Arm Tension? Find Relief!
We have been talking to you about ways to relieve tension associated with singing and we want to add arm tension to that list! One of the best tests for determining arm tension is to grab a friend and have them stand behind you while you are singing and raise your arms. The goal of this exercise would be for you to just let them fall back down and if they do not, you definitely are carrying tension in your arms. To help you release that arm tension, try swinging your arms forward and back while you are singing or practice tossing something between your 2 hands. If you find yourself stopping the movement for a high note for example, then you are definitely using your arms to support your voice rather then your breath. You can also pretend to draw on the wall with your pointer fingers of both hands to help you relieve this tension. If your friend is willing, have them move your arms up and down while you sing and help you to relax there tension. We would love to help you release your arm tension. Check out our Instagram post on this subject for more information and contact us for lessons if you want us to help you build a strong, relaxed voice.
Relieving Lip tension
The topic for this blog post is a problem that that plagues almost every singer. Tension in the lips can occur for a variety of reasons but the most common is that singers are actually supporting their voices with their lips rather then their breath. If you don't believe me, try this fantastic exercise for relieving lip tension. Gently pinch and hold your upper lip with one hand and your lower lip with the other hand. Then take a good low breath and start singing. I guarantee you will experience an immediate improvement in your sound and will also have the added benefit of forcing yourself to use your breath support more efficiently. The next step in learning to sing without lip tension is to start singing while holding your lips, then let go of them while still singing and keep that relaxed feeling going. Be sure not to sing too high in this position because if you are woman you will pop into whistle voice and if you are a man you will probably pop into falsetto. If you are having a hard time finding your whistle voice this is another great exercise. We would really like to help you find a way to release your lip tension and experience much more relaxation in singing. A relaxed production and understanding the proper usage of the breath is imperative to healthy singing no matter what style you are singing in. Contact us and start your vocal journey to a successful career and a healthy voice.
The correct position for your singing voice
To give yourselves the greatest chance at singing your best, think of always putting your instrument in the correct position for the best possible sound. This includes the position of your larynx. The larynx, which houses our vocal chords, should sit in a relaxed, low position at all times while we sing. When the larynx is low you will feel that yawnie, deep stretch in your throat. The problem with the larynx is it tends to rise with the pitch…pitch goes higher, larynx wants goes with it. When the larynx rises it tends to squeeze our throats producing that strangulated feeling that is not good for healthy, beautiful singing. So, in good vocal training we work to keep the larynx low and relaxed. For men, especially lower voiced males, you can see the larynx pretty easily. For women and higher voiced singers it can be difficult to see. Here’s what I suggest-Gently place your index finger on your throat and take a yawnie, deep breath. Most likely you will feel your larynx lower. Keeping your finger there can aid in revealing what your larynx is doing. When I learned about this critical aspect of vocal technique, my whole voice and world changed. I believe yours will too!!
Achieving the best Breath Support system ever for your singing!
Hi Singers, Joel here. I want to speak to you about breath support. When I was a young singer the word “support” was something I could not get my mind or body around! There are many ways to discuss support so let’s try and keep it simple. What we’re trying to achieve in support is to manage the flow or pressure of air from our lungs through our vocal folds…not too much and not too little is very important! Far too often we see singers use what I call their “valves” to manage or hold back air pressure that is built up in your lungs after you take a deep straw breath. We can think of our lips, tongue, jaw, larynx as valves that open or close. Let’s say you’ve mastered keeping your jaw down and relaxed, low laryngeal position, high and lifted soft palate in other words, everything is open and relaxed as it should be for great singing. What do you think is going to hold back the pressure of air in your lungs if you don’t tighten one of your valves? Hopefully your well built support system! Try this. Take a hard backed book and put one end against a wall and the other end in your lower abs-below your belly button. Breath in deeply. Your body should move backward from the wall. Exhale on “S” and don’t let your body fall into the book! This is the most important skill to master for good singing and good vocal long-term health. Contact us today to get started on your lessons!
A collapsed rib cage is wrong!!
One of the things we see a lot of singers do incorrectly is drop the rib cage. We call this collapsing and what that usually results in is a jutting out or sticking out of the jaw. Sometimes we say to students, “You’re leading with your jaw” It’s the wrong position to have your vocal instrument in. What you want to do is pick up your rib cage. It’s difficult to do this because under our rib cage is our abdomen and we don’t have a spine like we do in our back to hold us up. We can drop or collapse into the abdominal area which is really incorrect for great singing. Instead, imagine a string that is tied to your sternum and up to the ceiling pulling your rib cage up which automatically puts your head in a better position and gives you better posture through the vocal tract area. This will help you get a proper breath for singing and improve the quality or your sound! Make sure, by looking in a mirror you never collapse your rib cage while singing!
Singing easily on ALL vowels involves correct Jaw position.
Today I want to continue our discussion of correct jaw position. In our last blog we discussed the need to sing with a dropped jaw position and never compromise the space in the back. When you do this correctly you achieve a natural “AH” vowel. The question is how do we sing all the other vowels while maintaining the dropped jaw? Well, here’s how! Begin by gently pushing your fingers in between your back molars to drop your jaw. You now have achieved what I call the natural “AH” vowel. Again, you should feel a yawning sensation. If you want to sing an “OH” or “OO” vowel you need to simply use your lips without closing or moving your jaw. Now, again go back to the natural “AH” position. Move your tongue slightly up and forward to sing an “AYE” or “E” vowel sound. Lips and Tongue are what we call our Articulators and that is exactly and only what you should use to form vowels. Let us help you master the correct usage of your jaw and sing effortlessly on all vowels in all parts of your range. Contact us to get started on fixing the things that frustrate you!
Don’t settle for pressure in your singing, learn about Jaw tension.
At JVS we see jaw tension hindering singers natural beautiful sound and want to help you eliminate the incorrect usage of your jaw. First of all, your jaw needs to be dropped from the back more than the front. An easy way to achieve this is to take your index fingers, place them on your cheeks where your back molars are located and gently push in. This allows the back of the jaw to drop open. If done correctly you should feel a slight yawning sensation. This is the perfect position of your jaw and the key to maintaining the opening you need to eliminate tension. Vocal science has proven that when we drop the back of the jaw, our throats open. Try singing any one of your songs or arias with your fingers in this position. You will quickly discover how often you close or compromise that space when singing. We feel this is one of the biggest problems facing ALL singers today! If you want to learn how to master this extremely important skill and stop chewing your words, please visit the link in our BIO to start your lessons today!
Shush! Silent breaths
One of the most common issues we see in our studio when working with singers of all types is hearing loud, gasping, or aspirate inhalation sounds. When we listen to our students inhale in preparation to sing, we don't want to actually hear their breath coming in. If we do “hear” them inhaling then we know that the singer is not raising their soft palate and creating an open throat. If you hear that aspirate sound of your breath coming in, you need to learn to raise your soft palate. For more information on raising the soft palate, please see our blog post from 11/9/21.
Another issue you will experience when you are breathing loudly, is a very dry mouth and throat. With each breath you take, you will feel your voice getting drier and drier to the point that it will begin to cut out or crack. So, what can you do? Try taking in your breath making as little sound as possible. You will hear the breath going past your teeth and your lips but you should not hear a raspy gasping type of sound. If you are already working on raising your soft palate, taking a silent breath is another way to achieve the raised palate because when your breath comes in silently, you have raised your soft palate and gotten it out of the way. Because we have to breathe often as singers, if you take in a silent breath each time you breathe, you will be practicing raising the soft palate which will give you a lot of chances to practice this important skill and have success in achieving that full, beautiful, open sound we all want!
Raising your soft palate is REALLY IMPORTANT!
As singers, we all want to have the most open and beautiful sound we can produce. One of the most important skills to work on is raising your soft palate. You may be asking, where and what is my soft palate? Let’s start first with the hard palate. The hard palate is the area that includes the roof of your mouth right behind your upper teeth. The soft palate is the area that is behind your hard palate going to the back of your throat. If you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth and slide it back as far as your can you will feel where that hard palpate becomes soft. When we yawn, we naturally raise the soft palate. I was told by a voice teacher to practice singing while keeping my throat in a yawn position. That visual, although correct, was a bit too abstract for me. What really helped was to take a flash light and shine it into my mouth while looking in a mirror and actually see my soft palate. You know that little piece of tissue that hangs down in your throat that looks like a punching bag? That is called your uvula and it is in the middle of the soft palate. In order to raise your soft palate you have to pull the little punching bag or uvula up as high as you can.
Once I actually saw my uvula and understood where and what my soft palate was, I was able to practice raising it up. Then, once I felt the sensation of a high soft palate, I practiced singing while maintaining that feeling of openness in the back of my throat. The results were amazing! I found singing in general to be so much easier and I had an immediate improvement in the high part of my vocal range. I think that the results can be amazing for you too. Give it try and see for yourself an almost immediate improvement!
What is sub-glottic pressure?
What is sub-glottic pressure?
The opening between your vocal cords is called the glottis. When we close our vocal cords to create phonation we are closing the glottis so that the vocal cords can vibrate and create sound. What causes the vocal cords to come together and close the glottis? It is the breath that comes up from our lungs controlled by the diaphragm that draws the vocal cords together. So the term “sub-glottic pressure” is divided this way:
“sub” refers to the breath pressure that is beneath the vocal cords, “glottis” is referring to the opening between the cords and “pressure” is the air coming through the glottis to make sound. We have to create the correct amount of sub-glottic pressure to successfully sing in our different ranges. Sub-glottic pressure is at it’s greatest when we sing high because the vocal cords stretch very thin and vibrate very quickly so more breath pressure is needed. In our middle range less breath pressure is needed to create sound because the vocal cords are stretched less. Most people speak in their middle range because it requires less effort. When we sing in our low range, the vocal cords are the least stretched and because the cords are vibrating more slowly, the singer needs to move more breath rather then rely on the sub-glottic pressure to hold back air. Singing in our high range requires the most breath support to properly create sub-glottic pressure which is why so many singers strain their voices when they sing high.
So what is a singer to do? We at Jameson vocal studio believe that singers need to achieve the right kind of sub-glottic pressure to learn proper breathing technique. Your vocal cords will react to whatever range you want to sing in but if you lack adequate breath support you will not be able to achieve the beautiful sound you want. Don’t get frustrated, contact us today!!
“Develop the coveted seamless legato line using Lip Trills”
Lip trills really help to move and anchor your breath by using correct sub-glottic breath pressure. It’s a great way to create that seamless legato line which you need to develop for world-class singing. The objective is to make sure your lips keep trilling throughout the entire vocalize. If your lips stop, you can bet your breath stopped as well. Stopping breath is the same as dropping your support. So, stand with correct posture, rib cage high, good, deep, low, down and out breath and start phonation or singing by trilling your lips. In the lower range it might be a bit more difficult because you need to move more breath. Remember to keep the breath moving and those lips trilling!