Teamwork
Making sure that our voice is as strong as it can be takes teamwork!
Hey and welcome back to The Singing Studio! Today we are going to talk about our range a little bit more and how we can strengthen our range by using teamwork with the different elements of our voice. So just to recap, we talked about our chest voice, our head voice, and our bridge. Let’s just go over where those are located in the voice and how we can utilize these elements to make our voice even stronger.
So we have our chest voice – that’s our lower register. We have our head voice – that’s our upper register. And in between those two registers we have the bridge. The bridge, if you remember, is a little bit tricky and may be intimidating for some of us because that bridge is where we often crack or squeak. There is that transition between the lower and the higher voices. These three parts of our voice are so important. We can isolate and work on these things just by themselves, but in order to strengthen our range and make our voice stronger, we need to utilize all three portions of our voice: our chest, our head, and our bridge. We need to utilize these in order to strengthen our range, strengthen our voice and just to have the best sound possible. And that’s what we want. That’s why we take voice lessons, so that we can expand our range and make our vocal abilities more advanced.
So today I prepared some really fun exercises to help utilize specifically our chest, head, and bridge altogether as a team. These exercises are a little bit more challenging. Again, we are working on that full range so of course it’s going to be a little trickier. It might even be out of our comfort zone a little bit, but it’s really important to try different variations of exercises because those sorts of exercises will help our voice become better. Having that little bit of variation mixes up our routine and doesn’t make it boring sometimes. I’m excited and I hope you are too. Here are those exercises.
For our first exercise we will be doing a fun “wee” to “ah” vowel exercise. Let me demonstrate it for you first so you can know what it sounds like.
So I really like this exercise because it moves through our chest voice into our head voice. We obviously go through that bridge. I love it because it’s a small enough scale that you can focus on either the chest voice or the head voice, but it also really helps bridge that gap when you do your entire range. So as you’re doing it make sure that you’re using a lot of good breath support. It is a longer phrase so you don’t want to run out of breath by the time you’re done singing it. Make sure that you’re keeping that voice nice and consistent.
Our next exercise is a really fun “woo” exercise. Let me demonstrate that for you.
This is a really nice, simple, and light exercise. It’s really helping us jump larger intervals in our voice. There may be a possibility that you might even jump through the bridge from your chest voice to your head voice, or your head voice to your chest voice. Doing these jumps really helps get those muscles moving so that we can get used to transitioning between our head voice and our chest voice and through that bridge. This exercise, again just like our previous exercise, requires a lot of good breath support so that we can jump those intervals. Also, make sure that you’re nice and relaxed. Don’t strain anything. If you find yourself going up the scale and it’s getting a little too high, make sure that you come back down. Go at your range that’s most comfortable for you, but also this is meant to challenge you so don’t back off from the sound. Just really, really try and utilize that breath so that you can come out strong.
In this exercise we’ll be doing a fun “new wee you”. Let me demonstrate that for you.
I really like this exercise because it really puts it at the front of our face. “New wee you wee you.” Make sure that we’re not going “new wee you wee you.” We’re going, “new wee you wee you.” The reason why I like to focus on this nice, forward space in this exercise is to help us as we’re going through that bridge and to remind us to not back away. Also, keep it nice and forward to continue that laser beam focus. The worst thing that we can do as we are transitioning from our chest voice to our head voice is backing off. Again, like I’ve talked about at the beginning of this video, it takes a lot of teamwork between our chest, head voice, and bridge to really help smooth out our range. So reminding ourselves to keep things nice and forward is going to remind our breath to stay strong, but it’s also just going to help us sound a lot more consistent all around. Am I telling you to sing every song like Glinda from Wicked? No. But having that nice, forward, and almost nasally sort of sound can really help remind our voice to have that consistency and to help us not put it in the back of our throats. So I know it kind of sounds weird and it might feel weird. You might get some tingling in your nose and everything that’s totally fine. Just make sure that you’re not putting in the back of your throat and you’re remembering that laser focus.
Okay you guys that is all for our video today. Be sure to watch the supplemental video that will have all of the exercises in them so that you can follow along with me. Make sure to like this video and I hope you have an amazing day!
I do these videos every other week, but if you still want more musical theatre, check out my newsletter! It’s called “Beyond The Score”, and it just takes a closer look at musical theatre history. You can find that at jskstories.com.
Range Exercises 2
Hey you guys! Welcome to today’s supplemental video. This video goes along with Teamwork so be sure to watch that video before diving into these exercises. Thanks and have a great day!
Range Exercise 5: Wee Ah
Range Exercise 6: Woo
Range Exercise 7: New Wee You
Thank you for watching! These exercise videos are made to guide you through your practicing! Be sure to take breaks if you are feeling tired and make sure to drink water.
Make sure to like this video!
I do these videos every other week, but if you still want more musical theatre, check out my newsletter! It’s called “Beyond The Score”, and it just takes a closer look at musical theatre history. You can find that at jskstories.com.