Use this exercise to free up your range (singing class for beginners)

“It is not the daily increase but the daily decrease, hack away the unessential.”

This is a quote by the late Bruce Lee and I think it captures beautifully a big lesson that I’ve had with my voice. And that I’m still having.

And it’s this.

Often when we’re learning to develop the voice as singers, there’s this mentality of

What else do I need to do?

What technique do I need to learn?

What do I need to engage?

How can I support it more?

However I think a question EQUALLY worth asking, is what don’t I need. What don’t I need to engage. How can I focus on DOING less but doing it really well.

Now I get this is still sounding quite vague, but if we come back down to the fundamentals of the voice.

Now I’ve gone on about this again and again but all this means is can I find a clean stretch/thinning out of the vocal folds WITHOUT any other unnecessary muscles engaging. This is what allows you to start navigating your range with more freedom.

So for today, I want to share with you all an EXERCISE that has been helping me hack away the unessentials. So that you can focus on the main movement when it comes to developing technique.

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.

So here’s the exercise

STEP 1: I want you find a pattern or a scale that you can go up and down quite easily

Maybe it’s a simple slide near the bottom of your range. Maybe it’s a long scale.

It doesn’t matter.

As long as it’s a scale that allows you to go up and down quite easily. That’s fine.

Now I want you to do it once, because I want you to observe the feeling of the low note and the high note.

STEP 2: Once you have this feeling, I want you to try jump from the low note to the high note

Now if you’re like me, you’ll notice there is some additional “resistance” or “stiffness”

This is the unessential.

These are muscles or extra movements in the coordination that don’t need to be there.

It could even be just a lack of engagement of the right muscles.

Regardless, see if you can do it a few times, without this resistance.

Once you’re there. You can even speed it up.

STEP 3: Once you overcome this resistance. I want you to come back to that original scale and do it again.

See if you can find that same feeling.

Now you might not get rid of this resistance entirely in one go. But I think this is a exercise worth coming back to consistently

Because what it’s doing is working the coordination

1) Working the coordination from a detail manner

2) Also from a macro lens.

And by nature, making a very quick change in the pitch involves stretch the cord very quickly. And gives no time for the unessential. Otherwise you don’t make the pitch.

Anyway! That’s all. If you found this episode useful, please give this podcast a 5 star. If you’d like to work with me, links are down in description.

Apart from that I’m Ivan, your Voice teacher and I’ll see you next week for our weekly episodes.

Take care.

Extra Links/Resources

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