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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Re: Please enlighten a simple mind on some matters

FamiliarStranger
Hi!

My name is Niels, I'm 16 years old and I'm from the Netherlands. I've had Raise Your Voice for about 3 months now, read it several times, been religiously doing the Isolation Exercises, and I've got a couple of questions.

First off, even though I know terminology isn't the most important thing, I feel as though it would help me tremendously if I knew the following. Jaime refers to head voice as the upper part of your register. Does this mean that head voice is always full voice?

Secondly, I've been keeping track of my progress through the isolation exercises, and I can't quite get my range to progress. My range as of now, is C2 to E4 in chest voice. (Falsetto goes to E5 usually)

However this E4 I can only keep up for about 1 second, and not very technically correct. Therefore, I've lately only been doing the TT's and the Sirens up to a D4. I can however use an E4 while singing most of the time, in particular the song starlight by slash, but it's still quite challenging.

My problem is I can't seem to get my full voice to go any higher without straining. I suspect the problem lies in using to much air, or too much volume. So if anyone could suggest a way to make this work better for me, that would be really awesome.

Another question I have on this matter is, that if I transcend tones at an E4, shouldn't I technically use my headvoice for these notes, contrary to the picture in RYV showing the resonance going down into your chest when going to full voice? Shouldn't I just get the full voice to just expand inside of my head?

Would be really great if someone would clarify some if not all of this for me.

Thanks,

Niels



Hi Niels.

Headvoice:

Headvoice really has to do with the placement of resonance.

Put one hand on top of your head, and put the other hand in the middle of your chest - about an inch below your throat.

Start with the lowest note you can and slowly slide upward. make sure you are singing loud enough to "make your teeth buzz" as Jaime says.
You will start out feeling vibrations in your chest but at a certain point, you will naturally slide your resonation up to your head.

You really only have two options: Full Voice or Falsetto.

Anytime you have Full voice, that means that your vocal cords are fully coming together. In Falsetto, the vocal cords are not actually touching.... you re pushing a lot of air and only vibrating the edges of the cords.
You can use Reinforced Falsetto, which is somewhere between Full Voice and Falsetto - you are thickening the vocal cords a bit, making them more stiff and drawing them closer together so the sound is more like Full voice and less "airy" sounding, but they still are not touching, as in Full voice.

So, anything you hear the terms "Chest Voice" and "Head Voice", just remember those have to do with RESONANCE.
It is one of the problems with untrained vocalists and even voice teachers not truly understanding the terminology. For 20 years I thought Falsetto and Head voice were the same - because I had a school music instructor use the two terms interchangeably.


Part of the thing with Resonance is - how do you want it to sound? I always sing with a Pharyngeal sound. I sing into the back/top of my head.... what that means is, everything I sing sounds like Dio powering his way through things.... or it sounds like an Opera Singer. (I had people laughing like mad one night when I was singing "You Spin Me Right Round" like Dio. It was hilarious.) So why do I do this? It cuts through the mix #1, and it gives me my own sound - OK, technically a Dio-ish sound - essentially I am the only local that I know of who does it, but I have a very recognizable voice because of it.

Just keep practicing, and do you use the "Messa Di Voce" exercise? (Start out in Falsetto and then slowly raise your volume as loud as you can - not your pitch. Swell the volume up and then back down as evenly as possible. What happens when you do this is you strengthen your ability to draw the cords together, so that you can hit the same notes in Full Voice.

I know this sounds weird, bu I'm not sure that I still have a falsetto - I can't seem to find it unless my voice cracks because I haven't warmed up enough. I sing everything in Full Voice.

I hope that helps some.


Tim

Re: Please enlighten a simple mind on some matters

Ok so I've been taken some time to think about your reply.
First off all thank you very much for writing all that down for me!
I've been still been having trouble getting past D4 without straining, or getting overly loud. Wether this is due to wrong breath support or bad placement I'm not sure, it just doesn't work for me yet. But I'll continue on practising.
I will definitely try the messa di voice exercise. And I hope it helps me get the high notes down. Thanks again!

Re: Please enlighten a simple mind on some matters

Sorry I haven't been in here much. Will start replying more, but Skullsplitter knows his stuff. It takes time to build those muscles, so hang in there. And the head voice term to me just means your higher range. It can be falsetto, mixed, or full voice in your upper register.

Re: Please enlighten a simple mind on some matters

Thanks for replying Jaime! It means a lot! Managed a breathy F4 yesterday so with practice there might be hope for me.

Re: Please enlighten a simple mind on some matters

I've seen people gain that F4 in a day, others in a week, others in a month, and others in a year. There is no shortcut to getting there. It's simple muscle training. Take your time, do NOT give up, be diligent, and you will improve:)

JV

Re: Please enlighten a simple mind on some matters

Ok, so after a few days of practicing the F4 is starting to become less elusive. But I have another burning question:

Is it possible to extend my falsetto range at all as well? So far I can only go up to about an F5 in falsetto. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm probably a bass as my lowest note is a C2

Re: Please enlighten a simple mind on some matters

Yes you can extend your falsetto range. All it takes is time.

Re: Please enlighten a simple mind on some matters

FamiliarStranger
Ok, so after a few days of practicing the F4 is starting to become less elusive. But I have another burning question:

Is it possible to extend my falsetto range at all as well? So far I can only go up to about an F5 in falsetto. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm probably a bass as my lowest note is a C2




Don't be in such a hurry.
Rome wasn't built in a day.

LOL

It took me 5 months to lose 80lbs. Think about that. 5 months of almost no carbohydrates.... and now I'm bench-pressing 200lbs 100 times per day.(It's called German Volume Training for those interested. 10 sets x 10 repetitions. It was developed by the coach of the German Olympic team in the 70's. You only raise the weight at the beginning of each week, and then you use that weight for an entire week.

Keep in mind, I'm 6'2" 280lbs and at one point was squatting right at 700lbs.... but that was a lifetime ago.

Man I hope I get that inch of height back.. I'm missing being 6'3". LOL

After a bout of serious depression... my fiance and I split up and I spent almost 18 months downing in sorrow... I had an epiphany, and it kicked my butt right into high gear.


Just keep training.

Do it slow, drink warm singer's tea while you're doing it.... or just warm tea. My experience has been the slower you train, the more progress you will have. It is just like lifting weights. Go slow and you incorporate (activate and use) more muscle fibers. So do your slides between pitches s-l-o-w-l-y. Once you build them up and can hit the notes strongly, then you can speed it up a bit, after all, you want your voice to be extremely flexible and fluid so you can "skip around" and hit any note in your range at any volume.


But as Jim Gillette says,"PRACTICE!!! PRACTICE!!! PRACTICE!!!"



Tim

Re: Please enlighten a simple mind on some matters

But I wanna be a rockstar now! XD
Thanks for all the advice everyone I'm sticking at it.

Re: Please enlighten a simple mind on some matters

FamiliarStranger
But I wanna be a rockstar now! XD
Thanks for all the advice everyone I'm sticking at it.



LOL
So be a rockstar now, and that means you need to train like a rockstar.
Just remember, the way to build muscle is regular training, and time under tension. It doesn't matter which muscles you are training - it all works the same. you'll get there, just keep at it.