THE VOICE CONNECTION
SOUND OFF

Welcome to The Voice Connection Sound Off; a forum for users of books like Raise Your Voice, Melody to Madness, The Ultimate Breathing Workout, and Unleash Your Creative Mindset, as well as a place for Vendera Vocal Academy members to interact.

This message board was created so that singers could come together and "sound off" to help support each other during vocal development and the creative process of unleashing the creative spark that occurs when writing and producing music. Currently, myself and vocal coaches Ben Valen, Ray West, and Ryan Wall are here to respond periodicially to your questions, with new vocal coaches coming soon. But, feel free to help each other too:)

This board is here for you to ask questions about my and my fellow coach's books, videos, and MP3 programs, as well as offer others help with our vocal techniques. You may also post videos of yourself and your band to share your music and ask for critiques.

Please refrain from negative comments, profanities, spamming, and inappropriate criticisms of vocal methodologies, vocal coaches, and singers. All negative posts will be deleted and subject to banning without question. I will not respond to negative posts, because, as Mark Twain once said, “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” With that said, positive criticism is welcome because that is how you'll grow as a singer during the training process.


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Alkis Tsapanidis
Dec 26, 2006 - 8:28PM
Problems

Hey all,

first of all, I'm gonna be honest: I am lazy, I have not been following the RYV routine at all, although I do the exercises every now and then, every time I start a session, I just end up singing instead.
Now, I have a few questions/problems. I think that I have changed the way I'm handling highs notes in full voice, I do not pull my chest voice anymore. However, while I can get much higher without hurting myself et cetera et cetera, I still get *a hell of a lot* of muscular tension in my neck, as well as a high larynx. Sometimes, after a good warmup, it happens less, but most of the time, I just strain. When this happens, I also completely lose the placement of my sound and I do not have much control over the voice, it can crack very easily, if I am not very careful and it obviously doesn't sound good either.
Here's an example of this:
http://download.yousendit.com/69AF7FD10452F9EA

Note the weak tone and breaking...
When it works right, I can just get higher by going into mixed voice without a break but it hardly ever works right.

Even when I was trying to do the RYV exercises normally, I could plainly not maintain the yawning sensation over a certain pitch, my muscles would just do otherwise anyway and I did try doing a shitload of bullfrogs (easy to do anywhere, since not many people are watching your throat most of the time ;-)).

Exactly the same effect kicks in when I transcend to full voice from falsetto in the same pitches, everything starts getting pulled upwards.

It feels as if my brain "knows" how to do a certain thing and will do it that way no matter what I actually want to do.

Now, the actual question: What can I do? I know that the *real* solution is to actually stop being a lazy git and actually start doing the program full time but is there another way of correcting my existing technique?

Thanks in advance to anyone who answers.

Cheers,
Alkis

j
Jaime Vendera
Dec 27, 2006 - 4:00PM
Re: Problems

Alkis, you need to email me personally. Do to new management, I cannot outright comment on particular song posts anymore, although I can answer questions on this board. You've been a good friend, so email me directly.

JV

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