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Category Archives: Musicians and Singers

Vocal Warm-Ups or Vocal Damage

23 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by stephendnix in Musicians and Singers

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Breath, Creativity, Singers, Vocal Technique

I am privileged to work with many singers and music artists.  Usually, my first question to them has to be, “What are your warm-up exercises?”  About 80-90% of these people will have no planned disciplined warm-up technique.

Would a runner start into a full on sprint without stretching?  Do most athletes just start their sport without conditioning the body first?  No!  Most athletes integrate a warm up routine as a necessity before a game or competition.  Why?  It requires a physiological preparation to sustain, work at your maximum and minimize the possibility of a strain or injury.

I think if you have read this far, you are possibly getting the point I am trying to make.  Most singers start into a full-on performance mode without awakening, strengthening and preparing the voice.

I work locally with voice clinics and music professionals trying to remedy the abuse caused by singers who think they’re above vocal abuse.  A majority of the time when they are consulting with me, they have started on a difficult journey of recovering what they’ve lost.  Most of this started by simply not warming up the voice properly to allow disciplined healthy technique to ignite their brain, diaphragmatic muscles and placement.

Throughout my life I have been taught many counteractive warm-up techniques.  I tend to act like a David against the Philistines of bad vocal warm-up techniques.  Most vocal warm-ups have been inherited by choral conductors and music teachers, but they have no physiological reasoning or understanding for their purpose or lack thereof.  Remember, the voice is a physical instrument and every consonant and vowel sound carries a proclivity for helping or hurting the singer.  As a music professional, I’ve spent countless hours researching the physiology of vocal sound production and have become quite aware of the interactions of vowel and consonant sounds and their pros and cons for the singer.  It’s imperative that a warm-up allow the singer to slowly and deliberately stretch the voice in the right direction without causing injury or encouraging bad habits.

Let me put together a basic warm-up that can be expanded on, but will teach you some healthy principles of warming up the voice.

  1. Start with a lip buzz or “zzz” sound.  Do not place a defined pitch sequence to this exercise, a single moderately scaled tone is sufficient.  Make certain you are getting full breaths.  It’s also important that you aren’t just sustaining the sound, but you are also diaphragmatically pulsating the sound.  I call it belly pooching. It feels like you are making a noise in a circular motion.   This is like caffeine for the diaphragm.  In the age of computer and t.v. slouch, it’s imperative that we engage and awaken our muscles that are supporting our breath before we combine it with any pitch sequence.  Remember, no vowels!  Just buzz your lips like a bee or use the consonant “z”. It’s necessary to remind the brain and the muscles to engage properly.
  2. When starting to add a pitch sequence (five tone scale, etc.), this is where most choral directors, music teachers and singers go down the path of negative warm-up exercises. They combine warm-ups with back/guttural vowel sounds. These vowels like buh, boe, bah and boo naturally want to resonate in the throat and the singer needs to learn not make dark sounds which create more tension on the vocal cords/flanges.   Frontal/nasal Vowels like Bee and Bih and a neutral/central vowel like Bye are healthy  initial warm-up vowels because they assist in keeping your tone open and not create negative pressure on the voice.   When these vowels are combined with voiced plosive consonants like B, D, Guh or the nasal consonants M, and N.  It assists the singer in keeping away from tension, engaging the diaphragm and also feeling a healthy and forward placement.  Most people engage their placement too low  in their a speaking voice.  It’s imperative that placement for warm-ups utilize a brighter tone to offset the tendencies and pitfalls of the speaking voice. Remember, no back/guttural vowels for the initial pitched warm-up. Utilize the help of frontal/nasal vowels combined with plosive and nasal consonants  to gently stretch the voice.
  3. Start in a comfortable area of your range when warming up with pitched exercises. Starting at the ultimate lowest or higher part of your voice can engage bad habits by overworking or underworking placement and immobilizing proper breath support.  I prefer not to stretch the voice to an ultimate note incipiently, but slowly work down in the vocal range and back up to the higher range.  It is equivalent to a muscle stretch where you gently work to achieve your optimum range of motion.
  4. What I like to call “ballistic vocal stretching exercises” i.e. siren sounds, help to gently stretch and relax the voice. Glide the voice up and down in a wave like sound and motion, using frontal/nasal or central/neutral vowels and plosive consonants. Starting at the lowest pitch and quickly gliding to the highest pitch and back down. This helps to eliminate vocal tension. Males this is not just an exercise for females! Don’t be afraid of your head voice/upper range.
  5. When working through a pitched warm-up sequence make sure to utilize all of the vowel families. Start with the frontal/nasals vowels, then what I call frontal/maxillary vowels bay, beh and bah and lastly the back/guttural vowels.  By sequentially moving from the most forward placement to the back/darker vowels it helps the brain and muscles to better engage a healthy placement and secure tone.

*vowels have been simplified for understanding and do not follow IPA phonetic chart spelling.

Remember, warm-ups aren’t elective for a singer, but are necessary in keeping a healthy voice.   Get a warm-up plan or let a music instructor  help you maximize your vocal needs.  It might feel awkward at first, but you will get use to it and see, feel and hear a major difference in your performance.

For more information contact: Stephen Nix snix77@yahoo.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Power of Inconvenient Kindness

28 Thursday May 2015

Posted by stephendnix in Music Directors, Musicians and Singers

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Social media has made the playing field of platitudes, bromides and cliche’s a plethora, if not an infestation of words in which sincerity can’t be discerned.  It has become too easy to state opinions or feelings without having to back them with an action or responsibility for following through with what has been written.  In many ways, it’s discounted the power of a word, even words of kindness.

The foundation of all I believe to be good has not been based off of a word, a song or sermon, but the kind actions of others.  People going out of their way to help. People seeing a need and selflessly stopping their lives to help meet the deficiency.

When my Mom died in my mid-teens, I was left to pay my way through my world with her social security check and trusting the kindness of people to understand a young boy needed a parent figure to help with basic needs at times.  Then, my Father’s death followed some years later and the the prison of grief and shock from this event sent me spiraling into a deep, exhausting depression.  Again, I was unable to tend to my basic needs, but dependent on the kind actions of others. Some of this action was a deep commitment and wasn’t limited to a one time scenario of help.

After many years,  I thought I had grown past my need for help, but over the last year I have found myself in the same dilemma from my teen years.  Raising a cousin’s child who is layered with many special needs has proven to be an exhausting physical and mental task. Then, you layer multiple close family members dying and serious illness of close relatives and you find yourself at the same place.  I know there are countless people suffering from even greater experiences than mine.

It’s the friends who came and cleaned my house when I had to leave suddenly for a funeral, who kept my faith in goodness.  It’s the ones who have taken the kid and cared for him to give me a break, who keep my belief in love.  It’s those simple gestures of just being present and distracting me from the realities I can’t change that have made all of the difference.  It’s the individuals who see the basic needs of everyday life and help.   It’s people going out of their way to be more than a blip on a computer screen, a text on a phone or even a voice giving words of condolence or opinion.

We are all links in a chain called community/family and we all have to stick together by being present in each others’ lives.  It’s not always simple or easy and sometimes it involves some inconvenience on our part.   Love, family, friendship and community are more than terms to be written about, but they are living action. It means asserting energy to help.  The strength in showing kindness doesn’t always line up with our perfect plans, but it always ends up being better than what we had on our agendas.

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