Today I want to break down this of STILLNESS and why if you can’t understand this or execute this. Singing will feel hard.

I’ll also share some practical exercises that you can use to train this.

Let’s dive in.

So what do I mean by keeping stillness in your voice.

With every vocal you exercise whether it be

[DEMONSTRATE]

There’s two things happening simultaneously

1) The part that moves (the pitch, the cord stretch)

2) But simultaneously there’s the part that stays still (the vowel, the volume)

So part of building your vocal technique is of course getting better at changing pitch, stretching, shifting up into head. But also simultaneously it’s keeping stillness in the other parts of the sound. The vowel, the volume.

Now why is this important?

A lot of this is to build independence between there two parts.

Which means as you adjust for pitch, you don’t HAVE to move your mouth.

You don’t HAVE to sing louder.

Now of course in the context of a song, your mouth will move. The volume will move. But because you’ve done this work, you’ll notice there’s more freedom overall.

So that’s the concept.

Now before we dive into the exercises. For those of you who don’t know me. My name is Ivan, I love making music and also teaching singing to students all around the world. On this newsletter my goal is to make learning to sing simple. If that’s up your lane, consider subscribing. If you want to improve your voice faster, check out the links down below for ways to work with me

If you want to inspire our next episode! Drop in the comments below what you want me to talk about next.

Okay, so for today. Let’s focus on managing the part that doesn’t move. The stillness in the exercise.

Now I think there are 2 ways you can train this in.

1. Stillness within the rep

Have a listen.

[DEMONSTRATION]

Notice as the pitch gets adjust. The vowel, the volume doesn’t have to change so much like this

[DEMONSTRATION]

This is the first way and probably most important to train. This is also why teachers will tell you to darken the vowel, lower the larynx. Support more. Give more, give less. I think these are just ways to keep things the same.

So see if you can do this. Now if this scale is too long/challenging, you can come up with a variation that’s easier for yourself. But the principle is the same.

Try to keep the VOWEL/VOLUME still.

If you notice it moves, try to redo it and reign that back in.

2. Stillness between reps

Now another place that’s important to build stillness is between reps.

Say for example you can do it correctly once, but then when you do it again. The form completely changes. That means we can learn to build this stillness more

A simple exercise doing the previous exercises 10 times and are they changing between reps?

Quick caveat

Now of course, it would be awesome to have stillness across every rep we do. But we need to realise this skillset is something that’s built over time.

Even for me, this is something I’ve been massively focusing with my technique. Because I don’t always get there. But whenever my margins get tighter, I just noticed my singings easy. Because of this independence.

So don’t beat yourself, if you don’t get it right a way. Give it time, and just try to slowly build more of this stillness into the voice.

Anyway! I hope this was useful. My name is Ivan, I’m your Voice teacher. If you’d like to work with me, I’ve got 1-1 lessons over Zoom or a step by step singing course you can work through. Links are down in the description.

Take care!

Extra Links/Resources

🌍 Book Private Singing Lessons here: https://calendly.com/singingsimply 

🌍 Step By Step Singing Course: https://www.singingsimply.com/courses/singing-fundamentals 

🌍 Stream my music: https://linktr.ee/singingsimply

🌍 Business/other inquiries: [email protected]