. Vocal cords that feel scratchy and producing a lot of mucous. Your voice feels worse the next day after singing. Your head voice feels breathy, airy, and unfocused. There are some differing views on whether or not a high larynx is harmful or not, with some techniques suggesting that it's acceptable (even desirable!) , and others suggesting that your larynx should be as low as possible. I base my findings on eighteen years of teaching, and constant study and testing of new ideas. I believe that advanced singers can learn to sing with a high larynx, provided that they are working with a professional who knows what they're doing. For most beginning singers, however, a larynx that is too high and surrounded by tense muscles can lead to significant problems with the voice. Keep in mind that larynx control is only one of the five control systems I describe in my vocal method: All of these systems function in concert, with stability of the larynx representing a long- term goal of the method. The larynx houses the vocal cords, and operates in relationship with the whole voice (body, mind and spirit), and is not in any way isolated. Each system affects the other systems in a structure of balance and coordination. How to Stabilize your Larynx There are a lot of techniques to help stabilize the larynx, but the first step of this long journey begins with awareness. Keep in mind that professional singers spend years getting this right! With your finger on the V of your larynx (or Adams apple) sing along with a scale and notice if it is rising and falling with pitch. Notice the difference between different vowels: Sing OO (like boot), and then sing AH (like father). I refer to this as the kinesthetic approach: which means that you feel what's happening with your body. Gaining awareness of the position of your larynx is the first step. Next, consider your larynx to be a basket floating in a network of attachments, some reach up into the jaw, tongue and head, and some reach down into the chest, sternum and lower body. We want to relax the neck, jaw, and muscles around the larynx, so we can avoid the unconscious reflex that pull up on the larynx when we sing high. As you sing your scales, place your hands on the back of your neck and notice if there's tension. Next, place your hands on your jaw, and check to see if your jaw is clenching at all. The more release you have in these muscles, the easier it will be to stabilize your larynx. Proper breath support is also important in order to stabilize your larynx. The basics of this are: Breathe in without motion in your neck, shoulders or face. As you inhale, feel your stomach inflate. As you sing a scale or song, keep some gentle pressure out against your abdominal wall. As you're singing, try not to let your stomach contract suddenly. If you have any questions about the larynx, or singing generally, feel free to contact me at john@jdsvoice.com. This essay first published March 2, 2010 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

It has always been my understanding that correct support of the diaphragmatic region is a direct result of right breathing. In my experience I've noticed that most instruction has been about manipulating this region of the body in attempts to control the flow of air, unaware that the vocal cords are responsible for controlling the flow and compression. The vocal folds, and proper placement in the mask, have just as much to do with support of the singing mechanism as the diaphragm. Through extensive study and research over the last 15 years, I have discovered a little known secret. Proper use of the diaphragm is an automatic result of having learned how to inhale the air correctly. In my latest book, Vocal Strength and Power published and released by Hal Leonard Corp., I have included a glossary of the most commonly used words by instructors to describe how to employ and gain support with this region of the body. Frankly, when looking up some of these words, I was quite surprised myself by the true meanings. This forced me to change my own vernacular when instructing after realizing that all the faulty perception with regard to how to engage this region of the body properly came down to the true meaning of words. In my first two books, I purposely stayed away from instruction on the diaphragm and focused on how to get the other two support mechanisms (the cords and the mask) to work together. At the time, I still did not have the words to describe how to engage the diaphragm correctly. I only knew what was wrong: Singers were squeezing the neck and belly muscles, pushing up the belly muscles, and putting strain on the neck muscles. Squeezing of any kind only results in feeling like you must force and blow the air out for sound. This habit not only feels unnatural and strained, but after a few years of singing this way, many singers find themselves in doctor's offices trying to uncover the reasons why they are no longer able to sing like they once did. Unfortunately, some will require rehabilitation and in other cases, surgery. About the Inhale Air is already in the lungs and body from natural breathing and inhales. Because of this truth, it is a misconception that more is needed for singing. In fact, if you take in too much, the vocal folds will be unable to control the flow for sound and compression. There is an art to inhalation. Taking in heaps of air can be not only be damaging, but it also brings on fatigue. See for yourself. Take in as much air as you can and then exhale it. Repeat this action over and over again for about five minutes and you're bound to feel a little tired if you don't faint from hyperventilation in the meantime! Now imagine breathing heavily and hard like this, but with sound, over and over again between words and phrases of songs. A tired singer's instinct will say, I need to take in more air in order to keep that power going, hit those higher notes, and sustain the note (or notes) if needed. Not so. This is literally exhausting, especially on a gig. The more air you keep losing, your head will keep telling you to take more and more in. This will set you up for a no win cycle. Important to remember but not so easy to employ is the idea that the vocal folds do not need much air to produce a strong tone, or to prolong one. In my latest book I have created exercises to re-train how to take the air in properly through use of the staccato. This staccato is a bit different than most. It requires that you take tiny puffs of air between each note of the exercise. However, a tiny bit does not mean to hold the breath in any way. Nor does it mean to blow it all out on every phonated pitch. It's tricky but once learned, all three-support mechanisms will work as they should: naturally and automatically. You will not have to manipulate by tensing the muscles of any region of your body to achieve what you have wrongly perceived as support of the diaphragm. Natural and Automatic Going from one way of breathing to another is difficult; it takes the ability to focus one's efforts on re-training and requires repetitive practice of exactly how much air should be taken in for each phonation. For engaging natural support upon inhalation during a staccato run, the belly (below the navel) will automatically become firm. It should stay nearly unmoving until after you have finished the last tone of a run. You should not have to strain it for this region to remain firm. If you strain to hold the belly out, you'll be holding the breath. Because it is internal, it's hard to feel the movement of the diaphragm itself. The only part of your body you should feel moving is the upper abdomen (above the navel) jumping out and in as it is indirectly compressed by the moving diaphragm inside your rib cage. You can place your finger just below your breastbone to feel this movement. On an inhalation, the diaphragm will automatically move down a bit. As it goes down, it pushes the upper abdomen out. On exhale the diaphragm and upper abdominal muscles very slowly return to their starting positions. (There is no need to blow out the air for this. You only need to relax your belly and leftover air is automatically expelled. Try it. Take in a breath and then just relax the belly. You should feel the air having left by itself). Only when the diaphragm relaxes completely do the upper abdominal muscles move back into their normal position. Squeezing the lower belly muscles at this point only fights the diaphragm's natural action. Through the use of the new exercises I created to re-train the inhale/exhale action, the movement is much faster because the point of the repetitive exercises is to do everything in rapid succession. This will help to get the air and sound producing as if it is one continuous action, and working like a single unit. Material for this essay supported by the author's books Vocal Strength and Power, Hal Leonard Corp, 2009; Advanced Vocal Technique: Middle Voice, Placement and Styles, Hal Leonard Corp, 2008; and Vocal Technique: Finding Your Real Voice, Hal Leonard Corp 2002. This essay was first published February 1, 2010 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

I do a lot of rehab in my practice as a teacher, as well as fix severe pitch problems. One of the things I've found over the course of my years as a technique specialist is just how so many beginners, moderate, advanced, and even professional singers do not realize the importance of using the articulators (the lips, teeth, tongue, and palate) when pronouncing the consonants/ words of songs. Few singers realize that it is the articulators that become the propelling mechanism when singing songs, rather than the air and breath support when learning how to strengthen these things in exercise with vowel sounds alone. It can always be a stylistic choice to dig deeper, breathe in more heavily, add grit or rasp to the voice, etc. for sound and effects, but I believe these choices must be conscious ones. This may require the expertise of someone who has learned how to do this without injuring the mechanism: Preferably, a coach who specializes in this style of singing. When one of my students has a desire to learn how to scream, growl, and/or add rasp after they have a good foundation, all breaks bridged, a grasp of how to protect their instrument, preserve it, and how to correct a problem, I will make a referral. Effects like these are not in my field of expertise. Again the articulators are located in the mouth. They are the tongue, lips, teeth, and the palate. Consonants are not supposed to be pronounced from somewhere inside the neck with grabbing these muscles for a consonant like G, or from muscles contracting in the gut for one like M. If this is how you have been going after things, then you have probably felt quite a lot of discomfort while singing, especially when trying to reach the higher notes of songs. Grabbing results in cramming the cords so tightly together that no air can pass through them. This results in the forcing, or thrusting, up of all that air for sound, which causes the feeling of strain, especially when trying to reach the higher notes with strength and power. These are subconscious split second thoughts that occur in efforts to keep the air from escaping too fast or all at once. I graduated with a degree B.S. in Speech (no puns intended here), though not pathology. Nevertheless I learned a lot about what happens to a voice when consonants /words are not pronounced with the tongue, lips, teeth, and palate alone. You can't do this by using all these other unnecessary muscles and expect things to go well. Most of the time, after a singer has had an operation for polyps or cysts, the surgeon often tells them that they cannot speak (or sing) for the next six weeks to give the cords a chance to heal. After those first six weeks, they are instructed to start with speech therapy. In speech therapy they are taught how to use the articulators. Once learned, the speech therapist may often be schooled enough to also teach how to practically apply the same concepts to song. Having been a speech major, I know that learning how to use the articulators rather than the air, support and grabbing of all these other muscles for pronunciation for those pesky consonants can make all the difference in the world when seeking to sing with ease and freedom. But first it takes learning the art of breath support before moving on to training the articulators. Imagine being able to jump around on stage like a banshee because your body has been freed up enough to do so. Additionally, never have to worry about your voice anymore. Equally important is to remember and to come to know and accept that the task of un-doing a bad habit to re-train for a better way can be an arduous journey. It may take a few weeks of continued practice to change a habit if the habit has been a long-standing one. But, it's well worth the time and effort; because it becomes easy to sing -- even those high notes -- with the strength and power you seek. This essay was first published January 31, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

This is the first of a four part series focusing on the voice through four levels of our being: Part 1 - Physical/Mechanical Part 2 - Emotional/Physiological Part 3 - Mental/Psychological Part 4 - Spiritual/Energetic (includes integration) PART 1 - Physical/Mechanical Your voice is the ultimate instrument. Ever notice how when someone telephones you that you sometimes automatically know who it is by the sound of their voice? Even if you place a master impersonator next to the person they are imitating, you can hear the difference. The voice is the one thing that is unique to each and every individual. No two people sound exactly the same. A master musician learns to take care of his instrument because the entire body affects the voice on all levels. The nearest instrument to the voice is bagpipes. That instrument fills with air much like our lungs do upon inhale. The column of air created by our inhale then travels through the pipe structure (trachea, larynx, vocal folds and pharynx) until it reaches the cords. The cords control and compress the air for sound and pitch, which should then be coming out of the mouth at a steady rate of speed. In the human voice, the bones of the ear, nose and throat conduct the vibrational resonance throughout the entire structure. Our skeletal/muscular structure is of paramount importance. Posture and structural maintenance is essential for good singing. It's not possible to cover all body systems in depth in this series, but it is possible to give you a basic overview. In this first part, we'd like to take you on a very basic mechanical tour of the main organ structures essential for singing: Ear Nose/Airways Voice Mechanism All body systems play a large part in your voice and we will refer to these in the series. Let's begin with the ear: To produce sounds - speech and/or singing - You must first learn how to change your acoustical perception by learning how to listen to your voice as others hear you (from outside yourself) because of resonance. This resonance creates overtones that make the voice sound higher from the outside. If you continue to listen from the inside, you will be deceived because the sound is muffled. However, from the outside, the sound is free. The larynx can only emit sounds it can hear via the laryngeal nerve. We take in air through the nose and "down" to the body for circulation and life. We take in sound through the ear, which conducts the vibration and is transmitted through the rest of the body via the 8th (VIII) and 10th (X) cranial nerves. We vocalize by "pulling up" the air and sound through the larynx and shape it through the pharynx and mouth into our unique timbre. The primary function of the outer and middle ear chambers is the transmission of sound to the auditory receptors of the inner ear . Outer Ear Auricle (trumpet) ear canal ear drum (tympanic membrane) Middle Ear Tympanic cavity Auditory Ossicles (Hammer malleus, Anvil incus, Stirrup Stapes) The Eustachian/Auditory tube routes to and from this cavity. This controls and balances air pressure Inner Ear: The Hearing Mechanism The bony labyrinth called the cochlea because it is like a snail shape, also contains a membranous labyrinth with fluid inside it. It has an upper and lower chamber. The Organ of Corti (inside the cochlea) is the hearing sense organ that consists of cells, hairs and neurons, which conduct impulses to produce the sensation of hearing along a membrane (the Basilar membrane) that lies between the two chambers. Sound is created by vibration that occurs in air, fluid or solid material. Sound waves must be of sufficient amplitude to initiate movement of the tympanic membrane and have a frequency that is capable of stimulating the hair cells in the Organ of Corti at some point along the Basilar membrane. This is not the same width and thickness throughout its length. Due to this fact, different frequencies of sound cause it to vibrate and bulge upward at different places along its length. High frequency sound waves vibrate the narrow part and low frequencies vibrate the thicker, wider part. This means that specific groups of hair cells respond to specific frequencies of sound. Pitch is perceived by stimulation of the cilia (sensory projections) on the hair cells that are attached to the area that bulges upwards. Loudness is perceived when the upward bulge moves higher which further bends and stimulates the cilia. Fluid will move across this area to dampen the effect and protect the hearing mechanism. Therefore the ear and sound works like this: Vibration hits the eardrum, is passed along by the middle ear and into the inner ear where it becomes sound waves. Sound waves circulating around the cochlea, move the basilar membrane and cause the cilia to bend. This movement of hairs stimulates neurons to transmit electrochemical impulses into the brain and it is both the vibration of the Basilar membrane and the actions of the brain that determine our PERCEPTION of sound. Speech is composed of many frequencies mainly in the 400 - 500 Hz range. The ear can hear an incredible frequency range from around 20Hz to 20,000Hz. It is not equally sensitive to all frequencies though and the greatest sensitivity is in the range 1000 - 4000Hz. Pitch and volume issues can therefore be directly related to listening and hearing problems. The Airways Therefore in caring for our voice physically in singing, we must understand our airways to create a solid foundation on which to breathe so that the vocal cords can coordinate both the air and vocal sounds into songs. The quality and volume of air we take in will determine the efficiency of our ability to breathe correctly and sing to our fullest potential. The Voice Mechanism The larynx or voice box is a triangular shaped complex structure of cartilages, connected by ligaments and moved by various muscles. It is between the pharynx and trachea. Its largest part, thyroid cartilage manifests as the lump on the outside of our throats, which we call the "Adam's Apple". Larynx muscles are divided into two parts: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic means they originate in/on the larynx and extrinsic means they attach/insert into the larynx from another structure. Contraction of the extrinsic muscles can move or displace the larynx as a whole. Muscles in both groups assist in breathing, swallowing and vocalizing. It is the larynx that contains the elastic vocal cords/folds, and has two functions: to prevent food from entering the trachea: This happens by closing the glottis (the space between the vocal folds through which air passes) with the epiglottis (a thumb-like looking muscle attached to the back of the tongue). When swallowing, the tongue pushes the epiglottis back and down while the arytenoid cartilages squeeze the laryngeal inlet shut to prevent food from going into it. to produce sound: The opening and closing of the airways is vital in producing speech and sound. Sound is produced by the vibration of air as it passes through the vocal cords/folds. The two vocal cords/folds are membranes that run backwards inside the larynx. Normally they remain open and still during breathing. When air is expired through the glottis and the vocal cords/folds are drawn together with laryngeal contraction, also called adduction, the passage of air will make them vibrate and produce sounds. The posterior cricoarytenoid muscles (between the cricoid and arytenoid cartilages) open the glottis by adducting the true vocal cords/folds. The lateral cricoarytenoid muscles close the glottis by adducting the true vocal cords/folds. The faster the air passes through the vocal cords/folds the louder the sound. The closer the cords/folds are drawn together the higher the note. The looser the cord, the lower the note - much like a rubber band, the more the cords stretch for higher and higher pitches, the smaller the opening between them. The stretch of the cords is altered by the laryngeal muscles tilting the small, posterior laryngeal cartilages and arytenoid cartilage. (See diagrams above). The glottis can be varied in shape and size to produce different levels of pitch. The size and shape of the nose, mouth, pharynx and bony sinuses will determine the quality (timbre) of the voice. Changing the pharynx shape controls the production of vowel sounds. It is wise to note that for children the larynx changes shape as they grow so the quality of the voice also changes as they grow. Therefore "physical" voice production is a complex matter of co-coordinating sound through the ear/brain with the breathing muscles, the vocal cords/folds, the lips and the tongue. The laryngeal nerves connect the speech centre, in the cerebral cortex with the larynx. The ears transmit sound to the brain, the vocal cords produce a wide range of musical notes and the quality of sound depends on the larynx, the shape of the chest, mouth and sinuses for resonance. This essay first published June 28, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

Take your acting to the next level by following this one simple directive: Move, then sing. That's it. Amateurs move on their phrases. Pros move before them. I teach Movement for Actors at the Stella Adler Studio, Los Angeles. There, we spend countless hours laboring over truth in performance. Truth is what your audience connects with--more than great vocal technique, more than powerful lyrics, more than personality. And the truth of human behavior is that we express ideas with our bodies before we express them with our words. To act the heck out of a song, your performance behavior must reflect the truth of natural human behavior. When you see someone struggling with an armful of packages, do you stand there and say, "Oh! My gosh, let me help you!" and then go running over to help them? No, you run over, and, while you're running, you say, "Oh, my gosh, let me help you!" After you pour someone a drink, do you say, "Here you go," and then offer them the glass? No, you offer the glass and then say, "Here you go." When you hear a loud noise behind you, do you say, "What was that?" and then spin around? No, you spin around and then say, "What was that?" Your performance will be more truthful, and therefore more compelling, if it expresses the same truth of human behavior illustrated in the examples above. The way to this truth is to allow yourself to get caught up in the ideas of the song before you sing the symbols (words) that express those ideas. Your body is only a manifestation of what you're thinking; it has no intelligence to move on its own. So, if you get caught up in the ideas, your body will naturally express those ideas before you make the choice to express them through symbols (words). Wanna see what I mean? Check out these two performances: The first is Steve Perry singing "Faithfully." Notice what happens at 1:09. He moves his right hand just before he sings, "Right down the line..." See how natural it looks? And it feels natural. Steve isn't just a great voice, he's a singer, an artist. He's connected to the truth of what he's saying, and his body expresses it before his words do. The second is Judy Garland singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Watch her eyes. They almost always move before her phrases. You can see she's thinking about the ideas, not just singing words, so her body expresses the same naturalness of human behavior that you experience every day. It's why that performance is so compelling! It's like she's just talking to you, the way she would to a friend who'd stopped by for some tea. For some reason, when amateurs sing, they move counterintuitively--on the phrase, instead of before it. DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU. Naturally, it's okay to do it if you have to dance during a song or when you're adding emphasis to a particular word, as Steve Perry does in "Faithfully" when he sings, "...you and me." And sometimes the song is so fast, it's tough to move before you sing. But don't let these become excuses for a lack of truth in your performance. Your audience came for the deeper truth that art can express. Move, then sing, and give 'em what they came (and paid) for! Paul Cuneo is the founder of NotToneDeaf.com and the author of Correcting Tone Deafness. This is the ONLY completely sensible approach I have ever encountered to resolving the problem and stigma of "Tone Deafness. -Jeannie Deva. Paul is also an actor and teaches Movement for Actors at the Stella Adler Studio, Los Angeles. He blogs on the topic of Performance and Movement for Actors at MovementalLA.com . This essay first published February 5, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

So the time has come, the day of the competition, or audition. First things first... Ensure that you have everything you need: Directions to the event Your backing track(s) Costume(s) Promotional documentation on yourself Bottle of water When you arrive - be yourself. At every audition or competition the judges or those watching the audition want to be able to get to know you, and see your personality. Whether they can work with you in the future is important to them. Be polite and always introduce yourself. Sitting in a corner on your own is not the best way to go, however nervous you are. You will find your anxiety will become less after speaking with others who are in the same boat as you anyway. When you enter the audition... Now most of this is common sense but when nerves kick in, it makes it more difficult. Introduce yourself and hand over any promotional information you have - ideally a demo CD and photograph including your contact details. You would be surprised how many demo CD's I am given without contact details! Add your MySpace or website address too, so they can find out more about you. Offer your backing track and get to grips with the room you are in: How much space you have to perform. Then comes the big moment... Now, this really does sound obvious, but look at the judges/panel. Don't let your eyes wonder around. Focus as soon as the music starts. I don't mean stare them out, but eye contact is very important. The first 30 seconds are the worst. The nerves will rush straight through you, so ground yourself, as if the nerves shoot straight down into the floor. It will feel like you are singing really fast and your adrenalin with be pumping. This is the point where you need to let your technique kick in. Allow all the hours of practice take over. You have sung the song many times before, so why should this be any different. An old favourite piece of advice of mine is imagining the panel naked. It works! After the first 30 seconds you will find you begin to settle down, your technique and natural ability kick in and you can begin to relax into your surroundings. This is when you need to think more about your body language. Even if you are singing a ballad avoid standing completely still. Use natural, maybe literal movement to tell the story in the song. Try not to let your mind wonder. It's dead easy to do. What am I having for tea? I wonder if they like my song choice? Stay in the zone until the song is finished. Don't leave the room before thanking the panel/judges and then be on your way. Waiting to hear is pretty awful, but if you don't get the part don't worry, you were not what they were looking for, but next time maybe you will be. This essay first published October 20, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.

Preparing for a singing competition? Need some help? Here are some useful tips to ensure you show off your capabilities in your next competition. Before you even start preparing for your audition you need to research the company you are auditioning for, so you can understand exactly what they are looking for. Is the competition looking for the next big singing star? If so what age? What genre? An all round entertainer? Or a sob story? Spend some time on the Internet finding out as much as you can. It's also good idea to research the organisers of the competition too, so you can find out if the competition is credible, as unfortunately there are more and more competitions emerging that offer very little to the winners, other than the organisers making a lot of money. What to look for when researching: The organisers credentials Information on the judges - who are they? What do you win? What does it cost to apply? How do you apply? Is it an online competition or live audition? How many categories are there? What happened to the winners of previous competitions? Do you perform acapella, to backing track or do you bring a musician? What will you get out of entering? Experience, the chance to win? Exposure? So now you have researched the competition and have decided you are happy to enter, what next? You need to chose your song, and style of performance: Up-tempo; Ballad; Original song; and What aspect of your voice do you want to show off? The majority of singers are going to chose ballads, as it's the most obvious way of showing off your capabilities. But beware, a lot of singers will also chose to sing a ballad, so you need to look at something that you can do very well, or something you arrange slightly differently. What's the point of learning a song and then performing it just like the original artist? The judges have seen if all before, and really don't want to just see another 'imitation' singer. So what if you can sing like Michael Bubl, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Rhianna, Justin Timberlake, you may as well become a tribute act (which can offer you a worthy career though). Wouldn't you rather develop your musical 'identity'? So look for a song that shows off your strong points, and adapt it for you. Play around with it. Adjust the key, have it arranged differently. Make it your own. Don't be afraid to sing an up tempo song. Up tempo songs are a welcome break for judges, after listening to several versions of "Hero", "My Heart Will Go On", "I Will Always Love You", "When You Say Nothing at All" and "You Raise Me Up", they will be glad of the change. Why not look for a song that is really fun, to show you can entertain and allow and audience to have fun. Maybe a classic from the sixties, or something in the charts at the moment. Again, don't sing it just like the original. Make it your own. Â This essay first published October 5, 2009 on The Modern Vocalist.com the Internet's #1 community for vocal professionals, voice health practitioners and pro-audio companies worldwide since November 2008.