The High Performance Singer

On any given morning, I may be in my yoga class at the Y, awkwardly arranging myself into some nice, juicy, seated asana in celebration of having arduously completed my standing poses. With a sense of relief, I close my eyes to settle in. Without fail, my wonderfully aware teacher immediately hollers out, “Eyes open! This is a householder’s practice!” I sigh, open my eyes, and pay attention. He is referring to the concept of the “Householder” in Buddhism, the term that distin

Singing Emergency? The A Cappella Prescription Three weeks ago, I was sitting in a hotel room in Florida, languidly lounging with a cup of coffee and some well-earned Facebook time before needing to rouse myself to get ready for my friend’s wedding at 11 am. At 9:17, I received a text from the bride. “Soundman has a flat tire. Get warmed up.” Pop quiz, hot shots: what do you do? In case you’ve never met a frantic bride on her wedding morning, who has just been handed the

Several of my students are IT or biotech workers, graduate students, or office workers with high-stress jobs. Some of them have experimented with taking lessons on their lunch hour, after work, later in the evening, and on weekends. Most find that the calmer they are when they walk into the lesson, the more they get out of their lessons. So here are some things to consider when you schedule your voice lessons: - In the morning, many people find that the voice isn't as "read

Singers who can hear the fine nuances of other singers' voices can usually sing better themselves. If you don't feel like you know what to look for, or you don't feel like you have a good ear, don't worry. You can learn to listen better. Then you can use other singers' examples to make yourself a better singer. Here's how. First, here's a list of elements to listen for in other singers' voices. (This is not an exhaustive list; if you have other ideas, please comment!) Mel

This week: Seven tips for practicing for a gig - especially for the first gig with a new band. 1. Dress in actual gig clothing. If you are planning on wearing anything other than street clothes (or clothes you haven't worn at a gig before), run through your set wearing the clothes and shoes you will be wearing on stage. You don't want to find that the heels are too high, you can't breathe well, you feel overexposed or overdressed, you are too hot, or your arm movement is

Have you ever done any high-intensity sports? I ran track and cross country in high school. When we would warm up for the afternoon workout, we'd start with an easy jog. Not a 100-meter sprint; not even a half-mile run. We would start with an easy jog around the football field. Why? You know why. The muscles have to warm up, get blood moving, and release and relax into movement. Have you ever skipped your warmup, like running too fast too soon? Say if you only have 3

Do you feel power in your chest voice, but tightness and a lack of agility as you sing higher? Do you feel freedom and flexibility in your head voice, but lack that power and resonance you get in chest voice? "Split" your voice and you can combine the freedom of head voice with the depth of chest voice. ... Here's what I mean by splitting your voice. Imagine a glowing ball about the size of a golf ball or cue ball. Now imagine this glowing ball is your voice. (Did you see T

Last week I wrote about singing harmonies on the fly. This week's article is about singing harmonies when you actually have time to plan them out. If you haven't read last week's article, and you find terminology in this week's article confusing, you might want to revisit last week's article before reading this one. ... Planning out harmonies allows you to get into the kinds of harmonies I really love - the ones that are a bit unexpected because they aren't just chord triads

Last week, I took my first waterski set of the season. (Yeah, late start!) I started at a really easy speed because it's been seven years since I competed, and I haven't been training much. I completed two beautiful, easy passes through the course at that speed. So I increased to the next speed and ran a couple more passes. They were easy too. So I increased the speed again, now at the maximum speed for women (34mph), and those passes were still so simple, smooth, and c

I've always believed that singing even just a little bit each day is better than singing only a couple times a week for a long time. This certainly felt true when I was learning to play drums and guitar: if I practiced even 15 or 20 minutes in a day, I could feel an improvement the next day. This is because of how the brain turns short-term experiences into long-term memory overnight. Recently, though, I have changed my mind about the benefits of singing for just 15-20 min

Last week I wrote about how to avoid getting caught in your chest voice by learning to identify tension sooner than you used to, using an octave scale down, then up. This week is about keeping a fuller, stronger voice, but without yelling. Yelling is an unpleasant, strained, tense way of making loud noise on a high pitch in your range. Yelling doesn't have very many high frequencies or nasal resonance, so it sounds bottom-heavy even though the pitch is high. In this techniqu

You probably know how it feels - you're singing higher and higher, and your throat is getting tighter and tighter, and you feel like you're going to break unless you push harder and harder to hold it all together. You wish you could figure out how to sing in your chest voice without straining. But you're used to "pulling up" your chest voice. You don't want to sing like this. It simply doesn't sound good. Yes, you CAN bring a full voice up high, but don't do it by yelling

How long do YOU do vocal warmups - ten minutes? Twenty minutes? How long do you think OTHER singers like you need? A half hour? An hour? Try two hours. I take occasional voice lessons from Jesse Nemitz, associate at the Brett Manning Studios in Nashville. He's guiding me toward a new technique which I love... WHEN I can do it. It's very hit-or-miss right now, but when I'm there, everything is easy. The break (or bridge) disappears. Tonal qualities are the same all th

I used to work as a waterski coach. I coached all levels of skiers, from absolute beginners to competitive tournament skiers. Guess who tended to learn and improve faster? The beginners, of course. Beginners tend to have fewer bad habits to undo. Beginners know they don't know much. Beginners listen and try new things. Experts have been doing things the same way for a long time, right or wrong. They have habits - some good, some bad. Experts know they know something, an

Want to make a leap forward and sing better fast? Sometimes it helps to just go back to basics! I had a fabulous voice lesson last week. I brought my teacher the song "Use Me" by Bill Withers. It has one note that jumps up high - not that high, really, and I can hit it, but sometimes it sounds... well... less good than it could. I had tried a number of different approaches as far as placement, mix, pressure, and volume, but no approach gave me a consistently good result.

In high school, I was in track and cross country. I ran the 400, 4x400, 800, and sometimes even the 100m sprint. Do you think I warmed up with some jogging, stretches, and light running before racing as fast as possible down the track, or before taking off on a three-mile race over scrubby, rocky desert? You bet! It's really obvious when you think about it, but sometimes we don't think of vocal cords as muscles just like the rest of the body. Partly because we talk all da

You've done the experiments in Part 1, right? Hopefully you found that each day you returned to this exercise, you found a little more clarity (less breathiness) in your voice. Now it's time to make it easier, and better sounding. 1) Say the word "sing" and hold out the "ng" part, so that the back of your tongue touches the roof of your mouth. 2) On "ng", sing an octave scale upwards, starting in the middle of your range and going to a note that's a little bit high for you.

Those of you who know me personally, know how I can get carried away with trying to accomplish too many things at once. And I know that some of you are the same way. We are the kind of people who get so obsessed with making progress, that we don't make enough time for rest. Because of the new year and its attendant resolutions, this seems to be a time of the year for many people when we get too busy trying to get things done... make personal changes... improve ourselves...

Everyone seems to want to sing high notes. You probably have a lot more unused high range than unused low range, but it's a little trickier for some people to access that high range than to access the low range. One reason it is tricky is because there are a lot of different ways to sing in your high range! For example.... Click here to hear a classical head voice (well, as classical as you're going to hear me get, since I'm not an opera singer. Forgive me!) Click here t

For most people, the low end of their vocal range is the range they're most comfortable in. This is mainly because we constantly talk in the low end of our vocal range! But you may be able to access yet a few more notes on the low end of your vocal range than you currently do. Here's how to sing lower notes. 1) Use the Creaky Edge This is also called the "Vocal Fry." Unlike what the name suggests, it's a healthy vocal technique. To do the vocal fry, start by making a c