♬
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 91 of Voice Lessons To The World.
The show where we want to help you as singers
by answering your questions from all over.
And I'll give you a chance to ask questions later
but our question for this week comes from
John L. in Montreal Canada and John writes, "Dear Justin,
my voice teacher is always asking me to
bring my sound more forward.
How can I achieve this?
Now John, that is just a great, great question.
Because so many singers are asked to sing more forward,
to use a forward placement.
But we need to know, what does this even mean, "forward"?
Why is it important and how do we do it?
That's our goal for today, but first let's ask that question
what does it mean to sing more forward?
Now I got to be honest with you, John.
I'm not a voice technician that loves the word "forward".
I don't really use it, I find it a little vague.
If I'm going to say the word forward,
I might be talking about my man Kevin Durant.
Now that's a forward.
Or maybe I've been sent an email
and I want to share it with somebody, that's a forward.
But if a voice teacher tells me to bring my sound more forward
I'm gonna say, how dare you isn't that a little forward?
[hits piano]
Especially if you're not going to give me any specifics.
That's the problem with the term forward,
it means so many different things all at once.
So let's talk about the things that the word "forward" might mean.
Overall what we mean by the word forward
is that we're looking for a brighter sounding voice.
Not one that's dark or heavy or buried
but a bright tone or a forward tone.
But the problem is, there's several ways to
brighten the tone of one's voice.
There's increasing the twang, there's raising the larynx position,
there's widening the embouchure, there's fronting the tongue,
there's lowering the soft palate and increasing the nasal resonance
and there's using a solider vocal fold contact.
All of these things contribute to a more forward or bright tone.
And the issue is that, singers, in an effort to sing more forward,
will lump many of those things together.
When usually only one or two will create
the best circumstances for the voice.
So we want to be more specific
when we're talking about the word forward.
Is there perhaps, Justin, a better word to use besides "forward"?
Well, maybe there is.
Formant.
These days all the vocal pedagogy cool kids
like to use the hip word "formant".
Feels good when it leaves my lips, "formant".
Makes me feel tough.
But really all a formant is is a resonance of the vocal tract.
So when the resonance frequencies of the vocal tract are elevated
we get a brighter, or more forward, sound.
Historically, we also have this term, chiaroscuro.
Which is an Italian term which means bright-dark.
And the painters of the great Italian Renaissance
made these beautiful paintings with
angels of light in one corner and dark huddled masses
in the shadows in the other corner.
And the Italians would say "Mama mia, chiaroscuro".
A perfect balance of bright and dark.
Later, the great Italian singers came along
and did the same thing with their voices.
A perfect balance of bright and dark formants.
I think this is best heard in a song example.
So today we're going to look at
the Cole Porter classic "Night And Day".
In this song what we're going to do
is examine the dark and the bright qualities.
The dark, oscuro, night and the bright, forward, chiaro, day.
With, "Night And Day".
Here's too much darkness...
♪ Night and day you are the one ♪
♪ Only you 'neath the moon or under the sun ♪
Too dark!
Now what about if I went too far forward,
too much day...
♪ Day and night why is it so ♪
♪ That this longing for you follows wherever I go ♪
Too much forwardness.
Now what if I try to evenly balance the bright and dark qualities of my voice.
Let's see...
♪ And its torment won't be through ♪
♪ 'Til you let me spend my life ♪
♪ Making love to you ♪
♪ Day and night, night and day ♪
And I can feel and hear the dark and bright
working together in a chiaroscuro balance.
So obviously we don't want it to be too far back
and we don't want it to be too far forward.
But if we're going to add forward elements
we need to know what those elements are.
So let's look at how to add forward elements to the voice.
Earlier I mentioned many of the elements
that go into making a forward sound.
Let's look at them one by one.
The first is twang.
For a full treatment on twang
you can go back and watch episode 77 of our show.
But essentially what it is
is a narrowing of the top part of the larynx, the aryepiglottic sphincter.
This creates a more turbulent breath stream
and a smaller chamber overall which gives us
sort of "more for less" as we create those brighter resonances.
This is used stereotypically by Broadway singers
who have to protect their voices
over those long eight shows a week runs.
It's also used sometimes by rock singers to get some of the rasp
and compression that's needed for the grittier sounds.
You might even hear an opera singer use it
for some of the ring that we want in the operatic voice.
Next is the higher larynx positions.
For a full treatment on the larynx you can
watch our episode 42 "The Amazing Larynx".
But essentially, as I lower my larynx
the formants get darker and deeper
and as I raise my larynx the formants
get higher and brighter.
Or if I raise and lower my larynx like this
it sounds something like this and
it's a great day for baseball.
But if I ever want to be opera man,
I'm going to have to learn to lower my larynx.
Same thing if I ever want to be pop guy.
I'm going to have to learn to raise my larynx.
There's nothing right or wrong about
the different larynx positions but with respect to
making the sound brighter we have to take that into consideration.
That it also will affect the style if we change the larynx.
Next, the wide embouchure.
For a full treatment on embouchure you can watch
episode 84 of our show.
But essentially as I widen my lips the sound gets brighter,
and as I pucker my lips the sound gets darker.
Now we want to make this widening the
last choice for brightening the voice.
The reason why is this is really considered a spread.
It's a bad vocal habit, it contributes to pushing the voice,
and really now we're getting the brightness from without
instead of the brightness from within
where the true beauty of the voice lies.
Now at the extreme top of vocal registers,
sometimes we really do need to widen the embouchure.
There's also some stylistic occasions
that you might choose to widen the embouchure.
But really, really, you want to make this your
last choice for brightening the voice.
[pop sound]
And now, the fronted tongue.
When we sing the E vowel we're singing our brightest vowel.
It's because we're singing with the most fronted tongue.
Very different from the AH vowel
where the tongue falls down in the back.
Now this doesn't mean to go shoving your tongue forward
to make the sound brighter all the time.
But many singers struggle with the habit
of the tongue falling down and pulling back for all of their singing.
This darkens the resonance, puts pressure on the larynx,
and you might even feel a bulking
or a pressure at the base of the jaw.
To fix it you can vocalize on K, Y, G, or NG as in "sing".
And that'll help restore the neutrality of the tongue.
But tongue retraction is a big habit.
You can check out episode 33 for more information on that.
Man alive, we got a lot of darn episodes on this show.
[hits piano]
Now next up, nasal resonance.
Kids, stay in school. [♪]
Stay off of drugs. [♪]
And never let anyone tell you to raise the soft palate. [♪]
♪
The more you know!
For generations there was this mis-teaching
that we should raise our soft palate
to accomplish almost everything with the voice.
Nowadays we know better.
Nasal resonance is so, so critical to our vocal health,
our vocal technique, our vocal flexibility,
and, guess what, also the forwardness to our voice.
Some of those brighter and ringing qualities
you can find it very easily by vocalizing on M, N, and NG.
All the vowels already have the soft palate raised,
but those nasal consonants help to invite some of the
nasal resonance that we need for our vocal technique
and for these brighter qualities.
To learn more about that you can watch our epic episode 60.
Last, vocal fold contact.
Last but not least we have vocal fold contact.
For some of those brighter formants and upper resonances
to become present, the vocal folds
have to be making good contact.
Now there's nothing wrong with singing with a
breathy tone for a pop song, or an intimate moment.
But if we're singing with leaky cords
those upper resonances cannot come out
in the same kind of way as they do with solid vocal cords.
So when you're singing ask yourself,
am I singing too light?
Too tight?
Or just right?
Right down the center in a place where your resonance is maximized.
For more information on that, you guessed it,
you can watch episode 37 of our show.
So let's remind ourselves why it's a good thing
to sing with forwardness.
So "forward" might not be the most specific word in the world
but it's clear that brighter formants are
a big help to us as singers.
They help us sing our high notes,
they help us to take the pressure off the larynx
and off the vocal folds.
They help our voices to carry and project
even without force and a lot of volume.
And they contribute to our sound's vibrancy and liveliness and excitement.
So if your sound is always falling back
into a dark and heavy place,
you do need to add these forward elements.
But when you do, just make sure that you're specific
and not lumping a bunch of things together.
Maybe go back through everything that we talked about,
try them one by one, and decide what is the most
important factor for your voice.
Then you're really specific.
So, John and all, I hope that this has
been helpful for you 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.
And you know I encourage you, don't lose the joy,
don't lose the 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 near you
or if you're in New York or you'd like to Skype
with one of our staff you can visit us at
NewYorkVocalCoaching.com.
If you'd like a vocal course
you can do in the comfort of your own home,
check out the Voice Lessons To The World Vocal Course. [♪]
A 12-part course that takes you on a journey from [♪]
beginner to master level vocal exercises. [♪]
You can find that at VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com. [♪]
And if you'd like free daily vocal tips [♪]
sent to you every day you can sign up at [♪]
DailyVocalTips.com. [♪]
I'm Justin Stoney. [♪]
Until next time, make a joyful noise. [♪]
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It's your boy, KD!