Voice Lesson: Finding YOUR Voice

one question I get a lot how do I find my voice my true sound my real tone now let me say that if the sound is coming from your mouth it's yours you own it there is no official sound that is correct but there is healthy and unhealthy free and not free the human voice is capable of a wide array of tones and textures and as long as you produce them healthily rasp screaming rounded operatic sounds everything is fair game but what a lot of you are experiencing when you come to me is a lack of your full resonance and that means because of constrictions in your throat it's not that you're not hearing your true voice but you're not hearing your whole voice and when you hear your whole voice you're likely to be much more satisfied and you will hear it as your true sound it'll give you all of the resonance and all of the color that you're capable of wielding and with that you can do whatever you wish to do artistically to be more specific if your throat is overly constricted or even a little constricted really you can end up sounding nasal you can sound muddy you can sound really really flat or you can sound very harsh undesirably harsh and it's really imperative that we get this to let go in order for you to experience not only a difference in sound but a substantial difference in freedom to give you a very practical real-life example inspired by a recent student if I were to sing baby tonight I'm blowing up your line I got is that my voice it is but it's my voice weighted down by all kind of neck pressure so instead of I'm blowing up if I let go I'm blowing up you're lying I got you on my mind even if you don't like my voice it's much more resonance you're hearing more of me and so whether you like it you don't that's what it is as opposed to ant ah do you hear the difference baby tonight baby tonight okay you get the idea so from here let me show you three tips and how you can make that happen for you and reveal your real instrument tip number one is don't lock your abs it really vexes me there's so many voice teachers purposefully encourage their students to lock up rigidly at the abdominal area this locks your throat there's so much evidence to support the notion that locking the abs contributes everything from nodules to even dysphonia letting go of your abdomen will let go so much vocal weight up here that heavy sensation of the voice being just weighted down so this is easy place a hand on your abdomen and just do it like a trill your abs should move your abdomen should move a mobile abdomen is a released one so if it locks tight then it won't do anything but it'll stay still you should be able to feel it release a little bit when you inhale and it should move inward gradually as you talk or as you sing okay like that so if we apply this to our intro example and that baby tonight part of it is mental I'm gonna get into that a little later because part of that sometimes you're aiming for a certain sound that is the wrong sound for you but sticking to the physical component for now if you're getting baby tonight and you feel your abs locking up you can trill the melody focus on letting the abdomen move it should move when you inhale it moves outward when you exhale or make sound which is exhaling you're gonna slowly feel it move inward it's not something you should force I'm not asking you to pull your stomach game I'm asking you to let go enough to allow your abdomen to move inward so it's not baby tonight when you lock your abs you lock yourself in chest voice and this is the horrible illusion that nature casts that makes locking the ABS so appealing if you tighten your abs it can make your voice bigger it'll also make your voice tighter and it will trap you in one register of your voice and it will overtime weaken your instrument if you let go baby sit they may be tonight versus baby tonight I'm blowing up you line I got you on my mind even without vibrato even without any fancy riffs or runs the tonal quality is remarkably different and you get to hear me and you will get to hear you practice letting go and you might be surprised on the high notes on that river run they may be a certain section of the song that locks you up more than another but if you're tight here check your abdomen I know it's all the way down here your throats up here but they are connected your body is they're not separate they might seem like they're far away but the effects very close together sometimes letting go of the abdomen can be tough or even letting go of the throat can be tough because it can feel like I'm asking you to drive without the steering wheel like I'm saying take your hands off but drive around because we do need some kind of place to grab or to lean on to and this concept has been understood for literally hundreds of years um this is the thing you do have to grab somewhere some part of your body has to grab now we go into great detail on this concept and how to properly do it in my phase one and Phase two programs available available at your approach calm um but have to do the plug I had to it's the trade off but what I can give you for free something that you can really use is that it's okay to feel your body working it just shouldn't lock and a good way to feel this is you do a gentle gentle a gentle cough if you do it you'll feel your body kind of respond to that your asmin will engage your body will kind of lock but maybe a more fluid version would be a laugh and this might feel weird to just laugh spontaneously with no authentic motivation but if you just kind of you'll feel even though it's kind of jerky in the movement your body I feel my back muscles I feel my ribcage muscles I feel my abdomen they're all moving they're kind of grabbing at that sound we don't want the grab to happen up here stuff can work it just shouldn't lock okay there's one exception to that rule that we talked about in the program but for now nothing here should lock okay so that thing say it practice laughing through your range and feel your body engage and when you think you've got that go back to the trill you'll feel your your belly moving in but other stuff can work your whole torso is fair game this is what we call body connection singing with the connection to the body that was redundant but so that this doesn't have to work and I know this is part of your body between body ok so not bod you got me and that's going to make your singing much freer and much healthier when these bigger stronger muscles of your respiratory postural system can support your tone as opposed to these muscles up here and we you don't have to be a vocal coach to know that that feels uncomfortable and it causes problems ok so try to stimulate the feeling with a laugh or gentle cough and then try to sustain that via a trill to see if you can feel your body working when you do that so then when you go to I'm lovin up your line you're gonna be tired of that line after they don't know ah but it's you can feel a little bit of a gentle and again it's not a earth it's not a lot but I feel I got you uh my my I feel muscles working in here and discus to be relaxed okay play with it I don't have to be this song I just use it because my student did it recently but you can sing whatever the hell you want I don't care so but the concept remains the same wake these muscles up if you don't feel this working try to consciously let go of your this whole area this neck trap shoulder area try to consciously let go you have so much more control of your body than you might think you have so consciously your body might do knee-jerk reactions but you have the final say you can make them let go and when you fake laugh or you know gently cough I don't recommend doing this one too much but when you but you can feel it a little better sometimes um you should feel stuff here work pectoral area domina area back ribcage side ribs all that stuff is good pelvic floor even your buttocks a little bit and some of the stuff I'm getting into is a little advanced again phase 1 phase 2 April comm or you can work with me one-on-one they approach comm I'll probably throw in one more plug before we're done but you're almost there point number three is perhaps the most important aspect of finding your own voice and in the example I gave you of my student from just a few days ago we had to focus on this one a lot part of the reason why he was singing the way he was singing and why you may be having the problems you're having is that um let's call him James James like me is by nature a low voice type our voices are naturally rich and heavy and kind of dark and he wanted to sing just like is it Chris Brown um and he so in order to try to attain that sound not only were there physical things happening but he was purposefully pinching and trying to squeeze and contort his voice into this so I'm going to tell you something I tell all my clients we don't curse the violin for not being a trumpet and vice-versa so if you have a trumpet of a voice you can't play it like a violin if you have a cello voice you can't play it like a piccolo we're different and your uniqueness is part of the gift some of you are so married to this ideal of sound that's based upon whoever your favorite sing singer or singers are and you've got to let that go it's like trying to fit into somebody else's clothes and they're way too big or they way too small their clothes don't fit you get your own damn clothes so you have to find your voice and the crust the foundation of your real voice is in your speaking voice now before you spoke at that your speaking voice is capable of a wide array of tones and textures - and the ones where I'm from you might've heard me say this before I hear ya even know it but you know possession my thing about my uncle brews like I can hear him go all over the place with his voice especially if you want if you if you and your friends watch a sporting event if you're angry you speak differently than when you're happy it's you know how I gave it you know we do all these things so when I say use your speaking voice I don't mean that it has to be a monotone staying no your your voice is quite expressive and if you tap into your speaking voice you can draw from all those inflections and into nations therein so if I say babies and night that's so off-base from where I'm naturally inclined to go if I say baby tonight I'm blowing up your line I've got you on my mind from just speaking in a relaxed way but still with some emotional energy um I'm blowing up your line I'm blowing up your line I got you on my MOT you on my mind I got you on my mind whatever so it's elongated speaking don't try to make it don't try to make it don't try to make your singing voice and you're not Mariah Carey you're not ed Sheeran that's okay that's so okay you're you you can't be them and they can't be you that's not a better or worse kind of thing it's just different and learn to welcome that their natural gold nuggets or superpowers that any vocalists I've ever worked with has that special thing that they can do I trained David quarry X Factor finalists saying the coca-cola Fife a cup thing um he can scream like he can go and he can really do it um Bryan Terrell Clarke has this beastly mixed this belt mix that he can do he played Marvin Gaye Motown the musical um as you guys know you saw the head voice falsetto video got a lot of comments on that my head voice I have a lot of control over that everybody has their like their bailiwick their like their vocal super power doesn't mean you can't do other things but the thing that you're trying to suppress maybe a uniqueness in your tone maybe maybe it's really light or really darker or something um the thing you're running away from might be exactly what makes you famous or what makes you special or what touches someone's heart so don't shy away from that and if you have a problem with your speaking voice then you might need to do some work your speaking voice is your singing voice if your speaking voice is tight nasal apply these same techniques from 1 & 2 to your speaking voice if your speaking voice is really really especially if you go hoarse from speaking for long amounts of time or if you feel tight or fatigued after speaking you've got some speaking voice issues apply this to your speaking voice but a healthy speaking voice will yield a healthy singing voice and again the singing voice is capable of a wide array of tones and textures so you don't have to be stuck there you can do raspy you could do breath you can do all kinds of things but start there as your base and that will help you to find your true instrument of course there's much more to this too much to put in a single YouTube video even if I tried but you can go to www.youtube.com / one on one lesson with me Skype FaceTime anywhere in the world or if you're in the DC area you can work me in person or if you're in New York I'm in New York a lot as some of you know you can work with me just email my people click the link in the info box or just go right to the site I have video series that you can purchase that are awesome and you can send video clips and to give you feedback me and my team um April com I hope this helps and happy singing until next time peace

Channel: EricArceneaux

Views: 3,948,752

Rating: 4.9553957 out of 5

Keywords: Voice Lesson, How to sing, Open Throat, support

Id: niU9s2WwkpE

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2016