Tag Archives: singing lesson

How to Boost Your Chest Voice and Why

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Incorrect use of the low rang is one of the most common issues that I run into in working with singers. Most women resist singing in their chest voice and tend to sing everything in their head voice. I believe this is because it’s easier and the quality of the tone is more ethereal and less masculine.

There are significant problems with this approach:

  1. The voice in the low range sounds weak and breathy
  2. It’s extremely difficult to sing low notes as they simply won’t come out!
  3. It’s impossible to sing loud in the low range. Volume decreases the lower you sing.
  4. The quality of the tone is often gravelly.

There can be other reasons for not wanting to use the chest voice, ones that are rooted in our emotions and psyche. I discovered this while helping public speakers develop a strong, resonant speaking voice.

A strong, yet relaxed speaking voice is deeply connected to self-confidence. Often those who speak with a breathy voice were told many times as a child to be quieter. They may have been told to not sing, or to just lip sync because they were judged to be inadequate singers. When working with these students and we touch on making their voices fuller, buried emotions are often released, revealing the deep connection between the voice and our emotions. Working on the voice acts as a catalyst to bring deeply rooted issues to the surface.

A full voice communicates clarity of expression and conviction. If it’s forced out it’s often perceived as revealing insecurity. A voice that is full, strong, resonant, and without strain, conveys an attitude of self-confidence that is not imposing and is without ulterior motive. This predisposes the audience to be more receptive to you and what you have to share.

For a singer, a full, resonant voice means a larger “bandwidth”, better suited to sharing energy and inspiration. The correct use of the chest voice ensures that inspiration is grounded, practical, and accessible by the audience. Fullness and volume are but one aspect of what you are offering to your audience. Remember to remain open to the flow of inspiration, which can only work unimpeded when you get the ego out of the way.

Learning to balance strength and self-confidence with selfless expression of inspiration is a constant process of fine-tuning and recalibrating our intentions as performers. The reward, however, is the growing, overwhelming realization that we are part of something much greater, and through singing, we can access this and share it with the world.

CHECK OUT MY LATEST VIDEO

How to REALLY Sing – How to Be a Charismatic Singer

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Let Music Talk to You

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Are you familiar with Star Wars? It’s a series of seven sci-fi movies that tell the story of a small band of heroes (the archetypal good guys) fighting against a huge army led by an evil emperor on a campaign to conquer and rule the galaxy. The first three movies that were released starting in 1977 are fun, witty, and full of action. The characters show depth of feeling, courage, and many qualities that  resonate with us. The later three movies, although a lot more engaging from the perspective of technology and special effects, lack depth of humanity, making the characters and their experiences feel stilted, almost fake. Although the pictures dazzle the audience with incredible special effects, one leaves the theater with a sense of emptiness. Yes, the movie tells a story, but it does so without much feeling, much like the experience one can have reading a history book.

This is similar to the experience of hearing someone sing with a gorgeous, well-polished voice who lacks the ability to convey feeling. Feeling, not a perfectly trained voice, is what touches the heart.

Recently, my wife and I were in Switzerland visiting family. While there, we attended a Christmas concert performed by a family of seven singers called Gruppo Vocale Famiglia Sala. We had heard them before, but this time I had a greater appreciation for their ability to feel the music deeply together, to enter a timeless zone where they feel and breathe together, where they and the music become one entity. The church where they sang was packed and yet it was pin-drop silent. I could feel that the audience was captured and transported on wings of inspiration.

We had a chance to meet them personally last year. Beside their incredible talent, we saw many qualities they shared: an innate, child-like joy, deep love for one another and for what they do, and a sincere desire to inspire people with their music. Not much room for ego there!

I sincerely believe that this is the secret to a magnetic performance: to humbly tune into the music and our fellow performers, to try to feel and breathe together, and to remain open to what the music itself is guiding us to do, instead of egotistically using the music to show off our talent.

Truly inspired music creates a strong flow of energy. If we tune into it, it can take us and our audience soaring on wings of inspiration, upliftment, and joy. One song can completely change us, if we are receptive.

The great American scientist and botanist George Washington Carver wrote “Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.” Using our talents in service to music, supported by our deep love and sincere desire to tune into the music, will unlock for us the secret to deeply inspiring and magnetic performances that can transform us, our audience, the entire world.

 

CHECK OUT MY NEW VIDEOS

1) How to Sing in the Low Range

2) How to Sing in the Low-Medium Range

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3) How to Improve Your Singing Tone

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 A Community of Voices

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Music has a power. It changes those who listen to it and those who sing and play it. J. D. Walters, an American composer, said “Music is so much more than entertainment. It doesn’t merely reflect a state of consciousness: It also generates it.”

I experience the truth of this statement every Tuesday night, when I rehearse with the choir. Even if I’m tired, had a bad day, or am in a bad mood, I always know that by the end of rehearsal, I’ll feel light, joyful, and energetic, sometimes even to the point where I have a hard time going to sleep afterwards!

I found an interesting study on www.chorusamerica.org. Here’s an excerpt:

“Chorus America’s study found that an estimated 42.6 million Americans regularly sing in choruses today. More than 1 in 5 households have at least one singing family member, making choral singing the most popular form of participation in the performing arts for both adults and children.

That’s good news because the study also found that singing in one of the 270,000 choruses in the U.S., such as a community chorus or a school or church choir, is strongly correlated with qualities that are associated with success throughout life. Greater civic involvement, discipline, and teamwork are just a few of the attributes fostered by singing with a choral ensemble.”

Music can do that. But the group magnetism also plays a very important part. A choir is like a small community. Its strength and positive influence on the people in it, as well as the audience, is directly related to the singers’ willingness to blend their voices and energies together to create a unified sound. As long as the desire to stand out and be noticed is present, the true spirit of group singing is absent. It’s only when each singer humbly offers their voice to become part of something much greater than any individual that the choir can become a powerful instrument to uplift and inspire.

Here’s a short interview with John Rutter, a British composer, conductor, editor, arranger and record producer, mainly of choral music, about the importance of choir:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm-Pm1FYZ-U

A lot of what’s happening in the world today seems to undermine people’s trust in one another, creating disharmony and division. Singing together is a simple, fun, and effective way of building bridges, fostering harmony, and creating a sense of community. Try it!

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NEW AND UPCOMING

I’m very close to publishing my new online course How to Sing High Notes Without Effort!

It’s a series of 18 videos with instruction and guided exercises to naturally and effortlessly expand your vocal range, and overcome once and for all fear of high notes.

I will send out more information and samples soon. Stay tuned!

 

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!

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.