♬
Hi everybody!
My name is Justin Stoney and I'm the founder of
New York Vocal Coaching here in New York City.
Welcome to episode 77 of Voice Lessons To The World.
The show where we want to help you as singers
by answering your questions from all over the world.
And I give you a chance to ask questions later
but our question for this week comes from Sergey M. in Murmans, Russia.
And Sergey writes, "Dear Justin, what is vocal twang?
I've heard it can really help my singing.
But, I don't know what it is."
That's an awesome question Sergey,
because you're right about twang.
It's a topic that we hear about a lot
and yes it really can help.
So we're going to talk today about what is it,
how it can help us, and we're even going to
do a vocal exercise to develop twang in our voices.
So let's start off the day by answering that question.
What is twang?
Twang refers to the bright qualities that result from
narrowing the aryepiglottic sphincter.
Whoa! [hits piano]
Now what the heck does that mean?
Well when we sing or speak we have the ability
to bring out the brightness or darkness of our voice.
And most great voices have a good combination of
brightness and darkness.
What's bright and dark?
Well, there's the note that we're singing or speaking
and then there's overtones above that note.
And if we emphasize the higher overtones it sounds brighter.
If we emphasize the lower overtones it sounds darker.
Now there's lots of different ways to control
the brightness or darkness of the voice.
We've talked about some of them in the past.
If we sing with a higher larynx it's going to sound brighter.
Also by widening the embouchure or spreading,
that will also make it sound brighter.
Lifting the tongue root like in an E vowel
is another thing to make it sound brighter.
And then lowering the soft palate using
nasal resonance is another element related to brightness.
It doesn't have to but it's a part of our brightness.
But the aryepiglottic sphincter is different.
This is something inside your larynx,
at the top of your larynx.
And when it narrows it causes the chamber to be smaller.
Think about it this way, a big old tuba
makes a deep rich sound.
But a piccolo makes a high, tinny, bright sound.
That has to do with the size of the instrument.
When we narrow the larynx with the aryepiglottic folds
we're creating a little chamber that causes
brighter qualities to pop out of our voice.
The easiest way to find it is first by doing some character voices.
So we're going to look at the speaking voice
and some common twang characters.
It's super important that you find twang
in your speaking voice before you find it in your singing voice.
Because if you can do it with your speech
it becomes very easy to translate to your singing.
However, if you can't do it in your speech
it's rather difficult to apply to your singing
and the best way to do it is to find some
very silly twang characters that you can try.
You can try these or some others
that you might have fun inventing on your own.
But one twangy character might be a duck.
Quack, quack.
Or perhaps a bratty character...
Hey give that back!
You better give that back that's mine!
Or you might try an auctioneer.
Twenty five, twenty five do I hear twenty five,
Twenty five to that man over there.
Thirty, thirty, do I hear thirty,
thirty to that woman in the back.
Forty, forty, anybody forty,
forty sold to Sergey M. in Murmans, Russia.
Or you might do a robot character.
Hello my name is Justin Stoney and I'm the founder of
New York Vocal Coaching here in New York City.
Don't lose that joy, don't lose that passion,
don't let people tell you that you can't sing
you and I both know that's just not true.
Or maybe the best one would be a nerd character.
Um, well, I just thought that maybe we would have a voice lesson
and then after that we could go get our allergy shots
or maybe see a movie, I mean whichever one
you might think would be better to do.
[hits piano]
So you can try these twang characters
and find it in your speaking voice.
And then we're going to translate it over to the singing voice.
Which is what we'll do next.
Moving over into the singing we've got a
country or bluegrass kind of sound.
I've got my soulmate to help me with this.
This is, "You Are My Sunshine"
♪
♪ You are my sunshine, my only sunshine ♪
♪ You make me happy, when skies are grey ♪
♪ You'll never know dear, how much I love you ♪
♪ Please don't take that sunshine away ♪
Now in a sound like that, twang is very dominant,
present throughout all of the sound
making and it's appropriate for a bluegrass or country sound.
But what about a legit or classical voice?
If I take "Maria" from West Side Story...
♪
♪ Maria ♪
♪ I just met a girl named Maria ♪
That's fine.
But what if I'd like more "brilliance" in the sound?
♪ Maria ♪
♪ I just met a girl named Maria ♪
And by adding elements, percentages of twang,
to the legit singing it actually adds more
vibrancy to the tone.
It's only a percentage, but still it makes a difference.
What about a pop rock belt sort of sound?
We can take "Titanium" by Sia, you know this one...
♪ You shout it out ♪
♪ But I can't hear the words you say ♪
Now in the chorus here it's going to want
to go to falsetto if you're a guy or head voice if you're a female.
♪ I am titanium ♪
It's going to want to be a little bit too thin for a belt.
Here's where we can take a twang exercise,
like what we're going to do later,
and start to build some cord closure to the upper notes.
So if I take "nan", for example,
♪ Nan ♪
I start to find that edge, that cord closure within the twang.
Then I go back over into my song...
♪ I am titanium ♪
And then all of a sudden I can start to
get that belt happening up on upper notes.
So we can see that twang has all kinds
of uses for our singing voice.
And we're going to talk next about the benefits of twang.
There are all kinds of benefits to using twang.
The brightness.
We're doing a lot of extreme sounds today,
but being able to back off those extremes
to find percentages of brightness.
Then, brightness independent of other factors.
I don't want to have to spread to be bright.
I don't want to have to crank the larynx sky high to be bright.
I don't even want to have to use nasal resonance to be bright.
Nope, those things are different.
Nasal resonance is different than the brightness
that we sometimes call nasality.
That's what you can find in episode 2 of the show.
Twang is different than nasal resonance.
We can do them together or we can do them separately.
And it's cool to have that control.
Also, it helps with our mix.
Our cord closure, staying connected higher,
is easier to do with twang.
Also, the voice carries and projects
the upper overtones cut, and we can have
a louder voice without pushing the volume.
These are all the benefits of twang.
So I think we need to try it.
Let's do an exercise!
This is going to be NAAN on a
one three five eight eight eight eight five three one.
With this one we're going to have
guys and ladies on the same pitch.
Not up and down the octave, but the same pitch.
So we're going to be starting too low for most ladies,
and going too high for most guys.
It's okay to flip to falsetto,
it's okay to flip to head voice.
But if you can stay in a mix
it's not going to be too loud.
We're just going to keep it
really bad sounding, really twangy.
That's really the purpose of this exercise.
So here we go, with guys and ladies if you can on NAAN.
♪ NAAN ♪
Here we go!
♪
Nice.
♪
Bring in some ladies...
♪ NAAN ♪
♪
That's right, twang it up!
♪
Yes.
♪ NAAN ♪
♪
Keep it bad.
♪
That's right!
♪ NAAN ♪
♪
That's right, nasty...
♪
Awesome.
♪
Highest one!
♪
Coming back down...
♪
Great stuff.
♪
♪ NAAN ♪
♪
Keep it tiny.
♪
Twangy...
♪
Awesome.
♪
Great work.
♪
Guys keep going...
♪ NAAN ♪
Maybe some ladies too...
♪ NAAN ♪
A few more.
♪
Last one...
♪ NAAN ♪
♪
Fantastic work with those twanged up sounds!
So it's been a great day finding out what twang is,
how it can be used in the speaking voice,
the singing voice, the benefits of it,
and then you guys did such a great job adding
some of those qualities to your voice.
And as you know, if you can do it in extremes
then we can take it away and balance it out with other things.
It's really going to add new elements to your voice.
So I hope that's been helpful for
you guys today as singers.
If you've got questions that you'd like
to see us answer on the show,
you can send an email to Questions@VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com.
So I just encourage you, don't lose that joy,
don't lose that passion, don't let people tell you
that you can't sing, you and I both know it's not true.
Get with a great voice teacher in your area
or if you'd like to Skype with one of our staff [♪]
or you're in New York, you can visit [♪]
www.NewYorkVocalCoaching.com. [♪]
You also might be interested in our [♪]
Voice Lessons To The World Vocal Course. [♪]
This is a 12-part vocal course with hundreds of vocal exercises, [♪]
it's a good resource for you on your journey [♪]
from beginning to master singer. [♪]
To download the course go to www.VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com. [♪]
If you'd like free vocal tips sent to your email every single day [♪]
you can sign up at www.DailyVocalTips.com. [♪]
Fresh vocal tips delivered to you from your good old pals [♪]
at New York Vocal Coaching every single day. [♪]
I'm Justin Stoney. [♪]
Until next time, make a joyful noise. [♪]
♫
♪ Meow meow meow meow ♪