Two questions

[chuy67]

Hello there it's been two weeks or so since my last post and I have to admit my voice is getting better. But still, I have more questions that I hope could be answered. My first question for you all is singing in key/on pitch. Sometimes I do sometimes I don't. Are there any excercises for this? And second is head voice vowels. When I am in headvoice, I can sing ee, as In he, and o as in goat without an airy sound. But when I try the rest of the vowels, I get an airy sound. How can this be fixed? Once again I thank you all for your great advice.

[Steven Fraser]

Hello there it's been two weeks or so since my last post and I have to admit my voice is getting better. But still, I have more questions that I hope could be answered. My first question for you all is singing in key/on pitch. Sometimes I do sometimes I don't. Are there any excercises for this? And second is head voice vowels. When I am in headvoice, I can sing ee, as In he, and o as in goat without an airy sound. But when I try the rest of the vowels, I get an airy sound. How can this be fixed? Once again I thank you all for your great advice.

Chuy67: I will address the 2nd question. If /i/ and /o/ (ee and oh) are clear, but the others are not... you are singing them with a different adduction. The remedy is a set of exercises that use the clear phonation of ee and oh and then carry it over into other vowels.

Here is an example. Starting on the C below your head voice, sing the 3-note upward arpeggio C - E - G up into head on the /i/ vowel, dwell on the top note a moment, take a breath, onset the G as you were, and then come back down stepwise G-F-E-D-C on /i/. With this first exercise, you are looking for the /i/ onset on the G to be just as clear, nice and easy a head tone as you had before the breath.

Repeat the exercise, and after you have arrived on the G with the /i/ vowel, hold it 1 second and dipthong it into /a/ (ah) by just moving your tongue. Take a breath, onset the /a/, and then sing the downward scale as before.

This approach can be used for all the vowels. Of particular challenge will be the 'short' ones, Ih, Eh, A (as in cat) uh and oe (as in foot).

Sing them the same way you did the /a/.

Then, for the additional experience, use the /o/ on the arpeggio in place of the /i/.

[Robert Lunte]

Nice vowel modification work Steve.

Sing in pitch - Train on chromatic scales and sustain each note for four beats on a 4/4 measure. Also, in regards to pitch, I know this sounds trite, but listen. Pay attention to the pitch. I have found that most people that have pitch problems have no problems with their ears, they simply have never developed the ability to listen to pitch. Some students think that to sing close to the pitch is good enough, and it is not. In music, there is a lot of flexibility and creative license, but two things you dont mess around with, generally speaking is pitch and rhythm. They are the essence of musicianship. Tighten up your pitch and rhythm and you will sound pro.

Steve offers great advise on the vowel modifications, I recommend the same thing. Add to that, become very comfortable working on isolated twang contrations with such coordination that you can get good compression on any vowel and any note in your head register.

Hope this helps, im available on skype to help more if you like.