Hi.
I'm Aaron from HowtoSing.com and I want to talk to you about vocal exercises.
I want to give you some great vocal exercises, some that I think are some of the better ones
out there.
But first I just want to talk to you for a second about the benefit of vocal exercises.
As you may know, your voice or your voice box, everything that makes up your voice that
produces sound is made up primarily of muscle, cartilage as well.
But because it's muscle, a lot of people ask me, Can anybody learn how to sing? and my
thought is always, well, just like building up a muscle at a gym, you can build the muscles
in your voice box and you can have better coordination and better pitch and all that
stuff.
As you develop the muscles through vocal exercises, you strengthen the muscles and then obviously
they're not as weak when you're all that those muscles are weak and your chords are weak.
That's when you miss pitches and you break and you crack and all that stuff on a very
high range.
All that is because of the lack of coordination because your muscles are not strong.
So that's a big benefit of vocal exercises.
So better pitch.
Help increase your range.
Another one is to smooth out those breaks.
You may have heard of what's called the mixed voice or some people call it the blended voice
or some people just call it the mix.
But basically what that is, you have two primary registers.
You have your chest register and head register and it's true for guys and girls and then
there's your falsetto and whistle but I'm not giving you that.
As far as the mixed voice goes, it's basically a mix of your head voice [demonstrates head
voice] and your chest voice [demonstrates chest voice].
It's having a nice blend between the two.
That is your mix.
Having a good mixed voice is when you have a clean, smooth from like, Ooohhh.
So it's smooth all the way from chest to head and back down.
So it's one big, blended voice and that's what vocal exercises will help you do and
one of the exercises I gave you today is actually good for helping develop your mix and help
smoothing out those breaks.
So that will be good.
There are two types of vocal exercises, sort of.
I mean really there's the warm-up exercises which is the first one I'm going to give you,
the warm-up exercise; and a good warm-up exercise, you just need to do one, two, three and maybe
a full regimen of them.
But at least the first one or first couple should be a good like just getting your voice
kind of warmed up kind of thing and a good closed mouth exercise is a good one to start
with.
This is just the, Hmm, and let me just tell you the other kind of exercise is basically
the ones that expand your range, strengthen, develop mix and all that stuff.
So those are more strengthening.
You don't want to just start right off the bat with those kinds of things and doing a
lot of stuff with your head voice and higher.
You don't want to put a lot of strain in your voice at first.
When you first wake up in the morning, you kind of just want more like a, Hmm, just something
just to get your vocal chords moving and then go into, Hmm, hmm, and then once you're kind
of comfortable with that, maybe even like, Hhhmmm.
Start working a little bit up with, Hhhmmm, a little bit up in that head voice there but
mostly just the, Hmmm, just to get started.
So that's a good one to start out with.
The next one is a pharyngeal, what they call a pharyngeal.
You get that, Aaahhh, because your pharynx is down here.
The larynx and pharynx actually, Aaahhh.
N-G, the Nnnggg.
So this one is a pharyngeal slide.
So this is the actual one that this slide is the one that can help you expand your range,
smooth out breaks and help you develop your mix.
You got that Hmmm exercise and this one is do it like an N-G kind of sound, Nnnggg.
It's kind of, Ngaahh, kind of ugly sound but it actually is good for helping your vocal
chords to connect.
Just as a side note but the benefit of this one is that sound, that, Nnnggg, that kind
of sound helps your vocal chords to connect.
A lot of times what happens is when you go from your chest voice and trying to get into
your head voice, a lot of people have difficulty to get in their head voice.
Many people.
I would almost say most people have difficulty getting into their head voice without going
like, Aaahhh, in their falsetto.
And what happens in falsetto is your chords kind of break apart and that sound you're
getting just comes from just the edges.
The edges are catching the air and flow in the sound as it comes through.
So in order to keep that from happening, you want to keep your vocal chords together and
get into your head voice.
So that's how you expand your range but that's a different video.
It's this kind of brassy N-G, this pharyngeal kind of thing so, Nnnggg, nnnggg, called the
pharyngeal slide.
Just whatever is comfortable for you, start in like a mid range [demonstrates vocal exercise]
and that was going from my chest voice to my head voice.
There's no breaking.
It's just [demonstrates vocal exercise].
That pharyngeal kind of helps keep your chords together.
So that's that.
Those are two great exercises for you, vocal exercises there, and really vitally important
for the serious singer.
If you want to be serious, you really need to be vocalizing daily, doing your vocal exercises
daily.
My website is HowtoSing.com.
I've got a ton of other tips and tricks and articles and all that stuff for the voice.
I actually just put up a video on how to sing.
It's a 10-minute video on specifically how to sing high notes.
Great exercises, really some tips that the pros use of how to sing high notes without
strain, which is the real key to singing high notes.
So, come check that out at HowtoSing.com or just click the link below and it will take
you there.
That's it for now.