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
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Sing Higher without straining ....

There are two sets of muscles that operate your larynx: the outer muscles (which handle things like swallowing , chewing, articulating and yawning), and the inner muscles (which operate your vocal cords allowing them to stretch, adduct, thin and shorten). The outer muscles get used quite a lot. Think about how often you swallow. If the pitch-making muscles (inner muscles) are untrained it would make sense that they could easily be over-powered by the outer muscles which have been used every day of your life so far. This kind of muscle recruitment is a similar concept to a person with weak abdominal muscles who tries to do a set of sit ups and gets a sore neck -- The neck muscles are stronger than the abdominal muscles so they try to help with the activity. When you talk, you only use a limited pitch and dynamic range of tones, so it doesn't require a great deal of cord tension to create those tones. In order to create higher pitches your vocal cords must be able to achieve greater degrees of tension. Increased cord tension is what brings your cords back together more quickly each time they are blown apart when you need to sing a higher tone. If your vocal cords and the other inner muscles of your larynx are weak and uncoordinated, your outer muscles will be recruited to help; however, any outer muscle participation in the vibration process will only cause you vocal problems by pulling you off your speech-level. We use a system of specialized vocal exercises that help to retrain your neuro-muscular system to accept your voice’s functioning at your speech-level so that tension from the outer muscles will disappear. You will then be able to sing with release, a condition in which your voice works without your having to think about it, or do anything to it.....maggots

Re: Sing Higher without straining ....

Wow, Knobbler knows how to cut and paste;)

JV