fundamentals
1 LOOK AT THIS PHOTO THIS IS THE AGE YOU WERE WHEN YOU BEGAN TO LEARN TO USE YOUR VOICE. IS IT ANY WONDER MOST OF US CAN'T NATURALLY SING WELL? The way you use your voice is a product of The way you decided to use it when you were two. Your parents Your cultrual influences Your insecurities Your peers Let s change that forever
2 Session 1 How the voice works Introduction Congratulations on deciding to invest into your voice with this course! Within this manual, every session will have the training broken down into the following sections... What it is, How it works, Why it works, What to do and Can you do it? Being the first session however, this one will be formatted a little different to all the others. The intention of this session is to set up the important ground work of basic anatomy and physiology so all future training makes sense to you. By the time you have worked through Session One and Two, you will have potentially more knowledge and understanding than even many coaches out there today. And by the time you ve finished the complete fundamentals course, you will be approaching your voice from a vastly different perspective- one based on solid, grounded knowledge and application. Are you excited to get into it yet????!!!! Great!! Let s go! The Basics of Anatomy and phsiology The Larynx Put your hand against your throat and say uhhh. Feel how it vibrates? This is your Voice Box, the technical term, your Larynx. But unlike what most people assume, the primary function of the Larynx isn t to make sound, it s to keep you alive. It s the gateway to the lungs and the body knows that if ANYTHING were to pass into the lungs, you would choke and die. Place your hand across your throat again and this time, swallow. Feel it raise? This movement happens thousands of times a day, invisibly and automatically keeping every mouthful of food and drink from killing you. As it raises, it blocks the airway so food and drink can pass safely into the belly and not the lungs. And in singing, this mechanism is crucial to understanding how your voice does what it does. This will be covered in detail as your sessions progress. The True and False Vocal Folds Have a look at the image on the right. It s your larynx cut in half and looking from behind. The pink circles are the vocal muscles that form your True Vocal Folds. Look just above them. You ll notice two more flaps. These are called the False Folds or Ventricular Folds. And for many singers, you have never known about these. In simplest terms, the true vocal folds are what you use to make sound, the false vocal folds close off the airway. There are three conditions that the False Vocal Folds (FVF) close. It s when you re coughing/sneezing, when you re swallowing and when you re lifting something heavy. They feel very different. More on that soon.
3 The Epiglottis The Epiglottis plays a very important function because it s the doorway to your airway. When you swallow, the Larynx raises, the Epiglottis folds over to guide the food into the belly, not into the lungs. Additionally, the False and True Vocals Folds push against the Epiglottis to form a perfect seal. In this course, you will learn how to use this to add brightness to your voice (Twang). The Soft Palate Run your tongue slowly from the front of the roof of your mouth to the back. Half way along you ll notice it goes from hard to soft. The front half is called the Hard Palate, the back half is called the Soft Palate. The Soft Palate provides a very important function in that it can move up and down to block the nose. Every time you swallow, it raises to block the nose. If it didn t, your food and drink would push into the back of your nose instead of down your throat. Every time you make sounds like sss and Puh, the Soft Palate raises to block the nose so the air intentionally passes through the mouth. On the other hand, some sounds like mm and nn do pass through nose so the Soft Palate has to drop. From a singers point of view, the voice resonates better if we pass the voice through the mouth as much as possible. The major Cartilages The two main cartileges in the Larynx are called the Thyroid and Cricoid cartilages. The vocal folds are physically connected to the back of the Thyroid Cartilage. Both the Thyroid and Cricoid Cartilages can tilt and are hinged against each other as you can see on the bottom left of the diagram. If the Thyroid Cartilage tilts forward, it pulls the Vocal Folds tight from the front. This makes the voice sound compassionate. It s also your customer service voice. For a singer, this one way for easy access to high notes. If the Cricoid tilts back, it forces the back of the vocal fold forward which is the basic condition of yelling and singers use this when Belting. Thyroid Cricoid
4 Thick Vocal folds with no Thyroid Tilt Thin Vocal folds with Thyroid Tilt The Arytenoids The Arytenoids are two Cartilages that the back of the vocal folds are connected to. They can open and close, twist, rock back and slide sideways to produce four different ways that the vocal folds can work. You may know some of the terms like Falsetto, Head Closed Vocal Folds - ADDUCTION Open Vocal Folds- ABDUCTION Voice, Vocal Fry and so on. Their most basic function however is to close and open the vocal folds. This is called Adduction and Abduction respectively. How well the vocal folds close plays a big part in your breathing control and vocal efficiency. And efficiency plays a big part in creating maximum voice with minimum effort. The arytenoids physically sit on the back of the Cricoid cartilage so whatever movement the Cricoid makes directly affects the vocal folds via the Arytenoids. Front View RearView SideView
5 The Tongue The tongue is super important to getting control of when singing. It works so automatically and invisibly yet it s connected to so many parts of your voice. It s connected to the roof of the mouth, behind the jaw, the chin and the Larynx. What you do with the tongue greatly affects a singers voice. Simply poking your tongue out and making an ahh lets you hear very quickly the change in your voice. It works automatically. It has to. If you had to consciously think of it every time you chewed or spoke, you d be biting it all the time. And because it s so invisible to us, it s very easy for the tongue to have tension or be misplaced and you don t even know it. Tongue root tension is very common in aspiring singers. Trying to depress the back of the tongue down pushes onto the top of the Larynx and prevents free movement. This is one of the major problems singers can have when trying to sing higher notes. Muscles of the tongue (any name with glossus) Tip Blade Dorsum Root Names of the parts of the tongue
6 The top Ten Myths around singing 1. You're either born with it or you're not. You can't make a voice that isn't there. The truth to this is that your basic sound is determined by biology. Some people have dark skin, some people are prone to baldness, some are skinny, some have high voices. Some people have a physiology that is conducive to great singing. Shaquiele O Neil, the famous basketball player is Seven Foot one inch. Taht definitely gives him an advantage. But that aside, millions of people all over the world enjoy basketball. It s a lie that you can't maximize the voice you have. Much of the reason why you may not sing well has nothing to do with physiology. It's because the voice you have is being limited by things you may be doing wrong. The goal is to find your uniqueness and bring the best out in it. 2. Drink Honey & LEmon before you sing Hydration is great for general bodily functions. You should never sing dehydrated. By the time you feel thirsty, you're around 3% dehydrated and this can affect your muscular function. Also, the warming affect that the tea has on the muscles feels particularly nice. It s false however that the fluid has some direct effect on the vocal Folds. If the fluid ran past your vocal folds, you would drown and die. Generally speaking, what we eat and drink has a lot to do with our general health. And general health can impact our vocal effectiveness. So be healthy. 3. Eat Lozenges before you sing The purpose of a lozenge is to dry mucus when you have a cold. Eucalyptus oil is an an aggravent to the vocal Folds. The lozenge isn't passing through the vocal folds, so there is no advantage in that way. The only thing that does travel past the vocal folds are the vapours, and they tend to irritate. With good hydration and a decent diet and good technique, lozenges are unnecessary when you re healthy. 4. I'm singing from my throat! You're always singing from your throat. More correctly this touches on a reason why there s much confusion around learning to sing. There is a big difference between describing The sensations you may be experiencing versus good, grounded understanding of the machinery you're using. 5. Sing from the belly Comments like -The Voice comes from down low and Sing from the Belly. This is bad coaching for a number of reasons. Firstly, your intestines are in your belly. When you breathe deep, this can trigger many other movements that work against you. It can lower the larynx into a position and it causes the throat to constrict in a way, both that makes singing difficult. 6. Breathing From the Diaphragm Partially true but remember, breathing control occurs very much from adduction - The closing of the vocal folds. Also, breathing into the diaphragm and never allowing the shoulders to raise his old school and especially when belting, it works against you. Latest understanding shows that allowing the belly to release and the shoulders to raise slightly is much more efficient and creates easier access to good belting. In this course, you ll discover why.
7 7. Yawning is a great warm-up Yawning is a terrible practice to get into because... well. let's just check out why. Place your hand across your throat and yawn. Notice how low the larynx has dropped and noticed how the back of the tongue has gone with it? This is exactly the opposite required for a great singing position. There are a couple of movements that yawning creates that a singer does need to do such as raising the soft palate, but there are a bunch of things that is compounded with them when we yawn that we most certainly don't want. 8. Singing on a high Larynx can cause Permanent Damage Not true. There is physically nothing inside your throat that can be damaged by lifting the larynx when vocalising. What can cause permanent damage to your voice is driving too much energy onto your vocal folds. Hi energy singing is fine, so long as the energy is placed in the right parts of the voice- and that's not the vocal Folds. But nothing about that has anything to do with larynx height. 9. A powerful Voice is a Loud Voice Many people make this mistake when trying to develop their voice. You will see this at amateur events all the time. People screaming into a mic trying to be the most impressive by being the loudest. The problem with this is there is no attention to the tone of the voice. Said another way, the sound of the voice rather than the volume of it. A loud voice with an obnoxious sound is just well... loud and obnoxious. A well-developed sound in the voice will always sound more impressive than just a loud one. Also the effect of strength in a voice is a function of the overtones or harmonics that have been produced. And to a large degree, these can be created without being overly loud. You may be surprised to know this but some of the toughest, most powerful sounding voices in the industry actually sing into the mic fairly quietly. For some, it s how they can survive a three hour show night after night without vocal fatigue. The professional knows this and they do the opposite to the millions of amateurs who try to copy them by blasting their voice. Does this mean we should never sing loud? Not at all. With good technique, you can still sing with volume and projection and all that good stuff. But it s efficiency that you ll learn in this course that allows you to do this, not just brute force. For contemporary voice, your priority should be on the performance and sound of your voice first then let amplification do the rest. 10. I'm too old to start In a world that s dominated by culture of youth, it s easy to assume some things need to be done by a certain age. Physiologically however, singing can usually be done well right up into someone s seventies.
8 The Four Phases of Vocalpro Phase 1. Understanding the instrument Essentiallty, this is what this first session is all about. That said, throughout the whole of the fundamentals course, you will be learning deep knowledge that allows you to clearly understand what your voice is, what it looks like, how it works and so on. Completely demystifying the voice for you so that for the rest of your life, you will have the tools to be related to your voice in a closer way than ever before. Phase Two: Making your Instrument This most certainly IS what Vocalpro Fundamentals is. Based on the work from Phase One, Making your Instrument is all about learning the mechanisms that makes the voice work, and how to move everything around in there so you can sing with the Four Pillars of Good Voice firmly in place at all times. Esablishing the basics of tongue placement, roof of the mouth control, Larynx height, Adduction and a bunch of other things that a great singer needs to be able to do without conscious thought is what phase two is all about. Phase Three: Playing the Instrument After you re clear on how to set-up your voice, Playing the Instrument is all about taking the voice you ve made in Phase Two and applying it into songs. Things like intervals, timing, vowels, consonants and so on are all things that get in the way of your voice and you need to be able to do these well to ensure that the great voice you have built can be used with the added complexity that goes around singing words in songs. Phase Four: Performing the Instrument By now, you understand the voice, you can make it sound great, you can take that great sound and apply it into songs... Now it s time to skillfully perform it. The goal is to take the performance from sounding good to completely captivating a listener by emotionally shifting them. At this point, your technique is so invisible, you can mostly forget about thinking about it and just perform. There are some very powerful strategies, tips, tricks and techniques that the pro s use to get the emotion into a song and make it incredible. Phase four is all about those. Performing Path to vocal mastery Playing Making Understanding
9 The Four Pillars of Good voice The basics of any voice needs to be established for it to work. In some cases, this is achieved automatically and they are considered the natural born singers. For the rest of us however, we need to learn these. The four pillars are the fundamentals that you will dive deep into in this course. Without all four working well, the singers voice falls over. The Four Pillars of good voice are Pitch, Tone, Breathing & Articulation. Pitch Can you sing in tune? Can you hear the notes you re aiming for and can you accurately sing them? Tone Can you create a sound in your voice that s consistent with the tone it requires. Do you have the skill to be able to move your mechanism around to create different vocal colours. Example. You won t use the same vccal sound singing Phantom of the Opera to singing a pop song. Breathing Can you control the energy into the voice well or is it unregulated? Do you ruin your voice in a few songs? Do you lack power & control? Are you pushing lots of energy into the voice and having an inefficient result? Articulation Can you move your mouth, jaw, lips and tongue well that allows you to create your words well without destroying your technique? Do you find some phrases are difficult to sing even though it s not overly high? Understanding vowels and consonants are critical for a singer to be able to do well and this course covers those in great detail. Range Flexibility Everything else Song Style Emotion Interpretation Pitch Tone Breathing Articulation
10 Exercises Exercise 1: The ng siren Place the back of your tongue against the roof of your mouth like you re saying ngggg.. If you struggle to make this sound at first, say sinnngggggg. The last sound is the one you re after. Sinnnngggg. Place the edges of your tongue against the top teeth behind your canines. Keep the tongue wide widthways. If this is difficult at first, simply say hey and you will see the tongue flatten across the front. Begin to make small sounds with it. Try to keep it breathless and slowly siren up and down through your range. Gradually make the sirens wider. Go from the lowest of your range up to your highest and back down. Tips and things to watch out for Release the abdominals Don t push Try to keep it breathless Float the voice up and down Exercise 2: The Liproll siren Place your fingers under the edge of your mouth and lift slightly. Using your fingers allows the face to relax. Doing them without fingers would make you tense your lips and jaw, which you don t want. Lightly blow using a uhhh behind it. Keep the face relaxed. Tips and things to watch out for Release the abdominals Don t push Try to get it sounding clear without excesive air As you ascend, visualise the voice going through the back of your head.
11 What s in the rest of the course in detail The rest of the course comprises of 12 more major sessions supported by 9 support sessions bringing it to 22 in total. Every two days, another session will be opened up for you to get into. It s like your personal, virtual coach, carefully guiding you through all the fundamentals of great singing bit by bit, then putting it all together at the end. As you have just discovered in this session, there are a lot of components that make up your voice. They can all be trained, and they all make a big difference to your voice. In session 2, we get right to work by exercising and releasing tension in the voice in preparation for the more vigorous sessions you will have later in the course. All future sessions in detail 2 - Scales and warm-up: This session begins to put your voice to work. Like any other physical activity you use muscles, tendons, cartilages and bones when singing. And these need conditioning, relaxing & exercising. This sessions gives you some important basic exercises and clearly explains them in a way that takes the guesswork completely out of them. 3 - Understanding ranges: What they really are, how they work, how to access them and how to practice on them. Vocal Fry, Chest Voice, Mix Voice, Head Voice, Falsetto etc. is all clearly explained. After this session you will be never be confused about these terms ever again. 4 - Session 3 Reinforcement session: After experimenting with ranges for a couple of days, this session will show you some important things to watch out for and present some new things to try. 5 - Taming the tongue: The tongue is the biggest muscle in your singing mechanism and has over a dozen muscles connected to it. What you do with it seriously impacts your voice. This session will completely demystify it and show you exactly what pro singers do with their tongue to maximise their voice. 6 - Session 5 Reinforcement: After experimenting with your tongue for a couple of days, this session will show you some additional things to waqtch out for and some common pitfalls that folks run into when getting control of their tongue for the first time. 7 - Keeping the throat open on high notes: The primary function of the throat is to keep us alive. It s the gateway to the lungs. Any time we swallow or the body feels under threat, it will close down. And this can happen when we sing without even realizing it. That is, until we learn how to keep it open. This session is huge and the content you will learn within is worth the value of the whole course because it will dramatically change where you focus your attention, your energy AND it will show you how to sing higher and more open with less strain than you ever imagined. 8 - Session 7 Reinforcement: Controlling this part of your voice can be tricky. This session will show you some things to watch out for, and some additional training in gaining complete control. 9 - Efficiency: Your guide to complete breath control and power: The breathing mechanism of the voice is vastly different to what you may imagine. This session blows up the old model of breathing control and shows you a way better, more efficient way to gain that super powerful, clear sound we all love in a pro voice.
12 10 - Session 9 Reinforcement: After practicing these new efficiency techniques for a couple of days you ll be aware of some things your voice and body is doing that previously you were unaware of. Now that you have awareness, this session will reinforce the training from a couple of days earlier and show you some other things to take notice of and watch out for. 11 - Don t be so nosey!: The voice sounds way better when we sing through our mouth and not our nose. This session shows you how it happens, why it happens, how to distinguish it AND everything you will ever need to know to stop it from passing through the nose ever again. 12 - Session 11 Reinforcement: Getting the voice out of the nose can be difficult because we can t feel it. This session reinforces the previous training after having spent a couple of days working on it. 13 - Develop the tone control of your voice: Careful adjustment of your larynx can completely change the tone of your voice. So whether you want to sing a pop song, or a more traditional song, this session will show you the fundamentals of altering your tone for any song. 14 - Session 13 Reinforcement: After a couple of days working at your tone adjustment, this session reinforces your training by showing you some additional things to be careful of. 15 - Adding intensity: This session shows you an advanced technique that takes much of the previous training you ve already had and adds a very important vocal mechanism that creates unbelievable power and intensity by utilizing Twang. This part of your voice is one of the most important aspects to achieving the amazing sound that you already hear on radio and TV every day. 16 - Session 15 reinforcement: Putting all the combinations of movements together to achieve the required vocal placement can be tricky. This session shows you some pitfalls to watch out for after having experimented with it for a couple of days. 17 - Singing powerfully with a relaxed face: This is a deceptively hard thing to do because usually when we yell, we ll also tense the muscles of our face. In this session, we address how to focus your intensity whilst being able to maintain a relaxed Jaw and Mouth. 18 - Session 17 reinforcement: This session is a reminder session of things to watch out for when relaxing the face. 19 - How to navigate words like a pro: After you ve learned many of the basics of voice production, you ll need to be able to put it into words. This is deceptively hard because there are so many movements that happen inside the mouth. Some sounds like sss are made with air flow, some sounds like mmm pass through the nose, some sounds like or drop the tongue, but eee raises it. All these movements can be a mind-field for a singer and unless you learn the basics, you may never know why some phrases you try to sing are difficult for you. This session breaks it all down and completely explains Vowels and Consonants in a way that leaves you totally empowered around using them. Session 20 - Session 19 reinforcement: Continuing on with vowels and consonants, this session explores additional reinforcement content by showing you some pro examples and continuing your articulation training including some new content not explored in session 19.
13 21 - Putting it all together - Part 1. This session takes the previous six weeks training and shows you how to put it together into one simple technique that makes all the individual components work. By now, you re really beginning to have brand new singing technique that your voice naturally moves into when you go to sing! 22 - Putting it all together - Part 2: This session is as big as session 21 and introduces the rest of the training into your new technique. You ll also get a sneak preview into your next available course! Here s a quick checklist before you move on... Did you find this information helpful? Are you ready to take your voice to a new level? Would you like to have four amazing sessions per week for the next 6 weeks? Are you ready to take your voice seriously and sing better than ever before? Are you ready to invest into your voice? Click to buy the course at a special pre-release price!
14 Session 2. Relax & Warm-up Contratulations on making it into session Two!! Welcome aboard! This session is all about getting into work. Let s create a really great, basic warm-up you can do daily that relaxes the voice and get s it moving. Exercise 1: The ng siren Begin with a couple of minutes of ng on a siren just like last session. As an alternative, you an do a few minutes of light humming up and down Tips and things to watch out for Keep it super light Don t allow much air to pass. Sit the voice on the air. Don t push air through it This is a warm-up exercise, not a strength or conditioning one. Exercise 2: The Liproll siren As per last session. Exercise 3: Liproll 5 note scale Always use the provided scales either from the session or from the app so your voice has accurate note references for your voice to begin to sing to. Release the voice as the scale ascends. Add a slight cry to it to allow your voice to pass midway through your range and to access your higher notes. Go as high as you can but as first, the scale may go higher than you can. Join in and continue back down when you can. Decending feels very different to ascending so you need to practice both Tips and things to watch out for. If you re struggling to get the liproll working well, move the fingers around a little. Remember to release all the tension from your face as you go higher. Hold back on the airflow a little as you go up. Try and get these sounding clean. Exercise 4: Liproll Octave scale Same as exercise 3 but this time, the distance between the notes - the intervals - are much wider and instead of your voice stretching over half an octave per scale, it s now moving an octave. Check for pitch accuracy. Make sure you control the note you re singing as much as possible whilst keeping it relaxed.
15 Exercise 5 & 6 : Gooo on a 5 note and octave scale Sing the same two scales using ooooooooo with a hard g at the start. Gooooooooooo In future sessions, you will discover why we use a g. For now, just go with it. Exercise 7 & 8 : Yeee on a 5 note and octave scale Sing the same two scales using yee yee yee yee on each note. This scale encompases a bunch of things that will make complete sense in future sessions also. As a quick heads-up though, the y y y y on each note keeps the back of the tongue in a higher position which prevents it from crowding into the back of the throat. Do these daily for around 20 minutes. If you feel inspired, do it twice a day for 20 minutes. Daily exercise is as crucial to getting your voice working well as the knowledge is. Make sure you download the Vocalpro App so you can do your practice anywhere, any time.
16 Session 3 Harnessing Ranges One of the most confusing things around the voice is discovering and understanding your ranges. If you ve spent more than 5 minutes trying to sing, you ll wquickly discover that you have a bunch different ways that the voice seems to work. You ll try to sing a high note and you can t do it, buf for some, as soon as you laugh, a whole other high range magically appears. Or you may have your voice relatively low until you see someone and suddenly it goes high. Yet try to sing on this and it becomes impossible again. If you try to sing high, you may have discovered that your voice naturally breaks into a breathy sound. And you don t want that. So what the heck is going on? In this session, we re going to break it all down so that by the end of this session, you ll be absolutely clear on how it works and how to begin to harness this to your singing advantage instead of it working against you. In session 1, we discovered that the primary reason for the larynx to exist is to block the airway for various reasons. That said, the human vocal mechanism is super smart at conveying communication to others that s not only based on words, but on inflection and tone. We all know this. A stern authoritative voice sounds very different to a customer service sounding voice. Imagine being at a restaurant and the person taking your order talks like a military drill sergeant. Ludicrous. But it makes the point. Humans are pack animals. Even dogs will use very different vocalizations during the scared moments of a thunderstorm to the whimper they make when they want to show affection to their owner. The vocal folds are muscular, supported with a ligament and Brandi, Vocalpro Mascot covered with a soft covering. How the vocal folds work is always a balance of airflow and pressure, muscle stiffness and vocal fold length. These three things are always working in synergy and as a singer, when they don t work in a balanced way, your voice will begin to become difficult to use effectively. An obvious example of this is using too much air. Cross section of the vocal folds The two cartilages that open and close the vocal folds are called the Arytenoids. They have a bunch of muscles connected to them that allow them to move in different directions. Combined with the movement of the Thyroid and Cricoid cartilages, the vocal folds can be moved into one of four different conditions. Inside the Larynx showing the Arytenoids
17 They are... Slack folds Thick folds Thin folds Stiff Folds. You may recognize these as vocal fry, chest voice, head voice and falsetto. Muscles work by contracting only. They can t push, only pull. For every movement in your body, you ll have a muscle that works in the opposite direction (the antagonist). The bicep closes the arm, the Tricep opens it back out. In the Larynx, these two muscle groups are called the Thyroarytenoid muscles and the Cricothyroid muscles. We ll call them the TA and CT muscles. Arytenoids As the name suggests, the Cricothyroid muscles connects the Thyroid cartilage to the Cricoid Thyroid cartilage. As it shortens, it pulls the thyroid cartilage forward a little. And because the vocal folds are connected to the back of it, it stretches the vocal Cricoid folds from the front, thinning them out. This makes the voice sound more affectionate. It s the voice you use when you see someone you haven t seen in CT Muscles TAMuscles ages. The sound you make during times of surprise or excitement. The voice you use when you are talking to a puppy dog. And the voice you use when you want to appear disarmed, like the customer service voice as mentioned earlier. The muscle that pulls the Thyroid cartilage back upright is the Thyroarytenoid muscle. And obviously, this muscle connects the Arytenoids to the Thyroid cartilage. But the TA muscle is also TA responsible for making different pitches during speech type singing. Understanding this is fundamental to understanding your basic two ranges and the break that occurs in the middle of them. How difficult would it be for the arm to move freely if every time the bicep tried to close the arm, the tricep was tightening to prevent it. CT When your voice is singing lower notes, it s essentially being controlled by the stiffness of the TA muscles. At some point, the CT muscles are wanting to tilt the Thryroid cartilage so you can access the higher notes. They begin fighting each other and eventually the TA muscle releases to allow the CT muscle to add tilt. And this is one of your breaks that can occur.
18 Conversely, you re moving down through your range and at some point, the CT muscles will relax for you to move back into a thicker vocal fold condition. Hang onto that too long and you ll discover your lower notes get weak until something clicks in your throat and suddenly you have strong low notes again. This the CT and TA muscles in action. It s absolutely essential for you to be able to train your CT and TA muscles to work nicely with each other. The vocal folds basic movement is called a Mucosal Wave. If you ve seen a video of them working, you ll see they work in a wavelike fashion. There is 6 layers/parts to them. The innermost layers are the Vocalis muscle which is part of the TA muscle, and the vocal ligament. There s a couple of intermediate layers followed by the outer two, the Superficial Lamina Propria and the Epithelium. We ll just call these the outer covering of the vocal folds and you can think of them as the soft rubber door seal on a fridge. As the air passes between the vocal folds and the ligament and muscles provide structure to them, the soft outer cover is still free to flap open and closed. If you push too much air through your vocal folds, then the TA muscles have to stiffen way too much to counter the airflow. The CT muscles are wanting to get involved but the excessive airflow Layers of the vocal fold is preventing them from doing so. Eventually, voice lets go into a breathy voice. In this case, the Arytenoids rock back, the vocal folds lift at the back of the Larynx and the outer covering gets pulled tight against the vocal ligament. For this reason, the vocal folds lose their Mucosal Wave function and the stiffening of the covering causes the voice to sound distinctively thin and breathy. You may know this as Falsetto. Finally, if the TA muscles pull the vocal folds thicker, your note lowers, lower and lower until it loses it s Mucosal wave function and the voice becomes croaky. You may know this as Vocal Fry. Tilted Thyroid Cartilage. Thin Folds - front of vocal fold is revealed because of tilting Vertical Thyroid Cartilage. Thick Folds - front of vocal fold is obscured
19 This is very confusing for a singer if they don t understand what s going on. The four vocal fold conditions Let s discover these four vocal fold vibration conditions. Slack folds. The TA muscles have pulled the vocal folds so short that they are no longer work in the mucosal wave. It is the sound of vocal fry. Thick folds. For most of us, this is our usual speech voice. The vocal folds are not being pulled tight and thin. When you hear someone singing happy birthday or maybe a football club singing their club song, this is what singing on thick folds sounds like. This lends itself to Chest Voice singing. Thin folds. When the CT muscles have tilted the Thyroid cartilage forward and the voice sounds compassionate. Usually, singers will have a degree of this in their voice when they sing. It is also suspected that the CT muscles are responsible for natural vibrato. This lends itself to Head Voice singing. Stiff folds. When the Arytenoids rock back and pull on the vocal fold from the back stiffening the cover against the vocal ligament. This lends itself to Falsetto type singing. The three types of onsets There are three ways a singer can begin a note. We call these an onsetadn they relate to the way the vocal folds vibrate. Aspirate. This is where the air begins first and the vocal folds close onto it. An aspirate onset will lead your voice naturally into stiff vocal folds Falsetto. Glottal. The Glottis is the gap between the vocal folds. A Glottal onset is where the focal folds are closed BEFORE the air is entered into the Larynx.. This naturally leads the voice into Thick Folds. Smooth or simultaneous. This onset is where the voice and the air begins together and it encourages the voice onto thinner vocal folds. Let s see all three in action. The space between the vocal folds -Glottis Say How. Are. You as three distinct words. You ll notice How occurs as an aspirate onset, Are as a gottal onset and You as a smooth onset. You can experiment with these for as long as you want until you begin to feel the differences between them.
20 In this session, we want to develop your tilted thyroid cartilage function so you can access high notes effortlessly. The two vowels that naturally encourage tilting is the oo and the ee vowels. And it s for this reason that many many vocal courses practice all their exercises on these two vowels. It s also the reason why you may struggle to sing high notes on other vowels. That will be covered in detail later in your course. One final point. Is there a right way and a wrong way to use these? Not at all! They all have application depending on the song you re singing. Wonderwall would sound awful if sung on thin folds just as much as music of the night would sound awful sung on thick folds. Discovey exercises 1. Find stiff fold Falsetto using an aspirate onset Say Haa. Now lengthen it. Haaaaaaa. Allow your voice to relax into it and let it do what it naturally wants to do. Done well, it will be breathy and will lack rich resonance. Do a few sirens on this until you can clearly identify its sound. Down low, this is very inefficient and gets cleaner as you ascend. This is pure Falsetto 2. Explore stiff folds on different vowels Explore the aspirate onset with the following Vowels. Haaa Heee Hiii Hoohhh Hoooo 3. Thick folds with Glottal onset Say uh uh, like you re telling your dog off for chewing on the couch. Uh uh. Uh uh... Now lengthen it.. uh uhhhhhhhh. Take note of the feeling of this. 4. Thick to stiff fold siren Do exercise 3 and begin to siren up. As you ascend, your voice will break into stiff folds. This is the normal function of the voice. If you re half way up your range and you don t feel like you can go higher, then it breaks, this is perfect. You ve discovered Thick folds.
21 5. finding thin folds using a smooth onset Say you.. Now lengthen it. Youuuuu. Feel for the smooth onset as you say the yuh at the start. Give yourself time to explore this. Keep it light and breathless. Release your belly. 6. Explore thin fold throughout your whole range Say yooouuuuuu on a siren. Imagine your compassionate voice or your customer service voice. Tips and things to look out for As a generalization, females find this much easier to go into than guys. Begin the siren fairly small then gradually ascend higher and lower. Done well, the voice will sound exactly consistent throughout the whole range from the lowest notes in your range to the highest. You will have also eliminated your break! If this isn t working, check for excessive tension or excessive air. Keep the sound small and light for now. Application exercises For this session, we re focusing on establishing thin folds so you can free up your high notes. The following exercises are designed to allow you to sing in thin folds on any note in your range on any vowel. 7. Thin folds yoo on a 5 note scale Sing yoo yoo yoo on a 5 note scale using your soft compassionate voice 8. Thin folds yee on a 5 note scale sing yee yee yee on a 5 note scale in your softy compassionate voice 9. 5 note scale. Up on goo, down on down on eee sing up the 5 note scale on gooooo then on the top note change that to eee for the notes down. If you like, add a slight y at the top to smoothly blend the oo into the ee
22 10. 5 note scale. Up on Yee, down on yerr. Sing a 5 note scale with a yee up blending on the top note into a yer for the way down. The yer is how you can modify the ahh vowel at first to hold your tilt. At first, these exercises may occur to you as very weak. Mentally, you may have never deliberately used your voice like this AND physically, the vocal mechanism may be very weak in this position at first. You must coax the voice into this position, not force it. Finally, don t worry if it s sent your voice into Mary Poppins land. We re gradually building your technique from the ground up. We ll add another component to this sound in a few sessions and get it sounding contemporary and cool.