How to Improve Vocal Tone with Chant Talking

[Music] [Music] hi guys I'm Madeline Harvey thank you so much for hanging out with me today I'm super glad that you're here what I thought would be the bee's knees for our lesson today is to play with ways that we can generate a beautiful tone right now using our natural speech so if you liked today's video please be sure to give it a thumbs up or click that subscribe button below I would love to see you here more often and I just want to introduce this is my puppy her name is Mabel which means lovable and she's an absolute heathen but she's had a really hard day so we'll let her sleep anywho when we talk about tongue we are referring to a singers general vocal quality when they sing now it is important to note that we do want to work a tone in a way that is natural so we've oscillate between exaggerating what we're feeling and then integrating that into something that feels very speech like and natural for us because we don't want to give the impression that we're over producing the sound or we're working too hard so there are many many different factors that can create a singers tone in fact there are several that are happening at the same time interacting with each other that creates the singers tone at any given moment but today we're gonna be playing around with your natural natural speech because ultimately it is how the singer manages the language that creates the tone so we're gonna be doing this in a way that it's called chant talking there are three rules of chant talking game number one is it of course it has to feel speech like we want our ultimate tone to be natural for us and what more what is more natural than our everyday and number two it has to be a little like a little wee little bit higher than our normal speaking range now this is so that the influence of the mouth particularly the jaw the tongue and the back of the throat are not so restrictive on the sound so we allow the voice to venture into just a little bit higher this will ultimately free your resonance so much more and then number three it has to be slow this will really challenge the muscles that govern the breath process steadying that airflow and really strengthening your voice and giving you a little bit of drama also so again the three rules of chant talking are number one it has to be speech like number two just a little bit higher than your normal speaking range and number three and Carew okay so now that you know the rules of the game I want you to please just tell me tell me the word hello as if you are slowly calling down a well to someone like go ahead and give that a go here we go oh very good now we're not singing I mean we are but we're not focusing on singing we're just creating the conditions of music by playing with rhythm pitch inflection and dynamics now I'm ranting a little bit I can sense that so I'll calm down so as we're talking and you said hello as if you were calling down a well did you notice that how your breath was behaving was very stable very consistent let's go ahead and try that again oh good now if you can speak in this way slowly and you can sing anything I promise you that much but another element that we notice that when we slow something down is called open tone so that pretty much means that we're opening up those spaces just again in managing the language itself we're not we're not distorting or manufacturing the sound as sometimes it feels like we can do and we're singing when we go to speech and use the basis of our natural speech we have a way of creating a sort of connectivity that feels like connecting a string of pearls and the way that we handled that language so the best way to practice this you can practice this with song lyrics that would be fantastic but I really encourage you to simply read aloud for about three to five minutes a day now what we're doing is we're creating the conditions for a beautiful open dramatic professional sounding tone to just emerge and you can do this by just taking some text it doesn't matter what text you take in fact I have chosen the most random book I own which is Appalachian folklore almonds signs and superstitions because I'm dark like that and I just randomly opened to any page I have no idea what page I'm on and I'm going to read now as I read I'm going to generate the same conditions that music has which is rhythm inflection pitch and dynamics and I'm gonna do it in a chant talky away which is speech like just a little bit higher than my natural voice and incredibly slow so I'm pretty much gonna go up and down up and down teaching my voice the conditions that it may encounter in a normal song so I'm gonna read some random looks like omens according to Appalachian folk so here we go if ezel is seen running on the left of the person it is an omen that he has enemies at home good now what I'm focusing on is again the steadiness of my exhale and the speech like quality of the sound so I'm gonna pick a random and different crazy omen here okay if the shape of the car is seen when a folded tablecloth is on a table it is an omen of just you remember now I know this is crazy y'all but I know that we're just up and down in a very almost Maggie Smith Allah Professor McGonagall Harry Potter mr. Potter sort of fashion but we are recreating the elements of music now the big constant in voice in melody is that change is the only constant constant so we are teaching the voice to behave in ways that it can work with whatever happens but again chant talk is speech like just higher than your normal speech and very slow so by going up and down up and down you don't have the same level of anxiety that you might have when singing a normal song because again there's not that there's not the prerequisite that the must be correct and there must be a polished stylistic quality to it but in fact that you can play with your natural speech in a way that is very slow now I want you to imagine this in the same way that let's say you're a runner and as you run you work out with ankle weights on and you get used to working with that ankle weights well what do you think happens when you take those ankle weights off you're so much faster you're so much easier that's the gift of chant talking now chant talking with some random text it doesn't matter what you're reading you could read the directions on a shampoo bottle all is well there but you're gonna mimic the conditions of music is that the melody goes up and it goes down but you're going to handle the language in a very open consistent manner creating more drama creating room more romance and creating more polished now just one more crazy almond for you kids at home this is really right I don't know where they get this stuff I don't even know how I have this book but anyways a rabbit running down the street in daytime is the morning that one of the houses will burn down again it's how you handle the language now as you're listening to a singer I want you to listen in an active way and see if you can if you can hear the way that they're handling the language is very much like a string of pearls connecting one word to the next this is the very basis of both artistry and tone it's how you handle the breath the shape and the language so even though it's ridiculous and it is ridiculous I want to encourage you to play with this for at least three to five minutes a day whatever you can do slow you're gonna start to notice yourself doing this when you when you sing and when you speak yes and make sure I had that right and you are gonna notice that every time you open your mouth to speak is another opportunity for you to work your singing haha so there you have it guys I hope you've enjoyed today's video as much as I enjoyed reading some random almonds to you if you have enjoyed this video please be sure to give it a thumbs up or click that subscribe button below I love you so much and I would love to see you here again next time thank you so much for hanging out with me today and I will see you soon bye love [Music]

Channel: Madeleine Harvey

Views: 19,895

Rating: 4.9791937 out of 5

Keywords: how to improve vocal tone, vocal tone, improve vocal tone, singing tone, improve tone, how to improve tone, how to improve singing tone, chant talking, chant talk, Madeleine Harvey, vocal lesson, singing technique, singer tone

Id: bP1MBor0sFs

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Sun May 31 2020