Support for Singing: Part 1

 

Support for singing refers to the system of muscles that powers the air and forces it past our vocal cords when we sing or even speak. The muscles you choose to do this work will greatly influence the quality of your voice. When you engage the strong muscles of your lower body, you achieve the same desirable qualities we hear on the radio every day in our favorite singers.

The voice qualities generally considered to be assets to successful singers, are described as: rich, full, mellow, soothing, warm, clear, precise, commanding, edgy, in control, and sincere When these qualities are found present in a singing voice, chances are good that it has a lot to do with support.

The one and only sign I have posted in my voice studio reads: IT'S THE SUPPORT, STUPID. The sign is there to remind not only my students, but also myself, that if the support isn't right, nothing works well for a singer. When the support is in place and working, at least a singer will have a shot at producing a good tone and good intonation.

This all ties in with the breathing. I frequently reference how important I feel support is to good singing. And, good low abdominal breathing is imperative for good low abdominal support. You must learn to target your sound towards your lower abdominals. Now, I realize there are no actual lungs down there but it feels like there are. This is where your imagination comes into play. Wherever you put the air in your body is where you will press to push it out to make a sound.

If instead, you breathe high into your shoulders and power your voice from the upper body, shoulders, neck, and throat, you wind up with a voice that may be perceived as: nasally, thin, shallow, whiney, grating, squeaky, whispery, raspy, pinched and insincere. This can be deadly for a performing singer.

Breathing and support work hand in hand. Don't forget; whichever part of the body you direct the air into is where you will apply pressure to force it out when you sing. It’s easy to understand why it’s so important to let your air flow into the lower part of your body. Applying more lower-body strength will give your voice a richer, fuller sound.

Click here to view Support for Singing Part 2 

Furniture movers discover the secret that increases
vocal range and helps singers hit killer high notes!

Something else magical happens when you engage lower body muscles. Others sense that you have a strong commitment to what you are singing. Your audience wants to feel that you stand firmly behind the emotions you are trying to express. They will be more inclined to believe in you when you sing using your entire body. If your breathing and support are shallow, that’s exactly how you’ll sound—shallow.  

Nashville vocal coach Renee Grant-Williams reveals the trade secrets that have already helped hundreds of aspiring singers become celebrities: Tim McGraw, Martina McBride, Dixie Chicks, Miley Cyrus, Huey Lewis, Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill, Jason Aldean, Christina Aguilera...

Like me on Facebook at or follow me on Twitter @MyVoiceCoach. My blog can be found at MyVoiceCoachBlog.com.

Go to CyberVoiceStudio.com and sign up to receive my free weekly Video Voice Lessons.

For more information go to MyVoiceCoach.com or call 615.244.3280 to schedule a private voice session in person, by telephone or by Skype.

Throat Nodes - How to Avoid Them

Throat nodes, also known as vocal nodules, might not top a singer's list of things to worry about. Or at least that is not until the problems start turning up. The condition of a singer's throat is very serious business.

Many singers advance to a certain point in their career where they begin to experience success; they’re singing great and they start making great records. Immediately other demands start to intrude and their lives change drastically.

They begin a heavy tour schedule. They have a public to cultivate. They already sing well enough to get picked up by a record label so they think, “Okay, the voice is fine, I’ll worry about these other things now instead." Understandable, but still, a bad decision. Life on the road combined with all the other demands of a successful career are hard to handle. Too many singers lose the healthy voice that brought them success in the first place.

This is exactly what happened to Kim Wilson, lead singer of the Fabulous Thunderbirds. You may be familiar with their hit song from the eighties, Tuff’ Enuff’.

Kim is a very energetic blues/rock singer. Singing from his throat for years had damaged his voice and he opted to have surgery to remove the throat nodes that had formed. The surgery cleared up his problem -- for a while.

But he hadn't really changed anything about the way he sang so he developed the same condition again a couple of years later. Only now, the scar tissue from the surgery compounded the problem. Kim was at the height of his career and not eager to have another surgery, only to possibly be faced with the same situation again two more years down the road. He began to wonder if he should start thinking about a new profession.

Austin singer Toni Price told him about my work. We decided he should come to Nashville for a few weeks where we embarked on an intensive rehabilitation program that included:

Passive Breathing

Passive Breathing is as relaxed and easy as falling down a drain. Quite literally. Simply open up your throat and let the air fall in, like water going down an open drain. Never fill beyond your resting capacity, It forces you to tighten your throat to control the flow of air.

Lower Body Support

Think Elvis. Tuck your hips forward and put the power of your lower body under the sound, like lifting a heavy chair. Relax your knees and support the sound with strong legs. Imagine you are sitting on your tailbone.

Freely-Vibrating Resonance

Direct the resonance to almost any part of your body other than your throat. Do not tighten your jaw and lift your chin. Again, think Elvis and keep your head rounded over the microphone. Try feeling the sound resonate in your collar bones. Imagine that they are hollow resonators.

Heed Your Body

If you think something is wrong, it probably is. A raspy voice, a throat that's irritated after singing, and the constant need to clear your throat, are all signs of trouble.

Heal Your Body

Try putting yourself on complete vocal rest. No talking, no singing, no whispering. Then start back gradually, using the physical concepts above to get your voice back on track. For throat nodes that persist -- call a good Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor.

Kim worked hard to learn to sing with more of his body. He decided against the surgery and went back on tour and never did have to have another operation on his throat. If you follow the suggestions above you should manage to avoid falling victim to throat nodes. 

Click here to see part 1 Vocal Nodules: What Are They Really?

Nashville vocal coach Renee Grant-Williams reveals the trade secrets that have already helped hundreds of aspiring singers become celebrities: Tim McGraw, Martina McBride, Dixie Chicks, Miley Cyrus, Huey Lewis, Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill, Jason Aldean, Christina Aguilera...

Like me on Facebook at or follow me on Twitter @MyVoiceCoach. My blog can be found at MyVoiceCoachBlog.com.

Go to CyberVoiceStudio.com and sign up to receive my free weekly Video Voice Lessons.

For more information go to MyVoiceCoach.com or call 615.244.3280 to schedule a private voice session in person, by telephone or by Skype.

Wedding Songwriting Contest Winner

We are thrilled to announce the winner: GWEN POWELL. We received many songs covering a wide variety of what constitutes a wedding song. Unfortunately some of the entries did not follow the “key word” guidelines and were not eligible. Official Rules
The entry that won has all the qualities of a classic wedding song.
But more importantly, it touched our hearts.

You Are My Love
by Gwen Powell
Click here to listen to Gwen’s winning song

Vocal Nodules: What Are They Really?

Vocal nodules are the dismal end result of magnificently thoughtless self-affliction. If some singers treated their pets with as much casual neglect as they do their vocal cords they'd be behind bars.

Even a healthy voice will rebel if you strain it by over-singing. Tired vocal cords become irritated and swollen. As you continue the abuse they lose their elasticity and may refuse to press together to produce a clean sound.

If you find yourself hoarse at the end of a long show, (or worse) you feel you constantly need to clear your throat, or (this is the worst!) you are on the waiting list for an opening in surgery to remove vocal nodules, it’s possible you are a Victim of Vocal Abuse.

Straining your voice can lead to a condition called vocal nodules, or “throat nodes” -- a serious problem, and one that plagues many fine singers like Keith Urban and Adele for example. Throat nodes form like calluses. They’re a protective layer of compacted, dead skin cells, caused by repeated friction and pressure -- something like the calluses you would get on your hands if you worked too long with a shovel in the garden.

When you use a shovel, after a while your hands build up a layer of calluses to protect themselves from the friction. As long as you keep shoveling, the calluses will keep building and they don’t begin to fade until you stop. Vocal cords develop calluses in much the same way.

When strain or friction irritate your throat, the first thing your body does is send down a bit of mucous to lubricate it. That's why people feel they have to clear their throats when they yell. It's like the body says, "Okay, I hurt, so let's try a protective salve here." After a while, if you keep straining your voice and clearing your throat, the body seems to say, “Okay, I guess that’s not working. Let’s build a callus to protect this area."

The problem now is this; the callus gets in the way and prevents your vocal cords from fitting together cleanly. Your voice begins to sound hoarse and unpredictable. You’re probably headed for throat nodes.

Clearing your throat can actually contribute to vocal nodules because it puts a double burden on your vocal cords. First, it wipes away your throat’s initial defense mechanism, the lubricating fluid your body responds with. And then, the pressure you apply to your cords to clear them, irritates and causes them to swell. If you feel you must clear, please be gentle.

As with calluses, throat nodes will shrink and go away, but complete vocal rest over an extended period of time is required. Some people choose instead to have them surgically removed. However, if you don’t correct the source of the problem -- the abuse that put them there in the first place -- they’ll simply re-form. Then you have to deal with the issue of scar tissue from the surgery as well.

 
Click here to read part 2 Throat Nodes: How to Avoid Them 

Nashville vocal coach Renee Grant-Williams reveals the trade secrets that have already helped hundreds of aspiring singers become celebrities: Tim McGraw, Martina McBride, Dixie Chicks, Miley Cyrus, Huey Lewis, Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill, Jason Aldean, Christina Aguilera...

Like me on Facebook at or follow me on Twitter @MyVoiceCoach. My blog can be found at MyVoiceCoachBlog.com.

Go to CyberVoiceStudio.com and sign up to receive my free weekly Video Voice Lessons.

For more information go to MyVoiceCoach.com or call 615.244.3280 to schedule a private voice session in person, by telephone or by Skype.

Learn to Sing with Free Vocal Lessons

Want to learn to sing, but can't find the extra cash to take vocal lessons? There's a wonderful learning resource out there that you should explore. It's organized by trained professionals, can be found wherever people can be found, and it's almost always free!

Sound good already? Think about joining a chorus as a way to sharpen your musical and vocal skills.

Most choral directors teach at least some vocal technique and usually take time to do warm-up exercises. Choral singing is a terrific opportunity to improve your rhythmic skills, your vocal range, your listening skills, your confidence, and your all-round musicality -- it's a free vocal lesson. You're bound to learn something new and useful.

In addition, those who have experienced it know that there is nothing quite so magical as singing in a group. Letting go of personal identity in order to aspire to something more grand, we become a small cog in a very large wheel of harmony. When you join a chorus you become part of a fine-tuned, but very large instrument -- one with perfection on its mind.

Like me, many of you, grew up singing in these groups: children’s chorus in Sunday school, Glee Club in high school, college chorale, community chorus, adult worship choir. That's where we encountered music as a discipline as well an art form. A return in that direction might give you not only the opportunity to hone your vocal craft, but the opportunity to meet the challenge of performing solos. You can see how joining a chorus is a great way to learn to sing; it's like taking free vocal lessons.

In addition to the improvements you will make to your singing voice, your general musicianship will advance. You will be exposed to the symbolic language of music and be forced to sharpen your ears -- skills you can carry over to whatever kind of music you might want to sing.

In this video Dee Dee Vogt tells me what she learned as a member of the Music City
Community Chorus. Founder/director/conductor Renee Grant-Williams

A tip for soprano chorus members: you have the easiest job because sopranos generally sing the melody. If you want to get a free harmony lesson as well as a free vocal lesson try spending some time singing with the alto section.

And there's more . . . We're going to assume that because you want to sing you are solo material. Once you have established yourself in the chorus the next step is to try out for the solos. This will give you even more personalized training. It also provides a wonderful opportunity to experience singing in front of an audience -- something that is hard to come by for a new singer.

A chorus is a also a great place to meet other like-minded people and begin to develop relationships. It gives you an opportunity to start building a fan base as well. Singers get to spend a lifetime doing self-promotion. You might as well get started now.

There's a lot to be learned from choral singing. A word of caution, however, if you have a vocal technique that is working for you, filter the choral director's new ideas through your good sense and take away only that which adds to what you are already doing. Just bear in mind that in choral singing the voice is meant to blend and solo singing the voice is meant to stand out.

Renee Grant-Williams directs the Nashville Music City Community Chorus in a concert titled "Bach 2 Bach" featuring works from Johann Sebastian Bach and his son Carl Philippe Emanuel Bach.  In this video, the Chorus performs "Magnificat" by Carl Philippe Emanuel Bach.  

Nashville vocal coach Renee Grant-Williams reveals the trade secrets that have already helped hundreds of aspiring singers become celebrities: Tim McGraw, Martina McBride, Dixie Chicks, Miley Cyrus, Huey Lewis, Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill, Jason Aldean, Christina Aguilera...

Like me on Facebook at or follow me on Twitter @MyVoiceCoach. My blog can be found at MyVoiceCoachBlog.com.

Go to CyberVoiceStudio.com and sign up to receive my free weekly Video Voice Lessons.

For more information go to MyVoiceCoach.com or call 615.244.3280 to schedule a private voice session in person, by telephone or by Skype.