I had a discussion with a singer recently, regarding some issues they struggle with in their voice, and what they were looking to achieve.
I have a lot of these discussions, with new clients, old clients, prospects, and just people I meet who then discover what I do for a living!
What I have noticed is that many singers seem to have RIDICULOUSLY unrealistic expectations. This chiefly centres around:
a) what they think voices in general should be able to do
b) what they expect THEIR voice to be able to do
c) how much work it should take / how quickly they think they should be able to achieve such skill
Now, the obvious question that arises could well be “what makes their expectations so outlandish?”. Well, let me give you a look behind the scenes. If I give you a brief rundown on how voices actually function, what it takes to build a voice, and we are trying to do in sessions with clients, I think you’ll understand. You’ll start to comprehend why so much of the ridiculousness stems from a lack of understanding about the voice and how it functions.
How the voice works (Abridged)
Basics
Your vocal folds are two flaps of muscle, mucus and ligament in your larynx (Adam’s apple). They generate all the sound you hear. To sing low notes they contract and thicken, to sing high notes they stretch and thin. At the base level, the ability to move smoothly from a shorter, more contracted state to a longer, more stretched state determines how smoothly one can traverse their range.
Next, the sound your vocal folds generate travels into your vocal tract. This is the portion of the throat between your larynx and your mouth, and is responsible for focusing and shaping all the generated sound into vowels. The more precisely one can shape the vocal tract into respective vowels, and the more smoothly that behaviour can be handled between vowels, the smoother one is able to sing across one’s range.
Range, quality, power and tone, are all by-products of very refined vocal function made up of these components. The two are also highly interactive and interdependent. Even a tiny inconsistency in one can lead to a compensatory error in the other. These slight inconsistencies or functional obstacles manifest as curtailed range, flips, breaks, disconnects, yells, sudden switching into falsetto, etc.
The Process of Building a Voice
As we train the voice, we start with chest voice. Once an build an appropriate amount of weight into the voice (per singer basis), we can move upward. Excess or insufficiencies in the chest voice result in a poor foundation upon which to build the voice, and we can go no further.
Once this foundation is sufficiently together, we can start to move through the bridges of the voice. These are the transition zones between registers (moving from chest voice to head voice, and some complexities therein). Everyone will need to deal with at least their first bridge (which begins at E4 in men, and A4 in women), and most will also deal with their 2nd bridge (A4 in men, E5 in women). A few singers will deal with their third bridge, and usually only pre-pubescents or female singers with very light voices will ever experience their fourth bridges.
Each bridge contains several notes, and it takes developmental skill and time spent practicing that skill not just to get INTO each bridge, but to gain sufficient stability across each one before the next will feel stable enough to begin work on.
How this works in sessions
Every singer’s voice observes these general rules, but each singers voice also has their own unique qualities that must be integrated into the voice. More weight in the chest voice affects the process of bridging in one way, and less weight in chest voice affects the bridging process in another. Other frequencies and qualities exist also, and each in different measure in different voices.
The exercises we pick and prescribe for singers are based on what the singer’s own technical function can/cannot handle. As we progress through a session, about half way/two thirds of the way through the session, their voice should be sufficiently dialled in that it is at the best it can be. If the singer cannot deliver something accurately and well in this highly favourable and controlled environment, then they are not ready to deliver that in a performance context.
This is a very broad-brush explanation, but I hope that even from this cursory overview you’ll now grasp what I’m driving at.
Learning to sing well is nuanced, complex, and takes time.
It isn’t achieved through force, adrenalin, pure self-belief or a series of quick fixes
Building a voice is a long-term endeavour. The greatest singers are vocal athletes, but not in the sense that most think. Great singers are not trying to leverage explosive power and the vigour of youth to lift an extraordinarily heavy weight at the expense of their body. They are not hoping to peak in their career by 25, knowing that their body will be on the downward decline as they approach 30.
Great singers are far closer to endurance athletes, who train at the edge of comfort (but avoiding damage) for decades, to build their engine so it lasts a lifetime. They are closer to sleight of hand magicians who spend decades refining fine motor control to make impossible things happen, and make it look effortless and invisible.
In the discussion that prompted this article, the singer was struggling with their first bridge, but wanted to be able to sing beyond their 2nd and towards their 3rd. This would have been nearly an octave’s worth of extra range, over the hardest portion of any man or woman’s voice. Even for gifted singers, this can often be the better part of a life’s work, and yet they seemed disappointed that I couldn’t give this to them inside of just ONE session.
I could give many more similar examples but I trust the point is sufficiently made.
Conclusion: It takes time, and quality is deeper than just number of notes
Great singing is a wonderful thing, and I wish more would have the work ethic and wherewithal to pursue this in their own voice. Great singing is far more refined and specific than most appreciate. Many singers vastly under-estimate how much refined work needs to be put into training your voice to build, develop and grow range, let alone consistency. Great singers don’t rely on hail Mary’s, flinging their voice at notes praying some of it will stick.
If you have been reading this and would love to experience this long-term quality in your own voice, I’d love to start work with you. All these issues are solveable with good technique and time spent building your voice. If you want to make your favourite songs sound and FEEL much better, you can book in your initial consultation via my booking form right here.