Mega Music Talent

Posts Tagged ‘vocal coaching’

If you’re relatively new to singing, you’re likely to be thinking mostly about your vocal skills and how you can use singing techniques to develop and enhance your sound. However, when you reach the stage where your singing technique is stable, secure and providing an adequate level of support, it is important to consider how you are communicating the sentiments in the song you are singing.

An expressive vocal performance as well as a physical connection with the song on stage will produce an extremely powerful performance. However, the process of engaging with the sentiments of the repertoire and creating new levels of expression can be particularly challenging if you don’t have any experience in acting or drama.

Expressing repertoire effectively and communicating the story behind the lyrics not only helps an audience to fully engage with your performance but the process will also help you develop the tone and colour of your voice.

There are many different ways to develop these skills. Most importantly, you need to connect with the lyrics and completely understand the context and meaning of what you are singing. This may take a little time and even some research depending on what you’re singing. But once you’ve done this, you will naturally begin to express the material more effectively. This is why choosing to sing songs which already mean something to you and that you can relate to will help you to create a more expressive performance from the outset.

Following this, there are two main ways you can develop more expression in your performance:

#1 Personal Performance:

A ‘personal performance’ means you are singing the song as yourself. To do this, you need to identify the sentiments and emotions in each section of the song and then think carefully about how you would normally express these emotions in your day-to-day life. So, if you experience joy-how do you react, how does your facial expression change and do you do anything different physically? Once you’ve thought about your normal reaction to the range of emotions in the song, you simply apply your natural expressions to your performance. This can often be an excellent way to create a genuine performance and become more expressive without deep exploration of a character.

#2: Character Performance:

If you choose to perform the repertoire as the character who sings the song, the process will be lengthier. This obviously applies more to repertoire in opera, musical theatre and classical genres. It may be the repertoire you choose to sing is not sung by a particular character. In this case, you will need to sing the song as yourself.

Singing as a character involves exploring the character and developing a good understanding of the context in which you’re singing. Research into the character and the context of the song will provide an excellent basis for experimenting with the physicality and demeanour of the character. Think about how the character would walk, talk and react in particular situations and surroundings. This process of exploration and experimentation will help you when it comes to communicating the sentiments of the repertoire effectively as the character singing the song.

Ultimately, however, whatever method you use, providing you are effective in expressing the sentiments of the repertoire and communicating these to the audience, your performance will be greatly improved.

Achieve performing arts success with mystagedoor.co.uk – the global community of aspiring performers. Join the performing arts platform at mystagedoor.co.uk and get free access to training tips, career advice, showbiz news and the opportunity to meet thousands of other like-minded performers.

Article Source: http://bb-articles.com

Whether you want to train to sing in a stage show to hundreds of people a night or whether you strive to be a vocalist in a band, developing and maintaining strong and secure singing technique is crucial.

First, in the process of working on your technique you must ensure you do not push your voice – straining your voice can cause long term damage and should be avoided at all costs.

To develop good singing technique, you must begin to think about singing from a different part of your body. Instead of thinking about breathing from the chest and singing from the voice box in the neck, we must develop the concepts of:
1.    Using the diaphragm (which is just below the lungs) for effective breathing and
2.    Supporting the voice with the contraction of the ‘core muscles’ located in the lower abdomen (the muscles just below the tummy button)

The following exercises will help you to apply these fundamental singing techniques:
#1: Breathing:
Put your hands around your waist with your thumbs at the back and fingers at the front – this will help you to become aware of the exact movements of the diaphragm.
- In front of a mirror, breathe in for 8 counts, hold your breath for 8 counts and hiss the air out slowly and consistently.
- Watch yourself carefully to make sure your shoulders stay still. You should feel your tummy go out as you breathe in and go in as you breathe out. You should also feel a similar movement around your side and back.
- You may want to imagine having a rubber ring fitted tightly around your waist and as you breathe in you push out onto the ring.
- As you repeat this breathing exercise, you should remember three things:
1. You should try to take as much air into the lungs as your breath in – using more of your total lung capacity
2. As you hiss out, you should try to maintain as much control of the air flow as possible – keep a consistent flow to the hiss
3. You should try to encourage as much air out of the body  – towards the end of the breath use the tummy muscles to direct the remaining air out of the lungs

- Once you have completed this slow breathing exercise, you need to try speeding up the breathing process.
- Breathing like a steam train, produce short, sharp bursts of air. Remember to ensure you are breathing ‘diaphragmatically’ – tummy going out when you breath in and in when you breath out.
- Gradually speed the breaths up – stop if you feel dizzy at any stage.
- Use the contraction of the ‘core muscles’ (the band of muscles below the tummy button) to pressurise the air and maintain as much control of your breathing as possible.

#2: Support
- Progressing from the breathing exercises, instead of producing short sharp breaths, produce three short sharp bursts of sounds on a note which is easy for you to sing (try singing to ‘HA’)
- Gradually increase the number of sounds you are producing on each note until you are singing scales to ‘ha’
- With each note, you should feel the diaphragm flatten and the tummy expand as you breath in and the core muscles contract to support the voice as you sing the sound
- Repetition of this simple exercise will establish an initial awareness of what ‘support’ is and how the contraction of the core muscles can be used to help create security, stability, power and projection to your singing.

Achieve performing arts success with mystagedoor.co.uk – the global community of aspiring performers. Join the performing arts platform at mystagedoor.co.uk and get free access to training tips, career advice, showbiz news and the opportunity to meet thousands of other like-minded performers.

Article Source: http://bb-articles.com

The process of warming up is absolutely key to successful singing. I meet hundreds of singers and when I work with these people it is very easy to identify whether they are warming up before they sing. It makes such a difference to the wellbeing of your voice and your performance.

Not only is it important to warm-up but it is just as important to warm-up with an appropriate programme of exercises in an effective and manageable sequence. The exercises we use in vocal warm-ups help us with three main areas:
1. Preparing the voice for singing
2. Developing the colour and tone of the voice
3. Establishing effective control of the voice

We would then follow this with exercises which focus on a specific technique or a combination of techniques such as breathing, support, vowel sound production and extending your range.

Below you will find three key exercises fully explained to help you get started. These exercises are suitable for the start of your vocal warm-up. However, please remember that these exercises to not make up a complete vocal-warm. If you would like to make sure you are preparing your voice for singing properly, I recommend you purchase and download a vocal exercise practice track along with an online singing course.

Before starting the exercises, please make sure you are relaxed and that there is no tension around the head and neck area.

Recommended Exercises:
Exercise 1: The first exercise is excellent for the start of every vocal warm-up. It involves humming gently and making sure there is no tension around the head and neck area. We take an interval of a fifth starting from a note which is quite low in the voice and we slide through this interval. By humming, we reduce the exposure of the voice and so the voice feels less vulnerable and we can go about warming-up the voice with freedom and feeling relaxed. I recommend singing from Bb to F.

Exercise 2: We can develop exercise 1 and begin to release our sound. We hum up the fifth in the same way making sure we are sliding and then we can release down the scale to an ‘ah’ vowel. As you do this, you are aiming to produce a clear, open sound on the ‘ah’ vowel. Drop the jaw, open the mouth, keep the tongue forward and low in the mouth and try to release as much of the sound as possible.

Exercise 3: Now we can think about covering more of our range. One thing to remember when you want to cover a larger part of your range in an exercise is choosing an exercise which starts at the top of your range and works down. Therefore, start somewhere towards to the top of your range and come down the scale to ‘me’ and ‘mah’ The slow nature of this exercise not only gives you the opportunity to work with a larger section of your range but also to continue releasing as much of your sound as possible.

All these exercises are available on the vocal exercise practice track level 1 (see below).

Today’s Advice:
The vocal warm-up is a crucial element of singing success for singers at every level. Therefore, if you’re a beginner or intermediate singer and you want to make sure you’re warming up using an effective and manageable sequence of exercises, I recommend you download a vocal exercise practice track.

The vocal exercise practice tracks from easysingintutorials.com come in three levels of difficulty. Each track consists of ten exercises. Each exercise is demonstrated followed by a piano accompaniment for you to sing along to. Therefore, each track can be used over and over again for an effective vocal warm-up for your singing.

So, download a vocal exercise practice track today from easysingingtutorials.com and start making serious progress with your singing. Good luck!

Achieve success with online singing lessons visit easysingingtutorials.com today to get started.

Article Source: http://bb-articles.com

Have you ever thought about learning to sing? Are you interested in realising your potential as a singer and taking a step closer to achieving your aspirations? If so, to help you understand exactly what is involved with learning to sing, I have put together my ten top tips for singing success:

#1 Preparation: Think carefully about the time and space you are going to use to practice your singing. Make sure you have allocated sufficient time to be able to practice without interruptions or distractions and try to find a quite space where you feel comfortable singing.

#2 Posture: As you learn to sing and start to practice the technique and repertoire, it is important that you are standing with the correct posture. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, your arms down by your side and stand tall.

#3 Breathing: Breathing is obviously a fundamental area of singing technique and, therefore, you should be prepared to put time into focussing on the development of the correct breathing technique for singing. Ultimately, this technique will stay with you for the rest of your singing life, so put the effort into getting it right now. In short, you need to develop slow and low breathing using the diaphragm to full effect.

#4 Support: When you ask people about singing technique, most will quickly state the importance of breathing. Often the importance of the support mechanisms required for successful singing are underestimated. Support is when we use the ‘core muscles’ (lower abdominal muscles) to create control, stability, power and projection when singing

#5 Resonation: Once we are breathing and supporting effectively, we need to think about what we are doing once we have produced the sound. Instead of simply releasing the sound out of the mouth, we need to resonate the sound in different ways. This creates different vocal qualities which ultimately creates interest, dynamic contrast and variety in the timbre of our sound.

#6 Release: Having used specific resonators to create a variety of vocal qualities to enhance our performance, we can focus on releasing the sound effectively and projecting it forward to the audience.

#7 Repertoire: Your choice of songs will always be a challenging part of your singing, particularly if you have to choose based on the tastes of your audience or an audition panel. Therefore, spend time listening to music from different genres and then music from different areas of each genre. Building a good knowledge and understanding of the available repertoire will help you to make your decisions when the time comes.

#8 Communication: Once your singing technique is secure and you have learnt your chosen repertoire, the next stage is to work on effectively communicating the sentiments and messages in the music. This will help you to deliver a more dynamic, interesting and, ultimately, successful performance.

#9 Opportunities: Take every opportunity to get experience performing in front of an audience wherever it may be!

#10 Tuition: Before spending hundreds of pounds on singing lessons, I recommend getting started with online singing lessons. This will introduce you to the fundamentals of singing technique and the other aspects of learning to sing.

The beginner and intermediate courses give clear explanations of all the fundamental singing techniques. The course consists of advice, guidance and exercises which you can sing-a-long to and develop your vocal skills. The courses offer a tried and tested vocal programme which has helped hundreds of aspiring singers develop their vocal skills and achieve their aspirations.

Therefore, if you want to achieve singing success, I recommend you visit online singing lessons – visit easysingingtutorials.com today to get started.

Article Source: http://bb-articles.com