Our class yesterday was small, but wonderful! We focused on how to begin the sound healthily, support it all the way through and end it healthily. In case you'd like to play with some of our exercises at home, or take the class over again, here's a little recap of that section of class:
I like to describe the voice as a spinning top. If we begin a phrase unhealthily, it's like trying to get to top back on axis after it's already begun to fall. But if we get set it up beautifully balanced from the get go, it can spin and spin and spin with little to no energy to maintain that balance. To do this we focused on a couple of things: First we work on getting the air flowing steadily before we even began singing, so that the support is already there for it. Then we focused on simply allowing the chords to be swooped into phonation by that airflow, allowing all tension to fall away.
Once this was achieved (and it was - very quickly! Well done guys!) we worked on supporting the sound throughout the phrase. There's often a natural tendency for the voice to seemingly shrink and die away at the end of phrases, mainly because we're running out of air. So I like to liken the voice and airflow to a Playdough presser. Remember those things?! Imagine that you're pressing out a beautiful star shaped roll of Playdough, and you start running out of dough! What happens? It sort of crumples at the end, right? Well when we run out of air, the same thing happens to our voice. The shape of our throat and mouth is the cookie cutter that is funneling the dough (determining the shape, or color of the voice) And the airflow is the dough itself (what maintains that shape and color). So when we're running out of air - we don't want to change the shape of our instrument (or our "cookie cutter" if you will), we want to redouble our efforts to keep our airflow moving, and then STOP SINGING BEFORE the air runs out and our sound collapses. Practice this by simply singing "Ah" on one pitch, and as you feel yourself beginning to run out of air, bear into your diaphram and (for those who have attended class) continue exhaling from the BOTTOM UP (like a toothpaste tube) to use every last bit of air. And before anything begins to collapse, just stop the sound.
Now... We arrive at stopping the sound healthily. The short and easy way to say this is: Inhale in order to stop the sound. But there's a little more to it than that. In order to get into it, we have to understand how the vocal cords work. The cords themselves are two little folds of flesh that come together, vibrate, and produce sound. Air moves through them, assisting in vibration. (For a video of vocal cords vibrating go to blog here.) What most people do to stop the sound (until training) is to simply let the cords collapse into each other. There are a couple of issues with this. One - it doesn't sound clean - there's a clicking or grinding sound. But the most important is that it exhausts the voice, and can eventually lead to vocal fatigue. Imagine one of those old fashioned triangular tents, with two flaps in the front (your vocal cords), and the wind is blowing lightly, and the edges of the tent are making a gentle humming noise as they brush each other in the wind. Then a gust of wind comes by, and gently blows the tent flaps open (inhalation) and the sound stops, because they're no longer touching. This is how inhaling to stop the sound works. Instead of grind the cords to a halt, which would eventually cause blisters, they simply separate, and all tension is lifted from them. Easy! So while singing that same "Ah", trick yourself into a gentle silent inhalation WHILE YOU'RE STILL SINGING. It will immediately and seamlessly stop the sound.
We got into many other things, such as releasing jaw tension, and evaluating which consonants and vowels were getting in the way of resonance for each individual, and how to begin to undo those habits. But I think I've bombarded you with enough information for one day!
Enjoy, and I hope to see you in class soon!
Mindy & the Vocal Forum staff
