One Exercise to Dissolve Your Head/Chest Divide
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ต.ค. 2024
- Get command and coordination over your register shifts with this exercise framework: dan-callaway-s...
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If you’re new to my channel, my name's Dan Callaway. I teach music theatre voice and vocal pedagogy at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. I’ve performed on Equity stages for over 25 years, helped music theatre performers work sustainably on Broadway, national tours, and at top regional houses. I’ve taught at top music theatre programs for over 10 years (Elon University, and BoCo). I help music theatre singers build skill, gain confidence, and get to work.
You can find out more about me here - dancallaway.co...
If you’re a singer who likes to tell stories, and you want to do that in a satisfying, wholehearted way, you’ve landed in the right place.
I make videos knowing that if I help one person learn a game changing skill, carry away a helpful tool, or hear something that makes their life better, then it’s worth it. I hope this helped you today.
"Head Voice" and "Chest Voice" are just two of the many terms that continue to confuse singers. In this video, I teach you one exercise that helps. You'll understand how your voice is a continuum of possibilities, not cubbyholes or categories of abrupt change (unless you want that for stylistic purposes.)
This is a contemporary theater singer take on the classic messa di voce -- it helps you discover how your voice transitions from mode 2 (head/thin) to mode 1 (chest/thick) and then back to mode 2.
If you've never done an exercise, like this, you will probably encounter some speed bumps along the way. Stay with it, and just notice where the abrupt changes happen. Over time, your laryngeal muscles, your brain, and neurons will all start to coordinate to hand over phonatory responsibility.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me -- over at dancallaway.com
#messadivoce #yourvoiceisacontinuum #musicaltheatresinger #musicaltheatre #smoothvocaltransitions #musicaltheatrevoiceteacher - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
New subscriber here.
I only saw 3 of your videos but you already have a save place in my heart.
Your content is so relatable, understandable, informative, approachable, helpful and putting a smile on my face.
Thank you for beeing brave and showing us that the sounds we make while practising don't always have to be smooth. Especially not right away.
I'm so glad these have been helpful to you (and smile inducing -- woot!). We learn better through fun. Welcome, so glad you're here.
@@dancallawaystudio thank you
Fabulous exercise Dan ❤thank you
you're welcome -- hope it was helpful
I only discovered your channel today and I like how you teach.
I'm so glad it's been helpful -- welcome!
Fantastic exercise, thank you! I really appreciate the details in how you describe sensations to set the body and mind up energetically. 🙏 It's interesting, I did an exercise similar to this years ago but never understood the significance of it - I was basically just struggling a lot with it and concluded that "it didn't work for me". Now feeling like "oh boy, does it work for me 😅" - it's revealing in detail every place in my voice where I'm not yet able to transition smoothly between mode 1 and 2 + will probably help smooth those out over time. It's easy up to C4, then gets wobbly and clunky up to G4 where it gets smooth again. 3 minutes a day with this - yes definitely!
I'm so glad this was helpful for you -- YES, these are there to show you where the transitions want to happen, and then you let your voice learn a new way to pass the baton. We're learning to make the unfamiliar familiar. Thanks for the kind comment
Agree 100% with EvannaLily... often peeping for helpful exercises and so glad having discovered your channel 🙏. Love this little distortion, would like to be able to produce them on purpose and not only casually. And so important to know it's OK to produce weird noises on the way getting better. That's what my vocal coach sometimes tell me when I apologize for sounding shi... 😊
almost forgot my question. What pitch shall a lady choose for this exercise - lower headvoice, mix or around the "break", or doesn't it really maþer that much? Thank U Dan
Yep -- every sound has some info for you. And every sound is right for something haha -- I'm glad you found this helpful
@@ellie.rim30 For treble voices, it depends on where your natural transitions happen. Really, any note that you can sing in either M1/chest and M2/head is fair game. You'll find the transition tougher on middle/transition/lower pitches because more vocal fold mass is transitioning to thin fold coordination (maybe -- not always) and you'll find the higher you go, like B, C, D etc, you might find more ease in the transitions since the folds are already thinning -- hope this makes sense. Ask more if you need me to clarify
@@dancallawaystudio Thank U, I think I understand and will try this out.
@@ellie.rim30 excellent -- if there are more Qs, this could also be a more in depth video
I needed this video so badly a year or two ago. Mixing has been such a journey but just showing up and doing it , like you said, is so much the key. And not having a hate relationship with the larynx - which I’m still working on ! But adding this to days when the balance is off, which happens a lot in the mornings.
Yep, the morning has varying levels of cobwebs for all of us -- just a matter of learning how your own instrument coordinates best. Yep, I think if you can hold on to the truth that if you keep doing things you know to be helpful, your voice will organize, balance, and collaborate more and more. I've found being a curious observer of the voice has been such a helpful point of view -- helps you navigate the frustration while things are getting situated.
@@dancallawaystudio yeah, it is almost like you have to learn to sing again every morning. But experience will teach you how to learn quicker and I guess you can call that a warm up!
@@donrogg yep -- I call it coordinating. You could wake up at 3 am and scream everybody out! There's a fire! And your voice would probably be fine. So it's really about getting the muscles interacting in a way that sets you up well for the vocal tasks you're working on
Is there any chance you can get rid of that blue highlight to your subtitles? The subtitles themselves are OK but the moving blue blob makes it difficult to concentrate on what you're saying.
appreciate this feedback. Yep, that's an easy fix. You're the second person who's mentioned that 👍
You touched on this in this video, but stuff that might sound nasal or silly when sung at your speaking pitch will not sound that way when you sing high.
So it is good to set yourself up at a lower pitch and trust in the configuration and the vowel!
And a random note, funny vowel modifications. When Geddy Lee sings "But change is", in "Tom Sawyer" I am singing it like "Butt changes", like a visit to the proctologist. It makes it easier to go from the "eh" in "changes" by keeping the vowel the same and not narrowing it.
@@donrogg yeah I find it a helpful way to hear what the bowel shapes are at a low frequency so you can tell your brain "this is acoustic vowel code" when you sing higher pitches
Should you be able to switch between modes on every note in your range? This is much more difficult for me on notes before and in my passages that higher notes above it
Not every note in my experience. I can only carry mode 2 down so low, and my mode 1 definitely has an upper limit as well. And what you describe is very common -- the notes in our transitional zones can favor either the mode one muscular coordination, or the mode 2 muscular coordination, and will want to tend toward that rather than the balance points along the continuum. For instance, it's a lot harder for me to do this transition exercise on an F for F-sharp above middle C than it is on the B-flat a fourth higher. My folds are thinner there, so the hand-off from mode 2 to mode 1 and voce versa can happen more easily in my experience. I still get wobbles and blips in the transitional zones. Thanks for the question
@10jonchannel did you have another question about the transitional zones/passaggio experiencing distortion? I thought I saw that, but don't anymore -- for something like that, experiment with letting your larynx float a little higher on higher pitches and trying gentle dynamic support. Even playing with a way-high larynx and then lowering it down is a good way to play with this and see where you get balanced phonation. Hope this helps. The distortion could come from overblowing air and the pharyngeal tube not being in a favorable shape for that particular pitch.
Dan, Can I ask who are some Rock singers you believe to be very skilled and developed? Or, perhaps who were? For example, I sing some Kansas (Steve Walsh) deep cuts from their first album that really challenge me. They have some killer tessituras.
Steve Walsh is a great example. Ann Wilson from Heart is a great model. I just heard Alanis and Joan Jett last summer, and they both sounded great. The way Freddy Mercury sang -- intuitive and super sustainable. Early Steve Perry, John Fogerty, Foreigner, Boston -- they all come to mind. Bad Company, Van Morrison. I also can't figure out how Bruce Springsteen sang the way he did for 3 hours when I saw him in concert over 10 years ago.
@@dancallawaystudio Lou Gramm is my number 1 vocal influence. Foreigner is releasing a new 1996-recorded song with Lou Gramm on vocals.
@@VIDEOHEREBOB that'll be awesome to hear
Super, super cool to see someone showing Messa di Voce exercises, especially around G4. Few voice teachers have the courage to do so!
In my experience, the only way to achieve this is through pharyngeal resonance. The "pharyngeal voice", similar to a cat sound around that vowel/pitch, is what finally unlocked me to stay in the middle between registers M1 and M2 and this means completely transforming the singing.
It definitely sounds like you are using pharyngeal resonance there. I've heard some people say this is the ONLY way to actually mix M1 and M2.
Do you agree with that statement?
Thanks so much for the kind comment. Your perception is accurate because when I do conceive of resonance, I think about the pharynx because it's the most immediate vibration/amplification location after the folds do their thing -- everything vibrates out from the pharynx. So when I do this exercise, my attention does center there and tunes into the sensations I'm feeling there (above the larynx and in the snorty spot). I don't know if we even need to demarcate it as pharyngeal resonance because that's just the reality -- that's where the voice primarily resonates whether you're thinking about your mask or the back of your skull or your chest. Of course, there's oral cavity, nose, and sinuses and bones (that no one can hear) resonating, but all that to say that you perceived the way that I pay attention to the voice -- I feel like if you lovingly witness the pharyngeal resonance with good breath management, vocal fold balance, and tract shaping that supports the aesthetic you're going for, the rest is taken care of by physics
@@dancallawaystudio Thank you so much for the answer!
At first, I was really confused about what you said, because, although I know the pharynx starts right above the larynx, or in other words in the back of the mouth, my experience with "pharyngeal voice" was way above in the pharynx. Like when you do a very bright baby cry or cat meow, and it seems to reverberate in the top of the nose right between your eyes.
I'm experimenting with lower notes in low volume though, and it seems that messa di voice on that region benefits from a contraction of lower portions of the pharynx (like closer to the soft palate at E4).
Probably I'm just starting to understand this.
What is your experience with the pharyngeal sound in terms of where it ressonates? Does what I said about the forehead ressonate with you somehow? Like in this video below, the examples seem to come from much higher in the pharyngeal tract:
th-cam.com/video/JpoLBZvvPkE/w-d-xo.html
Also I get confused when people talk about "cry mechanism", I don't know what that means physically, but it seems to be a different thing.
@@musikkamagga3770It's very common for folks to feel strong resonance where you describe -- nose, cheek bones, front sinuses, etc. I've just noticed that everyone feels things differently -- one singer might use their mask resonance sensation as a helpful guide while another might have limited perception there. That's why I think it important to know what's going on as far as we can observe and understand and then let each singer notice where and how they sense their own vocal compass points.
@@musikkamagga3770in my experience "cry" is a cue to help coordinate a certain breath movement, fold vibration, and tract shape -- it can help you fine a mode 1 rather pressurized sound and also gives you some emotional impulse to support the sound. But it's more of a cue rather than a specific configuration in my experience -- much like a hooting owl, whimpering puppy, or super whiny child might be other images that help us connect familiar sounds to the ways they're made. I'll have to check out the linked video to see what you're asking about -- thanks for the questions
@@dancallawaystudio you know, I was thinking about it, and a snort is just a tongue trill without pitch. Which very useful to know! Thanks for introducing me to the snort!
Hi. How can I get in touch, I'm having some trouble signing up on the site?
oh, hey -- thanks for letting me know. I'll check that out. You can always email dan@dancallaway.com dancallaway.com/teaching/contact-for-lessons/
Just to clarify, the thought is to let the Crack happen, don't try to correct or smooth, and over time the voice will smooth out the transition itself? Is that the action? Thank you anyone who can clarify
I personally think it's easier to build and strengthen the voice from a position where it feels most comfortable. That way, you start off by using the correct muscles and with the least effort. Otherwise, if you put everything into just trying to be big and loud from the get-go, the strain, tension and effort involved will eventually wear you out. Trust me. Start easy, soft, and build it. With discipline and smart practicing, it will happen quite quickly.
unfortunately it’s not like that… you need specific air “work” and feel in order to get mixed voice.
of course you shouldn’t strive to make it work and you should understand how much voice and volume you need to mix first.
vocal cry is been key for me.
if you don’t intentionally do certain things you won’t get mixed voice… but also you need to know how to turn off the things that go against you.
Hey there thanks for the question. In this particular exercise, folks may or may not experience an abrupt register shift. The whole crack-stravaganza part of this :) was to say that if you do experience a big hiccup going from mode 2 to mode 1, that's all right. In fact, that's usually a sign you're working in a balanced and sustainable way. I've worked with some singers who didn't let themselves crack through compensation in other muscle groups, and that makes things hard in the long run. The whole notice-where-the-change happens is to cultivate 1. observation and awareness of your own instrument, feeling the transition point in your own body, 2. giving yourself permission to let the voice do that so that you can actually see where that happens for you-- there are laryngeal freedom exercises i do that specifically utilize the crack/yodel, and 3. to ensure that you're working with folds that are vibrating with balance and ease -- if you're slamming them together or recruiting external tensions to make the transition, you could be setting yourself up for working way hard at singing, and that lets less of real you through. Hope this helps.
@@utilitydisk you're right, there are many nuanced factors here -- dynamic support relating to phonation, vowel shape, amount of twang musical style. Singing's always 47 things interacting, that's for sure.
@@michaelwhy79 I think this is a wise plan -- start from ease, return to ease as much as possible.
Good videos, but the text bubble is distracting
Appreciate the feedback
😂
..as in, laughing with you and being grateful for you showcasing that letting things happen in order to get to know your voice is very comforting.
I'm so glad you got a laugh with me -- fun times :)