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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 14 of Voice Lessons To The World.
The show where we want to help you guys as singers by answering your
questions on singing from all over the world.
I'll give you a chance to ask questions later but our question
for the week comes from Adrian S. in East Lansing, Michigan.
And Adrian writes, "Dear Justin, I'm a voice teacher and I have
a lot of young male teenage singers whose voices have just changed
and who have a lot of problems singing high notes, their ranges are very small.
Is this physical or is this mental?"
That's awesome Adrian.
Congrats on being a voice teacher, you know I love that.
And, teenage guys have notoriously a lot of problems with their voices.
There's a lot of cracking going on at that age and a lot of crazy stuff is happening.
And we'll talk about that and hopefully find some stuff that
can be helpful for people of all ages.
But your question, is it physical or is it mental?
It's actually both for teenage guys, and let's first talk about why it's physical.
The larynx when you're a teenager and when you're a real young person
is not as developed as it is when you get older.
One of the reasons is that it's made up of cartilage that thickens over time,
it calcifies and thickens.
When you're a teenage boy it's very much not thickened as much as it will be.
So you don't have as great of laryngeal stability as you're going to have.
So that's one reason that teenage guys have so many cracking problems
and also such a limited range sometimes.
It's just that lack of stability.
Also, at that age you know the muscles aren't as developed.
You know that there's a huge difference between say a college
freshman who's like 19, and you know maybe a 13 year old boy that we're
talking about here in terms of muscularity.
Typically very, very thin and not very muscular
whereas in a few years there's a lot more musculature.
Same thing is going to be true for the vocal muscles.
So when we're talking about an age where you had just a year ago
somebody saying, "Hello my name is Tommy." [High voice]
And then two weeks later they say, "Hey what's goin' on my name is Tom." [Deep voice]
And it just blows your mind how fast that voice changed.
You know that you're going to have a volatile physical situation
but probably a volatile emotional situation.
Now, this is the age because so many
crazy things are going on with the voice and with the body
that people start to get a little bit, you know, shy.
They try to play it cool.
And these teenage boys who
a second ago were like this [High voice]
and now are all cool [Deep voice]
this is partly the reason why they can't sing high notes [Deep voice]
is because they they've just found their voice and they [Deep voice]
want to, you know, show that they're macho and show that [Deep voice]
they're, you know, are a man [Deep voice]
even though they're 13 years old.
So that's where the mental stuff comes in.
There becomes a shyness about using the voice and
going to high pitches.
There's the fear of cracking and then there's the trying to be macho
when you're sorting stuff out emotionally and mentally.
So you've got a couple factors working there against you, Adrian,
as you teach young guys how to sing high.
But the first thing I want to help you with as an exercise
is get your guys to sing in falsetto.
And teenagers if you're watching this, or people of any age,
go ahead and develop your falsetto because
that's going to give you greater flexibility.
Now, it takes a little bravery if you're not used to it.
But we want to develop a good falsetto so that you can find
greater flexibility for your cords.
So let's do an exercise here.
Try this sound for me, just say, like you're at a celebration or something,
WOO HOO!
Go ahead...
That's great.
WOO HOO!
Now if you're a teenage guy make sure you didn't go
WOO HOO [Deep, low voice]
Okay, no cool, no cool teenagers, let's be a dork.
WOO HOO!
Good stuff!
Now, that is flexibility that's going to help
you to get a little extra stretch for your voice.
Now, if you're man enough let's see if you can do this
following exercise with me.
♪
♪ WOO ♪
Go ahead.
♪ WOO ♪
Great!
♪
That's it.
♪ WOO ♪
♪
♪ WOO ♪
Great job!
♪
♪ WOO ♪
That's it.
♪
♪ WOO ♪
Nice!
♪
If we still got men let's hear this one.
♪ WOO ♪
Awesome. And coming down...
♪
Great.
♪
♪ WOO ♪
♪
♪ WOO ♪
Great job.
♪
Totally awesome.
So I hope you guys were man enough to go up there
in your falsetto and stretch things out.
Now Adrian, that's another thing.
You can tell how ridiculous that was right there, how silly, how weird.
When you're a teenage boy that's hard to do.
It's hard to break out of your comfort zone.
But, that's actually exactly what you need to do.
If you have voice students that are shy and are trying to play it cool,
make up some dorky exercises and make people feel like
they can take risks, like they can make mistakes,
like they can do some silly and goofy stuff to break out of that comfort zone.
Because that's probably, at an age where you're playing it cool, the only
way that you're going to bust through whatever mental blocks that you have
which are also preventing the physical flexibility that we're looking for.
Another thing for teenage guys is because there's no larynx stability,
this is another physical thing, the larynx is going to be through
the roof if they try to hit high notes.
They're not going to be able to keep it down.
So you want to encourage a low larynx.
If you're working on a song like Caro mio ben
a classic classical Italian art song,
you know you want them to do...
♪ Caro mio ben ♪
♪ Credimi almen ♪
But what's going to happen is...
♪ Caro mio ben ♪
♪ Credimi almen ♪
And you're going to get that high larynx and that squeeze
and probably even breathiness too.
That's what's going to happen.
But still encourage them to have a deeper larynx.
You don't want to shove it down but watch that because there's
going to be tons and tons of larynx lift,
because the larynx is not yet developed.
So, do some lower larynx and deeper exercises.
And on that note, encourage a lot of different styles including classical.
Most teenage people, you know, they like pop and they like rock
and they like what is cool and what's hot right now.
Let them do those styles.
That's awesome, we want to be encouraging of stylistic versatility.
But encourage your guys to do a little bit of classical singing.
That's going to help them get a sense of a low larynx.
When you can keep your larynx calm and low you get more flexibility
and you actually develop a greater high range.
So you want them to be able to do just a little bit of
classical if you can encourage them to do that.
And then also some low larynx stuff.
And then finally Adrian, and all teachers that are teaching young people,
or all young singers who are working out their voice and their range...
Patience. Big time. Patience.
I promise you if you're a 13, 14 year old singer
or if you've got a 13 or 14 year old voice student,
it's going to be a lot of inconsistencies.
It's just the same reason that two weeks ago you
had this voice [High voice]
and now you have that voice. [Deep voice]
Your body's changing so much, your voice is changing so much.
You can't expect your voice to just be doing what you want
and the muscles to do what you want every single time.
You've got to give it a chance.
So you might have a great vocal day one day,
you might have a terrible vocal day the next.
You might have a great voice lesson one day,
either teaching or having a lesson,
and you might have a bad voice lesson the next week.
That's just to be expected when people are going through that many changes.
So just be patient with yourself as a teacher or as a young singer
going through that process of developing those vocal muscles at such a young age.
So I hope that's been helpful for you guys as singers and as voice teachers today.
If you have questions that you want to see us answer on the show
you can send an email to-
Questions@VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com [♪]
And we just encourage you not to lose that joy and that passion [♪]
whether you're a teacher or a singer. [♪]
Get with a great voice teacher in your area like Adrian from East Lansing. [♪]
And if you're in New York you can check us out at [♪]
wwww.NewYorkVocalCoaching.com [♪]
If you like these videos you can check out [♪]
www.VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com [♪]
I'm Justin Stoney. We'll see you next time. [♪]
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