Sing With More Power (Fundamentals Singing Lesson For Beginners)

How to have more power in your voice. This episode is going to be another fundamental lesson when it comes to building your voice similar to our previous episode about isolating the stretch. Not only is it cool to be able to sing with more power, but it really highlights an important fundamental in VOCAL technique which is going to make you much more consistent as a singer.

Now I’ve actually covered this topic briefly in episode 2. But today my intention is to dive deeper, and help you understand the core mechanism in our voice that allows for more power. And no, it’s not just about tensing your abs or opening your mouth more.

Let’s go a bit deeper!

Real quick! 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.

1. Breath support

Let’s tackle a quick misconception first. When it comes to building more power.

One of the most common advice is to sing from the belly more. Add more breath support. Clench that BUTT! Or you may have heard, that you need to open your mouth more.

Whilst this is well intentioned advice, there’s a lot of us here who might find this advice confusing and frankly not see results from it. Some of us might even start pushing and yelling.

The reason why, is simply adding more air, tensing the abs hard, opening your mouth ALONE does not create more power.

When you start to understand how the voice works, you’ll realise why this is the cause. Let’s talk about this.

1. More cord closure/connection

In the past few episodes, I’ve talked a lot about isolating the stretch of the folds. This is the fundamental mechanism that allows us to sing higher notes. Which basically means without this, singing high notes would be VERY difficult. A lot of the work I do with my students is helping them understand what this mechanism feels like FOR them.

Now when it comes to power in our voice, there is also a fundamental mechanism. Without this, you won’t be able to build more power.

This is CORD closure. Some might use the word connection or compression.

In simpler terms, the more our cords press together and resist airflow. The stronger the buzz they will create. Think of letting out air in a balloon. Usually the air will just gush out. However when you apply a bit of pressure to the neck/hole. It will start to create this high pitch squeal. It’s this tandem of air releasing against a resistance that creates this sound.

This is also why singing with power is not just about the breath or opening the mouth more. It is coordination both the closure in tandem with these other factors especially your breath.

This means as your cords close together more, they will often recruit a more air pressure and vice versa. This is how I define breath support. It’s this matching between the cord closure AND the breath beneath it.

HOW/EXERCISE

So what can really help is learning to isolate what more cord closure actually feels like for you and also it’s nuances. Your cords aren’t either CLOSED or NOT closed. There is a gray scale here. Here’s a simple exercise.

Let’s start off by choosing a note that’s comfortable for us. What we’ll do is repeat this note on the word MOM. You can choose another one too.

We’re going to start on the softer side.

Now to encourage more power, I’m going to let the consonant M to do more of the work. As I try to sing with more power I’ll add a bit more pressure behind my lips.

Now try to do this with me, and observe what’s happening in your body.

What does this feeling of more POWER feel like for you? What is that SPECIFIC sensation?

For me personally, I notice an increase in the buzziness of the sound. This is a thickness that doesn’t feel strained.

Now it’s important to not change anything else.

For example some of us might DARKEN the vowel. Some of us might squeeze the throat and think it’s more power. But all of these are distractions from the true mechanism which is the squeezing of the cords. You need to learn what this feels like!

Also - most likely, your perception of this mechanism will take time to evolve! I’ve noticed that as I keep working on these exercises, and really pay attention. How I feel it keeps evolving as I filter out a lot of the unnecessary sensations.

That’s a wrap!

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Extra Links/Resources

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