Ep.52 How to Improve Your Singing? Balance Vocal Cords!
How to improve your singing by balancing your vocal cords? What does it mean to balance
your vocal cords and how can it improve your singing?
Your vocal cords are muscles over which you have direct control similar to pinching your
fingers or blinking your eyes.
Inside this video I’ll show you how you can bring balance to your vocal cords and
how this will improve your singing!
Hi, I’m Chuck Gilmore with Power To Sing.
In our last Episode I talked about controlling the air blow and air flow in order to help
balance the voice.
In a balanced voice, the air blow on the “vocal teeter-totter”, is balanced with the vocal
cords on the other side.
This means there’s ideal interaction between air blow from the lungs and the vocal cords.
The balanced air blow is not too forceful nor too weak. The vocal cords open and close
to allow just the right air flow required for the song. The vocal cords are not too
tight nor too loose.
This balance between the air blow and vocal cords produces an ideal tone for the song
being sung.
If the air is balanced, what causes the vocal cords to not be balanced? There are two primary
reasons over which you have control:
1.The vocal cords open and close too tight. If the cords are closing too tight this causes
imbalance. Not enough air is passing through the vocal
cords This adds tension to the neck and larynx
It slows the rhythm of the vocal cords It Slows or eliminates vibrato
Causes the pitch to go flat Increases the loudness and contributes to
a raised larynx Tone quality gets worse
The voice is out of balance.
2. The vocal cords open and close too loose. If the cords are closing too loose this causes
imbalance. Too much air is passing through the vocal
cords The sound waves created will lack intensity
The tone will be too soft to be heard The tone will be too breathy
The outside neck muscles try and help the tone
This causes more tension We push more air
This causes the larynx to rise which puts more squeeze on the cords
The voice is out of balance.
How to Improve Your Singing? Balance Your Vocal Cords!
Well, how do we balance our vocal cords?
Understand, first, that we can control how tight or loose we open and close our cords.
It works like pinching your fingers or blinking our eyes. We control it with our thoughts.
If we’re going to hold something tight we pinch our fingers together firmly.
If we’re trying to prevent dirt from going into our eyes, we close them tight.
Conversely, if we are holding a newborn baby’s tiny hand, we barely bring our fingers together.
If we’re told to close our eyes, but we want to peek,...but we want to PEEK, we leave
a little space between the eyelids, so we can see out of them.
The vocal cords are the same way. By thinking, we gain a wide range of control, from gentle
to firm to find what is just right with the air flow and loudness of the song we’re
singing.
2. We must be aware of how loose or tight we’re closing the vocal cords and then adjust
the cord tension to allow a more ideal air flow and blow.
Here’s how we can balance our cords.
If the imbalance is caused by closing them too tight:
Don’t close the cords so tight Relax the tension of the cords...relax your
grip so to speak. Allow a little more air to pass through your
cords Relax the external muscles around the larynx
Sing softer not louder Perfect your ability to do the Lip Trill and/or
the Tongue Trill.
This is a great balancing exercise between the air and the vocal cords. You can see the
balance between your cords and the air blow by how easy and consistent your lips and tongue/
or tongue are trilling. If you’re relaxed but the cords are too tight or too loose,
the lips or tongue struggle too. [Demo]
If the imbalance is caused by closing your cords too loose:
Close them tighter. A great exercise to develop your sense for this it the “ae ae ae”
with a staccato. This helps the cords come together more firmly. [Demo]
After you are able to do the staccato, use the same sound legato like this. [Demo] Make
sure the cords stay firm the whole time. Don’t relax them on the way down. Practice keeping
them consistent. [Demo]
If your spoken voice is not breathy or soft but your singing is too breathy or soft, try
“speaking on the pitch”. This means that you tell yourself not to sing, but rather
speak...except you speak with a melody in your voice.
Singers whose cords are not closing firmly enough often speak with a firm cord closure,
but when they start singing, relax the vocal cords too much.
Like Professor Harold Hill says in Music Man, “Singing is just sustained talking.” [Demo]
Relax the external neck muscles, but add more friendly compression to the vocal cords. A
great exercise for this is [goo]. It isolates the internal cord muscles and disengages the
external neck muscles. [Demo]
Sing louder. The vocal cords must hold back more air, which helps them close more firmly.
Be careful not to over due it and cause too much air blow for the cords to handle. [Demo]
Again, the lip and tongue trill exercises are excellent for bringing the vocal cords
together. If they don’t come together firmly enough, the trill has difficulty. It may not
work at all, or start and stop.
Balancing the vocal cords will bring balance to the voice. Your vocal cords will develop
their own coordination and strength. This is when you begin to develop real power in
your voice.
If you tend to close your cords too hard your vocal type may be Pulled Chest/High Larynx.
If you tend to close your vocal cords too soft your vocal type might be Light Chest/No
Chest.
Do you know your vocal type? This isn’t whether you’re soprano, alto, tenor or bass.
Your vocal type is what you tend to do when you sing.
Go to PowerToSing.com and take the vocal test or the PowerTest. Take the quiz and immediately
discover your vocal type. Visit the Knowledge Center and watch the videos about your vocal
type. Download the free exercises for your vocal type. These exercises are designed to
balance your voice.
I’m Chuck Gilmore with Power To Sing. You can sing higher with beauty, confidence and
power.
I’ll see you inside the next video.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community