Tag Archives: practise

Thinning out those cords

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This is the challenge.

We do the exercises, day after day, hour after hour…..nothing is changing. What’s up?

What’s up is likely a combination of two things: Old habits and undiscovered territory.

It takes time and commitment to get to the next level of new discovery. Are you putting in your time? Are you willing to do what it takes?

Then allow yourself to back up for a minute. Get in tune with your body and your voice. Allow yourself to thin out your cords…one pitch at a time.

Is it easy….no, not necessarily. But is it possible. Absolutely!

In the beginning, you must practise thinning our your cords every day……many times throughout the day. Your voice is made up of very small muscle movements. The vocal cords cannot learn to thin out if you only practise for a short time everyday. You must commit to training regularly throughout the day. I suggest 3 times….morning, afternoon and evening to see good results.

Give it a try. Let me know how it goes!

Just Do It!

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I can’t get over it when students come back week after week saying they didn’t have time to practise much during the previous 7 days. I think to myself, my gosh, you are carrying around your instrument inside your throat everyday, how can you not find time to practise it? I remind them they do not need their recorded lesson in order to practise. I show them how to exercise their voice without any background scale.

Sometimes what I hear is, “oh yes, I sing everyday”. Then when I get them to clarify what they mean, they say “I sing to the radio, or in the shower, or at karaoke, or with their band”. Again, I remind them that that doesn’t count. Practising/vocalizing means doing the exercises that have specifically been assigned for your voice to get better. I remind them that singing songs as usual can, in fact, do the exact OPPOSITE of vocalizing properly…..it reinforces your usual coordination that we are trying to improve!
I stress this because so many singers, (and not just kids and teenagers) seem to forget, day in and out, that if a better voice is truly what you want, then you need to follow the disciplines assigned to get there.

Learning to play the piano or guitar well doesn’t just happen without daily practise and attention to detail, and learning how to sing better is no different….except in one very important area….you can’t carry your piano around in your throat!