Category Archives: Tips for Singers

How to Deal with Stumbling Blocks

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In almost every piece of music there is at least one passage that challenges our vocal skill (and sometimes our patience, too!). Many singers believe that by just repeating the song over and over, they will eventually overcome the difficulty and be able to sing it flawlessly. Unfortunately, that’s almost never true!

How are we to deal with tricky passages?

  1. First of all, sing that passage and try to identify which note or group of notes are weak and why. Maybe they’re high, or you’re singing a word that contains a vowel that you’re particularly uncomfortable with, or they are in a challenging area of your range.
  2. Whatever the reason might be, isolate that note (or group of notes) and focus on one at a time. Practice holding that note on the particular sound in the word you have to say. For example, if you’re singing the word “sky”, hold the note on the sound “aahh”, because that’s actually the main sound in that word (funny mysteries of the English languages!).
  3. While you hold the note, make sure that:
    • You’re supporting your breath correctly from the diaphragm and belly muscles. You should feel that your belly muscles are engaged while singing.
    • Your throat is relaxed. If not, relax it consciously while you hold the note. When you do, you will notice a progressive improvement in the quality of the sound.
    • Your mouth is open and round.
  4. While holding the sound, as you hear an improvement in the quality of your sound, pay particular attention to your feeling in the throat. That’s the most important thing to focus on , because you will have to recreate that same feeling every time you sing that note, until you’re able to master the passage without thinking about it.
  5. Add back the consonants of the word in question and make sure that you can still place it correctly.
  6. After working on each “problematic” note separately, put them back into the context of the whole passage and see if you notice an improvement. In my experience, there’s always an improvement after completing this process.
  7. If necessary, repeat this sequence several times, until that passage is no longer an issue.

Describing this procedure takes longer than going through it; much less than repeating the whole song over and over. The difference is that, by following this practice, you will actually SOLVE the problem.

Being able to practice efficiently is one of the most important things a musician can learn. Too much time is wasted repeating the same mistakes and imperfections over and over, reinforcing them, instead of getting rid of them.

More importantly, spending time to make a song absolutely flawless, from the technical standpoint, makes it possible to perform with your mind completely free to focus on what really matters: sharing inspiration, energy, and consciousness without impediments. That’s what singing and music are really all about.

 

I’m on AMAZON and iTUNES!

Last month I announced that my course, Singing for Busy People, is now available on Amazon. Now I’m happy to let you know that the same course is also available on iTunes!

What is it?

The course consists of downloadable audio files with a different vocal exercise for every day of the week. The recording will guide you through the practice of the exercises, giving you special instructions, reminders, and addressing the most common issues students often run into.

This is my first time on Amazon and iTunes, and what I’m learning is that the more positive reviews a product has, the more likely people will buy it.

Therefore, I’d really appreciate it if you were to go check it out and, if you feel so inclined, write a short review. This will help other aspiring singers find, and benefit from, Singing for Busy People!

Click here for the course on Amazon

Click here for the course on iTunes

THANK YOU!

Sing the Blues Away

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What is happening in the world today?? While I don’t pay much attention to the news or watch TV, I feel a growing sense of fear and anxiety sweeping the world. My family in Europe tells me that this feeling is even more tangible there.

Current attitudes and events make world brotherhood seem more and more like an unreachable dream. Hearing of so many acts of violence causes many people to fall into despair, fear, and hopelessness. Many are asking “Is there anything that I can do to make difference? If so, what?” People are looking for tools to find inner peace for themselves and to share it with others. We may think that our individual efforts have little impact on the world’s madness, but the power of good is much stronger than evil.

As singers, we are powerful instruments for change. Certainly, we’ve all experienced the power of music to deeply affect our moods, our energy level, our behavior, and our consciousness. Just a few seconds of listening to an uplifting song can dramatically change our state of mind, from worry, anger, sadness, grief, to confidence, calmness, and joy. Just a few minutes of listening to positive music can alter our whole perspective, changing how we feel about virtually everything that’s going on in our lives. We have to choose the right kind of music, because just as there is music that uplifts, there is also music that can, and does, bring us down. (Interesting fact: in the early 1940’s, BBC radio banned a popular song called “Gloomy Sunday” because of the many suicides associated with it.)

If listening to music has this much power over us, how much more power is there in singing it? Singing positive, uplifting music, while striving to express high ideals and positive qualities, like love, joy, understanding and forgiveness is a sure way to help people, to give them hope and inspire in them all the beautiful qualities that bring happiness to us and those around us. Furthermore, it brings an intense feeling of joy to the singer, because, as a wise teacher once said, “The instrument is blessed by that which flows through it.”

Perhaps, our singing won’t change the world, but it can uplift and change people for the better. And that’s no small thing!

Don’t Just Sing, Inspire!

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I can tell a good movie by how uplifted I feel afterward. With really good movies, the feeling of upliftment and expansion can last for hours, or even days. Lincoln was such a movie for me. I saw it at the Grove Theater in Los Angeles. I was struck by the fact that, unlike any other movie I had seen there, at the end of the movie nobody was in a hurry to leave. Almost everybody sat through the credits quietly. There was a tangible feeling of stillness pervading the theater. I distinctly remember the sense of deep love and harmony I felt for everyone I saw when leaving the room. Quite a contrast from the usual “push-and-be-pushed” that you experience when leaving a crowded movie theater!

I reflected afterwards as to why some movies have that effect on us. I think that a movie inspires us when it helps us expand beyond our mental horizon and see things from a broader perspective. Mere sentiments and emotions cannot do that. The same is true for singing. If all we do is express ourselves in a purely emotional way at the level of jealousy, anger, hatred, or other base emotions, the effect on our audience will be shallow and short-lived. Only when we share the higher qualities of love, forgiveness, compassion, beauty, and joy through our voices, does our singing become a powerful source of blessing for us and for our audience.

I think that many singers today focus too much on developing an impressive technique, and too little on doing what a true artist should do: inspire and uplift people. If you can hit all the right notes perfectly, but you don’t inspire, your performance will impress your audience, but it won’t bring about any lasting changes. The next day they will just move on with their lives, as if nothing had happened. If, on the other hand, you touch their hearts and souls with your singing, you could change their lives with just one song! Such is the power of music: in just three minutes you can change people’s state of mind and consciousness. All it takes is to consciously sing from your highest self to theirs.

DO YOU SING IN A CHOIR OR WOULD LIKE TO JOIN ONE?

Since I’m working with so many choir singers, I’m creating a special section on my vocalbliss.net website where singers and aspiring singers can find resources to improve their singing. There will also be a section with a special curriculum of vocal training for brand new singers who want to get started but have never sung before. Please email me if you have any suggestions for things that you think it would helpful to include in this section. Thanks!

When Less Is More

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Last Saturday I went to Sacramento with my wife and some friends to see a live performance of Beethoven’s monumental Ninth Symphonie. If you don’t know Beethoven’s Ninth, it’s considered one of the major masterpieces of classical music. Beethoven composed it toward the end of his life and personally conducted the premiere when he was completely deaf! One of the revolutionary innovations in this masterpiece is the introduction of the choir and four soloists singing the famous “Ode to Joy” in the fourth movement.

We were seated in the second tier fairly high up, pretty far from the orchestra and the singers, and yet the sound was crystal clear. I was especially struck by the voices: even though the singers weren’t using a microphone, it sounded as if they were only a few feet away.

The beauty, clarity and power of these singers made me appreciate even more the value of training the voice to place the sound to be as full and loud as possible and to shape the throat and mouth to allow the sound to fully resonate. Properly produced sounds are not just loud but project, reaching the farthest row of listeners in the room.

When we hear such a powerful sound, we may be deceived into thinking that it took a lot of effort and strain to produce. Quite the opposite! It’s only when we learn to relax and let go of unnecessary tension that we’re really on our way to singing with a full, resonant sound. It’s one of many of life’s paradoxes!

In this article you will find helpful tips, including a tutorial video, on how to develop your voice to be fuller and more resonant without effort. Interesting that the two articles have almost the same title!

High Notes Are Not Hard!

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by Ramesha Nani

opera singer

One of the main goals of every singer is to extend their vocal range. Too many singers, alas, pursue this goal by straining and eventually ruining their voice. This is partly due to the many bad examples that can be found among the so called “professional” singers, as well as misinformation found on the internet. Of all the ways that one can sing, there’s only one that is physiologically correct and that fosters vocal health and longevity: by relaxing and expanding, rather than by squeezing and tightening.

Is it possible to sing high and even very high notes without strain? Absolutely! In fact, it is the only way, if you don’t want to ruin your voice. Here’s how you do it:

The ability to sing high notes without effort depends on the ability to access your high range, called “head voice”, or “head register”. In order to access it, it’s important to:

  • Stay relaxed and not push the voice
  • Open and expand the throat
  • Open the mouth wide
  • At first, decrease the volume. It’s harder to get into your upper range when singing loud. Once you know how to do it, you can sing loud or soft, it won’t matter.
  • Don’t be impatient! It might take time to develop and strengthen the muscles that operate the head voice. Some people don’t ever use them until they take on voice training.

One of the best ways to start is to hit and hold some relatively high notes singing in falsetto, and then gradually open the mouth and expand the throat. At first, your high notes will probably sound airy and thin. That’s absolutely normal. Keep practicing! As you do that, you will notice that your sound becomes deeper and more robust. Maybe still airy, but less thin. Gradually, you will strengthen your throat muscles as the sound becomes stable and strong, more and more similar to a “real” voice. Tip: practice on all the vowels (eee, ay, ah, oh, ooo). You need all of them to be able to sing a song!

I created a couple of videos in the past showing this process. Click here and here to watch them.

Don’t be impatient as you practice and learn this technique. It may take a while to get to the point where your voice is strong and loud in your upper range. However, in my experience, this is the safest way to learn to sing high notes without effort or strain.

That Pesky “eee” Sound

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by Ramesha Nani

A problem that plagues many vocalists is finding the correct placement for the vowel “eee”, especially when singing in the upper range. What makes “eee” such a tricky one?

In order to say “eee” the back of the tongue has to be lifted close to touching the roof of the mouth. This position of the tongue works well in the lower range, but as you move up the range it does not provide enough space to prevent the voice from cracking and sounding squeaky.

As weird and uncomfortable as it might feel, the best technique is to learn to say “eee” with your throat expanded. This requires training. The feeling is similar to when you’re yawning, but you don’t want the person in front of you to notice, so you keep your mouth shut and yawn only with the back of your throat. Although the back of tongue will still be lifted, it won’t be touching the roof of your mouth, allowing you to open your mouth a little, making your high notes more resonant and stable.

How to Do It

  1. Open your mouth, relax your throat and make the sound “aww”.
  2. Without changing position or closing your mouth, make the sound “eee”. Notice how your tongue lifts up a little, without touching the roof of the mouth.
  3. Listen to this recording demonstrating the sound of “eee”.

Am I Doing It Right?

If you want to make sure that you’re following these instructions correctly and getting the proper results, feel free to send me a quick note with an mp3 recording of your “eee’s” for feedback: info@vocalbliss.net

Good luck!

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Ready to bump it up a notch?

  1. Try a FREE Introductory Singing Lesson on Skype and get a feel for it. 

  2. Or sign up for my Singing For Busy People online course on Udemy and save $77!

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Questions? 

Feel free to contact me about any singing-related issue or doubt that you might have. I will do my best to help you  find a solution for it.

Everybody Has a Voice!

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by Ramesha Nani

SAM_1049 - CopyIn 2007 I was hired as a music teacher at a spiritually-oriented, alternative college. I enjoyed teaching there; the class was small – around ten students – and they all seemed special people to me. They were exceptionally centered and wise, especially for their age.

My assignment was twofold: teach them about the role that art, and music in particular, has to uplift humankind, and teach them to sing as a small choir. We focused on learning simple songs. At first we all sang melody, then progressed to two-part songs to get them accustomed to singing different parts.

One of the students (whom I’ll call Chris) seemed to have a particularly hard time carrying the melody on any song, which became even more evident when we started to sing two parts. I tried to encourage him, but I didn’t have much hope that he could ever learn to sing. He wanted to sing so much, and he loved the music so deeply that I felt I had to do whatever I could to help him.

We decided that we would meet thirty minutes before the beginning of each class, at the end of lunch time, to practice together the songs that we would be singing later with the rest of the class. I gave him some tips for how to better use his voice and corrected his pitch every time he lost it (which was very often!). My overall plan was to make him feel more comfortable using his singing voice. We discovered that Chris had a beautiful bass voice, so we worked on enhancing those gorgeous low notes while also accessing his higher range. Amazingly, he managed to accomplish this almost immediately. Expanding his vocal range made him capable of holding the pitch more and more often, which gave him the confidence and belief that yes, he could learn to sing!

By the end of the school year, Chris had made so much progress that he started to lead chanting sessions, learned the bass parts to many songs, and even sang a small solo at a concert. During the time that we worked together we developed a deep and lasting friendship.

As his singing improved, his love for music grew, too. After college he took cello and piano lessons.

A few months ago I was deeply moved when Chris got married and asked me to be his best man. He and his wife sang together a song that’s part of the wedding ceremony.

Chris’s story helps me remember that everybody has a voice! Sometimes it’s buried under bad vocal habits, tension, or emotional fear of using it (if someone in our past was critical of our singing or even speaking up, it can makes us unconsciously hide our voice). Chris expressed this beautifully in a testimonial that he wrote for me after college:

“Ramesha has helped me to develop as a singer. He has supported me and continuously encouraged me, without which I might not have been able to uncover the joy of singing.

Projecting vs. Pushing

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Over the last couple of months we’ve been working with our choir on Christmas music. The Christmas concert is one of the highlights of Holiday Season here at Ananda Village where we live, and a lot of energy and many hours of rehearsal go into it.

This is also the only concert throughout the year where we don’t perform only Ananda music, but we branch out to other music, especially Haendel’s Messiah. For those of you who might not be familiar with it, the Messiah is a monumental masterpiece that tells the story of Christ’s life in music. We usually perform only two or three songs from it, and people love it.

Unlike most Ananda music, which we’re used to performing, the Messiah songs are more challenging, vocally. There are more high notes, rhythmically challenging phrases, and the choir is often required to sing forte (loud) for extended periods of time. For this reason, we spent a lot of our warm-up time working on how to project the voice without strain. What’s the difference between projecting and pushing one’s voice? Is it possible to sing loud and project the sound without pushing?

Projecting the voice implies good placement. You place the voice correctly – which means that your sound is full, resonant, but relaxed – and then increase the air pressure by actively engaging your abdominal and diaphragmatic muscles to support the air flow. No extra tension should be placed on the throat by squeezing or tensing it. If the voice is not placed correctly, however, and you increase the air pressure, you will still get a louder sound, but because of the lack of a stable placement, the sound won’t be pure and you will have to tense or squeeze the throat to adjust it.

It’s like a radio that is not perfectly tuned to a radio station. You hear some music along with static. If you want to hear the music better you can either increase the volume (=pushing), or fine tune the radio to the radio station, until all the static is gone (projecting through correct placement).

Long Tones Exercise

One of the best ways I know to improve the quality of your sound is to practice long tones:

Pick a low note in your range that you can hit easily and sing any vowel (ee, ay, aah, oh, oo); hold the note long enough to give yourself time to gradually relax your throat more and more as you keep singing.

Experiment with how much you can relax and still be singing. If you relax too much, your voice will sound weak and “breathy”.

Practice with different vowels and different notes; go up a half step at a time and repeat the same procedure.

As you hold your notes and relax, you might notice that your voice will wobble a little. This happens because you’re gradually releasing tension from your throat and relying more on your diaphragm for support (this is supposed to happen).

Practice this exercise in different areas of your range.

In general: don’t try to sing very loud until your vocal placement is really good. When your sound stays consistently full and resonant, whether you’re singing high or low, softer or louder, then you’re ready to work on “turning up the volume”. As you do so, make sure to not tense your throat, but work with increasing the pressure from your belly muscles.

Increasing Your Vocal Range

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Rameshanani_croppedby Ramesha Nani

People often ask me how they can increase the range of their voice. While range can be worked on and increased, it’s actually more a matter of discovering the range inherent in each individual voice. All that is necessary is to learn how to access that range.

Our voice has two main “sections” called registers: the low register, also called chest voice, which most of us use when we speak; and the high register, called head voice, which some of us (mostly men) are completely unfamiliar with.

In trying to develop their high range, singers usually have the experience of hitting a “ceiling” they can’t go beyond unless they push and force their voice up. This is accompanied by tension, discomfort and, if continued long enough, a sore throat and possible loss of the voice.

How to proceed?
Before I talk about what you can do to develop your higher range, I want to mention that these are merely suggestions to give you an idea of what is possible. However, if you want to learn the delicate art of switching from one register to the other seamlessly, it is recommended that you find a voice teacher and have one-on-one sessions. A good teacher is capable of hearing even the subtlest nuances of your voice and guiding you through a process that can otherwise be difficult and frustrating.

  • At the beginning, use an arpeggio exercise (1-3-5-8-5-3-1) rather than a scale.
  • Start on a low note (typically low A) and move your way up a half step at a time.
  • Sing fast and soft. This will prevent tension in the throat.
  • The first note is the most important: make it as full as you can, by enunciating the vowel very clearly.
  • As you go higher, try to consciously create a round sound by expanding your throat (like when you yawn) but in a relaxed way.
  • When you are approaching what seems to be the top of your range, sing very softly, open your mouth wider by lowering your jaw, and stay as relaxed as possible. Your voice may sound “airy” and weak, almost like falsetto. It will naturally become fuller with practice, as long as you don’t push to make it sound fuller.
  • Stop as soon as you feel pain or discomfort.

It may take some time before you’re able to switch between registers seamlessly. Be patient! The most important point is to practice without tension and to not overdo.

Watch this video showing you how to develop your upper range:

 

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