Karaoke Forums

Hi,

I just bought "Vocal Power" by Jim Gillette (previously from Nitro). It is an instructional DVD consisting of vocal exercises to strengthen and extend range (opera exercises according to the author) as well as exercises to learn to scream in pitch without strain (the guy can break wine goblets with his voice). Anyway, I got it from Metalmethod whose guitar instructional dvd's I have enjoyed.

I have a fundamental question for anyone with classical training. The first exercise on the dvd consists of singing scales of "ee's". He then demonstrates and instructs that the ee's should be sung with a wide smile to get the proper resonances. According to the books I have read I thought that the face should be relaxed when vowels are produced? Before I practice too much with this DVD I just want to make sure I don't practice stuff I later want to unlearn?

So, please all you knowledgeable, classically trained people please chime in...

Thanks,

Morten

I'm not classically trained, but I am qualified in teaching children to sing...

In fact I run a centre for the development of performing arts for 11 - 21 year olds, and when we run our vocal training workshops, we generally teach to sing the "ee" sound with a wide smile... Hard vowels, such as "e" in "end" should be sung with a relaxed face, but for the resonance and vibratic "ee", you need the tensile, wide, mouth...  

Thats how I was taught (although not classically), and thats how we teach, with our students often winning regional competitions etc, so it seems to work...

Hope that helps in some way...  I'm sure some others will agree and some will disagree... Thats the way it always is, but there is my tried and tested opinion

Brett x

Brett,

thanks for your quick reply! That is 1-0 to Jim Gillette.

Morten

I've also heard that 'singing with a smile' (so to speak), improves resonance and basically makes your voice sound better. In fact, our voice teacher (now, here I'm talking about grade-school 'glee club' ok... so don't be too impressed heheh) used to tell us to always open our mouths to form words as much as possible. In other words, if you're singing an 'o', your mouth should be an 'o'. I think it's mostly 'vowel sounds' she was concerned about.

She was pretty good too, so I had a lot of respect for her. Some of the things she tried to teach 'us' back then, have helped me in these later years when I started to actually become 'serious' about my singing.

Your dvd sounds interesting Good luck with it!

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Great insight!! Thanks Elisha and syberchick.

Morten

ooh very nice descriptions, there Jazzy!!

Have you ever considered offering some downloadable audible lessons online for folks? Even if you charged $10/each... it could be worth your time. You could give examples, like those little clips you put uploaded once in SS. I think folks would really be interested in them.

I don't like the use of the term "screaming" because that sounds bad for your voice. I would have to read it in context to understand.

Just because your face is relaxed doesn't mean that your mouth shouldn't be open (probably what he means by a wide smile).  In general, when you sing on an "EEE" vowel it should be more like "IH" as in "sit" because otherwise it comes out sounding very EEEEEEEEEEE

I agree with what Elisha said.  It is the "inside smile" that I was thinking when you said that, too.  By wide he probably means making sure to open your mouth. If you don't open your mouth, the sound can't come out!  The "inside smile" is to open up inside and make the sound more forward.  You want to open your mouth but you don't want it wide at the corners because that can spread the sound.  Open it wide vertically, not horizontally.  This may seem weird at first but you will get used to it.  Just make sure  your jaw muscles are relaxed and not tight.  It's kind of like a yawning feeling.

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