Singing in the Mask: Some Recommended Old School Exercises from Italian Teachers

If you have wondered what singing in the mask was all about, then this article will show you some recommended old school Italian singing exercises to help you experience the "mask." The more you do these vocal exercises, the more you’ll discover your true voice and the power that only singing in the mask can give you. So how then are you meant to feel when doing these vocal exercises? Let’s take a closer look.

Try singing in a comfortable tone with the "m", "n", "v" sound. But the key is to feel the vibration in the nasal bridge, on your lips, your upper teeth and most importantly, your throat should feel free and open. If, however, the tongue is tense or raised, then these feelings cannot be experienced. The best way to get accustomed to doing this correctly is to do this exercise with an open mouth, with an "n-sound" and then with a closed "m-sound."

These exercises will help to get rid of the guttural sound, and the best way to achieve this is with the "n-sound" and the "m-sound." You’re going to be amazed to discover just how powerful this little old school singing exercise is for you. If you stick this into your vocal training regime, and you do it regularly, you will quickly notice a significant improvement in sensations experienced when singing in the mask.

And when you combine the "m-sound" with vowels in your exercises, they’ll help to project the sound forward. Make sure you’re pronouncing syllables ma, mi, mo, mu, whilst concentrating on the sound "m" in the mask. You should feel a slight tickle in the upper lip, and in the root zone of the upper teeth. When you open out to the vowel sound, make sure you do this without changing the sensations and sound-direction, and that that remains consistent. And one more thing: There mustn’t be any strain or stress caused to your throat. If you’re the kind of person that wants to experience the full potential of singing in the mask, then your vowel sound must sound easy.

My affordable, all new and exciting private lessons Speech Level Singing Program will help you get started with discovering the incredible power of singing in the mask. Why not take advantage of my current End-Of-Year Sale (closes December 31st),

You are the instrument, learn to sing like a pro!

JOETT

Vocal Coach & Author
"Letters from a Vocal Coach"
Private Singing Lessons
BUY Online Singing Lessons Course

Top 3 Vocal Training Insider Tips to Quadruple Results

If you have ever had the desire to quadruple your vocal training results, then I’m sure you will want to know what insider secrets there are that will quickly shorten the learning curve for you. The more you get to understand your own vocal ability in training and what you can and can’t do, the more you’ll want to discover the secret to getting the best results possible in training. So let’s take a closer look at the 3 most common shortcomings in vocal training, in order to find a quick and simple solution to your problem.

The three most basic must-do-vocal-exercises ideal for developing a connected tone are the lip roll (which I like to call the lip bubble); the tongue trill and the hum.  However, you’re going to be surprised to find how many people are unable to do these exercises. And I’m going to be very honest with you. Being unable to perform any of the above exercises puts you in a position where you don’t get to develop the desired connectivity. I’ll give you one quick example. When the above exercises aren’t working for you, like you cannot maintain the bubble or the trill, and your tone is rather withheld with the hum, then chances are you’ll find it very difficult to maintain a connected tone when doing your scales with vowels or when singing a song. Some people say that a connected tone will develop over time, but in all honesty, until you’re able to evenly connect your tone in training, the prospect of that happening would be farfetched at best. So let’s take a look at the three alternative workouts to the above, that almost anybody can do.

Depending on what scales you’re doing, you can quite easily replace the lip rolls with WEE (as in half the word WIN); the tongue trills with the consonant “N” (as your tongue is in the same position as when you run your trills with R). And to replace the withheld tone on your hum, switch that to a ZZZ. There is absolutely no way anybody can withhold their tone with ZZZ. After trying any of the above alternatives, I’m sure you’ll notice a world of difference in your tone production. If you’re the kind of person that wants to learn to sing with a well connected tone, then this will be exactly what you’ll want to do. My affordable, all new and exciting private lessons Quick Start Program helps you get started with reprogramming your neuromuscular system to eliminate all of the obstacles that come in the way of your singing. To take advantage of my current End-Of-Year Sale (closes December 31st).

You are the instrument, learn to sing like a pro!

JOETT

Vocal Coach & Author
"Letters from a Vocal Coach"
Private Singing Lessons
BUY Online Singing Lessons Course

How to Get Your Voice to Work for You: The Training Process

Training your voice, as you may have guessed, means learning to coordinate and strengthen the muscles in your larynx so you can sing with speech-level posture over a wide pitch and dynamic range. Coordination and strength are most easily developed by doing special exercises. You don't control your voice directly by working on or thinking about breath support, vocal cord adjustments, or resonance. These things are all by-products of speech-level singing. They happen automatically when you condition your larynx not to move, by relaxing your outer muscles and by allowing your vocal cords to thin and then shorten for higher notes to insure that your outer muscles stay relaxed.

As you do the exercises in the training program, you will memorize the physical sensations you experience in your voice as you do each exercise correctly. Everything else will take care of itself.

Developing coordination—the first step: Coordination of your voice at your speech level must be developed before you can begin to build strength in your voice. As you do the exercises, don't feel you have to sing them loudly. That's not important. If you try to sing too loudly (using too much air) too soon, your outer muscles will never give up their pulling and tightening reflexes. Have patience.

You must first eliminate any outer muscle activity that interferes with your tone. This will free your tone and, consequently, free your ability to produce words easily and clearly.

Your body's neuromuscular system, however, has been programmed by years of poor singing habits to activate every muscle it can to help you control your voice. It will attempt to resist any changes in muscular coordination you try to make. For a while you may feel tension in the muscles under your jaw, in your neck, in the back of your mouth, and in your soft palate. These tensions are caused when the "wrong" muscles (your outer muscles) are reluctant to give up control to the "right" muscles (the muscles of your larynx) in producing tone.

Never work around these tensions by doing things like changing the position of your tongue and jaw, raising your soft palate, making more space in your throat, or changing the pronunciation of your words. You will only create other tensions. Just do the exercises correctly, according to clear and concise instruction. Once you have successfully reprogrammed your neuromuscular system to accept your voice's functioning at your speech level, these tensions will disappear. You will then be able to sing with release, a condition in which your voice works without your having to think about it, or do anything to it. My affordable, all new and exciting private lessons Quick Start Program helps you get started with reprogramming your neuromuscular system to eliminate all of the obstacles that come in the way of your singing. To take advantage of my current End-Of-Year Sale (closes December 31st),

You are the instrument, learn to sing like a pro!

JOETT

Vocal Coach & Author
"Letters from a Vocal Coach"
Private Singing Lessons
BUY Online Singing Lessons Course

The Secret to Feeling and Sounding Natural When You Sing (Part 3)

In my last article I talked a little bit about your singing approach to the high notes. Today, I want to discuss the inner workings of your voice—or shall we say the more technical side of singing. When your vocal cords are stretched, they begin to thin. And the thinner your cords get, the less cord "weight" there is for your exhaled air to move. When the thinning takes place at your speech level, however, your cords are able to thin without disrupting your tone or words.

When your vocal cords shorten, something very interesting takes place when your vocal cords reach the point where they can't thin (be stretched) any farther—the vibrating length of your cords begins to "shorten." Let me explain why and how it happens.

Your vocal cords never open all at once and then close all at once when they vibrate. Even in your lowest tones, your vocal cords open from front to back and close from back to front. That's because they are more flexible the closer they get to where they attach to the inside front of your larynx (where your Adam's apple is), and air breaks through that point first.

If you continue to use less and less air past the point where your cords have thinned as far as possible, the back ends of your cords stay together, with less and less of the front part opening and closing. This also means, however, that they open and close much faster, increasing the frequency of vibration which continues to raise the pitch of your tone.

If, like the initial thinning, this shortening can take place at your speech level, you can continue to sing easily through the rest of your passage areas with your tone and word production intact. You will be able to extend your range far beyond what most singers can only dream about.

As your vocal cords begin to thin and shorten automatically when you sing, you become less aware of your passage areas. Eventually you come to think of your chest, middle, and head voices as a single voice—connected in the way it's produced and connected in quality!
Speech-level singing is a "natural" technique in which your voice is produced without effort. When you don't allow the muscles outside your larynx—your outer muscles—to interfere with your tone-making process, your vocal cords are able to more easily balance with your breath flow. Also, when you free your tone-making process, you free your word-making process as well, letting you produce all your words easily and clearly. A relaxed and stable larynx results in a stable resonance system in which your voice always contains an appropriate balance of top, middle, and bottom harmonic qualities, no matter where in your range you sing.

You are the instrument, learn to sing like a pro!

JOETT

Vocal Coach & Author
"Letters from a Vocal Coach"
Private Singing Lessons
BUY Online Singing Lessons Course

Vocal Coaching End Of Year SALE Starts November 5th 2015

The reason I’m writing this post is because 2015 has been an amazing year for me. Kicking off with me on the judge panel of pan African singing contest Airtel Trace Music Stars and Tanzania winning the competition with Mayunga; to new training module introductions to my vocal coaching programs throughout the year, I feel truly blessed. And so to celebrate, I’ve not only added a couple more programs in addition to my standard 10-hour programs, I am also offering an end-of-year SALE to boot VALID from November 5th till December 31st 2015. And here’s how it works: | OFA YA KUJIFUNZA KUIMBA. Jifunze Kuimba na Joett inawaletea OFA ya punguzo la ada kwa kufunga mwaka kuanzia tarehe 5 Novemba hadi tarehe 31 Dec 2015. Fuata maelekezo yafuatayo:

SPEECH LEVEL SINGING 10-Hour program on my SPECIAL end-of-year sale is selling for $150 (Shs 310,000) [normally $200]. Sale ends December 31st 2015. | Programu ya masaa 10 kwa $150 (Shs 310,000) {Kwa kawaida $200).

I recently introduced the Quick Start 3-Hour program, which gives you all the basics in just three hours, and now goes on sale for $45 (Shs 90,000) [normally $60]. Sale ends December 31st 2015. | Programu ya masaa 3 kwa $45 (Shs 90,000) {Kwa kawaida $60).

And the EXTRA SPECIAL highlight for this month is the ALL NEW 1-Hour program for Shs 30,000. What this entails is a once off one-hour private vocal training session in my studio, with free vocal training CD and instructions on how to learn from home. I also offer FREE support on WhatsApp to help you make the most of your training. | Kwa mafunzo studio kwa lisaa limoja tu Shs 30,000 pamoja na CD yakujifunzia nyumbani BURE na msaada zaidi (bure) kupitia WhatsApp.

HOW TO BOOK

See above fliers for program details and get in touch with me with your preferred option to make an appointment. | Kupangiwa ratiba, anaglia maelekezo kwenye vipeperushi hapo juu, alafu wasiliana na mimi.

You are the instrument, learn to sing like a pro!

JOETT

Vocal Coach & Author
"Letters from a Vocal Coach"
Private Singing Lessons
BUY Online Singing Lessons Course

The Secret to Feeling and Sounding Natural When You Sing (Part 2)

In my previous article I touched upon the low notes, and in this article I want to focus a bit more on singing high notes. It doesn't take a genius to know that a singer's biggest problem, at least from a vocal standpoint, is singing high notes. Therefore, we will be most concerned about extending your range upward. As you free your upper range, your lower range will also increase because, when your outer muscles are relaxed in the vibration process, they allow your larynx, thus your vocal cords, to relax as well. 

Now let’s take a closer look at the passage areas of your range. As you sing higher into your range, you quickly encounter areas where muscular and/or resonance activity, make it difficult to negotiate smooth transitions between vocal cord adjustments. Most singers know these areas all too well. They are places where the voice jams up, suddenly shifts in quality, or even breaks—things that can discourage someone from ever exploring the full potential of his/her voice.

We, however, refer to these areas as passage areas. That's because, when you approach them the right way, they become passage ways between where you are coming from and where you want to go in your vocal range. 

And now let’s explore the art of singing through the passage areas. Your first passage area is the most critical. It's where your outer muscles (if they haven't done so already) are most likely to enter into the adjustment process. When they do, they pull on and tighten around the outside of your larynx in an effort to stretch your vocal cords to get the necessary tension for the pitch or dynamic level you require. But, as we have said, stretching your cords in this manner causes your entire singing mechanism—tone and words—to jam up! Fortunately, there is a better and much easier way to stretch your vocal cords to achieve the necessary tensions without disrupting your tone-making process or your word-making process.

The key is to do less in order to do more. To be specific, the higher you sing the less air you should spend. However, this does not mean you should stop breathing. Just control what you spend. When you reduce the amount of air you send to your vocal cords, you make it possible for the muscles inside your larynx to stretch your vocal cords by themselves. Your outer muscles are less likely to interfere because there isn't as much air to hold back. Your outer muscles will interfere in the vibration process whenever you use more air than your vocal cords and the other muscles inside your larynx are able to handle. 

You are the instrument, learn to sing like a pro!

JOETT

Vocal Coach & Author

"Letters from a Vocal Coach"

Private Singing Lessons

BUY Online Singing Lessons Course

The Secret to Feeling and Sounding Natural When You Sing (Part 1)

When you talk, you only use a limited pitch and dynamic range of tones, so it doesn't require a great deal of cord tension to create those tones. In order to meet your needs for the higher pitch and greater dynamic levels often required in singing, however, your vocal cords must be able to achieve greater degrees of tension. Increased cord tension is what brings your cords back together more quickly each time they are blown apart, when you need to sing a higher tone. Increased cord tension is what enables your cords to hold back that extra bit of air pressure before they finally blow open, when you need to sing a louder tone.

If your vocal cords and the other muscles in your larynx are unable to provide the required tension themselves, you can be sure that your outer muscles will volunteer their help. But, that's the kind of help you don't want! Any outer muscle participation in the vibration process will only cause you vocal problems by pulling you off your speech level.

Speech-level singing—feeling and sounding natural:  You should be able to sing through your entire range—from the lowest notes of your chest voice, up through the highest notes of your head voice—in a smooth, even, or what we call connected manner, and still maintain a relaxed speech-level posture.

Singing low notes: The lower part of your range is never a problem as long as you are careful not to press down with your larynx in an effort to scrape the bottom of your range to get your lowest notes, or do anything in your throat or mouth that alters your speech-level posture. An example of the latter would be "creating more space" in your throat or mouth, to achieve a "deep, rich, resonant" quality. (Some descending exercises on a hum will illustrate that none of the above is necessary).

To begin with, the lowest note in your range should be the lowest note you can sing easily while still maintaining your speech-level posture. As far as the resonance quality of your voice, it should be whatever results naturally from that same speech-level posture. You should never try to make your voice resonant. You should never try to make it do anything. In my next article, I will talk a little bit about singing high notes.

You are the instrument, learn to sing like a pro!

JOETT

Vocal Coach & Author
"Letters from a Vocal Coach"
Private Singing Lessons
BUY Online Singing Lessons Course