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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 five of
Voice Lessons To The world.
The show where we want to help you guys as singers
and answer your questions from all over the world.
And I'll give you a chance to ask questions later.
But for right now we actually have our first
international question ever.
We're very excited about this.
This one comes from
Danielle S. in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
And Danielle says, "Dear Justin, I'm a beginning singer and
everybody tells me I need to practice lip trills.
What's the point of these?
Do they actually work?"
I like that question a lot Danielle.
Thanks so much for that.
And that's right, lip trills are a very
stereotypical exercise that singers do.
Everybody knows them, everybody does them.
A lot of people are doing them but they're
not even sure why they're doing them.
They're just doing them because they want to become a better singer.
And today we're going to talk about what they are,
why they're helpful, and are they actually effective.
Now what they are -
First of all, let's try this together.
So just kinda put your lips together
and try to make this sound for me.
Just do a... [ Lip trill ]
Try that out.
That's it.
[ Lip trill ]
And not everybody's gonna be able to do this.
But, a lot if you will.
Just practice it if you have trouble.
Put your lips together and... [ Lip trill ]
Great.
Now we're going to try a low sound with it.
So just do a...
[ Lip trill ]
One more of those.
[ Lip trill ]
Great. Now take it up high.
[ Lip trill ]
And one more.
[ Lip trill ]
That's great.
So now you've felt the low ones and the high ones.
But this lip trill, the point of it, is that you're going to hold the
air in the body.
Singers think that they need lots of air and
when we think about singing, we think,
oh, well singers they got to really use their air flow.
But actually, really good singing
is more about holding the air in the body
than it is about letting it out fast and hard.
So a lip trill is a perfect exercise, actually.
And as stereotypical and cheesy as it might be,
it's actually really, really helpful.
So, if I try to go for a high note,
chances are I might try to blast my air too much.
But if I'm doing a lip trill...
[ Lip trill ]
Then my air stays constant.
So what's great is, with a lip trill exercise -
and I'll let you guys do this in a minute -
we can go from low to high and back,
with pretty much the same air.
And that's extremely hard to do as a singer,
but not hard to do with the lip trills.
So if you're practicing your lip trills,
you're learning to do your entire range,
without changing your air flow.
And again, that's one of the hardest skills for singers.
So - now I'm going to give you a chance to try it.
We're just gonna do an arpeggio pattern,
which goes like this...
♪♪
[ ♪ Lip trill ♪ ]
Guys will be down there, girls will be up here.
♪♪
[ ♪ Lip trill ♪ ]
Now let's try it together.
I'm gonna take you low, all the way high,
and all the way down.
You're gonna breathe low in the belly as you know to do.
[ Demonstrates breath ]
And you're gonna see that you don't really need
to change your air as we go all the way up
and down the keyboard.
So here we go together.
Starting right here...
♪♪
[ ♪ Lip trill ♪ ]
Good.
♪♪
[ ♪ Lip trill ♪ ]
Nice.
♪♪
Good.
♪♪
[ ♪ Lip trill ♪ ]
Excellent.
♪♪
[ ♪ Lip trill ♪ ]
That's it.
♪♪
[ ♪ Lip trill ♪ ]
Good.
♪♪
Good, coming down.
♪♪
[ ♪ Lip trill ♪ ]
♪♪
Low breath.
♪♪
Good.
♪♪
[ ♪ Lip trill ♪ ]
♪♪
Keep it up. Good.
♪♪
Nice job.
♪♪
Couple more.
♪♪
Last one.
♪♪
[ ♪ Lip trill ♪ ]
♪♪
Great job.
So, now for some of you the highest ones might
have been a little bit too high,
But a lot of you could probably go all the way up and down.
But that's the point, Danielle, and for everybody,
is that you don't want to blast your air as a singer.
And if you have good exercises you're not going to do that.
You're going to learn to coordinate
the notes changing without the breath changing.
So lip trills, as common as they are,
as maybe stereotypical and silly as they are,
they're fantastic.
And I really recommend practicing them.
And if you like this video you can just practice
right along here with me as many times as you like.
So we hope that's been helpful for you today as singers.
If you have questions that you want to see us answer on the show
you can send an email to
Questions@VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com. [♪]
We encourage you to work really hard at your voice. [♪]
Never lose the joy and the passion. [♪]
And don't let anybody tell you that you can't sing, [♪]
because we all know that's not true. [♪]
If you're ever in New York, check us out at [♪]
www.NewYorkVocalCoaching.com. [♪]
Find a great voice teacher in your area. [♪]
If you like these videos you can visit [♪]
www.VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com. [♪]
I'm Justin Stoney. [♪]
See you next time. [♪]
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