Tips For The Beginner Student (Basic Vocal Warm-Ups And Technique)

Hanna, our principal, and Bojana, our senior coach, discuss the journey of a beginner student - what defines a beginner student and how they identify one, and how to build up one's voice from there.

Everyone can sing, but what defines a beginner is about the technical understanding one has about their vocals, and their ability to create a stable, whole tone when they sing. The most common issue in beginners is their inability to sustain a note comfortably, causing it to waver and wane. Also, it is about the consistency of the tone as one goes through their range - some singers can sing high notes, but are unable to maintain their tone when they hit the lower notes.

In conclusion, it all boils down to the breathing of the person. Diaphragmatic, or also known as belly breathing, is the most fundamental aspect of developing one's voice. And in this episode, Hanna and Bojana spend some time describing and sharing some essential warm-up and breathing techniques that would help beginner students.

Hanna spends some time explaining and describing how the diaphragmatic breathing works and how one can tell they are achieving it. Furthermore, the two talk about how breathing is a part of one's everyday consciousness of one's breathing outside of singing. It is all about consistently developing one's strength and awareness of how we breathe.

Bojana also goes on to share some of the advanced warm-up techniques. These techniques, when tried at home, are useful to assess whether one has already reached a more advanced level of singing in terms of breathing techniques.

Transcription

Hanna 0:00

Welcome,

Welcome. Hello. Annyeonghaseyo.

Bojana 0:05

Hi. Hola.

Bonjour. Guet?- That's, that's

All right now, let's not show off.

Hanna 0:14

Alright, good. Very good.

Yes. Oh, welcome to the vocal studios podcast. Episode two. We're the vocal coaches at the vocal studio Singapore. I'm Hanna. This is Bojana. Hi, how are you?

Bojana 0:34

Hi, I'm good. I'm good. Yeah, we had a great day. And all is good. How are you?

Hanna 0:39

Yeah, I had a very very busy day trying to figure a lot of things in the middle of classes.

Bojana 0:45

Oh, well, that's what we do in here. So it's all good.

Hanna 0:50

All right. So all right. Yeah. Why are we here today?

Bojana 0:53

So today, we're going to discuss a little subject that we both agreed on recently. Actually, it was your idea I think. Pretty much. About beginner students here at our school and the experience that we had with beginner students in general, as well as here in the vocal studio. So yes, this is what we are discussing today. So we're going to be talking about beginner students. And

-okay, who are beginner students?

Hanna 1:25

Yeah, actually, nowadays, we are getting quite a bit of inquiries for the beginner level students, right. I mean, because at our school we take in students from age five, right; all the way down to Five Little Princess to the ladies who are in their 50s-40s. And also like young adults who want to sing better, but who want to figure out about their own voices. They give a lot of questions, but this beginner- basically, the beginner students, how we

identify them as beginner, there are several factors -

elements that we consider when we give our assessment lesson. Yeah, the first thing will be definitely their pitch accuracy, right, whether they'll be able to sing into

Bojana 2:13

Yes, absolutely.

Hanna 2:13

That is definitely one there. What will be other things.

Bojana 2:18

Usually, it's the pitch. And as you say, the second thing is the characteristic that beginners students have. And that is the inability per se, quote, right? to (not) seeing, not not knowing what to do with their voice, you know, because we all have a singing voice, even if we are completely, you know, inaccurate, we can all sing. But then the ability to place that voice that they have and make it sing, that also describes beginners. And there's lots of other things in technical terms, you know, and then we go as we go with assessment, we can see less technical stuff they know, more considered they are to be beginners.

Hanna 2:56

But I mean, whenever whenever it's their first class-

I think majority of the students have this concern about their own voice. I don't know how to sing, my voice is not good enough. And one very big problem that they always bring to us is, whenever I try to sing my voice is very shaky, and it always breaks. So they want to fix that problem.

Bojana 3:23

Yeah.

Hanna 3:25

So all we have to do when we work with this beginner level students is first allowing them to really explore their own voice. And then after that, train it in a way so that it cannot, it will not be shaky, or a trembley or the voice will not break when it goes to certain pitch right, or point. Yeah. So I think having that trembley or a shaky voice, or having that voice breaking is one of the very common problems that the beginner students have. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, let's talk about like solid examples. You know, like, do you have any, like experience of the students, the beginner level students who had the kind of issue? During the class?

Bojana 4:12

Yeah, and, yes, beginner, beginner level students have this definitely this issue, but not only beginners. Oh, yeah. Yeah, advanced singers, or professional, maybe not professional singers. But people with a lot of singing experience, they also have that sometimes that issue when their voice shakes. They can still sing a lot of things, you know, they can have the range, but then the voice will be like *emulates trembley voice*. Right? Shaky. Yeah. So definitely the number one thing for the shakiness of the voice is the non-support of the diaphragm. Meaning that, you know, we have to be able to, quote "sing from the belly" so that the tone can become stable. So we have to be able to get that tone all the way from our diaphragm and make it go out instead of like completely forgetting about this part and being like, *Ohhhh* alright. So-

Hanna 5:02

That was a very good example. So so technically, what we call it is a deep breathing, sometimes we call it as belly breathing, you probably have heard of diaphragm breathing, which is using that the support of your abdomen muscles to sustain or release the air to maintain that constant pressure, amount of pressure in a very constant consistent way so that it can support your sound. But anyways, if you are not trained in it, the voice becomes.."Ahh", "Aaah". Right? That's one thing

Bojana 5:44

One thing Yeah.

Hanna 5:46

But actually, like,

The solution for this is very simple, but you have to work every day.

Yeah, basically, building the muscle like takes time and effort,

Bojana 5:58

Time and effort. And it's, you know, we breathe every day, right? So that has to be happening in, you know, it has to be our primary practice. You know, you can ask all singers and professional ones, how much they respect breathing though. Although lately, we hear a lot of opposition to do the breathing part is that, you know, we have something called the Speech Level Singing, but we're not gonna introduce that into into today's topic. But yeah, it's about breathing and knowing how to use this part here, which is under, under not underestimated how do you say but it's not, it's not in use, we don't use it very often.

Hanna 6:40

And

Diaphragm breathing, if you are using it properly, it causes changes in your belly area. So right if you bring, because you have- we have our lungs that stretches out from our like heart, you know, the rib, like all the way to the here. Usually, if it's chest breathing, which we call maybe shallow breathing, some other times, if it's a normal chest breathing. If you look at yourself in the mirror, when you breathe, take a very deep breath. Where do you feel the tension? Actually, you can feel your shoulder and your chest lifting up. At the same time, you also feel a little bit of tension on your neck, because that's also the muscle that's connected to here.

Yeah, right. And then after that you try to sing when they're

all it's pretty

hard to sell, it cannot really come out.

And another thing because there is no breath, there is no breath on your belly, your abdomen, do you know like how the core exercises- core is very important in giving a lot of support, you're not using it at all, you're only using this, the bones, but what can you do when it's only the bones and it's all tensed up like that. So what we want to do in singing, because we want to relax all this part. And also we want to fully maximise the ability of our core muscles to be able to sustain or control the amount, the pressure and the amount of air that you are using, when you're singing. We want to breathe in and then send the air all the way down to the bottom of our lungs, but bottom of our lung- to do that right underneath your lung, there is the- we call- it's a muscle sheath. That's called diaphragm. So we want to bring it down all the way so that my belly area is expanded, when you sing. But then-

Bojana 8:32

But then we gain the power there

Hanna 8:33

Yes, this is a power. And as you release

in singing, you don't want to give it out all at once, you want to really save it and give only little by little in order for you to have that, you have to have the muscle control. So this is a diaphragm breathing.

With a lot of exercise, you can freely just move it around. Right? And with a combination of the air.

(Aahh) You can also control the strength and intensity of the volume using this right because it's a combination of this vocal folds vibration, and the pressure that you're pulling your air to. Okay, so yeah, with right diaphragm breathing, you can either- you can achieve both soft singing and also belting, or like a loud singing, right? Yeah, so it's all coming from that, that support. So breathing is one of the major reasons why people have that shakiness in their voice. I mean, there can be also like some other considerations that you have to like, think of, if it's ladies, if you are in your 40s or 50s, it could be that because you're already ageing right? The ageing hormone also like affects the way you are vocal folds and larynx area changes, the shape also changes, it thickens. And also like how the dryness of it also changes so that your voice range generally will become lower. And because you are not like used to training it as often, whenever you try to sing it, somehow, the vibration, create the imbalance, which naturally turns it into a very, very shaky voice. So you know how the grandmas when they try to sing, old ladies, when they sing it's a lot more - "Oh", kind of shakiness. But it's also another issue. But for those ladies also, like having that consistent exercise is kind of like bringing your ageing muscle back into its shape. So through enough breathing exercise, and also like the proper way of like reprojecting your voice, you can totally achieve it to get back to a certain level, we cannot actually gaurantee if its due to the ageing that you will, you know, suddenly, like in one month or two month sound like Beyonce in their 20s right - no. It's realistically not possible. Yeah. But yes, there are the ways of making you strengthen your voice.

Yeah, and but they also want one very important thing to note, because we are having now having many teenagers, students, yeah,

Bojana 11:25

Yes, we can give a few examples of that. Yeah, that, you know, there's this this middle point, which is the the middle octave, right, from C to C. So one very interesting thing about the middle octave is that it can be a problem for professionals for beginners or intermediate students, it can be very problematic for everyone. Why that is because many vocal coaches encourage the singing, starting, you know, bit lower in the lower octave, or you know, when you when you warm up the students, they will just warm them up in like three octaves, which I think is not necessary. Yeah, that's awesome but you do that when your middle range is solid, but so the middle, the middle range can be very, very tricky. I've got a student who has a, you know, quite a huge range. And, but it's unbelievable, like, she can sing a lot, almost four octave range. But when it comes to the middle octave, like the voice is completely gone. Yeah.

Hanna 11:28

Oh, yeah. Because of the-

between like, whenever you're

Bojana 12:34

Because of the training, yeah, because what she's been doing is singing in choirs for a long time. Choirs where she's been required to do only the low part. So just repeating low notes, low notes, low notes all the time and at a time - Suddenly, she became a soprano, which is a bit weird, right? Alto to soprano, but can happen as well with the hormonal changes, whatever. And then when you say like, say few years you sing alto and suddenly you switch to soprano. So you've got a training of your lower range and of your higher range and non training in your middle range. Hmm. And so there's like a gap? Yeah, it's these there, which, which, you know, we're trying to work on now. So,

Hanna 13:10

yeah, it's actually pretty common, because, yeah, very low range and high range. Once you- it's like, when you know if it's completely low, so you can sing comfortably, or it's completely high; so you just have to, you're forced to switch the way you are using your vocal cords. Yeah. Then once you're stuck in that shape, then maybe like projecting the sound in that shape becomes easier compared to when you're singing in the middle range. Where there - what do you call it? fragile, actually, the sound can be quite fragile. Because this is - there are many ways of calling those range like some people so call it call it like the passegio. Yeah, the break point. Because I mean, and then, because they want to avoid that range. They just completely go into this two extreme. Yeah, right

Bojana 14:05

Because its the hardest one to get. Either the mixed voice happens and if you have a great mixed voice, then you don't care. You can sing anything? So i mean, these things are also.

Hanna 14:16

So I mean, but then they. They like the students when they come here. It's because you want to fix that problem. I mean, the key is, we always start with our first comfortable range, as Bojana mentioned. Solidifying what you already have your natural voice range is very important. And on top of it, we don't force the students to go over their limit to the point where they're hurting their body. But everyday ir needs a little more bit more exercise of extending it. Yeah, so like three octave everyday, maybe not, it will be as not effective as if you push just that limit that range little, little by little. A little bit more right.

Bojana 15:00

It's not necessary to just go (singing).. Yeah, I mean, you can it's not, it's not like it's wrong, but you have to know the right way of doing it. Not for you to Oh, I'm gonna just sing this three and a half of this today, and I'm going to work on it in every tone, and then it becomes you probably putting a lot of pressure and mostly if you're not very experienced, you might be ending singing on your throat, etc. So yeah, step by step.

Hanna 15:25

Yeah. Yeah. So in the, I guess, you know, like singing excessively? For 15 minutes using wrong way. Yeah, can be hurting more. And then you I mean, you might want to just like spend 15 minute in finding in a 15 minute into finding the right tone, right way of singing, to sing one single pitch, or expanding two or three keys in your voice range vocal range, then just go like, up and down, up and down, up and down. It's not going to change anything about your your

Bojana 16:04

tone and the technique.

Hanna 16:05

and the technique. So yeah, I guess being the beginner level student. It is very exciting. Because it's, you know, is there a new journey, you know, like how I love the energy of the beginner level students because they have the courage, they already took the courage to come down to the class, and then they have the full motivation, right to take their voice to the next level. So, but many times they are quite hasty. Right. And they're quite anxious. They want to improve too fast. So in the class, what happens is they want they actually demand a lot. Oh, yeah. They want Yeah, like 10 things in a day. But yeah, that's tackling one issue that everything you have to take it like, one at a time. Right. So if it's, if it's about if it's about your shakiness - controlling your breath, right? Really exercising and setting your body even though it takes the time is the - cannot emphasise it more.

Bojana 17:21

Okay, let me help.

Hanna 17:21

So, okay. The tips for the beginner level students to warm up the diaphragm breathing, to like to exercise the diaphragm breathing. Yeah, it's actually we can do this quite simple.

Bojana 17:36

Its called hissing. Which many people know. So you (pss pss pss pss) sound like a tire right? Like we're contracting sort of, thats exactly the sort of sound you're trying to achieve.

Ps ps ps ps

So you're expanding the diaphragm, right? So you're exercising, that's one thing, what else we can do is that the dog the panting breathing, like a dog right? (panting) To start with, that will be one thing. Just so that we can actually start engaging those muscles and making sure that they're moving and something is happening there. More movement we have in there, more power, the voice will have. Also what we can do, I mean, but that's more of an advanced level per se, we can do for instance, you know, (demonstrates staccato) staccato singing, but and that actually moves the whole diagram if it's properly you know, if it's properly done as you sit like that your spine is straight. You feel a movement just there in the very first like, the beginning of your spine is like this push. Have you ever felt like it's like, you know, and that your whole core is moving? Yeah. Yeah, this is why opera singers have record the best you know, breathing technique, whatever it's all about. It's always all been about breathing and how to breathe properly. So you know, anything that moves your diaphragm, meaning your belly, it's good you to start with as a beginner, and then that's we're going to wrap it up.

Hanna 19:06

Okay, so today we covered a little bit more about a little bit about the troubles or the challenges that the beginner students have, and some tips and how to then attain a solid voice through the diaphragm breathing and how to Yeah, make it not so shaky and trembley. It all comes back to the basic training of your diaphragm. You can experience all that like more like the exercise can vary. We just shared a little bit today. But really like the right exercises, maybe we'll in the class, we customise it for each student after gauging their own level, or their own body and their posture, their use use of their body and then the voice. Yeah. So okay.

Bojana 19:48

Thank you very much for today. That was really fun. I hope you guys enjoyed as well. I hope you find it useful and hope you had fun and we'll see you next time. See you next time. Bye bye.