♬
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 90 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
Santeri S. in Turku, Finland.
And Santeri speaks for the thousands of emails
we've gotten on this particular topic.
"Dear Justin, can you teach me how to do the whistle voice?"
And yes, Santeri, I...
[demonstrates whistle voice]
think that can be arranged.
But we have to know that the whistle voice
lives in the stratosphere, it's out of this world.
And this is part 5, the last stop on our Vocal Register World Tour.
So pack your space helmets, pack your spacesuits,
pack your space boots, because we're about to go boldly
where no voice lesson has gone before.
We're going on a Vocal Register World Tour.
♬
And so dear singers of the vocal universe, [♪]
the time has dawned on us to answer
this epic question that has been posed to me
so many thousands of times.
And I promise you by the end of this episode
you will be able to do the whistle voice.
But before I answer this epic question that has been asked of me,
let me ask a question of you...
Why, dear singer, do you want to do this whistle voice?
The reason I have to ask you this is because whistle voice
is not nearly as important as it is popular.
And I know that people start to get this kind of thinking in their head...
Mariah Carey is famous.
Mariah Carey is pop star.
Mariah Carey does whistle voice.
If I, singer, do whistle voice then I will be famous pop star, great singer.
The answer is...
[hits piano]
not really.
Whistle voice isn't used for that much stuff.
You hardly ever hear it in songs.
It doesn't really help your vocal technique.
It doesn't help your vocal style.
I want you to think of whistle voice
as a blip on the radar of your vocal technique.
At very best, it's a parlor trick that you can impress your friends with.
But it's not something that we really use in our singing.
I would have you focus on your breath support,
your larynx control, your mix, your resonance,
all of these things.
And make whistle voice a very, very small part of your vocal life.
So now that we've had that little talk, let's get to it.
We're going to start by comparing whistle voice to our other vocal registers.
In our Vocal Register World Tour we've had five parts.
And I'm gonna illustrate these five vocal registers
using five octaves of my own singing voice.
So I'll start down in the basement with chest voice...
♪ MUM ♪
And then the next octave I'll use mix...
♪ MUM ♪
And then the next octave I'll use Falsetto and a little bit of head voice...
♪ MUM ♪
And then the next octave I'll use flageolet with a little bit of Falsetto as well...
♪ MUM ♪
And then to go even higher into another octave
we're going to use today's topic, whistle voice.
♪ MUM ♪
So then you can see that the voice can extend to quite big ranges.
Now we didn't talk about vocal fry.
We have a whole trilogy on that if you want to go back.
We can actually do...
♪ MUM ♪
You can even maybe get a sixth octave down there
if you develop your vocal fry.
But you can see that good vocal registration
allows us to have quite a massive range to use.
So let's talk about what is this extension?
What is this whistle voice?
Well, you heard it for yourself,
whistle voice is the highest of all the vocal registers.
There's nothing that goes higher.
But we talked last time about falsetto and flageolet
and how the cricothyroid muscle stretches the vocal folds
to their maximum extent.
So you'd think that whistle voice would stretch the cords even further.
But, no.
Actually whistle voice is produced differently
from all the other vocal registers.
Most of our vocal registers have the cords vibrating.
Sometimes we call this the mucosal wave.
[Hits piano]
But not whistle voice.
In whistle voice we actually lock down the bodies of the cords.
The vocalis muscle helps to lock down the bodies
leaving a space in the back.
And we're actually, literally, sort of whistling through
the backs of the vocal folds.
This is what makes whistle voice the most
appropriately named of all the vocal registers.
I mean you and I are travel buddies
on an entire Vocal Register World Tour.
We know these terms aren't so great.
We didn't come up with them.
What, chest voice?
It has nothing to do with my chest.
That's thick vocal fold mass, yo!
Head voice?
Well everything resonates in the head,
So what? Is everything head voice?
I don't think so!
Mix?
Well, that's a pretty good term but it confuses everybody.
You gotta go back to episode 40 and episode 88,
just to make any sense of it.
Falsetto well, there's nothing false about that.
In fact, I hope you do it every single day of your life.
But whistle voice...
Yes, now, there is a good term for a vocal register.
Because when I whistle...
[whistles]
What vibrates?
Nothing!
And when I whistle with my vocal folds
[whistles with voice]
What vibrates?
Nothing!
I'm whistling with my vocal folds.
So Justin, can you stop talking about registers and tell us how to do this?
I just did.
There's a secret to it, and when you know this secret
you will be doing your whistle voice in a matter of seconds.
Manny Cooner can I get a little drumroll?
[drumroll]
The secret is inhale phonations.
That's right inhale phonations, can you believe it?
That the mistake we might have been making
in trying to learn our whistle voice is breathing out?
It's natural to breathe out when we sing.
But with the whistle voice it's actually easier
to first learn it breathing in and then later breathing out.
That's because it encourages the tops of the vocal folds
to touch instead of the bottoms of the vocal folds.
And since there's nothing vibrating, it's just air moving through a chamber.
It's just like whistling, we can breathe in, [whistles]
or we can breathe out [whistles].
With my whistle voice I can breathe in [whistles with voice]
or I can breathe out [whistles with voice].
And I can get my whistle voice either way,
but it's actually so much easier with the inhale phonations first.
So I'm going to take you step-by-step
through this on how to do it.
Here's step 1...
First, speak with an inhale phonation.
Inhale phonations are rather easy to do,
you just breathe in and talk.
Breathe in and talk.
So try this for me, "hello, how are you"
I'm doing very well!
Thank you for asking me with your inhale phonation!
Now step two, let's add some vocal fry.
You remember from our vocal fry trilogy,
vocal fry is beneath your chest voice.
It's just a very gentle creaking sound.
[demonstrates vocal fry]
Very nice.
Now let's try it with the inhale...
[demonstrates vocal fry with inhale]
Excellent!
That's going to help shut the bodies of the cords.
Now step three, let's kick it to falsetto and flageolet.
Last episode we talked about falsetto and flageolet
and how they help us to stretch our vocal folds.
♪ OO ♪
But what if we take our inhale fry
[demonstrates fry]
and just sort of think about going up into falsetto and flageolet,
then we get a...
[whistles]
Try it out...
Great!
And already you're starting to get some of those squeaks
that take us up into whistle register.
So now step four, pitch matching.
Once we've established our whistle voice
we need to get to a piano and make sure that
we're not just squeaking.
But we can actually sing real notes.
♪ [whistle voice] ♪
And then once we can do that,
step 5 is to create some vocal exercises.
Just like any part of our vocal training
we start off with exercises to build things
and then later we can do it with songs.
So whistle voice is the same.
♪ [whistle voice] ♪
If I can do an exercise then I'll be able to have
that kind of control.
when I have to do it in a song.
Of course there's not that many songs that use whistle voice.
But if we can do an exercise we know we're going to have that control.
Now, you're probably wondering is all this whistle voice healthy?
Well you already know my opinion on whistle register.
It's cool, but it's not that necessary of a voice to learn.
Not for technique, or for style.
But I know you guys, you'd be messing with it with or without me.
So I hope that these tips help you to do it as healthfully as possible.
It's kind of like with rasp though.
We'll cover that in the future.
But if you don't need to do it then don't mess with it.
Remember, we're shutting down the vocal folds
and not letting them do their natural vibration.
This might not be so great.
So be cautious, be conscientious.
If it doesn't feel right, if it's fatiguing,
if it's making your voice sore, then stop and do something else.
My real suggestion is to focus on the
first four parts of our Vocal Register World Tour.
You need to learn those registers.
So spend 99% of your time on that
and maybe 1% on this as a little extra bonus.
And that's it.
That's the end of our Vocal Register World Tour.
So I salute you on this great job
that you've done on our travels together.
And there's a lot more travels that we'll have together in the future.
So, Santeri and all, if you've got questions that you'd like to
see answered on a future episode of our 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 that'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 that 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 singing journey [♪]
from beginner to master level vocal exercises. [♪]
You can find that at VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com. [♪]
If you'd like free 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. [♪]
♬
♪ Meow meow meow meow ♪ [whistle voice]