Singing in a group, ensemble or choir can be challenging. How do you make the group sound great without losing your own identity of a singer? How can you use it to improve your own skills? You’ll be surprised at the answers in this episode of The Voice Club’s Sing Out Proud Podcast

Ready to take your voice to the next level? Check out online training at The Voice Club Academy

The brain has an amazing way of trying anything to help you avoid embarrassment.  And when it comes to singing difficult notes (that would be the ones you are not ‘mixing’ or vocally balancing on) your brain will pull out all the stops.

The Yank and Pull

Sometimes our brain will convince us that if we just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and take a good running start we’ll eventually hit that note.  And it works sometimes.  but it also engages muscles that aren’t meant for singing that can cause anywhere from vocal strain to outright vocal damage requiring surgery if you do this over time.  That’s no good.

The Slide

Similar to the ‘running start’ train of thought, sometimes your brain will tell you to slide up to the note.  This is actually a smarter move  (thanks, brain!) but depending on how your voice is balancing on the notes in the slide, it can be unreliable at best; sometimes resulting in a flat top note or a sharp one.  Close, but no cigar.

Picture Courtesy of Snooperz

The Air Blast

God bless our brains.  They mean well.  Sometimes they want so desperately for us to hit that hard note that they’ll just ask us to airlift ourselves right on top of it.  You’ll know if you’re doing this is every hard word/note has a little…or big ‘H’ at the front of it and/or it feels a bit gutless. 

Can this get you there?  Again, sometimes it can.  But the problem is that without a balanced mixed voice

1. you won’t be able to go anywhere with that note dynamically
2. it will be incredibly hard to hold out for any impact and,
3. sandblasting your tiny vocal folds (cords – same thing) has actually proven medically to be more damaging to your voice that screaming like a rocker. 

So…..back to square one.

The Answer

So how DO we get to the hard-to-sing notes without killing ourselves or our voices?  The answer is with a balanced, mixed voice.

A healthy balanced voice that mixes proportions of both chest voice and head voice allows you to easily navigate through the vocal bridges (‘passagios’ for my jargon happy friends). 

That means that you’ll sail by those notes that felt high or impossible as easy as a sailboat with a good breeze. 

It really can happen – in ANY voice!  Does it take time?  Yes.  How much?  As much time as it takes you to learn anything; time to untrain the things you’ve believed that don’t work, time to build the muscle coordination to balance the voice and time to test drive it until it feels like your new normal.  And that all just depends on two things, 1) good instruction, and 2) you!

If you’re ready to make the hard notes easy, click here.

Already working on it?  In the next post, I’m going to give you some great tips on some very practical things you can do to make those hard notes easier as you’re developing your mix voice.

Ready to take your voice to the next level? Check out online training at The Voice Club Academy

Hitting Bottom

Where is the bottom of your range?  Well, it can vary slightly depending on what time of day it is, how warmed up your voice is and other factors.  But there’s a simple way to give it a test run:  just sing one note at a time down to where you can’t clearly go any further.  Now, for the magic ‘expand-o-range’ trick:

Starting anywhere you like, say “Ahhhh” and slide gently down as low as you can comfortably go. 

“Ahhh” should feel like your sinking into a comfy chair at the end of a long day.  Try it again and try sliding gently lower. 

Do this a couple of times a day and you’ll actually start to expand your usable bottom notes (as long as you are accessing them the same way when you sing and not ‘shoving your voice down’ to them).

Singing Low Notes in a High Song

When the melody of a song only briefly dips into the bottom end of your range before sailing back to the top your brain only wants to think about the high notes.  It thinks the low notes are easy and need no help but the truth is that if your bottom end isn’t warmed up on a song like this your voice just ain’t going low without a fight.

Many songs start low in the verses and fly high in the chorus, so it’s extra important to prepare your voice to relax to the very bottom before you sing them.  Check out the video below and see how I helped a student prepare for just such an occasion:

Give your low notes the credit they deserve.  Warm them up, continually expand them and they will thank you with an overall increased vocal range and a comfort starting in almost any key that you never knew was there!

Ready to take your voice to the next level? Check out online training at The Voice Club Academy

How vibrato works

• Your vocal cords are moved by groups of muscles that surround them
• Vibrato happens when the muscles pulse; think of a baby bouncing on a mother’s knee
• Any sound that does that is a vibrato.  But who wants to sound like that?

The Secret Behind a Beautiful Vibrato

• To take a vibrato from ugly to nice requires vocal fitness; it takes the ability to control the muscle coordination.
• People who are born with a natural vibrato usually lack the ability to control it.  But gaining control will allow you to really color songs with your vibrato like a true artist.
• People who don’t have a natural vibrato are honestly no further away from discovering a beautiful vibrato than those who are born with it.  When you develop the coordination to control the muscles that make vibrato you will have just as beautiful a vibrato as anyone who’s been doing it their whole lives.
• What determines how fast you can develop a beautiful, controlled vibrato?  The right instruction and you!

How to Control a Warbly Vibrato

• A warbly sound is not the vibrato that most of us want.
• Just like a singer without a natural vibrato and weak muscle coordination will sound a bit ugly when they try a note with vibrato, a singer WITH a natural vibrato who lacks muscle coordination will also sound less than lovely.
• If you’ve got an over active vibrato it just means that the muscles that control your voice are wimpy; kind of like your stomach muscles after having a baby.  For you, building muscle coordination and a balanced voice will tighten those muscles and give you greater control over them.  THEN your vibrato will be a slow, fast, narrow or wide as you choose EVERY TIME.

Feel vibrato today!

• [Audio exercise]

 Want to see a student discovering her vibrato for the 1st time?  Check out this video Lesson Sneak Peak!

Have a question/comment about vibrato?  Type it in below!

Ready to take your voice to the next level? Check out online training at The Voice Club Academy

Can You Learn to Sing Better on Your Own?

YES:

Practice and experience WILL develop the voice you have

DO IT:

If you have some good direction and you don’t have a need for immediate improvement

NO:

If you’re singing with bad vocal technique or in any way that causes pain, strain or discomfort of any kind

DON’T DIY:

If you want to see results fast

If you need to correct vocal problems

How to Know if DIY is Right for Your Voice

Do you just want to lose a few pounds to fit into your skinny jeans? (I’m just singing at home for fun)

Do you need to lose 20 pounds for a special event coming soon? (I want to or am singing in public)

Do you want to see defined muscles and look lean in a bikini?  (I want to or am singing solo in public)

Are you training for a Triathlon? (singing competitions, musical theater performers, indie artists, aspiring solo artists)

Warning Signs for Singing DIYers

If you’re a singing DIY’er testing out different things you hear, watch for these signs that you may need some additional help:

• You’re feeling pain or strain when you sing
• All your notes sound or feel airy
• You experience fatigue after you sing
• You don’t see marked improvement in a year
• You find you have more questions than answers

DIY Singing Quick Start Tip

An essential vocal exercise for the DIYer [see audio]

Have you worked on your voice on your own?  What worked?  What didn’t?  Tell us your story below.

Ready to take your voice to the next level? Check out online training at The Voice Club Academy

Does Missing Notes Mean Your Tone Deaf?

Every year on American Idol, we see the people who come to audition who really believe that they can sing and they just can’t. I always feel really bad for them because, I mean, did their mother not love them enough to be honest with them. If you cannot carry a note then you shouldn’t be embarrassing yourself on national television. I feel so horrible for them.

Did you know that there are just as many people out there that can sing, they just think they can’t hold a note? They are actually in the same category. They are pitch confused.

In this episode we discuss what scientist say the solution to a pitchy voice really is.

How to Make Pitch Perfect

Why is it that some people sing on all of the notes, some people sing on most of the notes and some people sing on all most none of them?

What’s going on in your voice when notes go right?  This is a peek at the well oiled machine we call a ‘good voice’.

Why Good Notes Go Bad

We’ve all been there; the slightly flat note…the horribly wrong diversion from the note you planned to hit.  Find out why that happens.

4 Things That Are Sabotaging Your Notes

You might be doing some or all of these every time you sing but they all lead notes astray:

1.   Feeling like your stabbing at a note.

2.   Reaching for one note but not the next

3.   Straining to reach a note

4.   Gutless Notes

In the Quick Start Tip:

Get an exercise you can use to start fixing your pitch today!

Have a question you want answered in our podcast? 

Leave it in the comment section below or leave me a voicemail at (323) 903-7464 . 

Leave a message with your vocal question and, if you want, an example (you singing) and you might just hear YOUR voice in one of our future podcasts!

Ready to take your voice to the next level? Check out online training at The Voice Club Academy

001 A Professional Singers Story from Kim Snyder on Vimeo.

Did you know that there are thousands of singers out there making a living with their voice without being ‘big stars’?  Hear The Voice Club coach’s story of  going from family performer to paid singer and how one technique changed her voice forever in this first issue of the new podcast, Sing Out Proud.

Ready to take your voice to the next level? Check out online training at The Voice Club Academy

Is Singing Learned?

Point in case; iCarly’s star Miranda Cosgrove.  In her role in Jack Black’s Movie School of Rock she was actually trained to sing badly.   But when she moved on to her pop career phase she realized what she had been taught had stuck.  She had actually become a really bad singer.

Miranda’s experience is not that different from that of people who can’t sing in the first place.  Whether they know it or not, they have learned to sing bad.  Sometimes the brain confuses messages it gets from hearing different notes at the same time and not knowing what to do with it all.  Sometimes the brain tries to make sense of it and just calls it good.  That’s why you’ll hear people at all of the major singing TV show auditions swear they can sing well when they can’t hit a note.  Their brain tells them it’s right.  Some people just think they sound good because in comparison to other people they’ve heard they do.

So what about those who know they can’t sing?  Are they just victims of a non-musical gene pool?  Have they missed the musical boat and are left to be a listener rather than a participant?  How many times have you heard someone say they would love to sing but they just can’t?

What if I’ve Been Told I’m a Bad Singer?

Chances are they’ve just believed someone who told them they can’t sing or heard something in their voice that was embarrassing and decided not to let it happen again.  But is it true that if you don’t sound good you can’t be a good singer?  No.

When I was four I was initiated into the family trio and taught to sing the alto part.  My oldest sister was naturally a really good singer.  It was effortless for her.  My middle sister and I….not so much.  In fact, to this day my middle sister doesn’t believe she can sing, despite hundreds of public performances through our youth to eager audiences who invited us back time and again. 

I don’t remember when, but I remember someone telling me that I wasn’t really a good singer; that I was just born to sing back up.  And I believed it.  But when I turned 16 I got tired of singing alto.  I wanted to break free from the trio and…dare I say…sing lead. I ‘knew’ I couldn’t sing lead but it only made me more determined to figure out a way to learn to be a real singer.  That was the beginning of what turned into a career as a studio and live vocalist and independent artist and being the only singer in our family to make a living from my voice.

Maybe you think that’s a stupid example.  Obviously we could sing if we could harmonize.  What if you’re tone deaf?  Then I’m totally wrong, right?  Well, let’s take a look at tone deafness; the #1 excuse people claim for not singing. 

Maybe I’m Just Tone Deaf

Statistics show that only 2% of people are really tone deaf.  Tone deafness is actually a physical hearing impairment that makes it literally impossible for you to be able to tell one pitch from the next, regardless of all the musical education in the world. If only 2% of people are truly tone deaf that means the other 98% of people can learn to sing every note on pitch.  I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it for myself.

When I had just started teaching the natural balanced voice technique I now teach an adult woman came to me who could not hit a single note.  I don’t know if she knew it, but she couldn’t.  If that weren’t enough, she spoke a foreign language and very little English so there was a communication barrier.  Add to that every vowel I tried to have her correct confused her because her language had twelve times the vowels of mine.  I knew it couldn’t be done.

I went to a couple of associate teachers and told them I wouldn’t take her money because I didn’t believe she could be trained to sing.  But they both assured me that if I just did what I was trained to do she would.  So, for the benefit of full disclosure, I told my student that I didn’t think I could help her.  I told her my associates thought I could and that if she wanted to we would try this experiment together.  She went along.

To my complete amazement, within six months she was singing every pitch dead on.  Her confidence shot through the roof and my belief that I could actually help anybody learned to sing was born.  Since then I’ve seen it time and time again.  If a student will do what I ask and stick with it, a balanced healthy voice will result in good pitch.

So can anyone learn to sing?  Well 98% of them can.  And unless a doctor has confirmed your tone deafness, that includes you.  Want to find out?  Click here to get started and I’ll show you how.

Never give up.  If you love to sing you really can learn.  There is an amazing joy that comes from singing.  You can have it too.

Ready to take your voice to the next level? Check out online training at The Voice Club Academy

You don’t need a vocal coach to tell you what’s wrong with these sad attempts, but give ‘em a listen and let’s look at how they could have all been avoided.

So how can you avoid getting your performance on this list?

Top 5 Mistakes Made in the National Anthem

1. NOT KNOWING THE WORDS It’s the flippin’ National Anthem.  I understand forgetting a word or two when the nerves get to you but many people wing it and never take the time to learn the actual words.  Incorrect lyrics are all over the internet.  Get the right ones here. I have Canadian students who know every word of our anthem so I think the rest of us can do the same – consider it your patriotic duty.
2. OVER STYLING There can be a fine line between adding your own personal style to a song and adding so many vocal trills that you can hardly recognize the melody.  Honestly most people don’t understand what styling is and how to incorporate it.  So when they’re not sure they just pull out the whole bag of tricks.  The melody is there for a reason; it’s the face of the song.  Over styling is like putting on so much makeup that you can’t recognize the face anymore.  Real styling complements the integrity of the song.
3. CHANGING THE MELODY This is way more noticeable in a song like the National Anthem where people have a patriotic attachment to the basic melody but it’s an important lesson for all songs: the melody should only be changed after it is established and should not be changed so dramatically that it sounds like you’ve launched into another song.  This is styling 101.  Unfortunately, many stars who are surrounded by yes men are not required to take that class.  Consider yourself one step up.
4. STARTING IN THE WRONG KEY The National Anthem reaches just short of two octaves of the vocal range.  For a non-mixing singer, that’s probably 4-8 notes less than you can comfortably reach which is why this song terrifies us.  For a student who’s learned to mix you’ve got another octave or two on top of that.  Either way, starting in the right key will give you the best use of what you’ve got.  How do you pick a key?  Sing the first line quietly and choose a key where the 2nd word (“say”) falls on one your lowest notes possible.  That’s your key.  Obviously you can determine this ahead of time and use a pitch pipe or similar note reference but I’m a big fan of going freestyle because I’ve found it trains the ear better.  If you don’t use a pitch device and you start where the brain will tell you to (closer to the middle of your range) you are…toast.
5. SCREAMING Incorrect ‘belting’ is just screaming near or on a note.  It happens when a singer doesn’t know how to narrow their mix to transition to their higher notes.  When they try to add volume to power through the result is….well, Christine Aquilera’s big note.  Scream singing yanks up the larynx (the box your vocal cords are in) and literally puts your anatomy in place to choke yourself.  That’s why it sounds (and feels) like you’re being strangled.  How do you sing with power without screaming? THE MIX.  Mixing allows you to use the power of the chest voice and mix it with the higher resonance of your head voice to reach high notes with balance.  It prevents the vocal damage scream singing brings and it sounds way better!

Singing the National Anthem is an honor and one I think ever singer should seek.  It’s well worth it to learn this song.  When you’re ready to sing it just record it acapella on a CD or mp3 and contact your local sports venues to see who to send it to.  You’d be surprised how easy it can be to get in to sing the National Anthem even at a major sports venue.  Why?  Because this a tough song and not many people are in line to try their own luck at getting You Tube’d for their less than lackluster performance.

None of us are perfect and live performances with no music to hide behind are the toughest of all.  But if you’re up the challenge, singing the National Anthem is incredibly rewarding.  It feels good to do what few singers can.  Do it!  Then tell us your experience.  And don’t forget to check back in July to hear our students compete in our National Anthem contest!

Ready to take your voice to the next level? Check out online training at The Voice Club Academy

I could be the worlds stupidest musician.  Heck, my very own childhood piano teacher would regularly slap my hands with a ruler and finally dropped me as a student because I had a tendency to change the arrangement as I went along, which she said made me an incompetent student.  And honestly, it didn’t get much better when I started to go through a lineup of voice teachers.  I always felt like an idiot.  They regularly seemed disappointed that I wasn’t producing the results they were asking me for.  Most of the time I didn’t go back.  Sometimes I stuck it out until my ego could take no more.

My mom was a classical voice instructor and I eventually begin teaching a variation of the method too.  But when I found myself doing the exact same thing to my students that had been done to me I decided maybe I was just as bad as a teacher as I had been as a student.  So I quit.

But then something amazing happened.  After years of seeking answers to some of my nagging vocal problems I started finding answers that really worked.  The results were amazing and made such a huge difference in my voice that people kept asking me to teach them.  I went through the teaching program and before long I had given in.  I was a teacher again.  But this time with one major change:  I now knew why I had felt stupid all along.

Now I’m not the brightest bulb but even so, I realized that it was all my teachers fault.  Not because they were uninformed or nasty people, but because they simply were frustrated by not having the answers for me.  I was always a  front row, middle seat, hand always up kind of girl.  But the reality was that when what they had either been taught or personally experienced to be true did not produce the right results in me, well, it made them frustrated.  And since it worked for them, the obvious choice was to blame me.

YOUR TEACHERS REAL JOB

The first part of your teachers job is to understand a method that has a proven track record.  A lot of teachers know a little about a lot.  I used to be one of them.  Others know a lot about methods that are really more smoke and whistles than proven science.  Sometimes they’re trying to teach you to hit a bulls eye by turning around three times, flipping a lucky coin and throwing six darts in six seconds.  Might work.  But if it doesn’t, prepare for the disapproving glare.  Teaching that way does work for some people some of the time (ah the golden ones whom favor has rested upon), but understanding how speed, force and angle play into it would be effective for all people all of the time; making your teacher feel brilliant and, by extension, making you feel like the brightest student EVER!

The second and most overlooked part of your teachers job is to find a way to deliver the information they know in a way that you can relate to it and be benefited by.  No matter how much a teacher knows or even how good they are at doing what they’re asking you to do, if they can’t help you do it too it’s not a good situation…for either of you.

YOUR JOB

Yes, your job is to show up, bright-eyed and ready to soak in your teachers world of knowledge.  But an even bigger part of YOUR job is to ask questions.  Will it make you look stupid?  Well, think of it this way: if you knew the answers to the questions that pop into your head about the topic your taking lessons on….would you even NEED lessons? O.k.  So let’s assume you’re there because you don’t know, so asking might just help!

The more questions you ask, the more great ideas you give your teachers on how to deliver the information they have in a way you can best absorb it.  Which is…their job.  If you have a teacher who frowns upon your questions you either have a teacher who doesn’t know the answers and/or one who doesn’t want to take the time to find a way to get the information to you in a way you can best access it.  Either way, that means you’re with the wrong teacher.

BUT I LIKE MY TEACHER

So what do you do if you have a teacher you like but after reading this you’re wondering if they’ve got what you need?  You find out for sure.  Start asking questions during your lessons.   A good teacher will not make you feel stupid or like you’re bothering them for asking questions.  Work with your instructor to get a realistic time line of when you should start seeing results.  With the technique we teach, we try to get students hearing and feeling something different in the first lesson.  Big breakthroughs come at their own pace, but results are what you’re there for.

While you’re in that introspective mood, ask yourself if you understand more than you did before you started your lessons; not if you’ve been given new information, but if you really understand anything new in a way that you can use it and will make a valuable difference for you.  Sometimes it does take a bit of time for new concepts to sink in and you won’t fully grasp everything your teacher gives you, usually because it takes time both for them to learn how you learn and for your brain to change old patterns of thinking.  But if you don’t feel wiser now than when you started, that’s a red flag.

IF YOU DON’T GET IT, IT’S THEIR FAULT

As a teacher I can tell you that being able to help someone else discover something wonderful that you’ve learned is an incredible experience.  It’s WAY better than just trying to get through a lesson hoping what you tell them will work and never really knowing for sure.  I’ve been both places and if I had to stay in the latter, well, you wouldn’t be reading anything on this blog right now.

If you feel stupid when you finish a lesson or afraid to ask a question, it’s not your fault; it’s your teachers.  And it’s time to do something about it.  If you’re looking for a solid teacher check out our online lessons.  And if you want walk in lessons form a good instructor in your area let us refer you to someone.  We don’t get any kickback for it.  We just happen to think that both the student and teacher are best served when they know they’re a good fit.  And we think you deserve to know that up front.  For the rest of you: you are your best advocate.  Asking, asking, asking + good teaching = great learning!

Ready to take your voice to the next level? Check out online training at The Voice Club Academy