Thank you so much for this! I struggled with a lot of fear and sang dysfunctionally over the years as I didnt properly learned it. Just a bathroom singer. When I realized I did it wrong most parts it’s hard to unlearned & enforce new physiological reflex. I get good a lot when I learn the correct way & not fear of nailing high notes now because I know I can do it & did it a lot of times, just not being able to like all the time considering the nervousness of recording it or having audiences
I found this video to be particularly helpful as I carry years of negative feelings about my voice. Many of my voice teachers weren't comfortable dealing with the emotional component of singing or the psychological blocks singers can experience with what they find to be challenging about their voice. Thanks for facing it head on with understanding and positive suggestions!
Thank you for this video! In fact, thank you for all of you videos. They have been so instrumental in my progress with singing. I take voice lessons locally and watching your videos have been a marvelous companion to those lessons. Your videos have made some things click for me that I just wasn’t able to get in my lessons. I think sometimes different ways of having something explained helps the ability to understand. Thanks again!
Hi Karyn, This is a very nice vid! Really good demo of exercises and explaining the important role of mental imaging...never underestimate the value of that in practice! Love your little anecdotes too, wish my kids got even half as happy with leftovers LOL!! All the best, Lin.
I hope the exercises help me. Every time I even think to sing in my middle and upper register my throat tightens and feels like it's in pain in general. Back before I was watching and understanding your videos I had a really bad practice run and I couldn't speak for a week. I hadn't sung for months out of fear and depression
So informative! Something came to my mind that causes me a bit of a dilemma. I've been told (rightly so) that you shouldn't be robotic when singing but show some emotion, what the song inspires you while singing. When you're a new learner and you have little experience in public singing, you get too focused on getting your technique and sound right or you're plagued with stage fright and you're not really "in the song itself". I have this problem, so I've been working on it. The other problem I have is kind of the opposite in that certain songs move me so much that my emotions are too overwhelming and that doesn't help singing either! See what I mean? It's quite a dilemma! Somehow, you have to find a balance between worrying about the technique and sound because you appear cold and robotic and being too engrossed in the emotions the song provoke in you as it ruins your performance. How do you do that? I practice mental rehearsal a lot when I imagine everything going perfectly well, but it never turns out that way during the actual performance!
Very nice video thanks! It's a good topic. The mental rehearsal sounds a good strategy. Thinking on yawns and 'woops' though, I think these are going to put me into my high register anyway, the 'worry tones' for me are C# and D above my high C in a fuller/mixed sound. If I only needed to sing them in falsetto I don't think I'd have the problem.
Yes, these exercises won't put you in 'full voice' - you can't be in a whoop resonance strategy and chest mix or belt simultaneously. But again, they're designed to induce relaxation and release constrictor tensions in the throat (for singers with hyperfunction and constriction that's induced by how they're thinking and feeling about singing), not necessarily to create the precise sound or coordination that we're striving for. (Thus my comment to not worry about how it sounds; focus on how it feels, instead.) You'd be surprised to learn how many singers can't even achieve a release when creating these sounds! I intend to continue recording videos on this topic, in which I will address the breath, glottal resistance/compression and vocal effort, and vowel modification (resonance), which may be more of what you're needing at this time in your training.
Hi Karen, I've been watching and appreciating your videos for a while now. I enjoy researching and reading up on all the different ideas and techniques. Are there any books you could recommend reading? Thank you!
The books that I would recommend would depend on where you're at in your training and what your goals are. I usually start with Richard Miller's Solutions for Singers, regardless of the style in which the student sings. Are there specific areas of technique that you're interested in learning more about? In two weeks, I'm going to be posting a video for my 7 Questions for Singing Teachers series in which all the teachers share 3 of their favourite resources (books, podcasts, websites, etc.) and explain why they like them so much. Stay tuned for that video.
Hey Karen, I was doing the straw exercise and although I felt my abdominal muscles engaging at the onset of sound, I still felt my larynx going too high and felt that my voice was either too breathy or too heavy (too much air going through my vocal cords). Could you maybe explain the exercise in more detail? I saw your video on this exercise a couple of times, but I was hoping that by asking you I could get a more thorough perspective on this exercise. My abdominal muscles engage at the onset of sound, as I always feel slight contraction when I speak, but either not enough or too little engagement is happening; I'm hoping that with the straw exercise I'll be able to unlock just the right amount of air pressure and have the correct degree of contraction for specific notes! Thank you immensely as always :)
Sometimes it takes a while for the body to learn new ways of responding physiologically. The straw exercise is not an instant fix, and many singers do not experience immediate results with it. But over time, with daily straw work, the body starts to become recalibrated and finds better balance. We should feel the abdominal muscles become engaged at the onset of sound. However, if your larynx is still rising when you phonate into a straw (with a small diameter), then it's possible that you are squeezing too much with the abdominal girdle and therefore generating too high a subglottal pressure, which will lead to a high larynx. I will say this, though: Don't focus directly on the height of the larynx. Doing so will lead to an imbalanced focus. The larynx will do what the larynx will do, and all we should be doing is creating the optimal conditions for it to operate under. That includes finding an effective strategy for managing your breath pressure. And, in general, don't overthink your breathing, as this will lead to the development of conscious controls that prevent the body from coordinating as it's designed to. Energize your sound when you phonate into the straw (i.e., don't sing too lightly, but don't push the sound, either - try comfortable but energized speaking loudness, as when you're excited, at first) and don't try to consciously manipulate anything. Over time, the breath and the larynx will settle and find balance. Oftentimes, singers experience breathiness during the straw exercises because there is an imbalance, either with the breath or with the intrinsic laryngeal musculature. If you tend to constrict during singing, for example, the straw may prevent those usually hyperfuncational throat muscles from engaging as much as they usually do. So now, something is standing in the way of your habitual glottal closure strategy, so the instrument doesn't know how to respond, and you get insufficient glottal closure. This, too, may simply be a matter of allowing more time for the glottal adductor mechanism to find a new balance. If you've seen my videos on breath management, you'll know that I believe that she should try to mitigate the subglottal pressures generated by the contraction of the abdominal muscles by simultaneously keeping the lower ribs expanded (and thus the inspiratory intercostal muscles engaged throughout most of the phrase). This is ultimately the most effective means of managing laryngeal height (rather than consciously trying to lower it). But unless you're singing in classical styles, don't be afraid of some laryngeal elevation. For many techniques, including belting, it's okay for the larynx to rise so long as that laryngeal elevation is not accompanied by a feeling of strain. However, the positive back pressure created when phonating through a straw should encourage an 'open' throat, with more space inside the pharynx and a comfortably low larynx. Apart from examining your breath management technique and giving straw phonation some more time to do its job, I'm not sure what else to suggest without actually observing and hearing you perform the exercises. Please feel free to e-mail (karyn@singwise.com) a video clip of you singing into a straw. Maybe that will give me more insight into what's going on and help me help you better.
Wow thank you so much for your elaborate response! I have a feeling my straw isn't narrow enough-- maybe I'll experiment with a smaller straw and see how it goes!
Hi Karen, I am researching some of these physiological terms to understand some of your videos better. I am stuck at at the difference between the glottis and the aryepiglottic sphincter or the aryepiglottic fold. I read that they're both the entrance to the larynx. Please tell me what the difference is. Thanks !
The glottis is the space between the vocal folds. (So, when we bring the vocal folds together, we say that the glottis has been closed.) The aryepiglottic folds are located ABOVE the vocal folds, at the entrance to the larynx. The aryepiglottic folds extend from the epiglottis (in the front), which is the little flap of cartilage that comes down during swallowing to cap off the airway so that food and liquid can't enter the lungs, to the arytenoid cartilages (at the back). These attachments (arytenoids and epiglottis) give it its name. We call it the aryepiglottic sphincter because when the muscles within these folds contract (tighten), they do so with a sphincter type action - almost like tightening purse strings - which narrows the opening to the larynx (the laryngeal outlet). So, this sphincter action happens ABOVE the vocal folds. If you look at a bird's eye view of the larynx, you should see that the aryepiglottic folds sit just above the true vocal folds. I hope this helps to clear things up for you.
Hi when you talked about the Incipient Yawn, is that same as "inner smile"? I've been very confused about this. I'm searching all over the place and seem like the inner smile is lifting your cheek base on Mr. Edward L. Johnson. Could you please talk about this more? And it seem like one can't lift their cheek for so much, only a little. I have heard that the higher you go, the bigger space you should be open inside, how to achieve that if you can only lift your cheek to a certain degree? Thank you
They're definitely related. Although they are not actually connected by muscular attachment, when we lift the zygomatic muscles (the lift of the cheeks, so that we get a smile under the eyes, but don't spread our lips into a smile posture), we tend to also lift the soft palate. I think it's because that zygomatic lift inspires pleasant imagery, and so the soft palate naturally responds by lifting - that response is triggered. This is the 'inner smile.' The other reason for lifting the cheeks is because it takes weight off the upper lip and prevents the upper harmonics from being cut off. When the lip completely covers the front teeth, the tone can sound a bit dull. Lifting the zygomatic muscles is a way of achieving some brightness without actually using a smile technique, (which would be too extreme and would produce a thin, overly bright tone). Most teachers do teach that we should increase the space in our throats as we go higher. This helps to prevent constriction and a 'whitening' of the voice in which we lose the lower overtones because the larynx is too high. (As a general rule, we brighten the lower notes and darken the higher notes in order to achieve an evenness of timbre throughout the scale.) But studies show that this is not actually what happens inside the throat - it's what we perceive to be an increase in space because we're having to 'work harder' in order to maintain that feeling in the upper range. But if we're singing in commercial styles, and especially belting, we don't actually want a low larynx and wide pharynx in the higher range. (We also don't want to exaggerate velar - soft palate - elevation, as this will prevent us from achieving a speech-like quality.) What we want to achieve is the FEELING of spaciousness inside the throat, even if the vocal tract has shortened and narrowed. I hope this helps.
Yes. The reason why the yawn has become sort of 'in vogue' amongst singers and teachers is because it does encourage the soft palate to elevate. However, during yawning, the tongue is flat and retracted, which is not what we want for singing. So keep a nice, natural curve of the tongue (e.g., for a properly articulated AH or AE vowel), with the tongue root more forward along the anterior pharyngeal wall than it would be for an actual yawn. If you flatten and retract the tongue, the tone will distort - it will sound gagged and overly dark - and the larynx will be forced down, making it inflexible. And it may not be a very comfortable vocal tract posture. The posture of deep inhalation should suffice for opening the throat.
The tongue will go down a bit, but it just shouldn't be OVERLY flattened, and definitely not retracted or tensed (as in a full yawn). Start with the posture of deep, relaxed inhalation through the mouth, and your tongue will likely assume the ideal posture, which will be closer to that of the AH vowel, and this will allow you some space inside the throat for better resonance.
I never understood how even the initial yawn feels not constricted. Yawning always feels constricted. I guess my body was built diffrent. My tongue depresses naturally
Thank you so much for this! I struggled with a lot of fear and sang dysfunctionally over the years as I didnt properly learned it. Just a bathroom singer. When I realized I did it wrong most parts it’s hard to unlearned & enforce new physiological reflex. I get good a lot when I learn the correct way & not fear of nailing high notes now because I know I can do it & did it a lot of times, just not being able to like all the time considering the nervousness of recording it or having audiences
I found this video to be particularly helpful as I carry years of negative feelings about my voice. Many of my voice teachers weren't comfortable dealing with the emotional component of singing or the psychological blocks singers can experience with what they find to be challenging about their voice. Thanks for facing it head on with understanding and positive suggestions!
you are the best , really :) thanks a lot for the precious info and time :)
You're most welcome. Thank you for the lovely comment.
can i ask for your advice ?
Of course!
I am a clinical social worker. This is excellent.
Thank you!
Awesome video and concepts!! 👍🏾😃
Thank you.
Ah, so awesome. Your awesome. Thanks!
Another informative video. Thanks Karyn.
Thank you for this video! In fact, thank you for all of you videos. They have been so instrumental in my progress with singing. I take voice lessons locally and watching your videos have been a marvelous companion to those lessons. Your videos have made some things click for me that I just wasn’t able to get in my lessons. I think sometimes different ways of having something explained helps the ability to understand. Thanks again!
Another really interesting and well structured video- thanks!!
Lisa Cassidy You're welcome.
Hi Karyn,
This is a very nice vid! Really good demo of exercises and explaining the important role of mental imaging...never underestimate the value of that in practice! Love your little anecdotes too, wish my kids got even half as happy with leftovers LOL!!
All the best,
Lin.
Thank you for watching and commenting, Linda! I hope you're well.
I hope the exercises help me. Every time I even think to sing in my middle and upper register my throat tightens and feels like it's in pain in general.
Back before I was watching and understanding your videos I had a really bad practice run and I couldn't speak for a week. I hadn't sung for months out of fear and depression
Love it! Thanks Karyn
Thanks for watching and commenting, Phil!
singwisevocals Been busy for a few weeks, so I had a big catch up today :-D
So informative! Something came to my mind that causes me a bit of a dilemma. I've been told (rightly so) that you shouldn't be robotic when singing but show some emotion, what the song inspires you while singing. When you're a new learner and you have little experience in public singing, you get too focused on getting your technique and sound right or you're plagued with stage fright and you're not really "in the song itself". I have this problem, so I've been working on it. The other problem I have is kind of the opposite in that certain songs move me so much that my emotions are too overwhelming and that doesn't help singing either! See what I mean? It's quite a dilemma! Somehow, you have to find a balance between worrying about the technique and sound because you appear cold and robotic and being too engrossed in the emotions the song provoke in you as it ruins your performance. How do you do that? I practice mental rehearsal a lot when I imagine everything going perfectly well, but it never turns out that way during the actual performance!
Very nice video thanks! It's a good topic. The mental rehearsal sounds a good strategy. Thinking on yawns and 'woops' though, I think these are going to put me into my high register anyway, the 'worry tones' for me are C# and D above my high C in a fuller/mixed sound. If I only needed to sing them in falsetto I don't think I'd have the problem.
Yes, these exercises won't put you in 'full voice' - you can't be in a whoop resonance strategy and chest mix or belt simultaneously. But again, they're designed to induce relaxation and release constrictor tensions in the throat (for singers with hyperfunction and constriction that's induced by how they're thinking and feeling about singing), not necessarily to create the precise sound or coordination that we're striving for. (Thus my comment to not worry about how it sounds; focus on how it feels, instead.) You'd be surprised to learn how many singers can't even achieve a release when creating these sounds! I intend to continue recording videos on this topic, in which I will address the breath, glottal resistance/compression and vocal effort, and vowel modification (resonance), which may be more of what you're needing at this time in your training.
Thanks they sound like useful topics.
Thank you for this great video. I'm catching up with everything. I'm going to do descending slides into a straw.
Wonderful!!
Hi Karen, I've been watching and appreciating your videos for a while now. I enjoy researching and reading up on all the different ideas and techniques. Are there any books you could recommend reading? Thank you!
The books that I would recommend would depend on where you're at in your training and what your goals are. I usually start with Richard Miller's Solutions for Singers, regardless of the style in which the student sings. Are there specific areas of technique that you're interested in learning more about? In two weeks, I'm going to be posting a video for my 7 Questions for Singing Teachers series in which all the teachers share 3 of their favourite resources (books, podcasts, websites, etc.) and explain why they like them so much. Stay tuned for that video.
Hey Karen,
I was doing the straw exercise and although I felt my abdominal muscles engaging at the onset of sound, I still felt my larynx going too high and felt that my voice was either too breathy or too heavy (too much air going through my vocal cords). Could you maybe explain the exercise in more detail? I saw your video on this exercise a couple of times, but I was hoping that by asking you I could get a more thorough perspective on this exercise.
My abdominal muscles engage at the onset of sound, as I always feel slight contraction when I speak, but either not enough or too little engagement is happening; I'm hoping that with the straw exercise I'll be able to unlock just the right amount of air pressure and have the correct degree of contraction for specific notes!
Thank you immensely as always :)
Sometimes it takes a while for the body to learn new ways of responding physiologically. The straw exercise is not an instant fix, and many singers do not experience immediate results with it. But over time, with daily straw work, the body starts to become recalibrated and finds better balance. We should feel the abdominal muscles become engaged at the onset of sound. However, if your larynx is still rising when you phonate into a straw (with a small diameter), then it's possible that you are squeezing too much with the abdominal girdle and therefore generating too high a subglottal pressure, which will lead to a high larynx. I will say this, though: Don't focus directly on the height of the larynx. Doing so will lead to an imbalanced focus. The larynx will do what the larynx will do, and all we should be doing is creating the optimal conditions for it to operate under. That includes finding an effective strategy for managing your breath pressure. And, in general, don't overthink your breathing, as this will lead to the development of conscious controls that prevent the body from coordinating as it's designed to. Energize your sound when you phonate into the straw (i.e., don't sing too lightly, but don't push the sound, either - try comfortable but energized speaking loudness, as when you're excited, at first) and don't try to consciously manipulate anything. Over time, the breath and the larynx will settle and find balance.
Oftentimes, singers experience breathiness during the straw exercises because there is an imbalance, either with the breath or with the intrinsic laryngeal musculature. If you tend to constrict during singing, for example, the straw may prevent those usually hyperfuncational throat muscles from engaging as much as they usually do. So now, something is standing in the way of your habitual glottal closure strategy, so the instrument doesn't know how to respond, and you get insufficient glottal closure. This, too, may simply be a matter of allowing more time for the glottal adductor mechanism to find a new balance.
If you've seen my videos on breath management, you'll know that I believe that she should try to mitigate the subglottal pressures generated by the contraction of the abdominal muscles by simultaneously keeping the lower ribs expanded (and thus the inspiratory intercostal muscles engaged throughout most of the phrase). This is ultimately the most effective means of managing laryngeal height (rather than consciously trying to lower it). But unless you're singing in classical styles, don't be afraid of some laryngeal elevation. For many techniques, including belting, it's okay for the larynx to rise so long as that laryngeal elevation is not accompanied by a feeling of strain. However, the positive back pressure created when phonating through a straw should encourage an 'open' throat, with more space inside the pharynx and a comfortably low larynx. Apart from examining your breath management technique and giving straw phonation some more time to do its job, I'm not sure what else to suggest without actually observing and hearing you perform the exercises. Please feel free to e-mail (karyn@singwise.com) a video clip of you singing into a straw. Maybe that will give me more insight into what's going on and help me help you better.
Wow thank you so much for your elaborate response! I have a feeling my straw isn't narrow enough-- maybe I'll experiment with a smaller straw and see how it goes!
My pleasure. Please keep me posted.
Hi Karen, I am researching some of these physiological terms to understand some of your videos better. I am stuck at at the difference between the glottis and the aryepiglottic sphincter or the aryepiglottic fold. I read that they're both the entrance to the larynx. Please tell me what the difference is. Thanks !
The glottis is the space between the vocal folds. (So, when we bring the vocal folds together, we say that the glottis has been closed.) The aryepiglottic folds are located ABOVE the vocal folds, at the entrance to the larynx. The aryepiglottic folds extend from the epiglottis (in the front), which is the little flap of cartilage that comes down during swallowing to cap off the airway so that food and liquid can't enter the lungs, to the arytenoid cartilages (at the back). These attachments (arytenoids and epiglottis) give it its name. We call it the aryepiglottic sphincter because when the muscles within these folds contract (tighten), they do so with a sphincter type action - almost like tightening purse strings - which narrows the opening to the larynx (the laryngeal outlet). So, this sphincter action happens ABOVE the vocal folds. If you look at a bird's eye view of the larynx, you should see that the aryepiglottic folds sit just above the true vocal folds. I hope this helps to clear things up for you.
It does . I found the answer after I asked, but you cleared it up even more. Thanks .
You're welcome.
Hi when you talked about the Incipient Yawn, is that same as "inner smile"? I've been very confused about this. I'm searching all over the place and seem like the inner smile is lifting your cheek base on Mr. Edward L. Johnson. Could you please talk about this more? And it seem like one can't lift their cheek for so much, only a little. I have heard that the higher you go, the bigger space you should be open inside, how to achieve that if you can only lift your cheek to a certain degree? Thank you
They're definitely related. Although they are not actually connected by muscular attachment, when we lift the zygomatic muscles (the lift of the cheeks, so that we get a smile under the eyes, but don't spread our lips into a smile posture), we tend to also lift the soft palate. I think it's because that zygomatic lift inspires pleasant imagery, and so the soft palate naturally responds by lifting - that response is triggered. This is the 'inner smile.' The other reason for lifting the cheeks is because it takes weight off the upper lip and prevents the upper harmonics from being cut off. When the lip completely covers the front teeth, the tone can sound a bit dull. Lifting the zygomatic muscles is a way of achieving some brightness without actually using a smile technique, (which would be too extreme and would produce a thin, overly bright tone). Most teachers do teach that we should increase the space in our throats as we go higher. This helps to prevent constriction and a 'whitening' of the voice in which we lose the lower overtones because the larynx is too high. (As a general rule, we brighten the lower notes and darken the higher notes in order to achieve an evenness of timbre throughout the scale.) But studies show that this is not actually what happens inside the throat - it's what we perceive to be an increase in space because we're having to 'work harder' in order to maintain that feeling in the upper range. But if we're singing in commercial styles, and especially belting, we don't actually want a low larynx and wide pharynx in the higher range. (We also don't want to exaggerate velar - soft palate - elevation, as this will prevent us from achieving a speech-like quality.) What we want to achieve is the FEELING of spaciousness inside the throat, even if the vocal tract has shortened and narrowed. I hope this helps.
Thanks a lot for the information
You're welcome.
Thw yawn is important to open you soft palate? And what position the tongue in yawning?
Yes. The reason why the yawn has become sort of 'in vogue' amongst singers and teachers is because it does encourage the soft palate to elevate. However, during yawning, the tongue is flat and retracted, which is not what we want for singing. So keep a nice, natural curve of the tongue (e.g., for a properly articulated AH or AE vowel), with the tongue root more forward along the anterior pharyngeal wall than it would be for an actual yawn. If you flatten and retract the tongue, the tone will distort - it will sound gagged and overly dark - and the larynx will be forced down, making it inflexible. And it may not be a very comfortable vocal tract posture. The posture of deep inhalation should suffice for opening the throat.
But if the tongue don't go to down? How i make this?
The tongue will go down a bit, but it just shouldn't be OVERLY flattened, and definitely not retracted or tensed (as in a full yawn). Start with the posture of deep, relaxed inhalation through the mouth, and your tongue will likely assume the ideal posture, which will be closer to that of the AH vowel, and this will allow you some space inside the throat for better resonance.
I never understood how even the initial yawn feels not constricted. Yawning always feels constricted. I guess my body was built diffrent. My tongue depresses naturally