An ode to the 'BRRRRR'

Most of us love this simple little exercises because suddenly singing feels so easy - suddenly there are no breaks in our voices, suddenly the high notes just fly out - but why?

A lip trill works all the fundamental components of your instrument creating a perfect balance of breath and muscle release. Also, being SOVT (Semi-occluded vocal tract or half shut mouth) it sends the sound waves backwards which, when they meets the air coming upwards, sandwiches your vocal cords between air and sound waves bringing them together without any tension. 

But how do you transfer the lip trill into your singing?

You don't.

Doing your lips trills daily will strengthen your breath support, release tension and teach your cords to stay together throughout your range without tension.

It really is that easy

2008 (a long, long time ago....)
It was after a Thursday matinee. I was playing Jenny in Aspects on Love and we were on the last week of a year’s tour.
I had lost my voice.
It was constricted and struck, tight and weak. I’d pushed through the matinee but it just wasn’t working and Nikolai Foster, our director was in that evening. Nikolai was in, and it was the last week of the tour! It was the last week before these glory days of work ended and I’d be out of work again.  Maybe never work again! 
I was losing my voice and Nikolai was in, and it was the last week of the tour, and there were a thousand people of their way to see the evening show. Despite the empty auditorium, I could feel their imminent arrival crept over my body, tightening my skin, sitting on my chest, constricting my throat. They were finishing their pre-show dinners, they were meeting their friends and looking at their seat numbers. 
They were coming!
And I had no voice.
I stood in my dressing room, frozen.
My costumes were laid out, ready for me to put on and go and stand in front of all those people. And Nikolai. There was my microphone, the wire neatly coiled and set, ready to be pinned into my hair, ready to amplify the notes that WEREN’T THERE.
The window lead to outside, to the sky, where normal people went about their days. Oh, how I wanted to be them at that moment. How I wanted to run from my own skin that was tightening by the second.
Yet it was time to do the show and I had to figure this out.
I had to get on top of it.
I took a breath. I tried singing.
It didn’t work. It didn't work. It didn't work.
The panic tightened, grew hotter, the knots in my guts grew, my stomach clenching and churned, acid. I wanted to scream but I had no voice.
No voice.
No career.
No self.
Only panic.
I went through everything I knew about singing. My mind was blank. What did I know? Nothing! I knew nothing!
At that point, I had two strategies: warm up until it starts to work, or steam and pray, save my voice, stay quiet until second before I sing then jump and hope for the best.
Neither path looked good.
The half hour call was in ten minutes.
They were coming.
Nikolai was there.
This is the moment when Shona Lynsey, who was playing Rose, my mum, came into my dressing room. She saw that I was losing my mind, she suggested some Alexander technique.
A technique that changed the way I viewed singing forever.
It was a very simple practise: Lie on the floor in semi-supine and move through the body, “allowing the ligaments and muscles lengthen and allowing the joints to widen and release.’
After around ten minutes of this, I stood up.
‘How does it feel?’ Shona asked.
‘Um…’ I heard the sound slide free, unconstricted and easy, ‘Er…’
Clear. Open.
‘Better!’ I said.
It wasn’t a perfect fix but I got through the evening show.
 Now, ten years on and working as a vocal coach, I can finally unpin why this practise works so well.
My voice was knackered after eight shows a week for a year, but panic was far more detrimental. The panic was inhibiting the two crucial things that have to happen for a body to make sound: breath and release!
      We need to support a steady stream of air to power the chords to vibrate and we mustn’t constrict these vibrations (sound!) with muscles tension.
The panic was making me hold my breath and grip. Even if I let out enough air to make a sound, my muscles were clamping so tightly that nothing could vibrate. It’s like trying to ring a bell in a clenched fist
The systematic approach (moving through the body one part at a time) distracted my mind from frenzied panic and brought me back into my body. The semi- supine position, allowed my body to align as it 'lengthened,' and 'widened.' The verb, ‘allow,’ was crucial as it encouraged giving over into the body’s natural instincts rather than forcing effort. It reminded me that our body is smart.
It’s got this.
We breath all night long in our sleep.
Language and sound evolved to help us communicate our needs and emotions with each other.  
We knows how to produce sound.
Now, in moments of heat and turmoil I still often ask singers to use a practise like this: stillness, mindfulness, observing, body awareness, in any ways that work for them (a meditation can be running or listening to music).
It’s about stilling the mind and reminding yourself that the fundamentals of singing are breath and release.

Week six of the singing course today. Next week we'll be looking at registers and range, at vocals chords and onsets and how different techniques apply to different registers/parts of your range.
If you want to join us next term, you can book here 

SUBNOTE: Once your breathing is deep and easy, once you’ve brought your attention to releasing jaw and tongue tension, and once your mind is clear, then you can start to look into your tool box of other techniques you enjoy as a singer. Ie:
Singing on the open vowels.
Using the consonants for energy, support and articulation.
Engaging support with physical movements.
Acknowledging tilt and its benefits.
Using primal sounds.
Observing good and naughty vowels.
Place resonance and sympathetic vibrations.
Experimenting with onsets.
Stylistic and technical add on likes scoops.
Imagery.
The list goes on… and on… this is a list for another time.

Last week we spent a long time on solos, on rep and individual songs but this this week, I wanted to try something new! I asked everyone to learn, ‘She Used To Be Mine.’ from Waitress.

I was curious to know what would happen if we all took one song and worked it together, over and over, trying out as many ideas as we had time for. 

After warm up, we all sung it through. I joined in, which was novel and as I spend most of my days talking about singing and not getting to actually do it! I wanted to be part of this exercise so I could really interrogate my own advice. Was this going to be beneficial?
I wondered if we’d all be able to let go of limiting self consciousness if we sung together. This was play time not 'get it perfect,' time. Would that offer a freedom to explore, learn and observe.
So we all took a separate space and went for it.
It’s a TOUGH song! There are very low notes, very quiet high notes, there’s speech quality, belt, mix, emotion, storytelling. It’s all in there and needs technical ability and muscularity, with absolute emotional and commitment and without tension!
Easy?
At the end we discussed just how hard this song was, but also why it’s currently the most popular Musical Theatre song for woman.
Some people struggled with the belt section near the end, others with the quiet high notes. Some found the lowest notes a challenge. For me, I found the note ‘Mine,’ the hardest. It repeatedly sits in a place in my voice that felt unsteady, as if it wasn’t sure where to be placed.

  Over the lesson we tried it in as many different ways. We used exercises to encourage ‘tilt,’ we used SOVT, we sung on open vowels, we used muscular gestures to engage support, exercises to isolate focus on a relaxed jaw, and on the tongue, on twang and on release of physical tension.  
   Which ones helped? Which ones didn’t?
  I believe that there’s a simplicity to singing: If an exercise makes singing feel freer and easier then it’s doing you good. If it feels tense and tricky then leave it for the moment.
  At the end of the lesson, we all had exercise that had helped and some that hadn’t so much and it was time to sing the song through one more time with one last rule.

'FORGET EVERYTHING EXCEPT FEELING THE MUSIC AND THE STORY' 

Perhaps it was the repetition - like dancing, singing a song over and over encourages an ease of movement and muscle memory - but it certainly felt much easier to sing. 
Perhaps it was pushing us out of our comfort zone? Trying techniques that we wouldn’t usually use.
Perhaps it was the freedom to sound stupid and to give over to a song in the safety of a group?
I found it helped me and I’m starting to think this is just the beginning of a way of working that I want to explore. I think that this is the way to break through our ‘shoulds’ and habits and explore the full capacity of the voice.

Breathing is so fundamental to singing that talking about it can feel almost cliched. As a singer, one of the most frequently heard words was ,'support.' Yet, I remember standing on in the wings during a performance and thinking, I have no idea how to breath. Suddenly, the thing that keeps us alive - the thing we did first as we entered this word this world - seemed alien. Did you release your tummy to make space, open your mouth, suck in? Why did my chest feel so tight and why were the muscles around my neck like rocks? I stood, sweating, before falling on stage in a state of panic and hoping blindly for the best.
Now, after years as a vocal coach, spending hours thinking and talking about breathing, I want to demystify and help us make friends with our breath. Because, really, breathing IS fundamental to singing. It's your power. It is the bow to the violin, the hammer hitting the string on a piano. Without it, singing is like playing a clarinet with no air. We need breath so make sound, and we need a steady stream of air (support from the body) to control sound and to engage musicality. 

So, rather than tell you how to breathe, this week we looked at why you already know how to breath (you do it in your sleep) and we looked at all the ways that you already support your sound during your day to day life. These ways are:
- Sounds that naturally engage your breath support (certain consonants, fricatives, plosives, brr, SOVT etc)
- Primal and emotional sounds (pleading, yearning, frustration, calling out etc)
- Physical movements (lifting, pressing etc)

So, here are a few simple exercises to continue the work:
- Observing your own breathing. Sit or lie down and just watch what your body is doing naturally. If you feel tight and stressed then give it time. Observe and get used to the sensation of your stomach expanding as you breath in. 
- Use sound that we've worked on, like zzzz, vvv, brrrr (lip trill) and rrrr (rolled tongue) to feel the engagement of your body. Feel how the sound connects to the stream of air that your connecting, and to your body.
- Try singing on emotive sounds that natural engage your body: yearn, plead, let out your frustration - what ever works for you. Try all the heightened feelings you know. Try to feel them and then image that you're in a room full of people and you don't want to show them how you feel, Feel how the feeling is concentrated around your stomach and use that to pour into your sound.
- Try physical gestures to support the sound: sit on a chair and try to lift yourself up, press your hands together in front of your chest. Do anything that engages you stomach.
NOTE: In all of these. please be so careful that the muscularity you create doesn't transfer to tension in your shoulders, neck, tongue or jaw. 

Next week, we'll check in and see how this practise went so make a note as you go. 

We're off! Thirteen singers in two weekly sessions dedicated to spending the next twelve weeks digging deep into singing, singing and more singing. I started this course with some goals (see below!)

Thank you to all the singers for being so brave the first week. 
Here's the home work to reiterate the two fundamental components of singing: creating a steady stream of air support and letting go of tension (we'll look at exercises to really meet our resonators soon!)
There's a video below, (with my 18 month old singing herself to sleep in the back ground) or you can just follow these simple exercises:
1) Creating a steady stream of air support, feeling the connection to your body.
 - Do some long 'ssssh's,'
Feel where your breath connects to the body.
2) Add voice so it becomes, 'gzzz,' (see video for the sound, but you can also use zzzz or vvvv
Feel the sound connecting to your body
Feel the channel of vibrations through your body
Feel the connection of voice and sound
NOTE: Think 'or' not 'er" so your vocal tract stays nice and open.
3) Take this sound up, on scales or on a song, and retain the connection between your sound, your breath and your body. ​
NOTE: Observe that effort/muscularity in singing is not the same as tension.
4) Drop your jaw and let the sound become an unrestricted, 'or.'
- Loosen out your body: your wrists, your shoulders, your neck, jaw, tongue, walk around whilst keeping the continued energy of breath flow and the feeling of sound connecting to you body.
--  

Here's a riddle:

How can you sing exactly the same three times and sound completely different?

I ask my pupils this questions and usually get these answers:

"Open my throat?"
"No, you have to sing EXACTLY the same."
"Support?"
"No. Sing EXACTLY the same."
"Think low?"
"No. EXACTLY the same."
"Relax my tongue?"
"SING EXACTLY THE SAME."
"But how can I sing exactly the same and sound completely different?"

Got it? 

I know, I know. I'm being annoying. What I'm trying to make you think about is how sound changes dependant on the space you're singing in. We've all know that singing in different spaces creates a different sound: the lovely echoey-ness of a shower room, or the way a whisper travels across the room like magic in a Cathedral or amphitheatre, or the dullness of sound in a carpeted room. 

So, the answer I was looking for to my annoying question is, of course:
You can sing in different rooms.
But, now here's the point to this: Did you know that there is an acoustic room that we carry around on our shoulders? That there are spaces inside your head and throat that can completely and truly change the sound from its source (at the vocal chords) to what we hear?

The sound produced at the source isn't a nice sound. That is only the starting point: where the sound waves are made. Those waves love to bounce, to ricochet back and forth around hard curved surfaces so that they grow can in resonance and richness. Inside your head are rooms that you can use, spaces that can help the sound grow in tone. Here's a scribble I've drawn to give you an idea:

Although I draw like a nursery school child, you can see that there's a lot of space in the acoustic face playground (the squiggles are sound waves that are ready to bounce around, growing richer and fuller). I'm going to give you some exercises below to play with but you can add your own. The rules are simple. Sound likes big, curved, hard edged spaces and doesn't like small squishy ones.

Look at the drawing and you can spot some of these nice open spaces and you can play around with how to make them even bigger and more open. I'll also talk at the end about how you can direct your sound into the spaces to fill them with even more sound until they are buzzing in a way that is tangible. 

Now, you'll probably sing at your best if you employ all of the techniques below: jaw relaxed, tongue root relaxed, soft palate lifted, throat open, but let's look at each of them in isolation first.

1) Dropping the jaw or The "Adele." 
For more about how an over active/tense jaw is the singer's number 1 ENEMY, take a look here. But this is one simple and affective idea to instantly change your vocal tone.
- Take two imaginary golf balls and put them between your wisdom teeth. Try singing.  Keep the space between your back teeth. Google a picture of Adele and copy her pouty, face! See how she always keeps her jaw relaxed as she sings (she has a lot of space in her lower face so this helps - maybe that's the key to her voice??)
Note whether your tone has changed? Is it fully, richer? Does it sound lower? Somehow warmer and easier? Do you like it? Did you know that your larynx is interconnected to your jaw by muscles so you have now released it to more freely as it wants to do? 

2) The top of your mouth or the "Stevie Wonder" Wonder! 
Have a look at Stevie Wonder singing. Can you see how he raised his top lip slightly, as if he's found a way to direct the sound higher into his face, using the nasal cavities and raising the roof of his mouth: the soft palate?
Instead of using your top lip, you're going to try something which gives the same result: the inner smile!
As you start to smile, you'll feel your soft palate lift. You'll feel the resonance and sound vibrations rise to the spaces around your cheeks, top teeth and the bottom of your nose as you make more space for the sound to fill. This is a particularly helpful technique to employ as you go higher in your range, especially when you meet the notes in the middle of your range.
Do you like the sound? Is singing easier doing this? Does it help you transition into your middle "register" (NOTE: not "middle voice!" You need various techniques in different parts of your range but you only have  ONE voice. ONE VOICE.)
Is it too twangy? Too bright and crisp? Can you add it in when you need it? 
You can also try biting on an imaginary apple, or smelling something nice as you sing. You can even employ the beginning or a yawn. For more on getting control of your soft palate, read here.

3)  Battling the monster who blocks the cave's mouth ie. THE TONGUE!
The tongue is soft. It absorbs sound. It blocks the space. Did you know that, like the jaw, the root is interconnected to the larynx (voice box) so it can squash it or pull at it so it can't move freely as it needs to to sing.
As singers, we must learn to conquer the tongue and this is one easy exercise to see if it is hindering your sound.
- Stick your tongue out and sing. Easy. Keep it out as your sing a song or scales. Note whether it tries to get involved, to pull back inside your mouth or up. Don't let it. DON'T. LET. IT. Control the beast.
Does it change your sound for the better? If so, you may want to focus on some other exercises for the tongue.

3) The throat or "I can swallow a melon."
The space as the back of your throat is the first place that the sound travels through so it is imperative that it's a nice open tunnel. This is a very easy exercise to feel the space open and, as a bonus, it also helps to control the tongue, relax the jaw and lower the larynx. Hooray!
Try breathing in as if you're swallowing a melon. Feel the lovely wide opening as you breath in. Feel how the air is cold in your throat as you inhale. Now keep that space as you sing and observe whether your throat tries to push and "work" to make sound. We all feel like we want to do something active to help the sound but pushing from your throat (Or tongue. Or Jaw) is not that something. The working action should really be coming from your air flow (starting with the diaphragm and that is another topic). If you take the work load with your throat, jaw or tongue then the diaphragm gives up and goes for a cocktail. 
(For more on airflow, take a look here)

Let me know how you get on with these exercises but remember, you can alter the resonating spaces all you like but this is all secondary to having MADE the sound ie. created the airflow to pass through the chords, getting them buzzing and carrying the sound on and into the spaces.

MAKE sound and then SHAPE the sound.

Now, you've opened up the spaces inside your face and throat, you can direct the sound/airflow into those spaces. For more on how to do that, please take a look at this article on FEELING rather than listening, or  but, if you can feel the space buzzing then you are on the right track. 

This means that the steady stream of support, the air flow through your vocal chords, is always foremost. You can't play around with sound vibrations if you haven't made them!

For more on airflow read here: straw, breathing, blowing, hoover.

 
Years ago, when I was teaching a lot of children, I started using the straw. I'd ask them to sing their favourite song into a bowl of bubbly water and make as many bubbles as they could. I didn't know why I was asking them to do this but they loved these little plastic goddesses and so I made up reasons like it was good for their ear and for their breath support.

When you start doing something, as the saying goes, "you have to fake it until you make it" and that's what I was doing. I had no idea. Most of my teaching was throwing ideas at a wall and watching to see if any would stick. 

Thankfully, many of them did and the straw was one of them.

At the time, I still didn't know why.

The first thing I noticed was the instant improvement in the children's voices after they used the straw. I tried it. I felt like a different singer. Magic. Had I bought 100 magic wands for 99p from Sainsburys? What was happening?

Now, after further exploration as a vocal coach, I know that the straw isn't imbued with magic powers yet it's very real power to improve a singing voice is backed by science and it's not just myself who worships the little plastic sticks. They are used in speech therapy for the most severe vocal problems, they are used by singing teachers like myself and now I hear that some of the West End shows have a thing called "Bubble club".

If you're not in the bubble club, now's the time to get onboard!

For the science based why and how the straw works, read this brilliant piece on the naked vocalist website:
http://www.thenakedvocalist.com/podcast/42/

But, for those in a hurry, I'll attempt to simplify the mystery of why singing through a straw is a good thing to spend some time doing.

1) Without trying, it engages the breath support muscles. As you sing you'll notice your lower stomach tightening in organic and natural support. You'll notice that the stomach works harder as you sing higher. This will fix the muscle memory into your support system so it works automatically when you start to sing.
2) You will be making a sustained steady flow of air, teaching the muscle memory needed for singing. Your chords will not vibrate without a airflow. If they aren't vibrating well then you will struggle to sing. We all hold our breath at times when we're singing. You'll can hear breathing problems in in "tightness" and tone loss (often as you go higher and don't increase the support).
Try putting the straw in water.
Making bubbles = steady support visualised. 
If you fix your attention on the bubbles or just continually blowing through the straw then you're teaching your body the right thing to do.
3) The tube will bounce the sound waves back into your mouth (pharynx) and offer a cushion to the vocal chords so they don't need to fight to control the force of air coming through them. Like a vocal chord cuddle. Crucial for anyone going through nodules or vocal cord injuries.

What is glorious about using a straw is that you don't need to think. Sing through the straw and all the right things will happen. Try singing afterwards and your muscles will remember. Then you'll sing better. 

​Magic.

Try sirens (smooth slides up and down your range), try your scales, try singing the song you're working on. Observe how it feels as you do it and carry that feeling into your singing. Even if you can't do that, your muscles will remember and you'll carry it through anyway. 

Magic.

​