Fact number one:
You face a temporary obstacle. Obstacles should be considered a blessing in disguise. Why? Because the vocal node will eventually teach you how to sing well, since you won’t be able to sing comfortably in your throat. Therefore, it will search until it finds the answer. That’s exciting! Setbacks and setbacks cannot affect morale if viewed this way. There is a saying: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Maintaining a positive attitude in the face of obstacles is part of a successful solution to all of life’s problems.
Fact number two:
It is impossible to learn to sing from exercises on a piece of paper or on a CD or DVD. Why? You need a teacher with the right knowledge to give you specific advice on your specific problem at the time. Having said that, I will still give some exercises that can help and explain them so that you can understand something.
Fact number three:
There are very few good singing teachers. Those who are famous are not necessarily good. You, however, will not know who is good or not due to lack of experience. I suggest going to a speech therapist to retrain your voice, there are more good speech therapists than good singing teachers, the voice that speaks is the hand and the voice that sings is the arm. If you speak forward into the resonators using your breath, chanting will follow as the next easy step for you.
how the diaphragm works
Rock, blues, country, pop singers use the natural speech function of the diaphragm, where the diaphragm contracts on exhalation and expands on inhalation. Locate the front of the diaphragm by placing your hand horizontally just below the last rib to the waist. The hand will feel a three to four inch area that goes to the waist. The sides of the diaphragm are to the right and left of the waistline. These two areas will need to become elastic with the inhalation and exhalation movement described below. Don’t overdo abdominal exercises because if your abs are too tight, you don’t have flexibility with your diaphragm! Many singers think of the diaphragm as the abdominal muscles or the stomach muscles. It is not, the stomach is not the diaphragm. We use the diaphragm to sing. The stomach is for digesting food. It is true that in certain schools of breathing such as yoga, the abdominal muscles relax when inhaling. Much less, however, for singing. In fact, it’s okay if the stomach muscles remain toned, not contracted, but toned. Allowing the abs to relax on the inhale is sometimes allowed, but mostly for very high notes. For the rest of the range, the diaphragm is the right muscle to develop and expand with the air.
Support for classical singers is different from that for singers of any other genre. Classical singers use compressed air, so the function is actually the opposite. The support for the classical singer is with the diaphragm muscle coming out on exhalation, which is the opposite of the natural function. However, some classical singers support the input of the diaphragm on exhalation with good results. I will talk about the natural function of breathing, which is mainly used by non-classical singers.
Before starting the exercises, do twenty minutes of brisk walking without stopping (or as many minutes as you can). As you walk, exhale using the SSSS sound or the SCH sound. Count to four (exhale) and allow four counts to inhale. This will make the breathing mechanism (diaphragm) work properly. If it’s raining do the same by walking on a treadmill or on the spot. Then, as you walk and time your breathing, notice your diaphragm muscles and how they work. You will have to recreate this. Notice that you are not breathing high in your chest and your shoulders are not rising and falling. You’ll also notice your abdominal muscles stretching as you inhale with this type of aerobic exercise. to sing try to concentrate on the diaphragm, both in front and on the sides. The back of the diaphragm can be located by placing the thumbs on the sides of the waist and the fingers on the back. It’s nice if the back of the diaphragm also expands for high notes.
Exercises to understand breathing:
1. Tell someone to shut up using the sound: SCH. Get all the air out. Now see what muscles were used when you did that because you will have to recreate the same action when you sing but instead of saying SCH you will be singing using that level of diaphragm air.
2. The following exercise is the same but brief. Again use the SCH sound. Do this five times staccato (very short) and notice that the diaphragm moves in as you exhale and then relaxes out. Don’t think about taking the air as it will happen on its own. Try to understand this function by doing this exercise, as you will have to recreate it in speech. Put your hand horizontally in front of the diaphragm (below the last rib to the waist) and do both exercises again, seeing what happens.
3. Now do the same as above on the SS sound. You can do these exercises throughout the day.
Combining breath with sound:
1. After understanding how the diaphragm works as a muscle that generates the flow of air, it is necessary to be able to speak using the nasal resonator and make that speech exhale in the same way that the sound SCH was exhaled. You will have to help the diaphragm to enter the word and then let it relax on its own. When you try to speak by helping the diaphragm to enter the speech, you will find that it is more difficult and not as automatic as when you used the sound: Sch. Then allow the diaphragm to relax on its own. In doing so, the air enters by itself.
2. Now to find the nasal resonator: make the sound Mm hm as if you agreed with someone and did not speak but made this sound. Now put your two index fingers a half inch to the right and left of your nostrils. See if you can feel the sound there when you say: MmHm. Now say Mm hm and the word one. Say the word one at the same pitch level as the Mm hm. You may need to say the word one as a question, as it is normal to drop your tone. You don’t want to drop the tone. No doubt you are talking in the lower part of your throat without the correct use of breath that has caused the problem in the first place. This is an exercise that the famous physician Morton Cooper uses to cure Asphonic Dysphonia (strangled voice) which the medical profession has called incurable. Remember that this exercise must go hand in hand with the breath as described above. When you can say Mm Hm one, use diaphragmatic movement going in on the exhalation and then relaxing again to allow the air to go back in. Remember that the muscle relaxes after speaking, not during, as in the SCH exercise. Feel the sound resonate across your face at the sides of your nose and cheekbones, and you’ll be right. You can increase the number of words you say like Mm Hm one, two only when you have mastered both breathing, exhaling from the diaphragm, and speech, at the level of the nasal resonator. It must become a habit for your normal daily speech.
Then you can start trying to do the same with the singing voice using simple exercises with the diaphragmatic exhalation and the nasal resonators. You can start on a note using the same function as the Sch exercise but using the consonant H preceding the vowel. The vowel e will become He. A will become Ha, etc. This is to ensure the airflow that will ensure the H. Start with the staccato exercise on a note that is at an easy pitch level for you and then hold the no for two, three, and more beats, etc. while maintaining airflow from the diaphragm to the resonator.
You can do the breathing exercises for hours, but when you add the voice you need to start very slowly with five to ten minutes, not more, but several times a day. You can do them four or five times a day but only for this short period of time. Later you can increase the practice time a little more. Do not sing your songs until you have completely changed the use of your voice. Good luck!