Monday, July 13, 2009

Vocal Singing Exercises & Scales

When you have mastered your breathing, the following free singing exercises will help you on the path to improving and understanding your voice.

The key to a good rehearsal is to ensure that you achieve the following before starting:
Abdominal breathing
Good posture
Breath during natural pauses
Keep your chin level
Keep your knees loose
Keep your head up
Keep your shoulders sloping and relaxed
Keep your toes pointed forward with your weight on heels and soles
Keep the front of your neck loose - don't stretch it
Keep abdominal muscles relaxed
Keep your back muscles relaxed
Avoid holding your shoulders lifted and puffed out
Relax and SMILE.
If your having a bad day or feel tense and stressed, this can affect your practices and performance. To help achieve consistancy do a few Relaxation Exercises before your rehearsal. If it all starts going horribly wrong, take a break, relax or do something else and try again later.

Stand with your shoulders relaxed, arms by your side.

Breath in slowly.

Sing one note, holding the note for as long as you can without becoming short of breath.

Do NOT suck in your stomach!

Repeat the exercise with different notes using doh, ray, me, far, so, la, te, doh.

Use different mouth shapes and vowels like "ooh", "ee", "a" and "aah"

Try singing up and down a scale (called an arpeggio).

Sing short notes (known as Staccato) as well as long ones.

Practice along with our free online midi scales!!


animated mouth Sing phrases to improve diction: Examples:-
'I really love to sing' (going up the scale)
'Do,re,me,fa,so,la,te,do'
'La, Lo, Le, Lo'
'Ma, Mo, Me, Mo'
'Ta, To, Te, To'
'Hi, He, Ha, Ho, Hu'
'Qua, Quo, Que, Quo'
'Fluffy Floppy Puppy'
'Lolli, lolli, lolli, lolli pop'
'Bring back the boys big brown blue baseball bats'
'Sally saw silvester stacking silver saucers side by side'
(c-e-d-f-e-g-f-a-g-b-a-c--b-d-c up the scale then down the opposite way)
(suggested by Erica Zweig posted to Vocalist Newsgroup.

To feel the difference between raised and normal positioning of the larynx, place your fingers gently on your throat and try to talk as if you were a child or use 'baby talk'.

Record your efforts, notice the notes that do not sound right and concentrate on those until they do! Listen to the difference in your recordings over the next few weeks practice sessions to hear the improvement in your voice.

(Source: www.vocalist.org.uk)

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