Vocal-Exercises

Extending the Range of the Female Voice I suggest work on balanced onsets until the student can do them easily and consistently . The onset exercises in Miller’s “The Structure of Singing” works for me but I more often now make up my own as seems to be needed by the student. Keep in mind that a balanced onset is neither a breathy onset nor a harsh attack onset; it is a an onset that is neither breathy nor preceeded by a glottal stroke but somewhere in between these extremes. ...

One of the most valuable helps for a singer is some form of feedback. Whether it is from a teachers’s suggestions, an audio recording of the voice or any other form of feedback, it is the feedback that is the primary way a singer learns to know how to create an acceptable sound. And that is learned because the feedback informs the singer of how they sound to the listener. Feedback can take many forms. ...

Humming through a folded handkerchief is an excellent method of teaching the correct way to balance vocal tone with breath pressure and it is simple to do. Place a folded handkerchief, folded four times, over your forefinger. Place the forefinger parallel with your mouth, gently close your lips over the finger so that they seal against the handkerchief and will not allow breath to pass by them. Breath into the cloth of the handkerchief. The warm breath passes through easily but it meets some resistance from the cloth. ...

Some additional thoughts about Lip Trills I have never found the lip trill to be very productive for most students even those that have no difficulty getting their lips to “flubber”. And the reasons for this is that lip trills encourages excessive air flow which is not the desired description of the well phonated vocal fold oscillation. The air flow needed is little more than what is produced when you moisten your glasses with your breath. ...

Vowel exercises that use semi-occluded lip positions. Here are some exercises that I have used to help students develop a vocal tone this is rich yet easy to produce. They are all based on the concept that good vocal tone is a combination of efficient and clear phonation assisted by resonance adjustments that compliment the phonation while simultaneously enhancing the tone through a balanced vowel resonance. They are not given in order of preference. All of these are most effective if used with a siren sound that takes the voice from the bottom of its range to as high as is comfortable. ...