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.


The Voice Connection - Sound Off
Start a New Topic 
Author
Comment
Tips for Getting the most out of RYV

Hi everyone,
Just wanted to share some things that may seem obvious to those who have "made it" but to others this advice is crucial.

Ignore this advice at your own peril!!!

read and re-read the instructions for the exercises in RYV, and listen to the audio examples and pay strict attention to every single detail. pay attention to the tone jaime uses and describes (heaviness, brightness, loudness etc)

re-read the book and re-listen to the audios every now and again because you will miss important details the first time through that you will pick up on the second and third time through

Misinterpretation is the biggest danger no matter how good the teaching method is. If you misinterpret what you are being taught you will train the wrong way and the results will either not come or will come slower.

when you have trouble, post your troubles on the forum here and INCLUDE AN AUDIO and even better a video of you doing your training so we can see what is going wrong. It's too easy to misinterpret terminology, hearing the issue is far more objective.

Do not mix and match things and do not try to modify what you have been told to do. the subtle things you think don't matter are usually the most important things in growing the voice.

CONSISTENCY IS KING!!! Many people stop training when they cannot do something 100%. how can you expect to gain the skill to do it 100% if you quit?

it is a process!

The best thing you can do is to forget about range and things like that and just do the exercises and focus on following the instructions as best as you can. Tone, pitch, control, flexibility, range, efficiency are all built in time and they will all come as a byproduct of good technique, and to build those things you must use the voice you have now.

When jaime says things like "just do what you can do and don't strain yourself to reach high notes" DONT IGNORE THAT like you always do! I know you ignore that! Stop ignoring these things that you think won't matter. Pay attention! Pay attention!

Instead of killing yourself to "hit that note" and then feeling like you failed, treat the entire workout as your warmup and detach that emotional investment and focus more on the technique rather than "how well you perform". Your warmup is not a 5 minute lip bubble, it's the entire vocal workout! this is why jaime wants you to sing for 30 minutes after the workout, because you have worked your voice and warmed it up at the same time for singing.

Don't expect to wake up and suddenly have a seamless voice, you must warm your voice up. if you hit some magic place in your voice yesterday after 3 hours of practice, then you will have to practice for 3 hours today if you have any hope of getting close because those 3 hours warmed you up thoroughly.

Be conscious and specific about your goals. I cannot tell you how many times someone has come to me saying "Man I would be so happy if I could just even touch the A4" and then in the first lesson they are hitting that note they've never hit before, and instead of being happy they say "but it doesn't sound good". hey getting it to sound good takes more time, 5 minutes ago you just wanted to hit the note and now you aren't even grateful for the improvement! be patient and congratulate yourself that you have improved, now the goal is to get it to sound good. :-)

before you can hit the note, you cannot hit the note. before you can hit the note good, you will hit the note bad. before you can hit the note good and easily, you will hit the note good and with difficulty.


and lastly, when something goes perfectly right and you know it, PAY ATTENTION TO HOW IT FEELS. That feeling is what you will want to try to get back into as much as possible once you know what it feels like.

what are your tips you'd like to add to this thread? list them below!

Phil Moufarrege
Grow-The-Voice.com
My Youtube Channel

Re: Tips for Getting the most out of RYV

Phil, this is why i like having you on here. Although you're a vocal coach, you genuinely come on here to share from the heart and not for personal promotion. So glad you wrote this article. I feel bad I am not on here more, but, writing, teaching, and the Academy are consuming my hours, ha-ha. Still, I try to sneak in when I can;)

Re: Tips for Getting the most out of RYV

Thanks for sharing! I am actually quite surprised at how you take the time to type out advice and reply to so many people! Quite an inspiration :)
Thank you!

Re: Tips for Getting the most out of RYV

Thanks for the kind words everyone!

Phil Moufarrege
Grow-The-Voice.com
Youtube.com/PhilMoufarrege

Re: Tips for Getting the most out of RYV

Great post phil. I think people would save so much time if they either got a few lessons with Jaime or just read this post once they got the book.