Lather rinse repeat?

[JoshJ25]

Hey people how are you all?

When I do my practise exercises there are certain ones which I basically can do with minimal effort and others that are hard and take a lot of concentration and effort to do them right. Is there any benefit in let's say doing a tough scale/arpeggio and repeating the same exercise a few times to work it in and get "better" at it before going on to another exercise? I'm hoping the pros weigh in on this one. Thanks!

[kalapoka]

Hi, am not a pro, just a learner like you (i am assuming) - but yes, i think you should repeat the same exercise until you get goood at it, BUT it is important to note that you should not hurt yourself by keeping doing it. also, sometimes it helps to repeat it a few times, try something else to help with the boredom, and then coming back to it again.

hope that helps!

fahim

[markgrubb@gmail.com]

When you vocalize are you listening to the back of the theater, do you inhale preparing for the next pitch, do you sing with your heart? If you are watching the clock and checking of the vocalizes then you are not preparing your voice to express yourself. A breakthrough for me came from practicing as if performing; raising the standard of practice.

In fighting you learn your body will do what it is trained to do. In a fight your fine motor skills are challenged. The athlete most likely to win the fight is the athlete who is 1) thinking 2) prepared 3) trained with attention to detail.

Practice makes permanent. Your performance is an extension of your practice. Practice like people are listening, like it matters, because it does matter.

[Jens]

I disagree to some off what you wrote mark, when i do exercises I dont focus on sounding good.

Ofc it depends on what the exercise should develop, if it is for example the tone of your voice, sure then sounding good is great.

Practise as hell, they key's to unlocking the voice is infact when you face your errors and overcom them.

[Marcus]

I have to agree with Jens on this one, if you're practicing vocally difficult excercises you shouldn't really focus on making it sound good. You should focus on doing it right and development of passages in your voice that troubles you. I think you benefit greatly from difficult excercises when you do get them down. As an example - the Witches Cackle excercise (from James Lugo's program) sounds really horrible (my girlfriend is so sick of hearing that excercise I try to do it when she's not around), but I've done it anyway and it really unlocked my upper registers. Even if it sounds really bad it builds your muscles and gives you voice stamina, and I think it's great for practicing twang too. It may take some time and a lot of effort with such excercises, but in the end it's usually worth it.

On the other hand, if you are practicing songs it is essential that you in practice try to do what you later will do in performance so you don't loose your nerve when you are on stage. Experiment with what you can actually do while singing it.

[VideoHere]

I have to agree with Jens on this one, if you're practicing vocally difficult excercises you shouldn't really focus on making it sound good. You should focus on doing it right and development of passages in your voice that troubles you. I think you benefit greatly from difficult excercises when you do get them down. As an example - the Witches Cackle excercise (from James Lugo's program) sounds really horrible (my girlfriend is so sick of hearing that excercise I try to do it when she's not around), but I've done it anyway and it really unlocked my upper registers. Even if it sounds really bad it builds your muscles and gives you voice stamina, and I think it's great for practicing twang too. It may take some time and a lot of effort with such excercises, but in the end it's usually worth it.

On the other hand, if you are practicing songs it is essential that you in practice try to do what you later will do in performance so you don't loose your nerve when you are on stage. Experiment with what you can actually do while singing it.

hi marcus, could you explain or post the witches kackle exercise?

[Marcus]

It's explained here and there on the forums, and it's in both James Lugo's "Vocal Asylum" and Jamie Vendera's "Raise Your Voice". It's for practicing the pharyngeal voice.

Make an ugly sound somewhere between head and chest on "hii" and then slide down an octave ending the word on"yah". I begin the excercise on tenor high c and bring it up to about the e and then down to an a below tenor high c. It shouldn't sound pretty. You can also practice transitioning from a pretty falsetto/head tone into an ugly pharyngeal voice.

Here's a Youtube clip with Kevin Richards explaining Witches Cackle.

I prefer Lugo's version of this excercise, but then again he was the one introducing me to it. And it really helped my voice.

This excercise also helps to establish twang and isn't just used for metal vocals. Some musical theater vocal coaches use this excercise, and I think Brett Manning also picked this up and includes it in Singing Success. At least there's some videos out from SS on youtube with this type of excercises (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIDJNUBVHfc it's with some Singing Success guy called Chris I think)

[VideoHere]

thank u

[jonpall]

Marcus, I've done the James Lugo exercises every now and then (from Jamie Vendera's book), but I gave up on them, perhaps too quickly, because I didn't really see what I would gain from them. I'm thinking of doing them again and see what happens. Do you rank those exercises among the most helpful ones in the past for yourself?

[Marcus]

I can't really say that one excercise was the most helpfull, but it's definately on my top-10 list. I have a professional education in musical theatre, and though it helped me develop great support and skills in performing it left me with just a small increase in range. When I began using Lugo's excercise program it took about three months to gain almost an octave in full voice (offcourse it's some sort of bridging, but it's with a full voiced sound). I guess all the technique training from my education did a great deal for my voice, laying a proper foundation to build on.

I've always wanted to be a tenor, and felt kind of stuck in my bass/baritone range. And for me, being a metalhead in heart and soul, Vocal Asylum was very helpfull with giving excercises for range increase with the sound I was looking for.

The witches cackle gave me both better twang and muscle coordination for my bridging. Now I don't do it as much as before, but instead I use the gained muscle coordination with another Lugo excercise ("ii-aah"/"ii-yeah" slides and scales, starting on ii and opening it up to an "ah" or "yeah" on the top, this helpes me keep the twang going through my excercise). Lugo don't say that much about twang, but his excercises are great for establishing it in your voice.

If I were to explain it in CVT terms I guess I use curbing quite a lot, and the cackle excercise gave me the coordination for keeping my voice together with the "hold".

And Mary Hammond (legendary musical theatre coach in London's West End) used the witches cackle excercise with the class starting the musical academy after I finished. (Umeå Musical Theatre Academy have an exchange deal with London's education so they have some teachers come over and do some classes). So it's good for a broad spectra of genres. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the excercise first appeared in Voice Of The Mind wich is for classical music.