Hey guys welcome to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing!
Today we’re going to talk about mixed voice.
What is mixed voice, and how do we get it and how do we utilize it, how do we use it?
Well, it’s actually a pretty expansive subject, so I’m not going to get to cover everything
today, but what I am going to do is I’m going to break down the basics of it so you
understand the concepts, okay?
The first thing is: I want you to think of your voice like building a house.
Okay, or building something.
And we need the foundation to be really strong in order for the rest of the house to
be able to hold up to what it is we’re gonna put on it.
We want bedrooms, we want a rec center, we want you know, a Jacuzzi.
I don’t care what it is in your house, but you want all this stuff to hold up and it
needs a foundation.
So as I cover in my singing course, How To Sing Better Than Anyone Else, we have to build
up, first, a great, powerful, robust chest voice to sustain all of these rooms that we
want to add on to the home.
Now, in this case of head voice actually want to build head voice in a similar way, because
I don’t want to compartmentalize something, but I want to kind of draw an analogy for you.
I want you to think of your leg, and you’re going to kick a soccer ball, and you’re
going to whack the soccerball with your leg, right?
I want you to think of your chest voice like your biceps, right your forearm right?
And I want you to think of, oops, your biceps, this is your biceps.
My bad.
Anyway, your biceps.
And I want you to think of your elbow as the passaggio, or the passageway to get to your
head voice.
And I want you to think of your forearm as your head voice.
So you’re going to kick this soccerball, boom!
Right?
Boom!
Now, several things have to happen, in order to be able to do that.
And I go “HEEEEEEEEEEEEY”.
I started in chest.
I went into mixed voice.
I went into head voice.
I went back into mixed voice.
And I came back down into chest.
Now, there’s a lot of stuff on the Internet floating around.
They say everybody is “let’s talk about mixed voice!””
Let’s go straight to mixed voice!”
Well, it’s not really that easy, and you probably found yourself getting really frustrated
“I just can’t get it!
How do I get, you know, I’m not getting this center where I’m when I break
“AAAAAAAAAAAA” “AAAAAAAAAAAA”
“How do I keep from cracking?
How do I not get into that space?”
Well, that’s because people aren’t explaining this that well, so I’m going to give you
my personal rendition of how this, it works.
So, within chest voice we build our chest voice very robust.
And there’s something called secondo passaggio, the second passageway where that break happens,
the register break.
As I go through this break, I need to be able to strengthen my elbow, right, to get into
my forearm, right, to do this soccer kick: boom!
To hit this ball, to get up top, right?
Well, I can’t apply a lot of pressure to something I haven’t built strength up for.
So I’ve got to build this strength up first.
But where does the strength come from?
Well, it has to be anchored to something.
It’s got to be anchored to here.
If I just go like this, that’s not going to mean much, I’m not going to have much
power in that.
But if I have a lot of, you know, resistance, and the ability to swack that ball, so to
speak, if you will…
In fact let’s think of this more like this is my quad of my leg, and this is my calf
of my leg, and this is my knee.
So let’s look at it for a minute like this.
I’ve gotta swack that ball.
I need the strength to come from the torque of my body to get that ball, to hit it, to
hit it hard, okay?
Well, this couldn’t be more true, for how we train the voice.
So first we train our chest voice, and then we train our head voice.
And I have chest voice videos, by the way I have a singing course out called How To
Sing Better Than Anyone Else.
If you want to check it out you can check it out here.
You can check out my singing forums, I’ve got almost 10,000 members now, where we discussed
all of these ideas.
In fact, like and subscribe to my channel, if you want to hear more of this stuff.
That would be awesome too.
Just click the like button, that would be cool!
But what happens is, is that we have to build the whole house.
We can’t just talk about one subject and tack it on to another subject.
It does not work that way.
So we build the house first with a strong chest voice, and then we build the head voice,
and then we build a way to connect the two, which is the passaggio.
The passaggi, second passageway.
Now, actually there are two passageways through the voice.
Primo passaggio, which is from my speaking register into what’s called my call register,
or my belting register.
So right now I’m talking to you in my speaking register.
Hey how’s it going?
Pretty good, a how are you doing?
Well not bad.
Thank you.
All right?
So when I go “Heeeeeey”.
Right there, I kind of shift gears a little bit, and I move into a belting register.
Heeeeey, yeay, yeay, yeah, aaaaa!
I move into like a belting register.
Now once I do that I’m like “Oh, crap!
I’ve got all this weight, and I’ve got to dump this weight to get through the passagio
to make it up top.
Heeeeeyyy!
Now, what I can do is I can back off the sound, to get me through the passaggio, in order
to get into my head voice.
If I’ve built my chest voice really strong, and if I’ve built my head voice really strong,
all I need to do is build this knee or elbow of the secondo passaggio, the second passageway,
to get me so I don’t hear that yodel.
Now this doesn’t happen by belting or pushing or forcing through the sound.
It happens by growing that area.
So what I want to do with you guys here right now, is do a couple exercises, just a couple
slider exercises they’re called, where you can get through the passagio really lightly
first.
Real gentle, be really gentle.
Try to do it to where you don’t hear the break at all, and then little by little you
can lean into the sound to grow it.
It’s a muscle, like any muscle in your body.
You can grow this thing.
So we’re going to start here, and we’re going to go:
LAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
On Lay, like Lay!
Here we go…
LAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
Now make sure that you’re not going (Sings with yodel/break) Right?
You're actually just gently starting the initial stages of growing and building that passaggio.
LAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
Now how we do this is we force that throat to stay open.
Force the throat, or, encourage the throat to stay open.
LAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
Now.
If you’re going up top and you’re going into your head voice, please see my video
on head voice.
You have to first build strength in the head voice to get nice and bright to match the
timbre, or the sound, or the brightness of your chest voice, so it sounds like one long,
seamless, powerful note.
Okay?
LAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
And little by little, as you get good at this, you can start to lean into that sound, and
build strength into your mixed voice.
LAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
That sound: AAA AAAA AAAA you hear that sound?
LAAAAAY, AAA?
You’re like I’m kinda like lifting the soft palate, I’m raising the back of the
throat, I’m pulling up the yawning sensation, to where I can create enough space, and to
open that throat: LAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
To where I don’t hear the break and I don’t hear that yodel, but I can create enough space
to get in there and then start to lean into that sound, and make that sound nice and robust.
And therein lies your mixed voice.
Okay?
All right, guys! We've got more coming your way!
If you like what you heard, please like and subscribe.
Check out my singing course called How To Sing Better Than Anyone Else.
This will help you like crazy.
And until next time.
Peace.
Out.