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Why does Ng help me so much

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Deep notes high notes medium notes.... when I sound ugly on recording i re-do it with "ng" and just cry it before trying singing again.

Then when I sing the song my resonance is way "turned on" hard to explain but why does the Ng help so much? and how can I use the principal behind it to train better.

- JayMC

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Deep notes high notes medium notes.... when I sound ugly on recording i re-do it with "ng" and just cry it before trying singing again.

Then when I sing the song my resonance is way "turned on" hard to explain but why does the Ng help so much? and how can I use the principal behind it to train better.

- JayMC

Its a semi-occluded phonation... it balances the sub-glottal and supra-glottal respiration pressure of your vocal folds and tilts your cricoid into a twang-like position. If you maintain the compression you get from this nasal vowel through the passaggio, it also has the benefit of helping to coordinate CT/TA through your bridge.

If you have a copy of "The Four Pillars of Singing", you have a lecture titled "Semi-Occluded Phonations" that does a fair job of explaining all this. Or you can click on the FREETVSLESSONS below in my signature and get access to the audio version of this lecture...

BTW, you can do the same thing and will probably get a similar favorable result with the other two nasal consonants, /M/ & /N/... One last thing... if you are training with Pillars... are these not the three nasal consonants you should be "buzzing" in exercise #1? If you are my student, you should know the answer to your question that you post... Im assuming that you are a client of TVS and have "The Four Pillars of Singing"?

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the "ng" is an awesome, highly beneficial exercise which keeps you from overblowing and straining, and teaches you about positioning up and out of the throat.

also it helps approximate the folds without over compressing them or allowing too much air through.

it's restrictiveness is it's prime benefit.

go from an "ng" and open up to a vowel to really do yourself some good.

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ng has other uses, too. I find it's a good place to onset from if I am starting a lyric or phrase in the higher end of the range. Like Rach sing, your tongue starts high, preventing you from accidently scooping the note.

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I truly believe using NG is one "secret" to mastering the voice.

I used to be a chronic overblower, however when the NG is performed correctly it will not function with overblowing, you will stall and not be able to ascend in your range or your folds will blow apart.

When you master doing a low volume (NOT falsetto/neutral) NG, you have a very solid foundation for the voice. The tounge can simply be dropped and you have a perfectly modified AH (more like Aww), which I even think Tamplin has stated is the best vowel for growing the voice since the other vowels stem from this setup. Try it for yourself, say "sing"; sustain the ng; drop the tounge and feel how you automatically have a perfectly modified Ah (Aww).

This is a difficult coordination (currently working on this every day), it's a light coordination but via other exercises such as mesa di voice you learn to increase the support and swell it into a very loud phonation.

Here is a quote:

If a singer can achieve a free jaw and "NG" against the hard palate (tongue root wide) with the back wall of the pharynx open, they can sustain this most difficult range.

From this page http://www.voiceteacher.com/passaggio.html

The things written on this page make a whole lot of sense to me now that I am experiencing this for myself. I feel that when I use a well produced NG, I can sustain whatever note I'm sitting and can very easily change the vowel sound with very subtle changes (tounge, mouth, all the parts which create the vowel).

Before I used to picture different phonations through different vowels, but now I feel more that there is only one phonation created by the vocal folds and the breath, and that the vowel and sound colors are very very subtle afterthought/modifications to this core phonation. So I feel that the NG trains my "core phonation" and it lets me do this without all constriction of the jaw, tounge and neck (which was my huge problem).

Also if you are trying to expand your range, the NG (when practised correctly) guides the voice through the proper adjustments, which will feel alien and foreign at first (if your voice knew these adjustments, you would already have the range). I always wondered how I would find the resonance adjustments needed to go higher, like a catch 22 "how do you do that which you can't do", and the NG helped me with just that. Carves out the path for the voice when done correctly.

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