What Is Singing All About? How to sing? Some tips and answers..

[liauce 0]

Introduction and guidelines of this Topic! Please read and try to adhere so everyone can benefit

 

Hi first of all let's make clear the direction for this topic so everyone can benefit ok?

 

Things we discuss include, How to Sing, Singing techniques, Singing pop songs, Singing classical songs, Singing in choirs (choral singing), different ranges of singers (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass), styles of singing (soloistic, ensemble, broadway, jazz, pop, rock, accapella), common questions e.g. how not to get a sore throat, expanding of singing range (how to sing higher or lower), finding your singing range and anything related to singing etc.

 

What you should post: Questions and answers to problems or general tips and discussions relating to the above

[liauce 0]

Hi Ok. Let me put my contribution in a separate post from the Introduction and guidelines.

 

Today I will be addressing a common problem faced by many singers. That is a sore throat. Below are some common reasons why people get a sore throat and the solution to these problems.

 

1. Dehydration --> This is obvious, Drink plenty of water and do not scream or shout

 

2. Screaming or shouting or singing excessively loudly --> there is a correct way to shout and a correct way to sing excessively loudly, and that is by engaging your diaphragm to ?punch? the sound out. How do you do that? Lie down on a mat or on your bed and place your palm just below your rib cage. The bottom of your rib cage is shaped like an inverted ?V?. At the vertex of this V is also the center of your diaphragm muscle and where you should exert your force when singing. To see how your diaphragm moves, just inhale and exhale gently without any tension whatsoever in the shoulders, throat or neck and feel it rise (inhalation) and fall (exhalation). This can go on to become a whole topic, I?ll thus address this another time. If your problem persist, you may want to continue reading point 3 which deals with what you need to do to your throat.

 

3. Tension of the throat --> this occurs because you are trying to sing a high note, or trying to sing very loudly or just tense. If this occurs because of singing high notes, or loudly, then please refer to point 2. Now if this occurs because you are tense, then there is a way to release the tension. A tense throat is only one where the throat is shut tight and you are trying to force air in. Now one way to see if your throat (which is the back of your mouth) is open, is to stand in front of the mirror and open your mouth wide (3 fingers spacing) and see if you can see your uvula. If you don?t know what?s a uvula check dictionary.com. If you can see it dangling freely and not resting on your tongue (which means your tongue has to be raised and blocking the passage way in order for that to happen), then your throat is open. If not it isn?t. A common problem with many people including singing coaches is that we tend to equate a big open mouth with an open throat. However, if your mouth may be open at the front, but not at the back. Meaning your jaw may be wide open but the passage way is blocked, thus sound cannot flow freely and there is abrasion against your larynx (voice box) thus you get a sore throat. Now, I?ve yet to touch on how to open that throat. If you can identify when its open and when its close, then just try to relive the same experience that causes it to be open. Some experiences include, yawning, getting ready to swallow something huge, or just having trained to lower the back of your tongue at your whim and fancy. To solve the problem you have to go progressively from identifying the experience to creating it. This will take time and a conscious effort. It sounds difficult, no but its actually very easy. Think of how many times your have yawned in your life.

 

I will stop here. If you have further questions pls direct them to this topic. I will try to be of help.

[OCAC 0]

Thanks liauce, this is really interesting, I love singing in choirs and did so infact this morning for our harvest service. But the bacis technique are the same if you want to sing on your own or in a choir. So I am really looking forward to readon more about the technical and physiological side of singing. I think that is the area where I lack most. I know, and practice good warming up techniques, including efforts to relax the whole body, before starting to sing, but I only do this because one of the conductors used to do that with us. So I do it, know it is good from practice, but don't always know, why (physiologically). She also had some fantastic tricks for our Soprano's, when trying to reach the higher notes, she said a sign should flash up in the nape of your neck saying "It's fun to sing."So, please continue this series, I am looking forward to learning a lot.Thanks

[romy 0]

i have voice like a frog. and i can't help myself. i gues god didn't wanna me sing.have a nice day!

[liauce 0]

Singing and Its Psychology

 

Thx OCAC for your question, I hope I answered some here.

 

Unlike other instruments like the piano or guitar, your voice is inside you. Ironically, what's inside you is more difficult to feel than what's outside you. For what's outside you can feel with your skin, through pressing, through feeling pressure, through looking at what to press and even through hearing the sound you produce on the guitar and piano.

 

You noticed I mentioned "hearing". With your voice as your instrument, what you hear and you think you are producing is not actually what your audicence hears, unless you sing into a mic and hear from the monitor speakers which then again only mean 50% of what you hear is what the audience hears.

 

Try this - if you have not done this before try this out. Find some way to record your speaking and singing voice onto a casette tape or a MD or into your computer through a mic and then play it back. What do you notice? I'm sure you may even be freaked out at first. What you recorded and played back seems so different from what you have been hearing. Is there scientific evidence for this? The answer is yes! Your body has many resonating chambers of which includes your phraynx, cheeck bones, mask of the face, nasal and oral cavity and even your chest. The sound that your vocal chords produce will be resonated in these chambers.

 

(In fact, a proper way to sing loudly is to channel all the sounds into the these chambers so that you sound louder rather than only using your oral cavity) Sound travels at different speeds through solid, liquid and gas (3 states of matter and yes sound does travel through solid, that is why soundproof studio rooms have double glazed vacuum glass doors)

 

Therefore what you hear comes directly from yourself to your ears through the vibration of your body and skin while what others hear is transmitted through the air from the vibration coming from your body. Simply but what others hear is body >> air >> ear and what YOU hear is body >> air >> ear AND body >> ear.

 

I'm sure that you have realised from the previous article that you are able to control a few things in the singing mechanism, that is the lowering of the tongue, the pressurising of the area where your 2 halfs of the rib cage meet and the opening of your jaw. But how do these relate to your larynx, your diaphragm and your throat? Indirectly they do. e.g. lowering of the tongue is controlling the tongue muscle but not your larynx, yet if done correctly it helps to lower your larynx (place a finger at your adam's apple, that's the position of your larynx)

 

Therefore Singing IS psychological

 

How do I then use psychology to the advantage of singing better?

 

Have you experienced a time when you felt sad and spoke to your friend over the phone and your friend could tell without looking at your face. Or have your conductor or coach ever told you to smile when you sing so that you produce a bright and happy sound? Indeed how you feel translates into how you sound.

 

Therefore to produce a bright forward, ringing, inspiring sound means you have to smile, raise your eyebrows and your cheekbones. However, wouldn't it be weird to do such actions on stage. Yes. Therefore there must come a point after sufficient training where such techniques become second nature and internalised. Meaning you only have to smile slightly on stage without looking weird with an over exaggerated smile to produce just the same extremely bright and cheery sound. How do you do that? Here comes the psychological part. For psychology in itself is too hollow and intangible you need to do all those exaggerated smiling as mentioned previously first! Then you start to think of your body producing sound waves that emit like a rainbow from the tip of your nosebridge (this is where your sound should focus at) and flowing out with ease like a set of notes. Imagine the colour and beauty of these notes just like you are watching a cartoon with birds chirping and animations of musical notes emitting from their cute tiny beaks. This imagination translate to sending the vibration up there. Since you have no buttons to press and no internal anatomy, then this is the only way to send the sound up and out, into a heaven-like lightness and beauty. So putting into perspective what do I mean when I mentioned about not being able to feel tangibly like playing a piano and yet having to smile excessively which is obviously a very concious feelable thing. The smiling is only to aid in your imagination and feeling because the smiling in itself is so indirect. Using muscles to smile does not specially activate certain muscles in your body that move sounds upwards or change the quality of sounds as if your body is such a straight forward instruement where there is a spring, valve and string to everything. No there isn't! Its about feeling and things insides your body that happen but are hard to explain. If fact as a singer, there is not really much need to know all these. To sing a happy sound just look and think happy. =)

 

IN conclusion

 

Therefore singing is a mix of things you can feel tangibly and things that are just emotions are imaginations. Of the things that you can feel tangibly, they do not have a direct and straightforward cause and effect on your anatomy that leads to you producing that sound, rather that kind of sound is the side effect of the cause (your doing of the tangible actions like smilling excessively)

[biscuitrat 0]

I know that when I sing, I want to either be standing or sitting up straight to get airflow. Always open your mouth, to the point of yawning, but not quite there. You want to project your voice. Never sing from your throat, let the air come from your stomach. It may sound weird, but if you can work air out of you with your diaphragm, you should be all right. Everyone has a set range that they can sing at any given time. Don't overextend yourself. For example, I'm a soprano - I can manage alto, but tenor or bass would be out of my grasp. However, I'm extremely comfortable with mezzo-soprano. And I think lastly, ornamentation that a lot of singers use today isn't exactly necessary. It does show how powerful or flexible your voice is, but if you can't do it well, don't do it. It's not necessary to hear moaning and groaning. Also, vibrat(t)o is not something you can just force out of you - wiggling your chin and shaking your throat will only ruin the quality of your sound.And yeah, that's all.

[Becca 0]

I can't sing either. I was hoping I could but I have too much of a baby voice. SOmeone ttold me I was soprano and like wtf , I don't know all that stuff lol.! I use to go to this music thing and they gave us singing lessons but I was never good at it.Some people also sing from their noses I don't know what activates it but it sounds squished and aweful and I do it sometimes...why do people do it ?

[biscuitrat 0]

Oh god, a lot of people sing from their noses. But hey, if you want to sound like a dying cow, by all means continue.And I'm sure you'd be great. I'm still mastering not going flat on some of the high notes in my songs...or hitting them at all :/

[Jesse 0]

ok general reply to the above. there are many different types of singing however when doing so you can be a singer or a voal musician. the difference is the way you sing. singers sing without much technique and sound horrible sometimes while a vocal musician can sing a wider variety and know how to make their voice sound so that it fits that style. most people dont know that. im in my college choir and we sing in a lot of different languages its really fun. singing in a choir can really help you learn a whole new vocabulary such as tenuto which is a long line above a note telling you to hold the note out for its full value. a staccato marking is a dot above a note telling you to make the notes shorter and detached leaving space between each of the notes. there are also different terms for saying loud, very loud, semi loud, semi quiet, quiet, very quiet and so on and so forth. there is much more to singing than meets the eye its not all just singing notes in front of you or knowing the melody to a song that you like. there are also what are called undertones or harmony parts that most of the time you dont pay attention to. when i listed to music because i have been in choir for so long i also learn to listen for the harmony and undertones and all my friends think im crazy because i'll sing that instead of the melody. since im a soprano in the choir i always have the melody it seems therefore being able to have the harmony and be out of the spotlight is sometimes very nice for me. if there are any other questions...post them i'll try to read them...ttyl..oh yea and btw people who sing from their noses dont know how to open up and sing from their diaphram. if u want to know how to stop that i know it sounds silly but do it anyway sing a straight note...then hold your finger to your nose...when you dont feel vibration...shape the vowles and you'll hear a HUGE difference...if you want to get ahold of me i have msn @ kjrayburn12@hotmail.com

[biscuitrat 0]

Three or four little things:1) Vibrat(t)o usually comes naturally if you open up and sing.2) You can pick up tenutos, marcatos, dulces, szforzandos and all of those lovelies from any music teacher. Example - I learned them from piano first, and then reinforced them in band to use them in singing.3) Sopranos don't always get the melody. A lot of choir songs combine alto and soprano to make a melody and have the bass and tenor as harmony or odd little things like that.4) It really does help to listen to each individual part of music so you can listen for subtle changes in music. Since I play trombone in my band, we often provide the bass for the rest of the band while the higher pitched instruments carry the melody. Never underestimate your tenor or bass lines!

[liauce 0]

Singing From the Nose??

 

During the early stages of training, one may inevitably sing from the nose. However, that is not desirable for performance. To sing from the nose on purpose like a chipmonk is way off. But to sing from a nose because you are trying to place the voice correctly then there is nothing really wrong. Actually singers are supposed to place the voice (placement is the place the voice emanates or resonates from) between the eyebrows at the tip of the nose bridge and not on the nose itself. This will enable you to get a bright, forward, ringing and even a full operatic sound. As long as the sound is pure, it has potential to be channeled by the diaphragm. So if you find yourself singing from the nose, use hand actions or pinch your nose bridge to tell yourself to send the sound all the way up instead of halfway up. You can better do this by using more of your diaphragm ie. intensifying to muscle just below your rib cage.

 

When you breathe you breathe as deep as possible, way below your belly buttons. This only means your lungs are expanding and not that you are breating into your stomach cause that is physically impossible. Thus you pressurize the diaphragm area using adominal muscles (but in actual fact your are activating your diaphragm muscles too) and send the sound up and out through your nose bridge. Another reason why people may sound nasal or singing from the nose is because they are overdoing what I just described above. If you push too hard with your diaphragm your sound will lose its focus. The focal point of your sound is once again your nosebridge. The kind of focus you should feel is the vibration suspended (sound suspended) just behind your nosebridge, yet it is not protruding out. Why do we do that? so that you sound natural and not obstrusive.

 

Regarding Vibrato

 

Never try to do this. Never force it. The idea is one fine day, when everything becomes so natural, when you become so powerful, it WILL happen.

 

Vocal Techniques For the POP / Chorus / Classical Singer

 

My answer is that it is for everyone. The vocal technique will never be different, only the way you choose to stress on the sound. eg. when you sing new age pop ballads you don't put as much empahsis on producing thick rich vowel sounds as when you sing classical arias. However, your diaphragmatic support, placement, and tonguing technique remain the same.

[LessThanThree 0]

I wish I could sing...but it's okay, I play drums/guitar.

[Sprnknwn 0]

I think those errors (dehydration, screaming, etc) could be a bad thing for easy listening music, ballads, etc, but I?m not very sure if it can be used for any singer. What would have been of Nirvana, Pantera or the Sex Pistols if their singers had had a perfect technique?. Very commonly rock music are confronted to rules and this also means singing rules, don?t you think?Anyway some heavy metal singers need to have a clean, clear and, loud voice.

[liauce 0]

To a certain extend yes, some rock songs and popular songs are best sung without proper technique. However when I say proper technique I only mean the conventional ones, they may have their own other techniques. Some popular singers don't have very long singing careers because they damage their vocal cords when they scream or ues an incorrect technique. However, considering how much fame and fortune they would have already earned, no one's complaining. Its rather sacrificial actually, that to contribute to the trueness of whatever genre of music they are doing, the abstain from using "proper technique" which kinds of kills it.

[bmxpunker2005 0]

hey liauce, or anyonw else who could help, I want to make music on my mac in garageband, I want to create metal/rock type of music, while most rock bands I hear dont have very much talent (or so it sounds in their music) some do sound great, I want to sound great in an agressive hard rock kind of way, is their any tips you could give me? Thanks a million.By the way, I've never done much singing, and my voice is a little deep. Thanks again