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This morning, I woke to find I'd lost my voice for the first time in a decade. Yet, this was, serendipitously, something of a gift. I was preparing for a retreat that Becky Gilhespie and I are running called, ‘The Singer and the Self,' and having to ask some big questions. Now, with the very subject of discussion 'gone,' I was forced to face them head on. Asking, how does the voice connect to the 'self'? And, is our voice the sound of our ‘self’ and what happens if the voice cannot express the 'self'? Growing up, my voice was always just there. Like the breeze on my skin, or the ground beneath my feet, it was an inarguable part of existing. Until it wasn’t. Around the age of 15, my voice began to take on a mind of its own. This was a time that coincided with divergences in the inner and outer world in which I existed: there was the normal stuff like new hormones, bodily changes and teenage self-consciousness. Also the pressure was mounting as I gained a place at the elite performing arts school. Then, I lost my father to suicide which brought about some big feelings, to say the least. My life was fracturing and reforming, and my voice wasn’t keeping up. Whatever the reasons, a splitting of the voice and the 'self' was ocurring. That said, I didn’t notice this at the time. Not in any big way. I began to observe that my singing voice was no longer ‘just there.’ What had always felt like an intrinsic part of my ‘self’ was behaving like a thing with it’s own mind, showing up one day, then stamping it’s foot the next, obstinate as pressing old play-doh through a spaghetti machine. Professionally, things moved fast. At college our agent showcase was round the corner. By the time I was nineteen, auditions were coming in for big jobs. I gripped my voice by the hand and told it to stay with me. Yet, the inconsistency wasn’t shifting. In fact, the more I worked on my voice, the less it listened to me. At college we were told to fight with everything we had to win a place in the West End race. I did. I chased my voice like an illusive spectrum through a maze holding a golden ticket to get me across the bridge from one life to another. When it did work, I felt infallible, ready to take on the world, visible, worthy. Not only because of the responses from my peers, and tutors but in some bigger way: I had found my way of communicating. My voice took hold of the messy chatter inside and made sense of it. My voice was the only thing I felt good at. It was my future. But then there were the other days, when it no longer felt like my voice. There was this new weighty lower range that hit the ceiling unless I heaved it upwards like an unwieldy boulder. And then, across the gulf of a crevice large enough to send me tumbling into no man’s land, this odd ‘higher’ voice that was flimsy enough to fly away. I felt shame at these sounds that came from my body but felt nothing to do with who I was. Around this time, the ripples were gently spread into my social life. I was now twenty and sharing a house with my friends, yet most nights I was hiding in my room. Otherwise, my voice wouldn’t show up for class the next day. On nights out, my voice would turn and run by midnight, leaving muscle ache, and huskiness, the glass slipper version of the real thing. I’d pull back in the darkness of the clubs in case anyone tried to communicate. At weekends, I’d get the tube into central London alone where I could hide amongst crowds who wouldn’t ask me to speak. This was the only place I could find myself again, listening to my inner voice who was still there with me when my outer voice had disappeared. This voice became even more precious now I knew that I couldn’t reply on the outer one. The lack of control infuriated me and sometimes my resolve left. If my voice was mistreating me, I’d mistreat it. I’d drink more, smoke, sing as loudly as I wanted over the music, and stay up all night. The next day, my voice wasn’t there but these times I made it happen. I told it to go. I was in control. Except I wasn’t. Without my voice, I felt lost in the hugeness of everything with nothing to offer. Inside me was messy and loud and without a key. I reached out in this big wide world but it didn’t connect. I wasn’t sure who I was, or where to be. Finally I went to see an ENT consultant and - to my relief - I was diagnosed with soft nodules. The relief was immediate. I could see the little bump on my vocal folds: the culprit of years of this internal shame, frustration and disconnection I had hidden from view. Now it had a name. It wasn’t something in me. It was on me. There was a clear plan, away from this uncomfortable past few years, and towards the future I wanted. Or so I thought. The plan was to drink 2 litres of water a day, complete voice rest, to see a speech therapist and to take Gaviscon for the reflux that the consultant told me told me was coming up from my stomach and aggravating my vocal folds ‘Like leaving a violin in a case of acid overnight,’ he said. With new certainty, and hope, I followed their plan. There was nothing more important to me. When it ended, the nodules were gone and professionally, things progressed. I got my Agent, my first West End show, then another. I started playing lead roles. I kept up the treatment plan yet things weren’t getting better. I practised relentlessly. I’d warm up relentlessly, coaxing, pleading before every audition or show. A hundred times. A thousand times. Surely the theories of muscle memory had to work, if I just practised enough? I inhaled more steam than air. The doctors kept pumping me full of pills: Gaviscon, omeprazole, ranitidine, more, more, more to stop the reflux. When the pills didn’t work, I was sent for an operation, a thing called a Nissen Fundoplication, essentially tying up my oesophageal sphincter to prevent the abrasive acid getting to my vocal folds. Jamming a cork in a bottle, push it down, suppress it, numb it, plaster over it. I gave up performing at the end of that contract and started learning about the voice. If I couldn’t conquer it, I wanted to understand why. Without the pressures of having to perform, I released the very pressures that were restricting it. It wasn’t immediate. Many of the muscle patterns from holding my breath and pushing my muscles had become habitual, but as I began to understand the mechanics I started to retrain. I quickly saw that the voice loss had triggered an effect much more profound than a little pink nodule or a bit of extra stomach acid. My voice and I were triggering each other in an impossible circle: the voice loss transforming the way I interacted with the world around me, my terror of the thing itself perpetuating the cause. The effect was creating responses in the muscles of the voice, the body, the breath, the brain and the nervous system. Now, today. I have to admit this was all coming back. It was 7am. Time to get the kids to school. I was still waking up and figuring out if this was just ‘morning voice,’ but it wasn’t. It was very difficult to produce even a few low notes. Whilst my articulators energetically performed as normal, there was a low, gravelly, muffled nothingness below. For some reason, my vocal folds were not happy. As I faced this, no one else noticed. The kids were each very much in their own worlds. The eldest wanted to talk about lego, the next eldest had just had a dream where I was eaten by an ogre, the next one down was having a meltdown because the arm of her cardigan was inside out and the two year old was pretending to be a tiger. I did a hasty self-check at what this could be: I spent the night before, leading a choir where I couldn’t help myself singing flat out over the group for 90 minutes, but I was pretty sure, it wasn’t anything functional. I do this every week. I’ve not had a problem before. I could feel no tightness, or pain, no sense of the ‘lump in the throat’ or the sensation of something pressing against the lower front of my larynx which I used to. Of course, this doesn’t always rule out a problem as the vocal folds have almost no sensory feedback but I took comfort in knowing that my voice had been fine last night. Unless I’d been belting out showtunes in my sleep, it was probably just the cold moving low enough to affect the larynx. The mucosa that makes the top layer of the vocal folds thick, gunky and unable to vibrate with any ease. My throat was inflamed so maybe the muscles lower down were too. Despite the memories rising as my heart beat shouted ‘Danger! Danger!’ I chose to switch the lens. This was an opportunity! To revisit the experience of ‘voicelessness’ again with fifteen years experience as a vocal coach, now knowing that the voice is not an ambiguous and illusive thing but engineering that I am familiar with. How is the ‘self’ connected to the voice? I began to observe what was happening. ‘Mummy! Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!’ It’s a funny thing with voice loss. I’d forgotten that, even if people around you know you’ve lost your voice, they still expect you to talk. Until you lose your voice, it’s just there, like the nose on your face. It’s near impossible for people to understand. It’s part of existing, like reading facial expressions, gesturing, and reaching out to pick up a cup of tea. It’s not something that can be ‘lost.’ Until it is. ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ It’s my eight year old, ‘Look at Iron Man’s car. It flies as well as goes underground! Mummy! Why aren’t you listening!’ ‘I am,’ I croaked, but looking at him and nodding wasn’t enough. We were missing something: the autonomic verbalisations that pepper all conversations. The ‘umms,’ ‘yeahs,’ and ‘uh huhs,’ we offer to affirm to the speaker that they are being understood, that we are in this journey together. He didn’t feel like I really understood how cool his lego vehicle was. ‘Mummy! Where are my shoes?’ the six year old, ‘Mummy! My shoes? Can you help me find my shoes?’ Then there was the effort! Unless we recite a re-rehearsed script, speaking should be spontaneous. We only realise what we want to say as we say it. You should have to heave and haul the voice into action. I could already feel the urge to run away. It’s not only the effort and discomfort, the very act of intuitive conversation becomes something awkward, responses falling late, breaking the natural musicality of exchange. You’re no longer in sync with your own words. Your mind has been and gone, as the voice struggles to keep up like an annoying echo on the telephone line. ‘Bye Mummy!’ This was the time I most wanted my voice: too far away to touch, I knew that only the voice could reach them. The thread we throw from one to another: sound passing from inside ourselves, into another, vibrations we create travelling through the air to be received and re-perceived by the catcher. This. This is what allowed humans to become the most powerful creatures on earth. Johan Hari said as much in, ‘Sapiens,’. Our voices allowed us to overcome our relatively weak physical abilities by building relationships, working in teams, and expressing our unique selves. Without our voices, we are vulnerable, stripped of these tools and armour, desperately using your bare hands against the clang of metal. And I don’t believe that is down to language, or at least, not only down to language. It is about the nuances we are capable of expressing. Through the day, it continued. I had a business meeting on Zoom and could feel my own skin tightening as I navigated a new relationship in monotones. Without the prosody of nuance and subtext, words had to be carefully chosen for exactly what they were. Trying to replace these subtleties with gestures, body language and facial expressions doesn’t cut it. You are an alien speaking a half language, jokes fall flat, only the shell remains, a skin discarded as the real thing looks on in bafflement. At dinner time, I watched my two year old eating. As usual, she was providing a constant undercurrent of ‘Mmms,’ to her chewing and I realised something else: it wasn’t only that I had lost a way of interacting with the people around me, I missed the feeling of vocalising as well. The sense of vibrations grounding me to my body, the sympathetic rumble down the sternum, the gentle hum of warmth that floods through the bones and cartilage in the face, the pain releasing endorphins that come with it. And, within we vocalise, we exhale. To stay mute is to hold your breath, or at least to deny the healing effects of the longer exhalations that go with them, something that has huge consequences for the nervous system. When I started thinking about the Singer and the Self, I assumed that the voice is the culmination of the ‘self’. I certainly find that when I am singing, or when I am using my voice to teach or interact. I don’t doubt that it’s the expression of all that is inside us yet, now that it was taken away I saw this anew. Because my ‘self’ or inner voice was still here, chattering away despite the outer grunts and growls. The issue was that I could only communicate that as my swollen and mucousy apparatus would allow. The voice is the culmination of the ‘self,’ but which self? A spiritual perception of ‘self,’ or ‘soul’? The one that captures every part of you from your upbringing, to your genetics, to your present state of mind? Is it neurons? Trillions of interconnections, forming a narrative of consciousness in a two way conversation between the brain and body? Is the ‘self,’ actually outside of us: the sensory symphony we are just reactive to? Is it the noisy voice that compares you to your peers, or feels anxious about the email that landed? To me, the ‘self’ was the inner voice that remained when the outer voice failed. One that I heard more clearly this morning. It’s the inner voice that is always still in the eye of the storm, like a light deep inside you. The voice that accepts that you are you, and knows that, if you trust that, you will become the best version of yourself, that that is the only thing to strive for. Is the quest to get this voice in harmony with the outer voice? So we can truly ‘sing from our hearts’ and ‘speak out truth’? Back in 2003, it really wasn’t possible for me even if I’d not cared about hitting the notes, my outer voice wasn’t in harmony with my inner voice. Something had become functionally out of whack. That’s why the very sensible treatment plan was about as useful as building a palace without bothing to look at the foundations, and ground you’re building on. That treatment plan was never going to work for me because I was over working, over interfering with something that should be intuitive, over thinking instead of feeling, and consciously getting in my own way. More than that, I was too afraid. In this state of fear - of flight, flight or freeze - of sympathetic nervous system overload, or whatever you want to call it, my body was constantly ready for action. The nervous system was interpreting imminent auditions and a struggle to interact socially with the world around me as being as threatening as a pack of hungry lions waiting in the shadows. In fact, I probably would have faced the lions in exchange for a promise of hitting the notes every time. Take the reflux: the Gaviscon did nothing to dissuade my nervous system that these lions were about to attack, and it was time to fight. Blood to the peripheries, ready to run. Breath quickening. Muscles tightening. Vocal folds clamping. With the beast about to leap, how was there time for the body to prioritise anything as secondary as good digestion, and repair of the body? SOVTs, laryngeal massage, voice rest. All these tools in vocal rehabilitations have to be given to the patient along with the awareness of why and how to use them. When you understand the voice, the body, the mind, the nervous system, and the tools to strengthen them you can use them in a way that makes sense for you. If we can listen to that inner voice and find a way to allow the outer voice to respond in harmony and partnership, it is quite something. Rachel is the founder of The Sing Space, home of the Vocal Gym™ providing a space where singer can attend daily online singing classes to help you discover techniques to provide the freedom to sing across all genres. www.thesingspace.com. The 'Singer and the Self,' retreats were created with vocal coach, Becky Gilhespie. 
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 This is a topic dear to my heart.
In the past 18 months I've run almost 500 Vocal Work outs. I have never felt more connected to my voice or myself but is a Vocal Work out different to a Vocal Warm up? The answer is a BIG yes. So, first, what's a warm up? A warm up is a deeply personal thing, to take you mentally, physically and vocally to where you need to be: be it an audition, a gig, a presentation, or to find a place of vocal ease to take you through the day. During ten year in the West End it was my nemesis. I'd do the show warm up, singing along with sweeping, 'Bella signoras,' and arpeggios, scales and sirens, ignoring the tightness that was growing. Then I'd do a tape (cassette? It was the early 2000s!) from my singing teacher in the dressing room, often repeated before act two, whilst continuing to siren sporadically every few minutes in the wings. One day - voice half ragged and panicking because the director was in - a cast member told me to chill out and took me through a body scan in semi-supine. I stood up after five minutes feeling vocally better than I had in a year. To me now, a decade later - not performing, full-time vocal coaching, a warm up is taking your given circumstances and guiding them to where they need to be. It can - if you are lucky enough - be as simple as having a chat with a friend before an audition, engaging your voice and mind enough to set you up. You may be vocally ready but need to mentally warm up with meditation. You may need to go for a long walk to use the rhythm to give certainty to your brain and stop the chatter. You may need to spend some time in your lowest notes to connect you to your body. You might need to focus on massage or stretching or dance around the room to free your voice. You might need to spend ten minutes feeling the sound buzz around your face if you are someone who usually feels the opposite. To find any sound that makes everything feel free, and pleasurable, and efficient and spend a bit of time on it until you feel it's done it's job. It's personal and mindful and goal orientated, and asks you to listen and respond and understand your own challenges and needs. But a work out? A work out is a whole different ball game and - due to the conflict in terminology - is often dismissed. Compared to most physical careers, singers don't practise. We learn a song, go to monthly singing lessons but we don't 'work out'. By which, I mean, show up consistently and practise our craft with repetition and focus, to expand abilities and overcome challenges. In those first six months of doing daily lockdown 'warm ups', I experimented with explaining what we did as 'vocal check ins', 'time for you and your voice', and landed on the Vocal Gym because it shifted the connotations from 'warming up' (for what?) to 'working out' (ah, that is something that makes me stronger. That is taking ownership) The Vocal Gym™ is a safe space to explore your voice before entering the confines or associations of repertoire. Because jeez, the perimeters of a song can activate a need for 'perfection' that can stamp on all chances of personal growth. It is there always. Live every day. 24-7 on catch up. We use the familiar structure of scales and simple sounds to focus on one concept or ideas, be that idea conceptual or one of applied science. To give ourselves a time each day to be mindful, and to breathe in and out for a legitimate amount of time, to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and reap the benefits (anti-inflammatory included) that circulate back to the benefits on vocal and mental health. The scales act as structures to explore with awareness. It asks us to take 30 minutes a day to put a magnifying glass on one concept. A lip trill can be explored in infinite ways. Jaw release can be interrogated within the terrains of contrasting vowels or intervals. We can do deep. Obsess with joy. Take an idea one day to discard the next as it didn't work for you. To feel how your voice changes day to day, over time, with different commands, intentions and on different vowels. To show up regularly and let good habits overtake detrimental ones. The Vocal Gym™ runs daily mornings or evenings at www.thesingspace.com led by Rachel Lynes and guest coaches. Guest coaches 2020-21 include Line Hilton, Barbara Tanze, Jenevora Williams, Stephen king, Oren Boder (RADVOX), Amelia Carr, Becky Gillespie, Rosie Williamson, Patrick Jeremy. www.thesingspace.com  Practise to forget! To give over to the music and the story. The Sing Space Vocal Gym was born from the belief that with regular guided practise, a singer can gain ownership over their instrument Every 30 minute sessions will: Create balance. Engage the parts of your body, voice and mind that need to be engaged. Release the parts of your body, voice and mind that need to be released. Activate your parasympathetic nervous system which innervates your voice and diaphragm. Free your breath. Connect your body to your sound. Massage your vocal folds using back-pressure of sound waves. Aid proprioception of the six fundamentals of singing Open up your full sound spectrum. Stretch and massage the vocal folds. Enhance awareness of resonance Engage your articulators Free the larynx. Keep reading for a full breakdown of every exercises "How to warm up before an audition of performance?" WATCH NOW Part one: Set up to optimise the subsequent work out and active parasympathetic nervous system Mindfulness, alignment, stretch and massage, Part Two: Vocal Health SOVT (semi occluded vocal tract exercises or half closed mouth to utilise the benefits from the back pressure of sound waves. Part Three: Vocal Exploration Explore your full acoustic and range potential with sounds that guide you safely towards useful vocal 'postures'. The exercises 1. Lip trills - for breath flow connected to the body (add tongue out) How: Whilst keeping your face relaxed, allow your lips to trill or reverberate. Why: You are learning to make a continuous flow of air, connected to your body as you sing. The closure (SOVT) creates a backflow of sound waves which aids cord adduction and can stabilise the larynx. It also gives your heightened awareness of resonance. As this exercise only works if your jaw and face is relaxed it will also encourage jaw release. If you also want to target your tongue root release, then have an awareness of the tip of your tongue behind your bottom front teeth. We slide to gentle stretch the muscles and ligaments whilst utilising the back pressure to give the vocal folds a massage 2. Puffy cheeks - For resonance awareness. How: Sigh out and fill your cheeks with air then add sound. Make sure you keep your cheeks full of air as you sing. Why: The closure of your mouth contains the sound waves within your vocal tract. Allowing a heightened awareness of the ACOUSTIC sensations of resonance both within your vocal tract and sympathetically through your body. Which will be useful for guiding your 'resonant placement' throughout your range to help navigate registers. And is indicative of good fold closure. These sound waves move at different speeds and shapes depending on different notes , how you balance breath and vocal fold and the acoustic shape of your vocal tract. The puffy cheeks allow you to release jaw tension and focus on tongue release. 3. Sighing as singing - for awareness of cord adduction. How: Breath in for two, out for two then sing on the wave and momentum of that release. Why: We are exploring the benefits of an ‘aspirate onset’ and awareness of your own vocal cords. This exercise is especially helpful for those of us who tense up before we sing (holding our breath and tensing the jaw and tongue) There are two types of onset (how to commence a note): Glottal onsets mean that the cords come together before the breath. Aspirate onsets mean that the breath passes through the open cords before they come together to make sound. Aspirate onsets, can help with jaw and tongue release, a free larynx and breath flow. This exercise allows you to release muscles before you sing. It also lowers sub-glottal pressure. And frees larynx from unnecessary lifting 4. “Woah,” - For a free larynx or ‘extreme tilt.’ How: Aim for a yawning, dopey, sobby low Papa bear voice. Why: This one is for those of us who tend to sing with a high larynx, allowing us to feel the other end of the spectrum: a very low larynx. It is also for those of us who struggle with register breaks, or high notes as it uses an extreme version of the techniques needed to navigate these areas. It allows for a stretching of the CT muscles to enable higher notes or ease through registers The emotive sobbing feeling, can also engage your breath support and cord adduction (and your body’s primal knowledge of vocalisation) Use an additional F before the W to aid jaw release and breath flow. 5. “Wee wee wee,” - with a finger/pen between your teeth - For jaw hinge release (add nose hold to check for nasality) How: Put your finger (or a pen, or chopstick) between your front teeth and bring your awareness to the 'mask' Why: You can’t lock your jaw hinge with this in place so it teaches you to sing without clenching your jaw (which also affects the muscles that surround your larynx) It will also encourage your tongue mobility. The ‘W’ we are using is to engage the breath support in the body and the choice of EE is because it’s one of the best vowels for tongue release and acoustic shaping. The addition of holding your nose tests whether you are sending the sound into your nose allowing you to adjust the resonance placement accordingly! Note: we don't make sound in our nasal cavities (hence holding the nose) 6. “Ng- Gah,” or percussive consonants - For tongue root release and engaging articulators. How: With a dropped jaw we are isolating the tongue. Why: Isolating the tongue will give it a good workout, tiring it out so it doesn’t get involved when you sing. The intermittent closure of the NG will engage breath support, create resonance awareness and engage the benefits of SOVT work. 7. “Hey hey hey,” - To engage the primal or emotive side of singing. How: Take a gasped in-breath on the count of four they call out, ‘Hey,’ on an arpeggio as if you need to urgently get someone’s attention. Why: Understanding that much of the vocal system is autonomic (or involuntary ie. connection to your nervous system) we need to give over to emotional intention to engage the body’s natural knowledge of how to vocalise. The H provides the aspirate onset, and engages breath. Just be careful not to tense the jaw, neck or tongue in the urge to communicate. Tongue lifts at the back rather than using the jaw Maintain the exhale through the phrase  Singing in-person might be restricted, but we've sought out the BEST online singing experiences out there for you. From £10 upwards, here's a stocking jam filled with pressies suitable for vocalists of all ages, from beginners to professionals.  1. One to One online singing lessons (From £25-£450) The Sing Space offers lesson with top UK Vocal Coaches, starting from £25 to £450 for packages of ten hours. All vouchers are valid for up to one year and come with a 'coach matching,' service to help you you find the perfect coach for you. Their coaches even offer to combine songwriting, or instrumentals in to the lessons. www.thesingspace.com Suitable for all levels.  2. One Month in a Vocal Gym (£19.99) What's a Vocal Gym you ask? It's what's been missing from any singer's life until now! West End Vocal Coach, Rachel Lynes, offers daily guided singing work outs Mon-Fri 10.30am on Zoom. What's great is that these are all available on catch up and - for those who are nervous - you can have your video and sound off so you can watch as if it's a webinar. Suitable for committed adult singers, from beginners to professionals. Email now for a personalised voucher to the Vocal Gym or explore more here  3. A Vocal Straw ( £29.99) This transformative technique for strengthening your voice appeared on our radar a while ago, backed by years of science and used by speech therapists and singing teachers across the world. Yes, you can use any straw, but we love this one because of the options for diameter and length to target your singing practise. Also it's beautiful, and comes with a smancy little cleaning brush! The straw is designed by vocal coach and scientist, Oren Boder, who send instruction with every purchase. Buy now here.  4. The Sing Space All Access - 40 hours of singing classes (£39.99) An incredible opportunity to dip into 40 hours a month of online classes with some world leading coaches. This programme originated during lockdown to supports artists who have lost work due to covid and to reach singers who were unable to attend their usual classes. The schedule offers a brilliantly varied array of classes from Seminars, to Yoga for singers, to West End Fitness classes and even free 121 support. Email for a personalised voucher or explore more here Suitable for singers from 16 and over.  5. USB Microphone (from £20-£200) A great quality plug in an go microphone can turn anyone's computer into a home recording studio. We've asked our industry sound experts and were recommended the blue yet microphone for a fab budget option which you can buy here for £54.99. Suitable for budding recording artists of all ages.  6. Lesson with a West End superstar and Oliver Award winner! £79.99 Support some of the UK's leading performers during and benefit from their years of expertise in select 121 mentoring. Currently mentor include West End stars, Cassidy Janson, Emma Hatton and Gina Beck. The Sing Space space also takes requests, so if you have a favourite artist, get in touch and they promise to try and arrange a lesson for you. What's even better, is that when you book a recurring monthly slot, you get 40 hours of FREE classes with the Sing Space free (see above). Email here for more information. Suitable for Musical Theatre Fans.  7. A vocal vibrator (from £10) Yes, it's true... using a vibrator helps you sing better. Well at least that's what Vibrant voice technique claim. The technique was created by David Ley, Professor of Voice at the University of Alberta who suggests that using "external vibration (aka a vibrator) to help quickly and effectively enhance vocal resonance and reduce the muscle tension that can lead to vocal fatigue." Explore their suggested array of vibrators (to match any vocal frequency!) here Suitable for adults!  8. This is a Voice (from £7.78) This is a Voice is a practical toolkit of step-by-step vocal exercises to help speakers and singers of all abilities transform the quality of their voice. By Gillyanne Keyes and Jeremy Fisher, you'll find heaps of useful and well researched tips. Buy now on Amazon  9. West End fit (from £10) Sing-a-long Musical Theatre Fitness classes, stop it!! Well, they aren't technically sing-a-long but, being on Zoom, you can sing as loud as you like and no one except your neighbours and family will hear. These classes are run by fitness expert and performer, Emily, with a playlist of the best Musical Theatre songs to get sweaty to. Learn more here or email to book a one off class with a personalised voucher.  10. A Vocal Nebuliser £
Yes, an upgrade on the popular singer's mate, the steamer! Take a read here, about why this could be considered an uplift to any serious singer's first aid kit As professional singers, we're not afraid to admit that this would make us very happy!! Buy now on Amazon Every 121 lesson, I found myself thinking the same thought: I can give you tips but, really, for you to make progress I wish that you had a place to practise. At best, this would allow you to take ownership of your voice and become your own coach and, at the least, you'd gain a deep awareness and vocabulary so our lessons could be optimised. Then the vocal gym began to evolve... When lockdown started, I made a pledge, to offer a daily free guided warm up to my community to stay in touch and to help keep up your vocal stamina. In five months, our community grew from 300 to over 11,000. During this time, I began to form the structure of the Vocal Gym: the result of twenty years of work on the voice: both as a singer (going through rehabilitation) and a vocal coach. The voice is a muscle that needs constant practise yet practise is near impossible without guidance. Our voice is an ambiguous concept to many of us and we don't know where to begin or whether what we are doing is taking us in the right direction. I spent ten years trying to 'practise' and often doing more harm that good. The aim of the vocal gym is to give the singer ownership of their voice and a route to vocal freedom. It is there to guide you as you learn what to strengthen and what to release, and to provide an affordable alternative to 121 lessons. It is there to provide structures, focused and consistent practise. Below, is a detailed overview of WHY and WHAT happens inside the Vocal Gym. Keep reading for more information... The AIM: take time for practise so, when you perform, you can give over to the music and the story. In our launch we are offering Sing Space All Access for free when you join us (worth £39.99) - giving you an additional 30 hours of professional training a month plus 20 sessions in the vocal gym (Mon-Fri 10.30am available on catch up) 
Why repetition? The core of the vocal gym is based around repetition. Every exercise was crafted during years of coaching to pick sounds and note sequences that - within their specific order - warm up and work out the voice, balancing muscle engagement and release. Below is list of our exercises which, as we gain familiarity allow us to use each session to focus on a different aspect of vocal production (list of focus below)
Vocal health: What I wish I could have told my younger self when I was diagnosed with nodules...6/24/2020 I was in my second year at ArtsEd when I was diagnosed with ‘soft nodules.’ Finally. A name for the huskiness, inconsistency and loss of range. I was given a clear treatment plan by an expensive and highly regarded doctor with many letters after his name. After a scope down my throat, he offered his diagnosis with brusque dismissal and impersonal certainty. The relief of this diagnosis and a treatment plan was second only to the relief I felt, a decade later, when I gave up singing professionally because these treatments hadn't worked. It was only after I started coaching, that I understood why it would have been impossible for me to overcome the vocal issues that remained with me. I remember everything about that time. The bearded doctor treated me more like a pair of vocal cords than a human being, but that was okay; my vocal cords were the most important thing to me, too. They were the love of my life and I was ready to do anything I could to protect them. He told me that soft nodules would become hard nodules if I didn’t follow his advice. 'Complete vocal rest for a week,' he said, 'Write, don't talk.' I walked around college wearing a notebook with pride. Any frustration was menial compared to the avenue of hope that had opened up. These nodules explained everything but soon they would be gone and I would sing with ease again! Friday night, in the student bar, I drank water, imagining my high notes gratefully glugging the hydration. He sent me for three sessions with a speech therapist who made me hiss like a snake. She had awards all over her walls. I could feel my vocal cords healing. Then there was the prescription for Gaviscon. ‘It’s like leaving your violin in acid overnight,’ he’d commented on the effects of the reflux he'd diagnosed, ‘Think about how that would affect it...’ I did. I thought about it all night long, imagining the erosive acid on my fragile, nodule-d vocal cords and couldn’t sleep for fear - fear of losing my future and fear for the performances the following day. But, this cardboard rectangle with capsules that would make everything okay. The pills were sunlit stepping stones across the uphill swamp to the future: a future in which I could sing again with the freedom I used to feel. If I’d have known then, that the swamp would last for the next decade, that my prescription would be upped gradually over the next five years until they tied my stomach in a knot, and that I would be chasing stepping stones - or treatments - like an addict, would I have stopped then? I know the answer with certainty. No. Even after what happened next, singing has still been one of the greatest loves of my life and continues to be so: from the time ‘before nodules’ when vocalisation ‘just happened,’ to now, as a coach. It’s the closest I have got to believing in something bigger, to flying, to being fully alive, and I feel privileged to have spent my life exploring it. So what would I say to myself now, if the young me, from half a life time away, booked in a session, or came for some advice? Would I still use anything from that initial treatment plan or try something else? I would start with saying this, 'Over the next decade you’re going to see many experts: vocal coaches, doctors, nutritionists, hypnotherapist, and get advice from colleagues and friends. You’re going to read many conflicting articles and spend a lot of money and take a lot of prescription drugs and natural medicines. Although much of this advice is great advice, you will feel lost. They will give you what they can in the hour you see them, but they cannot fix this. This is not their fault. They have their own journeys and this is yours. I would say that none of the advice or exercises will work, unless you first understand the relationship between the mind and the body and the physical manifestations of stress and anxiety. That the body and mind are, in fact, inseparable. Start inside and build out. I would explore how that fear would have put my body in a state of high stress, a sense of being under attack, sending my sympathetic nervous system under attack, into a state of fight, flight, or freeze. I’d try to explain how those brain signals inform our physiology. To start exploring the difference between para-sympathetic and sympathetic states and how, in this massively impacts digestion - even with all the Gaviscon in the world, I didn't stand a chance at managing the reflux. This would start a spiral: reflux caused voice loss, fear of voice loss caused reflux. I would try and explain how the state of my nervous system - or my sense of ‘safety’ also affected vocalisation. I’d talk about the wonders of the Vagus nerve and how to stimulate it, to activate a state of calm so our vocal system can respond to the signals in the music and storytelling, so our digestion is optimised and our mental and physical health improves. I'd explore the assumptions or misunderstanding around the direction I'd been given to 'save my voice,' or 'not to push,' and how those words can counteract good singing technique. In fearing 'pushing,' was I fearing the muscularity of adduction (cord closure)? Was I holding my breath? Were my cords unable to function without the subglottic pressure needed? I remember the days choosing songs that used a light breathy tone that I perceived as a save 'head voice' but that that perpetuated poor support, a high larynx, lack of cord closure and a tense jaw In caution was I ‘holding’ my jaw. In restraining, was I creating tongue tension? I’d got through graduation. I was hit and miss in auditions. I'd arrive hours early, sitting in coffee shops across the road from the audition venues in a state of terrified limbo. I'd enter the room on a tide of hopes, prayers and wishes, pleading with anything out there for the notes to come out. I got recalls on good days and was politely steered out the doors on bad days. It was like tightrope walking with crocodiles below. I got my first West End job, then another one. I loved it. I was covering a lead and thank goodness I had warning when she pre-booked a night off for dental surgery. I had time to go on complete vocal rest, to stop drinking for a week. By now I was learning that I could manage my voice if I stopped everything else: eating, drinking, speaking, socialising... That was the only way I got through the following years. I was lucky enough to keep getting work, but all other life stopped which only added to the pressure I was putting on myself. Despite seeking out singing teachers and going to the speech therapists my voice was profoundly inconsistent which I think was down to a perception of these people as infallible. I was so eager to conquer this, that I took everything I was told and didn't ask why: why are you making me sob or hiss? Why is it easier on a certain vowel? Why the chopstick between my teeth? If I could go back, I could explain that in was probably the tongue position of the EE vowel, the larynx freedom or 'tilt,' and openness on the sob and the jaw release with the chopstick. We could look at how to transfer these techniques into song, via awareness and repetition. In 2005, during a run of Joseph at the New London theatre, my reflux medication was ten times what was recommended. The doctors kept upping it and I just kept popping. The side effects made me so anxious, I was unable to sit still - god knows what it was doing to my nervous system and the subsequent connections with digestion. The other drugs caused a deep fatigue that pulled me under the covers in the middle of the day whilst the anxiety wouldn't let my body stay still. I did what the doctors said and kept taking the medication. I paid hundreds of pounds to see a nutritionist but, but then, I was on so many acid suppressants that if I stopped I’d wake choking on my own stomach acid, unable to breathe. She told me to avoid tomatoes and chilli, then asked for more money. At this point, my voice had started to mysteriously disappear mid show, from all to nothing. There was a new terror. I'd stand in the wings, hearing the sound of a full auditorium and leave my body. There was a high chance at this stage that I was about to implode into a stratospheric failure. This is when I first learn that I was the 'freeze' in fight, flight or freeze. A new default started to occur where I slept walked my way through performing, hovering somewhere above, trying my hardest to flee. How I wish now, that someone had handed me a straw, some SOVT exercises and taught me some mental strategies to calm the hell down. Instead, the doctors instructed a Nissen Fundoplication, tying my oesophagus in a knot. I was twenty three and nodded along. They were the grown ups, they were the ones with letters after their name. I tried giving up the job and going travelling but on the day I booked my flights, I got my first lead role and left for a year on tour. It was a dream come true. A cast of performers I idolised and a director and creative team that made you feel you could be the best version of yourself. Each second in the rehearsal room felt deeply precious. Time moved in slow motion as I tried to absorb each second. Yet, the cloud of fear hovered. Six weeks in, I hadn't lost my voice yet, but we were moving into theatres now, friends and agents were coming to watch, Andrew Lloyd Webber was in, the director was watching! The memories of humiliation haunted and the fear of losing my voice again started to take over everything. I used a vocal steamer twice a day for twenty minutes, probably burning my vocal cords on the just boiled water. I was extensively warming up, using endless warm ups from all the expensive vocal coaches I’d seen. I'd warm up with the cast, then alone in my own dressing room, then again before the next act and evening show. I had started to understand the benefits of using meditation, playing music as loud as it would go through headphones until the fear was drowned out but my warm ups were so acrobatic, and without awareness or sense. I was introduced briefly to Alexander Technique by a fellow cast member and experience a complete vocal regeneration in fifteen minutes of body scanning yet explained it away as, 'luck' because it seemed too easy and I was so used to thinking that success were the result of 'effort.' Writing helped. That was my only saviour as it offered some of the stabilising meditative qualities yet it brought me too much into my head and out of my body, out of balance, and breath and awareness. I was looking for certainty. That is probably why it felt such relief when, at the end of that job, I told my agent I didn't want to sing any more. I had to be perfect, something I could never have been, so would always fail. I wanted to spend my life singing and exploring singing, but not necessarily performing, and there is a big difference. Ironically, after stopping performing, I've have spent the next decade enjoying singing for a job and never loosing my voice again. I wanted to share this before this evening's class - and what I've shared is only the surface of it. It's influenced all my teaching since, and my urge to help other singers. In class we'll be looking at the general vocal health rather than rehabilitation and the effects of hormones, fatigue, muscle tension, over work, bad technique, habitual patterns, diet, mental health and some things you can do to on a daily basis to keep in top vocal condition. Book the class here I'll sign off with this: Close your eyes, take a deep breath. Your voice is you. It is not a pet to tell what to do, It is not engineering to ask someone else to repair. It is your breath, it is what you use to communicate with the world. It responds to your nervous system, the motions of your limbs, it's intertwined with your memories. Aim for awareness. Feel how everything feels. You know your voice better than anyone else. Any command, any piece of advice, is one colour in your picture. Stop going to people for answers and instead go to people to learn from them. There is a difference. It is not your land to conquer and dominate, but to explore and play with. For like our world there are parts we will never fully understand.  Your daily singing warm up - How to and why? Download this free PDF or read more below then join the Facebook group here to join in live. Like every other physical activity, your singing voice will benefit greatly from daily practise. These benefits stretch far beyond the act of singing itself, into physical and mental well-being. Now is an opportunity to work on your voice and to take some time to breath a little deeper. WHAT ARE THE PRINCIPLES BEING THIS WARM UP? Awareness: Bringing awareness to the six fundamentals of singing: breath, resonance, adduction, jaw and tongue release and a free larynx so you can be in control of your instrument. Repetition: EVERY exercise works all six areas so each time we do the exercise we can focus on a different area, going deeper into the practise as we become more familiar with each technique. Balance: The biggest challenge to a singer is coordinating active engagement and release. Which areas are working and which are releasing? Community, shared resources and support : As these will be live, we can all support each other, wherever we are in the world. Self-care: taking a moment each morning to deep breath and be mindful is important for us all at this time. THE WARM UP: Part one: We will start each session with a short mindfulness exercise including alignment and a gentle stretch. Part Two: Bringing awareness to the six fundamentals of singing:
The exercises EVERY exercise below works all six of the fundamentals. Lip trills - for breath flow connected to the body How: Whilst keeping your face relaxed, allow your lips to trill or reverberate. Why: You are learning to make a continuous flow of air, connected to your body as you sing. The closure (SOVT) creates a backflow of sound waves which aids cord adduction and can stabilise the larynx. It also gives your heightened awareness of resonance. As this exercise only works if your jaw and face is relaxed it will also encourage jaw release. If you also want to target your tongue root release, then have an awareness of the tip of your tongue behind your bottom front teeth. Puffy cheeks - For resonance awareness. How: Sigh out and fill your cheeks with air then add sound. Make sure you keep your cheeks full of air as you sing. Why: The closure of your mouth contains the sound waves within your vocal tract, allowing a heightened awareness of the sensations of resonance (the feeling of soundwaves travelling through your body). These sound waves move at different speeds and shapes depending on different notes (frequencies), how you use your breath and vocal cords (harmonics) and the shape of your vocal tract or mouth and throat (Formants) As sound waves are a physical thing, gaining a heightened awareness of the feeling of sound will greatly help with placement and register breaks. Sighing as singing - for awareness of cord adduction. How: Breath in for two, out for two then sing! Why: We are exploring the benefits of an ‘aspirate onset’ and awareness of your own vocal cords. This exercise is especially helpful for those of us who tense up before we sing (holding our breath and tensing the jaw and tongue) There are two types of onset (how to commence a note): Glottal onsets mean that the cords come together before the breath. Aspirate onsets mean that the breath passes through the open cords before they come together to make sound. Aspirate onsets, can help with jaw and tongue release, a free larynx and breath flow. “Wee wee wee,” - with a finger/pen between your teeth - For jaw hinge release (add nose hold to check for nasality) How: Put your finger (or a pen, or chopstick) between your front teeth. Why: You can’t lock your jaw hinge with this in place so it teaches you to sing without clenching your jaw (which also affects the muscles that surround your larynx) It will also encourage your tongue mobility. The ‘W’ we are using is to engage the breath support in the body and the choice of EE is because it’s one of the best vowels for tongue release and acoustic shaping. The addition of holding your nose tests whether you are sending the sound into your nose allowing you to adjust the resonance placement accordingly! “Woah,” - For a free larynx or ‘extreme tilt.’ How: Aim for a yawning, dopey, sobby low Papa bear voice. Why: This one is for those of us who tend to sing with a high larynx, allowing us to feel the other end of the spectrum: a very low larynx. It is also for those of us who struggle with register breaks, or high notes as it uses an extreme version of the techniques needed to navigate these areas. The yawny, sobby feeling encourages larynx tilt (The larynx’s makes high notes The emotive sobbing feeling, can also engage your breath support and cord adduction (and your body’s primal knowledge of vocalisation) Use an additional F before the W to aid jaw release and breath flow. “Ng- Gah,” - For tongue root release. How: With a dropped jaw we are isolating the tongue. Why: Isolating the tongue will give it a good workout, tiring it out so it doesn’t get involved when you sing. The intermittent closure of the NG will engage breath support, create resonance awareness and engage the benefits of SOVT work. “Hey hey hey,” - To engage the primal or emotive side of singing. How: Take a gasped in-breath on the count of four they call out, ‘Hey,’ on an arpeggio as if you need to urgently get someone’s attention. Why: Understanding that much of the vocal system is autonomic (or involuntary ie. connection to your nervous system) we need to give over to emotional intention to engage the body’s natural knowledge of how to vocalise. The H provides the aspirate onset, and engages breath. Just be careful not to tense the jaw, neck or tongue in the urge to communicate.  The quest for the indisputable facts about singing. Breathing is easy. We breathe all night long in our sleep. It seems that our body is better at it than we are. This system is autonomic or unconscious. We are not the driver. We are passengers on the breath bus. Journeying through life on the perpetual motion, our lungs are billows, inhaling and filling, charging oxygen through our pipeworks, the veins, powering our muscles and organs. Singing is breath. Breath is singing. (For more on the six fundamentals of singing, READ HERE.) As I was exploring how to articulate this, and how to find an answer that qualifies as an indisputable truth about breathing, I asked my students how they approached this subject... I listened to answers about where they felt like they were breathing into (their bellies), how they inhaled (opening the bottom ribs, breathing into the lower back, stomach release,) or exhaled (from the diaphragm). I heard them discuss support (a feeling of strength around the solar plexor), posture (lifting the clavicle), yawn breaths and imagery (pulling the sound from deep inside you or throwing it at a wall) and physical movement (lifting). None of this was necessarily wrong but I wanted to finesse; to find a clear truth to build from. A checkpoint to which we could always return. I wanted to find a statement that couldn’t be misconstrued or replaced. A fundamental truth to BREATH in relation to sound production. I tried to sing whilst removing all of these pieces of advice: I breathed high into my lungs instead of my belly. I could still sing. I tried singing with horribly tense shoulders. It wasn’t optimum but (by being careful to stay released around the jaw) the sound was relatively free. I tried singing with bad posture, with a low soft palate, going against all the advice above. It might not have been optimum but I could still sing. I could cheat, find another way around. Nothing so far was fundamental or an indisputable truth. So if we knew that your singing voice is vibrating air particles of breath then what is the one thing that singing could not happen without? For a long time, I played around with this, singing breath out fast and slow, in fits and starts, increasing and decreasing the flow of pressure. All seemed possible and related to a stylistic choice in singing but I came to release that there was one thing that was indisputable: where there was output, there had to be input. The air had to be constant; a constant flow, and what was more, as soon as that flow was constant, it was connecting to my body. I could dispute, where I felt it, sometimes, around my solar plexus, or my lower stomach, or the sides of my ribs, but, to attain the flow of air the vocal cords needed to make sound, the body had to get involved. I tried not connecting the sound to my diaphragm or lower stomach. I couldn’t. Even if there was no movement at the commencement of a phrase, soon a feeling of connection grew around my lower stomach to help the remaining air exit the lungs. Where there is singing there is a constant flow of air connected to the body. To take this into practise, we can look at any sounds that do just that: any sounds that engages a consistent flow of air through your cords connected to your body. These sounds are primarily ones that we can’t get wrong and come under the category of SOVT, or Semi-occluded vocal tract. This fancy acronym basically means half closed mouth. The closure, provides resistance so the body connects with the breath, creating a consistent flow. As you do these exercises (more details on how below) focus on just the indisputable truth: ‘singing requires a consistent flow of air connected to the body’. By doing this, you teach your brain and body how sound production should be. The brain starts to create new pathways, using this new efficient approach, ready to unconsciously translate this practise into your singing. In addition to this subconscious, or body memory element to practise, you are also consciously gaining awareness to the sensation of always breathing out and always connecting the body to the breath so you can consciously bring this practise into your singing. You can use any closed mouth sound but the most common is the lip trill. Here’s a video on The Lip Trill or you can watch the video on breathing below. We all know you breath in to sing, but how about breathing out? Approaching singing as sighing helps create maximum vocal efficiency and freedom. This video explores singing as a release, using sighing, aspirate onsets and silent h’s to release the muscles in the jaw, to bring your vocal cords together and to creates breath support. |
Rachel Lynes -vocal coachThese articles aim to simplify and clarify. My aim is to give you clear exercises that make a big difference. Archives
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