The CoMMUNITY SINGer

Welcome back to The Community Singer. This is episode four and is part of our core principles of singing.

This episode is all about connection. What we're talking about is connecting the breath to the voice.

I hope you've already watched episode three and that was all about breathing and was teaching all of the fundamental ideas behind how we get the breath working first of all in order for us start processing the breath through. So, now we need to move this on and connect that breath that we've just been developing through to the vocal folds so that we can access the breath in the best way possible and manage it for us to be able to sing. So, first I thought I would give you some basic information about the voice box.

Inside the voice we have something called the larynx. It's usually only about this big. It feels like it's much bigger, but it's actually quite small - and inside the larynx is housed the vocal folds or the vocal cords, you may have heard of them before.

The vocal cords, or the vocal folds, are two muscles that come together in order for us to make sound and then wave together joining as the breath hits them in order to vibrate and for the sound to come through. The vocal folds are very clever. They can be long, they can be short, they can be fat, or they can be thin and it all depends on what we're singing, whereabouts we're singing in our range, to decide how the vocal folds are going to need to be.

So, in order for us to be in speech level, so we're in our speaking voice, low in our voice, then the vocal folds, most likely, will be short and fat. They'll be joining together in a short and fat way. As we go up through the voice and we go high into our voice, the vocal folds need to do something in order to do that. They need to get longer and thinner.

In order for us to get a higher sound, a higher pitch. And in order to do that, they vibrate faster, and they get longer and thinner. This is exactly the same principle as a guitar string. The lower strings on the guitar will be looser and then as you go higher, they'll get tighter and it's exactly the same principle as that. Also, if you just think about an elastic band, if you were going to put an elastic band, it's exactly the same principle there. That’s all the vocal folds are doing in order for us to do low notes or high notes. They need to be able to move.

So, we need to access the breath through to the vocal folds by connecting the two together for them to have the best possible root of air for them to vibrate at exactly what they need in order to be short and fat or long and thin, or somewhere in between, because you're gonna need a little bit of everything. They need to be flexible to do everything.

In the previous episode, I talked about ‘splatting’ - Singers, Please Loosen Abdominal Tension, and that is all about releasing the breath when we take the air in so the tummy is released, and the air just drops in.

So, in order to have the best connection, what we're trying to do is use the airflow, connect it through to the vocal folds and then ‘splat’ in between, loosen everything, let it all go so that we have full management of the air as we're connecting and then we release and we relax. And it's so important to release and relax in between.

I often think it's more important for you to work out how you're breathing out, than how you're breathing in. There's only a finite amount of air we can take in, but we can really manage how much we breathe out. And if you're going to do long singing phrases, if you're gonna do big songs, you're gonna need to really know how to manage your airflow, that you can get to the end of the phrases and you're not gonna run out of breath. So, in order to do that, we're gonna practice some more exercises.

We began with the non fricative sounds. That was the ‘sh’, ‘f’, ’s’ and ‘th’ sounds.

We did those in the previous episode when we just starting to get this air flowing. Now what we want to do is connect the airflow to the vocal folds. So what we're going to do is make sounds this time, but these are gonna be very low. We call them modal sounds. We're gonna keep them very low speech level. Not thinking about singing, we're just thinking about making a sound. And we're going to put our breath into our vocal folds using the pressure that we are going to give for the airflow with the time.

So, let's go through these sounds again. We started with the non fricatives, and we're gonna add the sounds on. So the ‘sh' sound is now going to become ‘sh’ If you can hear, I bring the vocal folds together to make sound.

Then I just go to air. So I want you to try that with me. Here we go.

Then the next sound we're gonna make is a ‘z’ sound. It goes like this.

You try?

And if you see my tummy, I'm pulling in sound in because it wants to help me pull the sound in.

And then it just keeps pulling as I'm releasing all my air. Then I ‘splat’, and we go again. The next sound we're gonna do is a ‘v’ sound, ‘v’ sound. Here we go.

And we splat the tummy.

Lovely. And the last sound, we're going to do that ‘th’, which is going to be like a 'the' sound. We're gonna do ‘th’.

And again, As you can see, with all those sounds, what I'm doing is bringing the vocal folds together, connecting the vocal folds, in a short fat position because I'm in my speech area, I'm in the low part of my voice.

And then I'm just going to air so the vocal folds will come together, and then go apart. Come together, then go apart. Okay? Let's give this a go.

So, we're trying to connect the air. One thing you could do. Let's just practice it, is do it without letting the air connect. Let's feel what that's like.

So, if you were to just do it without thinking about breath, if you just made the sound, you're gonna say, ‘v’ let's try that.

Do it again. Don't think about air.

If you see on me, my tummy's not moving and I can really feel it's all made in my throat.

Now I'm going to do it from my tummy. So, I'm gonna imagine that the sound is coming from here. I am starting with my tummy. I'm starting with the breath, I pull in and that makes the sound.

And then I release.

Hopefully, you can hear the difference between the two. One, which we would call off the breath, off the voice, and one which is fully connected sound. And when we're singing, we want fully connected sound all the time because that is the best way we can sing. We're not gonna be tired, we’re not gonna be using too much tension, creating any trauma, with a vocal fold, which is going to be using the body. It's going to be grounded and connected to the airflow, and you're gonna feel super strong, super stable with your voice, which is lovely. So now we're going to put these voiced sounds together in the same way that we did previously with the unvoiced sounds, and we're going to do it to a beat four, as we did before.

One, two, three, four.

I'm gonna do one, and then you're going to repeat after me on that beat of four. So, remember, when you are taking a breath, I'm making sound. As I am making my sound, you are breathing in being ready to go. For that four beats. Okay? Here I go. Wait and make take your breath now.

Your turn.

And again. Release the time. And again, don't forget to ‘splat’.

As soon as you finish, ‘splat’ and fill up.

On that ‘z' again. ‘Th’.

On the ‘th’. Let's go around them all one more time.

Don't forget to splat. And lastly on ‘th’.

Fantastic.

So I hope that you have found those easy and they've made sense in how we do those in relation to the unvoiced sounds that we did in the previous episode.

In the same way as I said before, practice this lying down. Practice them in bed before you go to sleep when you're really nice and relaxed. You can start with the unvoiced sounds, and then add on the voiced sounds when you feel more comfortable.

And just get into a nice role of doing these around and round, you'll soon feel very sleepy, and you'll be lovely and relaxed ready for bed.

See you next time.