Daily Voice Strengthening 1: “Breath Power”

um I was getting used to being someone you love if we want to belt mix if we want to sing hard in that part of our mix or even if you want to do even if you want to sing softly we need to strengthen the connection from top to bottom so last week on Instagram I asked you what do you want me to talk about in my next voice lesson video and for topics kept coming up over and over again control or stability connecting from head to chest smoothly without the breaking rid of that break singing hard in the upper register adding more weight to mix and recovering a horse or moderately injured voice so we're gonna cover all four of those topics today in this one video the a approach method of vocal training my method that I created we focus on three different mechanisms in the body to stabilize strengthen and protect the voices all about connecting body to voice and the first mechanism is the inhale we're going to touch on that the second one is our natural reflexive responses that's like the meat of the technique and the third aspect is conscious engagement that's a bit advanced but I'm gonna touch on it a little bit today we've got time to stay in practice or why not okay so let's begin with our first tier oh by the way we call this three tiered support three levels so let's start with level one just to get our bodies awake with each level before we start sing a little bit sing a little bit of a song any song that you want because I want you to notice how each tier affects your voice so after we do the breathing part I want you to sing again you should notice that your tone is easier for their blah blah blah blah after you do the second tier I'm gonna ask you to check your voice again you get the idea so pause me or whatever as I'm transitioning into the next shot and sing saying anything you want we're gonna approach breathing from a slightly different angle today so I wants to try to awaken our natural deep breathing responses I don't want us to try to control too much which is not about filling up the belly or even filling up the back per se it's all about trying to awaken our natural breathing so can we start with just a basic yawn it before is that I've done this before I know we're gonna build upon it okay so there's just try to yawn as best you can so we're gonna breathe I want you to notice a couple things that might freak you out especially if you're a trained singer your chest will move can we just establish right now how bad that is not so I know a lot of you have been taught like the chest should never move the chest is evil I've been trying to scream from the mountaintops how not true that is your diaphragm lives within your ribcage a part of it fully descending upon' inhalation means the chest has to open up so it's okay I just want to point this out so notice there's a difference between a broadening a panoramic chest as I like to call it versus a high I'm not advocating this nuance it's a thing so with that being said there is a difference so all chest breathing is not created equal that's your yawning you should notice that your ribcage just really opens really wide so the chest opens and also our Cobras hood opens the sides and back of your ribs if you think like about a cobra head snake how they are their hood just flares open yeah so it's it's almost like the way a bodybuilder does a lat spread only we're not like muscularly forcing this we're doing it with the breath were yawning and the ribcage just opens I also want you to draw awareness to how the back walls of your throat just stretch open so the pharynx just opens up these walls are muscled and they can be warmed up and stretched they can be restricted in tight they have a lot to do with how easily air comes into our body and easily sound comes out especially high notes point that out so if you want to have more control if you're more experienced you can do some conscious yawn space breathing we teach this a lot in a approach where you consciously lift the soft palate if you're not sure what that means look in a mirror and look at your uvula the little dangly thing in the back of your throat and make it lift up if you can make it lift up it affects all kind of other muscles too we call it the face lift effect and a approach because everything's connected if you can make it lift off you'll find that you can inhale very deeply very quickly very easily and on the exhale I'm doing an ocean breath yoga style although I'm really consciously trying to keep that space open you can even do it with a closed mouth to challenge yourself on the inhale and then on the exhale so notice even though my mouth is closed your mouth is closed I can still feel that kind of smiling in the back of my throat I can still feel it lifting up now if all of this stuff is just too much for you it feel like I don't know what the heck he's talking about Jessie Yama you can just try to stimulate good old-fashioned yawns and before I see the comments about like but I gone all the time and I don't and I don't feel like I'm a great singer most people stifle their yawns returning to you because we're taught that this natural biological process is rude and so we're taught to feel shamed about it I watch people a lot it sounds creepy maybe it is a little bit but most people will stifle their yawns we stifle our yawns we stifle our lives we Stipe we stifle these natural biological processes that really help to free the voice and so a lot of us don't yawn freely nor do we laugh really so let your soul yawn it's magical it's magical I promise you it's been almost 5 minutes let's do a little bit more of this 5 minutes of yawning powerful thing really focus on feeling that's facing back your throat open your ribcage will also respond your belly might actually go in because your ribcage is opening so much so don't be alarmed by that this is a bit on the advanced side I know many of us have been taught fill your belly fill your belly we're taking it to another level right now okay the quarantine life so it's another level we got to take it up a notch now if you did it right you should notice a difference all ready let me back about the cameras a bit aggressive okay if you did your honest face breathing correctly sing a little bit it's not gonna be perfect we just did one thing but you should notice off my voice is a little clearer or maybe my natural breathing it's a little easier oh snap you know people still nobody says that okay oh let's take it up a notch I want to do this sniff this is an old class of a technique that really helps to wrap the engine up so to speak we're gonna sniff audibly some of you have done this with me before so I'm going to speed it up I want you to sniff as if it's an inquisitive sniff it's audible like is that smoke there's something burning I want you to notice when you do this you're focused on your nose but your ribcage opens up oh do you see that and you should really want to feel the breath get packed into the sides and back of your ribcage that's like our real powerhouses vocalist the sides and back of our ribcage like we have wings or a cobra switch so as a sniff ah widen okay and this might freak you out but the tummy might actually the tummy what am i six the your belly your abdominal wall will actually come in and up that transverse abdominis that transversus is gonna kick in and we get lifted as well so we get lengthened and also widen so as we get more advanced with vocal technique breathing is more about a v-shape and less about a teardrop shape so I don't want you to be alarmed by this I know many of you have been taught Bali Bali Bali Bali but we're getting ribcage ribcage chest wall size and back of our ribs and as we're also lengthening the spine through this the abdominal-wall kind of comes in and up so I don't want you to be freed up by that so we sniff sniff sniff feel that breath and Kimmy hold for a second when we're full not at the throat but can we feel our back Ness is kind of grabbing that air so you're gonna hold your breath for like a few seconds three to five seconds no need to go to 40 or 30 or even saying but just and just hold for a few seconds just feel your back muscles hold that breath and then just let it out we're just warming up we're not trying to challenge our body too much right now this is a warm-up we're gonna get to the workout segment in a second lastly in this series we're gonna use my personal favorite which is a purse that inhale now my private students know I tell them all the time do five of these and your voice will be better I promise you I promise you so let me break down the rules here and you can go out whatever pace makes sense where we inhale silently do pursed lips tiny mouths the most minut mouth opening that we can muster so you know like you're about to Grandma about to get like that so we're gonna tiny lips soft throat soft shoulders and you're not trying to guide the breath to any particular place this can be kind of tricky if you've had some training because you're gonna have to kind of get out of the way of your body and let your body do its thing so I'm inhaling through tiny lips just trying to focus on the feeling of that faint touch of arrogance the lips and I'm letting the breath go wherever the hell that wants to go I'm not trying to make you feel my belly I'm not even trying to make it feel my ribs fill my ribs on my chest are my pelvic floor none of that I'm just letting the breath where it wants to go I'm letting my body show me what it wants to do so the tiny mouths do in silent breathing it's a catalyst to stimulate our natural deep reading responses you might notice that the belly gets sucked in a bit as the ribcage flares open and when you're full just let it out and breathe normally for a little while I don't recommend doing this back to back to back try to let yourself have a moment where you just breathing normally for a little while and by a little while I mean maybe 30 seconds or so and then do it again keep the throat soft you know it's not that it's silent soft throat soft shoulders you're gonna be yourself let's make via verb and go forward now hopefully you get the idea I want you to do five of those after you do five pause me and sing and you should be like oh voice is a little better and you're welcome no seriously though it should feel already more stable more free and the reason why is because your vocal cords and your diaphragm are really designed to respond quite automatically to our desire to communicate if they have space and the breath work that we just did is work to restore space to release and open the throat to open the ribcage to decompress the spine you might feel a little taller you might feel like your posture is a little better like you've got more space across the collarbones you might feel like your neck is a bit longer you know so the breath really affects our shape and the approach we don't talk about posture a lot because we view the breath is being quite autocorrected to the posture and so it really affects the shape of your body so it kind of it's like the energy that kind of affects you know how you're the structural integrity of your form of your physical form so play with that this is all just to prepare our bodies for like the nitty-gritty of what we're about to do so grab your straws because we're about to work out in the next one

Channel: EricArceneaux

Views: 147,088

Keywords: how to sing, sing from the diaphragm, support, how to breathe, breathing exercises, Carl Stough, Manuel Garcia, Opera singer, vocal warmups

Id: OIpvIgKFABI

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 04 2020