Membership Expired Kat Hunter
Membership ExpiredForum Replies Created
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For sure, narrow vowels are super helpful. It’s all about finding that place of efficiency!
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Yeah, interesting. Metal I don’t know about but I assume it’s similar to twang?
For me twang is the sound that’s created when using a “pharyngeal” voice. But to me this is still more to do with sound rather than placement. I’ll use it to encourage vocal fold adduction, and to bring out harmonics to allow a voice to “cut through”. -
If you’re trying to find ways of dealing with performance anxiety specifically, I always find the Bulletproof Musician has some great advice. Trawl through the blog section and you’re sure to find something that helps: http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/start/
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This could be a cool thing to discuss in the forum – pros and cons of teaching breathing… Might also be helpful preparation for the podcast, I suppose?
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this sounds awesome. I’d love to hear some conversation about why/when to teach breathing. With only a few exceptions I tend to not teach breathing at all!
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Hey Eliza,
I’ve heard some mixed reviews about old Roger Love. What’s his teaching method? Anything in particular you took away from his book?
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3 choices I can recommend:
Voice: Psyche and Soma – Cornelius Reid
The Naked Voice – Stephen Smith
Your Body, Your Voice – Theodore DimonHappy holidays indeed:)
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Didn’t know old Miller was out-there! haha. I’ve read the Miller and Kayes, I’ll check out the others!
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Righteo!
Number one, is that I find students who squeeze alot and do things that make their voice sound weird unnecessarily are usually just trying really hard. Ironically it’s often these singers for whom music means so much to them that they’d prefer to micromanage everything to avoid anything going “wrong” but end up sounding completely unnatural.
There’s a few things I’d do for this particular student. Number 1 is get her speaking everything (including the lyrics to the song and all her exercise sounds that you’re using). Listen to her speaking voice and see what’s going on in there. Is it breathy? Is it high? Is it released? If there’s any pathology in her speaking voice she’ll probably over compensate with singing, so make sure she’s speaking with power and ease first! Get things back to basics. If her speaking voice sounds great then get her to be aware that for the most part, (especially down low where these songs are), singing is basically just speaking but with more sustain and greater specificity of intonation. But everything should feel pretty similar, pretty free. Her speaking voice can be a template for finding something that’s much more comfortable and natural for her.
Another thing I note in these recordings is that she has quite a high voice. This is causing her to go way too muscly at the bottom (which probably feels a little extreme for her), and is consequently forcing a little break to happen at E4 pretty consistently. This tells me that even though chest voice is something you need to work on with her in the long term, it’s probably her trying to sound strong at this low extreme of her voice with no reference frame that’s causing tension. She’s a high voice, so let the voice chill out nice and high for a while. Allow her to be a bit heady. Do some songs that have lines that start above that E (even songs that start above A4!) with descending melodic lines. This will appear to weaken the sound of the voice in the short term, but it will also trick her into stopping her voice from muscling her way up from the bottom, which in the long term will result in a more natural strength-building process. Dopey or sob sounds from the bottom will only make that break at E4 more pronounced, which will make her use more muscle to compensate! Do songs that aren’t quite so heavy sounding. Let the voice return to normal before you add more muscle! That would be my 2 cents :).
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Although like Ben said it’s difficult if you haven’t set the terms first.
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I would stand my ground. She’s not the kind of person you would have had positive WOM with anyway. Or another idea would be to say that the lessons are not refundable but that they ARE transferrable. Maybe she knows someone who would be a much more willing student. Win win.
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I think you should be fine:) You can always have some back up ideas about activities people can do in groups that brings all of these ideas together. That should keep them busy! Like role-playing or speech-reading or something I don’t know. It will also be interesting to see if the room gets loud with all those projecting voices in different groups talking over each other. Could be another thing to address as you go.
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This sounds great! Some ways I’ve found of simplifying things is to firstly talk about terms people might have heard. Like “voice box” and “adams apple” are familiar to people. So when you start using the term larynx you could explain verrryy simply how these terms relate. Another thing you can do is demonstrate something with an action first and then name it second rather than the other way round. Often people don’t understand why something is important or how it relates until they see it in action. Obviously don’t wear yourself out, but some “bad” vs “good” examples and discussion can help them get past the theory aspect.
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Great question! I think two things I’ve come up with that help retain students are:
1. Performance opportunities – These could be a performance/open mic hosted by your studio or outside opportunities if the student is in a choir, band or musical theatre group. When students have opportunities to perform they have more and more goals to work towards, which gives them more reasons to continue coming back for lessons.
2. Offering some other areas to grow – as teachers we tend to have one or two areas that we stick to and most of us spend a lot of time on vocal technique. But students who don’t have opportunities to work on other things can feel their progress begin to stagnate sometimes. So offering things like song-writing, music theory, performance technique, or simply just singing songs in a different genre to what they’re used to can change things up a bit and keep it interesting. Technology can help too. Recording a student’s rendition of a song they’re working on (even if it’s just on your laptop) and burning to disk, or just having a microphone/PA in the room can make things more exciting!Would love to hear other ideas people have!
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I LOVE lip trills. That’s definitely my go-to exercise. If a student has trouble with that, then tongue trills will do. I just find that the lip trill can get the student feeling warmed up over their whole range, with no strain, and of course the air gets regulated this way too.
If it’s a warm up to get ready for a performance I’d usually suggest doing lip trills at the same time as moving the body, to get rid of any tension, as Ben was indicating; especially watching for any tension in the shoulders, abdomen, neck or jaw as tends to happen when people are nervous!
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Hey Matt, you say at the end there you can look up exercises for soft palate nasality as a solution to something. I’d be interested to know what it a solution for? Like what would be the objective for such an exercise?
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Totally! So when you’re thinking about the tongue position you can think of it lifting upwards to block the access of air to the mouth. The air is still coming up behind the tongue and exiting the nose :).
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If you’re interested in the effects of different vowel sounds or consonants, you could always start up a forum topic on the mgr website! Would be great to see more discussion on this:)
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Not sure exactly what you mean, but if you want to test if air is coming out primarily through the nose you can see what happens when you pinch your nose with your fingers. Notice that with a “zz” nothing happens but with an “ng” the sounds stop. The throat should only really “close” during swallowing or lifting heavy things. Not sure if that’s helpful?
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Yes! re. vocalis vs. TA. I’ve been told that calling everything the TA is more of an American tradition whereas labelling the vocalis as something separate is more European. This definitely doesn’t help with making waters less muddy.
Cool recording of your student! I would say he’s singing probably the whole thing in a “light mix”.
This whole discussion is an interesting point of comparison in regards to vocal techniques. Coming from an IVA background, the whole point of IVA is teaching mix. Period. Accessing all the registers and then smoothing out the passagios using consistent fold adduction and hopefully a resting larynx is pretty much the holy grail for IVA haha. And you can definitely teach it successfully – it’s what I spend most of my time teaching. But even then, from the perspective of the singer, there will always be tiny gear shifts, definitely. The idea of it being a gradient is a little misleading for sure. But if you can get it to the stage where the gear shifts are mostly imperceptible to most ears, and breaks/flips have mostly been eliminated then it provides real opportunities for expression – like that video above! Rachelle Ferrell from the sounds of it can go from F#3 to D#6 in one fell swoop, and pretty smoothly. In that song she demonstrates the ability to make a “connected sound” through that whole range. Which is pretty darn rad.
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PS. Matt, Do you know of Hirano’s 1970 study about vocalis vs CT activity? I’ve read a fair few articles that reference that study as showing evidence that in trained singers, a pitch glide will show this exact muscular action we’re talking about where the vocalis gradually gives over to the CT. I went looking for the original study online but could only find an article I read more recently that cited the study. http://etd.lsu.edu/…/etd…/unrestricted/Ferranti_dis.pdf page 11.
Of course this research is not super recent so maybe it’s been surpassed?I went looking for that Natalie Henrich paper and found this…http://phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/reprints/Kobetal.pdf is this the one you’re talking about? I’d be interested on knowing the pedagogical implications of this both for you personally in teaching and more generally. Sorry if this is nerd-out overload haha!
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Also you might be surprised how different the 57 and 58 feel. They have the same diaphragm, same everything essentially but the 57 has the grill removed and therefore is usually used as an instrumental mic. But I LOVE singing into the 57 because you can use more proximity effect which gives you more mids to your voice (which is nice for high female singers like myself who feel a little bit top-heavy as far as frequencies go).
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Great lesson, Matt. The forward vowel+sob combo is rad. Fixes so many things at once. I’ll be interested to hear the next steps!
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PS. I feel like I should say I got the OK from Matthew on this one.
PPS. IVA/SLS training is usually really expensive. I’m just offering a tailored condensed version of IVA training (as a certified instructor) for a fraction of the cost – say 25 pounds for an intensive hour of hands-on learning.
PPPS. Please ask me any questions. Like I said, I ain’t no messiah, I just have a passion for pedagogy, so if you’d like to test me out, please do. I’m happy to work with those of you who are Estiill teachers too. I believe that IVA and Estill aim to do fairly different things, and I think a range of perspectives never hurts. When it comes to helping students. -
Is their speaking voice wispy and breathy? If not, you can often use speaking as a template for how the voice will feel in a nice solid chest voice. I would stick to lower songs/exercises to try to develop some vocal fold adduction and use forward vowels etc..
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I would thoroughly recommend IVA. Just my 2 cents :). You don’t necessarily have to join up if you don’t want, you’ll still get a lot out of just finding an IVA teacher and booking a lesson and asking teacherly questions if that makes sense.
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Actually the next event is May 31st
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I might be biased, but I’ve been a part of IVA (http://vocaladvancement.com) for a few years now, and I think it’s second to none in terms of preparing teachers with the knowledge they need to confidently address vocal issues. I’m not so up to date with the UK events these days, but I’m pretty sure there’s some masterclasses happening up there in June. Look it up:)
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I’d suggest some vocal fry and some coup de glotte style exercises (using an onset that’s somewhere between balanced and glottal), if you feel confident using these. That onset is really important as it might help get the interarytenoids going, (a weakness in interarytenoids is usually what causes posterior chink. Often what’s going on is that the lateral cricoarytenoids are doing their job but the IAs aren’t). As Matt suggests, some lower pitch, thick folds exercises will help too.
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pharyngeal sounds are often the best way to fix this. Also I suggest doing some “squeeky” top down exercises. Sometimes with these students if you start from the bottom and go up, the sound is too heavy and just breaks apart. But if you can get any squeeky sounds (like nee nee nee or ‘ee ‘ee or even cat meouw sounds) going at the top and bring them down, then you can smooth everything out. Say a 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 scale pattern. Also you could keep her on bright sounds like ee and ae to discourage the oo tendency.
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Awesome! Thanks!
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One final question (sorry :P), is there a quick tool you can use (if you’re not ranking highly yet) to find out how high you are in google search without physically trawling through the pages until you find yourself? (that sounded awfully existential)
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You, sir, are a genius.
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Haha sorry another question: Most of what I’ve read about SEO says that links to your website are vital. But maybe they’re actually not if you’ve managed to get over this hump with our websites? Because teaching/business pages like us aren’t really things that other people would link to?
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Wow, that’s super interesting. Sounds like a rabbit warren of crazy. One interesting thing about that, is that it seems like there are companies out there offering “SEO”, but that maybe this is a bit of a sham/not worth it, because if you can have a killer website design and content and fast loading pages, then you’ve effectively done it yourself, and moreover these aren’t things that another company could or would want to provide for you.
I might have to ask for some advice down the track about all this, when I move back to Melbourne and have to whip up a new website. It seems like Squarespace websites are really not ideal for SEO then, in that although they look amazing, there’s very little noodling you can actually do to the backend (which is where it seems much of the magic happens)…
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Like Matt, I’ve had great results posting at university notice boards and such. But I have a question about this whole SEO business… What is actually involved? Like for example, I made my own teaching website as much to have a blog on it as anything. I’d done websites with wordpress before, but for this I decided to go with squarespace. It said it had some SEO built in, but clearly this is not the case because when you search for key words, it doesn’t come up. So… other than sprinkling the old magic dust, what IS SEO and can you do it yourself and if not how much does it cost? Whatever ever happened to ordering search results by relevancy (was this ever the case?!)? Is google taking over the world or something? Man oh man. Sorry I got a bit carried away.
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Was looking into this a while ago and I liked two programs… One was called acuity scheduling but the other I can’t remember.. Hmmm I’ll let you know when it comes to mind.
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Yep it definitely happens to everyone! Agreed if most of them are staying, it means you’re already doing a great job. For those who leave after a couple of lessons, if you’re not sure that it’s for financial/personal reasons, you could always email them wishing them the best and saying you hoped they enjoyed lessons and to let you know if they have any feedback. I’ve only received semi-negative feedback once, and I was able to give it a bit of thought and I applied what I could and felt like a much more confident teacher at the end of it :). That said, you can *never* please everyone, so don’t stress it too much!
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(I know it’s annoying though. Drugs are no fun)
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(both acid reflux and allergies feel similar, they both swell the vocal folds (laryngitis) and they both tend to be worse in the morning. The ENT is probably just trying to cover all the bases before the examination)
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I second what Matt is saying. You can often get acid reflux in your sleep and not know about it, and the symptoms it presents with are very similar to that if you have allergies. If anything the indigestion tablets are probably to make doubly sure that anything the ENT sees in the laryngoscopy is purely down to allergies and not something else.
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haha don’t be. It’s not that you’ll actually need more help, it’s more that I’ve found the UK medical system is based on telling people there’s nothing wrong with them and turning them away until the last possible moment to cut down waiting lists. Better to see an ENT because they’ll be able to check you out properly and put your fears aside once and for all (if you get a laryngoscopy that will be awesome to see as a vocal teacher!). Whereas a doctor will say “I’m sure it’s probably fine, just come back in a month if it’s still bothering you”, which is what doctors say about everything and is never helpful (sorry, just cynical haha).
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(don’t take no for an answer! 🙂)
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Go to a normal doctor, insist there’s something wrong and you need more help, and get referred to an ENT.
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What I would probably do is say something along the lines of “I’m a singing teacher not a screaming teacher so I can’t teach you to scream . There are people out there who specialise in that kind of thing, but unfortunately I’m not one of them. What I can say for sure though, is, that no matter who you go to, overly distorted vocals will never be the sign of a very balanced voice, and thus should be treated as a “sometimes food” kind of thing. If you have to do distorted vocals on stage, then it’s important that you do fully balanced vocal exercises in between that will keep your vocal folds well conditioned and healthy so that you can aim to avoid losing your voice and general fatigue. These are the things I can teach you.” And leave it at that. If that’s not what they’re looking for, it’s better that they find someone else anyway I think…
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Birmingham sounds great to me!
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Absolutely. Every hour lesson that we do is a full hour straight of unabridged concentration and support for the students. In other jobs you can get up for a stretch or a coffee break, but with this every lesson is a serious intensity of work. Also it’s easy to forget how many hours a week we spend on enquiries or admin or accounting etc.
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But on a more serious note, if any of you have some magical work/life balance (not going insane balance) tricks, I’d be very up for hearing them. I tend to find that 6 hours is the max hours I can teach in a day before I start to become a vegetable. Anyone else?
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How do you guys all have so many students? I have about 25 hours of students a week at the moment, and find it makes me go insane. Matt Pocock, I seriously don’t know how you do it. And time to write the blog as well?? For me I teach roughly 11am or noon till evenings most week days, although I’m trying to have easier days on wednesdays and fridays because otherwise I burn out big time. Almost all of my students are adults (only a couple are under 18), and about 65% are male. I tend to teach quite a few uni students (as you’d imagine in leeds), and also a lot of young dads surprisingly.
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Oh also I should add, although it’s a blog not a book/article, I also find this to be a good source of information/incite: http://petersenvoicestudio.com I took a course that Justin was running a while ago and it was really great.
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Haha no worries. Nerds unite 😛
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A few little added tidbits there. Out of all of it though, I think Cornelius Reid’s work is my favourite. Really super stuff.
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Haha, will do! There’s lots that I still haven’t got around to reading yet, but I’ll contribute. Regarding your list, the only one I’ve read so far is the book by Gillyanne Kayes. My old opera-singing housemate studied with her and said she was amazing. I think the book has some great parts, but man, I just couldn’t do half the exercises haha. I think if I poke around my throat for too long, I gross myself out 😛
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Yes! Nerd club! I love it. Pretty much everyone i’ve read says that the TA and CT muscles are involved with pitch making. This is a pretty good website that talks about that stuff and other stuff too http://www.lionsvoiceclinic.umn.edu/page2.htm. Obviously the adductor muscles (interarytenoids, and lateral cricoarytenoids) have to be involved to some degree across the board to ensure adduction, but the thyroarytenoid and cricothyroid as far as I know generally share the responsibility of pitch making (much like a tug of war). As you might well know, the TAs make the folds shorter and thicker, and the CTs stretch the folds out.
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Haha I’m just a nerd, really 😛
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PPS. I think you also have to change your tactic for different students, obviously. If a student only has a month of lessons with me before he goes on a cruise ship or before he goes on tour, the science is 100% only on a need-to-know basis. However if the student is not a performer and has a scientific mind, then obviously I am happy to explain things in greater detail with time.
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PS. I read in Titze’s book, Vocology, that there’s strong evidence to suggest that motor learning is actually MORE effective when students are not thinking about the physical processes involved in the task. There are probably many differing studies on this, but there is a large proponent of thought that believes that when a sportsman, dancer, or performer is able to focus only on their own sensation during the act, rather than the movement of specific muscles and cartilages, that motor learning is adopted much faster. Just food for thought. This is especially profound when you consider that much of the vocal mechanism cannot be directly felt or seen. YES, a scientific approach from the teacher’s point of view is vital, but if one of my students just needed to lower their larynx to sing better, I would prefer to give them a larynx lowering exercise as soon as they walk in the door, so that they can first experience what it feels like. And then when they can identify with the greater vocal ease that that exercise brings, then, if they ask to know more of the science, I will tell them. I think at least that way, the scientific learning doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Just my own personal take on it.
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Haha I’m not even sure if that answers your question. But hopefully it does 🙂
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Re. registers: although in reality as we make pitch roughly everything stays the same except for a shift in primary usage from the TA muscle to the CT muscle, nevertheless, as students experience a shift in resonance, this can wreak havoc with the tonal quality of the voice. This is usually at E4 for the majority of men and A4 for many women (or the first passaggio) although of course there are exceptions. As you will have discovered, there is a often a “break” in the voice where it flips from chest to head or chest to falsetto etc., either suddenly or gradually. This kind of break can be found in most voices and is probably the singularly most hampering thing to the extension of range, and the expression of the soul in music. This is why most of the primary focus of SLS, IVA and other Bel Canto teachers is on registrational issues (ie. the blending of the chest and head voices to create one continuous and consistent voice that can be accessed and navigated with ease). This was also the main focus of the schola cantorum, and indeed almost all vocal pedagogy until about the 1850s. That’s (1800s) when “wagnerian” and more heavy, shouty styles of singing became the fashion in opera, and so the technique had to change from something that aimed for balance, to something that aimed for the maximum strain and loudness on the voice. Thats also when things like the resonance schools (“Place it in the masque!”) and the 100% breathing focused schools (“Support from the diaphragm! Support!”) came into fashion. Of course a focus on resonance and breathing can be helpful, but science has come a long way since then… If you read your Ingo Titze, Richard Miller, Cornelius Reid, Manuel Garcia, E. Herbert-Caesari, or any of that ilk of more recent scientists and pedagogues, there is strong evidence for the “mixed voice” as being one of the primary goals of vocal development.
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Sorry about how exceptionally long that post was haha.
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IVA is the institute for vocal advancement: http://www.vocaladvancement.com. It’s pretty similar to SLS as I said. But last year a lot of people felt that SLS wasn’t being run very well as an organisation. So all the people who still wanted the education but didn’t want to do it with the SLS system moved on. It believes in the same thing: dealing with registrational imbalances in the voice using a resting laryngeal posture and adducted (but not pressed) vocal folds. I completely agree about Estill being good at the scientific side of things. For sure. IVA is still very scientific. And often-times IVA and Estill are trying to achieve similar things. I personally prefer IVA because it allows the teacher to think and hear in scientific terms (ie. What is this person’s larynx/arytenoids/folds etc. doing?), but then instead of communicating to the student in scientific terms, we use exercises and tailored sounds. We’re still getting the physiological effect, but in a way that the student doesn’t HAVE to know the science if they don’t want to. Not to get into too much of a debate between techniques, but one other reason that Estill doesn’t work for me is that there are multiple different configurations that are focused on. From memory, I think Sob, Belt and others. This is great if you can already vocalise from the bottom to the top of your voice with no breaks and are looking for different sounds to be artistic with. However, I find that most students have enough trouble getting into chest or head voice in a comfortable way let alone trying to make a whole lot of different configurations. But definitely if I had a student who was already proficient but wanted to know more about the science and the different configurations, I might well send them to an Estill teacher, for sure.
Alexander technique is definitely mostly postural stuff, but there are a few teachers out there who specialise in Alexander technique for voice (or for playing instruments). I studied with a really great Alexander Technique specialist when I was in Australia, but I haven’t done so much of it over here. It’s definitely not the whole picture in terms of technique, but there area few things I’ve learned from it that are helpful for certain students especially those who hold too much tension in their bodies. Just an extra something.
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PS. If you’re into reading vocal pedagogy, I sincerely recommend the free articles on this website. http://corneliuslreid.com .
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I used to be with SLS, but then when many of its good teachers went to IVA, I went with them. I still teach mostly IVA method with bits of Alexander Technique and a few other things. I’ve found this personally to be a pretty successful combination. I think Estill is great for gaining more in-depth understanding of the workings of the vocal mechanism, but unfortunately as the students cannot see or feel most of this, you have to develop ways to “trick” the student into using the muscular balance that you’re after. SLS and IVA both aim to teach “mix” in exactly this way. Science is great for your understanding as a teacher, but unfortunately teaching voice is not really like teaching guitar. We can’t “ask” a student to lower and tilt their thyroid cartilage and flex their TA muscle for example. But if you give them an exercise that does that, your job is done. I’m a big fan of Cornelius Reid’s work too, and I’ve heard great things from the Shenandoah Con. in the US. Jeannie Lovetri does some great work over there that I’d be keen to check out.
