How come I can do my warmups, but my technique goes out the window when I sing?
You are not alone!
This is a very common problem.
We have a ‘speaking’ voice, a ‘warmup’ voice, and then go into our ‘singing’ voice. Psychologically, we sense these as three separate voices and, therefore, treat them differently.
The trick is to start considering the voice, in all its guises and uses, as one single instrument (albeit the most flexible one there is!).
This is why, in vocal coaching lessons, we sometimes (often) do ‘calling’ games using our speaking voice to access a sung belt voice (TA dominant sound).
The intention with this is that we can then recreate the feeling of energised ‘calling’ but do it on pitch (singing). Already, then, we are starting to integrate the speaking and singing voice.
Recognising this connection is important. If we misuse our spoken voice all day, e.g. using a strained, breathy, or de-energised* tone (e.g. laden with vocal fry! - Another interesting science article here from The Journal of Voice), how can we expect our vocal folds to perform differently when we sing? Our body has already developed tensions and muscular habits we may have to unlearn and to retrain the correct muscles.
This takes time because we have to develop a) muscle memory which involves new synaptic pathways in the brain as well as b) actual muscle development. I read somewhere it takes up to thirty days to develop a new habit! So, be patient with yourself, but remain vigilant and diligent (say that quickly a few times, and you’re already doing a diction exercise!).
The second thing about the ‘warmup’ voice is that 1) it can often be playful, so we feel less pressure to ‘perform’ and 2) it is often done on vowels only (so fewer articulators are involved = less complex).
Let’s talk about play.
In warm ups, trying out sounds is part of the fun, if we really let ourselves get into the playful mentality. Due to this relaxation into making quirky sounds, we are less likely to engage our upper abdominal muscles in a damaging way that induces constriction (see our blog post on Constriction versus Retraction).
We are more likely to have a giggle with our vocal coach, which is - ding! ding! ding! - one of the antidotes to constriction (= retraction)!
Bringing that playful energy (rather than the perfectionist, ‘I must do it right’ energy) to vocalising (notice I didn’t say ‘singing’!) can help us build these synaptic pathways in a more effortless way. Your vocal coaching expert may say this to you (and with good reason) often:
‘Less is more’.
So, play!
It doesn’t have to be so effortful…
Next, let’s discuss prioritizing healthy vocal tone...
We work with all of these in your Solo Vocal Lesson!
The second thing is that, especially if you’re developing the consistency of vocal tone, you may be doing lots of vowel work, which mainly involves the larynx, itself - its posture (tilted versus neutral) and its position (high, mid, low) and within it, the vocal folds (thick or thin folds and transitions between). There is some mild movement of your lips and tongue.
However, when consonants are introduced, which involve your other articulators much more (mouth: jaw, tongue, soft palate, lips; other facial muscles: auriculars - see the blog Mona Lisa and the Rainbow of Power on these; zygomaticus major and minor, etc.), it complicates things!
When you add words, you now have to consider all the tension releasing elements that those require (see tongue root tension release blog, for a start).
A nice image I like to use is this: the voice / vocal tone is a flowing river. The consonants are little boats floating on top.
Whatever floats your boat…
Prioritise vocal tone.
In other words, consonants shouldn’t be dams that block the flow of the vocal tone at any point. If you feel this, you have tension somewhere - articulator or abdominal, the latter of which requires the swift antidote of retraction.
[EDIT: I have been reminded in continuing professional development training, at VocalProcess, by the wonderful Jeremy Fisher that there are, indeed, some consonants, e.g. plosives - discussed below, that do stop the flow of air, which is what causes the ‘explosion’ of sound upon release. The image above still stands in that you don’t want to feel like your release is laboured or pushed.]
To help with any articulator tension, you may need to modify vowels (open at the top ranges to a darker vowel) by opening your jaw more and using your tongue to create the brightness of ‘ee’, for example, rather than clenching your jaw (the ‘ee’ vowel darkens to ‘I’ as in ‘pig’). You may need to modify your unvoiced plosive consonants (which make a mini-explosion of air), like ‘p’ and ‘k’ to unaspirated plosives, like ‘b’ and ‘g’. (This will also help with mic technique - more on that later!).
MODIFY, MODIFY, MODIFY
(I call it ‘vocal cheating’! Makes one feel naughty, right? Well, it works!)
Let’s take a couple examples:
‘Empty Chairs at Empty Tables’ from Les Misérables
‘The very words that they have sung
Became their last communion
On this lonely barricade, at dawn.’
You have the above words in a higher range for the male voice. I have worked with baritones on this to modify both the vowels and the consonants with a consistent jaw drop (no chewing!), tongue release and plosive change. The difficult line, then, becomes:
Big-ehm theh lahst gah-myoon-yahn
Try it. Sounds weird to say it, right? But if you’re singing high, the modifications will still allow the meaning to come across because the vocal tone will be in place. This is very common in opera and should be more common in musical theatre. (You also hear vowel modifications a lot in very twangy rock singing, which are often stylistic choices, in addition to technical aids. More on rock later!).
Below is Michael Ball’s live version. He audibly says ‘gummunion’ around 01:20, which helps with control of his beautiful tone and avoids the aspirated (breathy) plosive ‘k’ catching the mic, softening it with the unaspirated plosive ‘g’.
Eddie Redmayne’s version here features an audible vowel modification in ‘Bih-came’, rather than ‘BEE-came’, which helped his higher note come out using a more relaxed jaw and tongue (around 02:00). (Though he may have some neck and jaw tension, as his head shakes a little when he sings. But only we vocal coaches would notice this detail in such a stunningly acted performance. Bravo, Eddie!)
(Redmayne uses a vulnerable supported falsetto, rather than the full wailed voice you hear in Ball’s rendition, which means he can manage his breath pressure and worry less about overblowing his plosive ‘k’. More on breath pressure, later, too!).
You may add back your plosive ‘k’, but getting rid of them while learning this song may help you maintain the consistency of vocal tone. Worth a shot, eh?
One for the women:
Joni Mitchell’s ‘My Old Man’ from her Blue album
‘My old man, he's a singer in the park
He's a walker in the rain
He's a dancer in the dark
We don't need no piece of paper from the city hall
Keeping us tied and true, no, my old man
Keeping away my blues.’
Here is Mitchell’s live version:
The above lines in bold appear on significantly higher leaps from the rest of the chorus, as is Mitchell’s style. (She loves the octave and sixth leaps!)
Ways to approach this could be, once you’ve mastered the light mix vocal tone (Mitchell flips up into CT dominant sound), to modify your vowels and consonants, which can significantly reduce articulator tension. I’ll try to write them phonetically here:
…singer in the park = Senga ren-tha pahk
We don't need no piece of paper from the city hall = Wi dahn-nid no bis a bayba fum thuh siddy ‘all
…keepin’ away my blues = gibbon aweh mah bliws
So, to conclude, there are a lot of things to think about when we sing in the context of a song, including posture, stance, articulators for vowels and not to mention WORDS.
It’s, therefore, really important to focus first on getting the vocal tone into a really clean, controlled place, integrating the speaking voice with the singing voice (which is why spoken exercises are so helpful!).
Supporting your singing and general vocalising can be done by modifying vowels and consonants to release any tension to make vocal tone your first priority. In this case, don’t be afraid to ‘cheat’ by opening your jaw just a little more and lightening your consonants!
Talk to our vocal coaching expert about how you can do this within the repertoire on which you’re working!
Don’t get me wrong: using the vocal fry for emotionality in vocal performance is a must in pop, jazz, rock and musical theatre vocals, and even electoacoustic music. Noticeably, these art forms all use a microphone, which allows for more subtle, intimate, breathier approaches. Vocal fry should be an optional stylistic choice (‘seasoning’), rather than default. Here is an article from Science Daily about this.
Here is a vid of me performing Elegeia (for Anna), 2013, which I co-composed with Nikos Stavropoulos. It features a significant use of vocal fry as an expressive vocal tool in this electro-acoustic music piece for Tape and Voice, on the theme of grief.
More info on vocal coaching lessons, here.
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