Free Vocal Lesson: Vocal Cord Closure and Connection

hi i'm ian castle from ozzie vocal coach calm welcome to your free weekly singing lesson this week I want to focus on proper vocal cord closure and coordination so what is vocal cord closure and why is it so important for singing well when we sing in speak our vocal cords come together and as the air passes through them sound is created now with our vocal cords don't come together there'll be a lot of space between our cords for the air to pass through this will create a very breathy tone I'm speaking to you right now and my vocal cords are connecting if they weren't connecting this would be the result I would be speaking to you so how does all of this relate to singing one of the biggest and most common problems that I see is singers losing connection as they sing higher notes the result is usually a very obvious break followed by a flip into falsetto like this oh now I know how frustrating and embarrassing that can be because it used to happen to me all the time now I'm going to share with you some tips and an exercise that you can use to train your vocal cords to stay connected first what I want you to do is take a breath in through your mouth then hold your breath with your mouth open like this now after you have done that I want you to vocalize and AH like this oh oh now when you hold your breath with an open mouth position your vocal cords have to close to stop the air escaping this puts them in a completely connected position now by vocalizing avow from this closed position it makes it very hard for your voice to flip into falsetto because you're starting from a connected position now does that mean since i'll slow the process right down for you to demonstrate how the vocal cords gradually unzip to create a pure connected sound there you go before I move to the vocal exercise I want to point out a very common mistake that singers make when singing words that start with a vowel now I was working with one of my private students on a song from the musical Chicago the phrase goes like this think of those autographs I'll sign now on the word autographs she was putting a haitch in front of the bell so it ended up sounding like this think of those holiday grass sale sign now she wasn't aware that she was doing it and as you can hear it creates a very breathy and unconnected tone the way we fixed it was exactly what I showed you earlier doing the breathing in holding and vocalizing a vowel technique now it works straightaway and got rid of the breathy tone now be careful if you have words which start with a vowel in your own songs make sure you aren't putting a haitch in front of it because you will lose connection to finish with I want to share with you an exercise that you can use to train your vocal cords to stay connected through your range it sounds like this oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh now notice that I wasn't trying to sing too loud and my tone was quite edgy I was basically doing the exercise I showed you earlier just over a series of notes each note should be short with time for your vocal cords to close between each note now I'm going to provide you with an mp3 of this exercise on my blog that you can use to practice with well that's it for this week's lesson head over to my blog to grab the mp3 and access a lot of other free stuff you can find a link in the box below I'm Ian Castle thanks for watching and I'll be back next week with another lesson

Channel: Aussie Vocal Coach

Views: 34,525

Rating: 4.910543 out of 5

Keywords: Free vocal lesson, how to sing, vocal cords, singing tips, Ian Castle, Aussie Vocal Coach

Id: xibskA0RE6E

Length: 4min 45sec (285 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 17 2011