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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 19 of Voice Lessons To The World,
the show where we want to help you guys as singers
by answering your questions from all over the world.
And I'll give you a chance to ask questions later,
but our question for this week comes from Marnell Dante Sample.
He's a voice teacher from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
And Marnell writes, "Dear Justin, what are some exercises that you
would recommend as an alternative to lip trills?
I know lip trills are supposed to be a good semi-occluded exercise,
but I find that sometimes they don't help much.
What would you suggest in cases like this?"
That's awesome to get questions from other voice teachers, Marnell.
Really appreciate that.
And let's talk today about alternatives to lip trills.
There are many other things that you can do if lip trills aren't working for you,
whether you're a voice teacher and you're giving exercises to your singer,
or if you're a singer and you're thinking of some other things
that might work better for you besides lip trills.
We'll go back a step.
First of all, we'll talk about why do lip trills work?
We've done this in the past, but just real brief.
First of all, a lip trill is going to increase your
breath support because it limits the airflow.
When you do a [lip trill] you've got steady air, and notes that change.
So it's causing you to regulate the breath.
That's one part of it.
But the part that we're going to talk a lot about today,
is that lip trills block the mouth, alright.
When I'm making a [lip trill] sound,
I've got something in the way of my mouth.
Now this is what Marnell means when he says, "semi occluded".
That's very smart.
Occlusion is a block, and it's semi-occluded.
It's partially blocked.
So I'm not blocked, but I'm partially blocked.
Now that sometimes called a "filter".
And that's the word that I use.
And so today we're going to be talking
about filters as other alternatives for your lip trills.
Before we do that let's talk first about chest voice and head voice.
Chest voice we know that the cords come together thickly,
and that the air moves outward out of the mouth.
Whereas in head voice the cords thin out somewhat,
and the air moves back into the head.
So if I sing very open mouthed, with no occlusion, no filter,
just out there, then I'm probably going to go more chest dominant
and things are going to get tighter.
If I sing into the head I have the ability to loosen my vocal cords
and probably go to higher notes with greater ease.
Let me show you an example of that with a song first.
Some small mouth singing, some filtered singing,
some occluded or semi-occluded singing.
Let's take "Chocolate," by Snow Patrol for a second.
And I'm gonna first just do it with the smallest,
most filtered mouth that I can do.
♪
♪ This could be the very minute ♪
♪ I'm aware I'm alive ♪
♪ All these places they feel like home ♪
I'm barely opening my mouth, but it's pretty easy to do.
Now if I open really wide and let the air out...
♪ This could be the very minute ♪
♪ I'm aware I'm alive ♪
Now I'm exaggerating a little bit, but it makes it much more difficult
when the air is just zooming out of my mouth.
And it makes a lot more easy when I have some sort of filter,
some sort of block, within the context of the song.
Now that's not all the time that you want to do that.
But often, you will want to use some sort of filter
when you're singing a song to help you get the air into the
head in a greater way.
So let's talk about exercises.
If we know that filters are really the thing that's going
to help us with better breath support and blocking the mouth,
let's talk about stuff that blocks the mouth.
And then, Marnell and everybody, you're going to have some ideas
for things that are alternatives to lip trills.
Stuff that blocks the mouth, here we go...
V- vvv... That's the bottom lip blocking the mouth.
You can exercise on V.
Z- zzz... That's the tongue touching the hard palate and blocking the mouth again.
You can exercise on a Z.
You could also try your nasal consonants.
M- mmm... Lips blocking the mouth.
N- nnn... Tongue blocking the mouth.
Again, air going into the nasal cavity.
Ng. nnng... Back of the tongue, sealing with the soft palate,
also blocking the mouth putting the air up into here.
Tongue trills, an alternative to lip trills obviously.
[trills tongue]
Tongue blocking the mouth and a little bit getting out.
Then you could also do an U vowel- ooo... because the lips are
blocking the mouth pretty well.
Or an E vowel- eee... because the back of the tongue is
also blocking the mouth.
So those are some exercises that you can start to do.
We'll do them in full in later episodes.
But I just want to give you a preview of that.
Those are all filters.
Those are all stuff that blocks the mouth
which helps you with breath support, and getting the air up into the head.
Can be used as an alternative to exercising your voice
if maybe the lip trills don't work for you, you can't do the trill,
or maybe you just want some other ideas to give to your students
or to be practicing on your own.
So, know that when you're singing, whether it's a song or exercises,
it's not a good idea to just go straight out with it,
to open up and blast.
You need strategies, song work and exercises,
that help deflect things up into here.
So I hope that's been helpful for you guys as singers today.
If you have questions that you want to see us answer on the show,
you can send an email to:
Questions@VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com [♪]
We just encourage you not to lose the passion, don't lose the joy. [♪]
Get with a great voice teacher that you trust. [♪]
It sounds like Marnell Dante Sample, out of Philadelphia, [♪]
sounds like he's very passionate, sounds like he knows what he's talking about. [♪]
You might want to check him out. [♪]
But get with a great voice teacher in your area. [♪]
And if you guys are in New York City [♪]
you can check us out at: [♪]
www.NewYorkVocalCoaching.com [♪]
And if you like these videos you can visit: [♪]
www.VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com [♪]
I'm Justin Stoney. [♪]
We'll see you next time. [♪]
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