Hello, I've had RYV for a few months now, and I do the exercises regularly. It has helped a lot. The micro breath, soft palate and breathing techniques helped a lot. I now don't strain when I sing.

However, I'm having problems with the siren exercise. I tend to get whiny when I singing notes starting from G4(G above middle C).

Clip: http://www.box.net/shared/16c69ary8k

The whinyness sounds very very bad. I can remove it, yes, but only if I shout. I've reread the exercise several times but I still don't get what is wrong. I just can't produce a natural tone like Jaime does in the siren exercise.

Any help?

I'm afraid that is straining. My advice is: when you go up, keep the sound as BIG as you can. Keep the back of your throat open. Keep your ribcage expanded. Also, try to focus the sound onto your soft palate.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the reply. I will try it out later. It's a fine line between keeping it "big" and shouting. How can I make sure that I'm not shouting?

It kind of sounds like your pushing chest voice to an uncomfortable level. I suggest you try the transcending tone exercise to be able to sing higher notes without pushing chest voice. :)

as you ascend the sound should be rising into your head... but you're keeping stuck in the throat. really focus on sucking the sound into your soft palate for the whole thing and then it should happen naturally.

Not to say that any of what has already been posted is bad advice, but back when I was pulling chest none of these tips helped me. I've copied and pasted a post I made on the voicecouncil back in Nov. 2007 on exactly what I went through to stop pulling chest:

"Pulling chest is the single greatest pitfall I've encountered in my short struggle with singing (8 months). It's all too familiar for me. Here we go:

- pulling chest = yelling = shouting = when you're really ****** off and you're yelling at the guy across the street who's breaking into your car at 2am.

- pulling chest feels like "muscling through it." It literally feels like you're lifting weights with your throat. It's a no-holds-barred yell; it's when you just go off on someone. We've all done it to some degree, and I'm sure most of us do it at least once a day.

- pulling chest for me had a TON of resonance in comparison to not-pulling chest (I'm a singing noob) which made me think that it was the correct way to sing.

- pulling chest sounds not-unpleasant when you're in your chest voice (below around E4 for males), but once you start muscling your way higher then that, it starts to sound REALLY harsh; like just a whole crap load of noise.

- pulling chest does get easier the more you do it, which I mistook for making singing progress.

- how do you avoid pulling chest AKA yelling? Well, this is where I could be totally wrong since I'm a singing noob, but I have a method that seems to make perfect sense, and that my vocal coach agrees with: I call it "following the breath." At ALL times, maintain a sensation of breathiness; notice I said "sensation." There's a balance you have to find, between how high the note is and how breathy you're getting. In my experience, higher notes require blowing more air AKA higher respiratory velocity (to quote Robert Lunte). You don't want to be really breathy, because that irritates the chords in a different way, but you want to maintain a slight amount of breathiness. Why?
Here's my theory: first of all, when you pull chest AKA yell, your vocal chords are squeezing together too hard (let's say 120% closure). Now, when you sing breathy, your vocal chords aren't closing all the way, (let's say 50% closure). Ideally, you want EXACTLY 100% closure, right? Well, here's my theory:

80% closure (slightly breathy) is better then 120% closure (pulling chest AKA yelling) AKA maintaining a slight breathiness is better then pulling chest. Basically, if your voice has any breathiness, you can't possibly be pulling chest, because your chords aren't closing all the way. Use the amount of breathiness in your voice as a way to gauge how close you are to 100% vocal closure. You want to keep the breath to an absolute minimum, but you do want to maintain it at ALL times, and you want to blow more air as you get higher in pitch (but keep it to a minimum). And of course each each day you sing you want to aim for less and less breathiness - 80% closure the first week, 81% the second, 82%, the third, etc. etc. etc. I just made up that schedule, but you get the idea.



Or I'm totally off-base, but it seems to be working for me and my teacher digs it.

One final note: if you're new to singing, or if all you've been doing is pulling chest, then if you're warmed up and haven't tired yourself out then pulling chest feels a lot better then it actually sounds to listeners, though you'll tire your throat out in minutes or even seconds."

8 months later, I've eschewed the "follow the breath" technique in favor of simply combining good support with a "big voice." "Support" will require it's own separate explanation; for me, it seems to be by far the single most important thing in singing. In fact, it seems to be the only thing that really matters.

I really hope some of this helps. Just keep it breathy - I was never able to pull chest AND keep it breathy. I know you want to eliminate the breath, but this whole "keep it breathy" thing is just a crutch to teach you what it feels like to NOT pull chest. Learning good support is what eliminated the breath for me, and made head voice stronger.

@James: I've tried doing that a bit, but it keeps breaking at F if I try to keep my tone breathy (albeit slightly). Seems like I'll just have to work on it more. Thanks for the help everyone.

I also need to add that I may be singing with too much resonance (aka pulling chest). Thanks for the tips. I always thought more resonance = better.

more resonance is better nigel, just proper resonance. Pulling chest causes you to keep the resonance in your chest, and since it wants to go higher it'll get stuck under your throat and make you strain. You want to keep really resonant, but allow the resonance to float on up from the chest into the head seamlessly.

It's more a matter of where you focus the resonances of your voice rather than whether it is breathy or not... Simply because you could in theory sing in the throat with a breathy voice...

Can anyone post a male clip using the same range but done correctly? Just curious to how it should sound.

Try doing the exercise at 70% instead of using your loudest voice. Power will come with time, but focus initially on bridging head and chest. Think of siren as a bridging exercise.

Another idea is to pinch your nose closed while you do the siren. If your placement is good it won't sound "nasally."

Hello nigel,

After listening to your clip, I think you're pulling chest and increasing the tension on your cords as you ascend on the siren. As is my understanding, volume on
on higher notes don't come from increasing vocal cord tension. In other words, just because the higher notes have a powerful resonant sound doesn't mean you should be increasing the volume. It comes from the resonance produce in the head cavity while not over-tensing the cords. So if you start on a vocal cord tension of say 9 (which is really loud and resonant), and try to maintain that tension along with proper breath support as you ascend to the higher notes,
your higher notes should have the same powerful, resonanting, non-whiny tone quality as your lower notes. If you strain, you've increased your vocal cord tension and you're forcing the volume.