Hi guys. I'm Madeline Harvey and thank you for hanging out with me today. Yeah it's gonna be a really great video. So I thought we would take a look at the crazy notion of what it means to be a wind acoustic instrument as a singer. We are wind acoustic instruments but a lot of times a lot of people don't really know what that means or they don't really know how to leverage that to really work for them. So today we're gonna get in there and we're gonna explore it. We're going to experience more rain and more pitch control more tone consistency more tone quality. The list just goes on and on and on. So let's just dive right into it shall we.
I want you to imagine that your range that consists of notes from here to there. Write each note is its own rung on a ladder meaning each note will be in a very different acoustic space and it's the breath that carries the vibrations into that space.
Now that's kind of hard business because if you've ever played a wind instrument like when I was in sixth grade I played the flute for all of two weeks when I was like This is not for me but it's like I had to focus a lot of air just to be able to create any sort of steady pitch. And that's kind of where we're at. We've got to be able to focus a nice consistent steady even flow of air in order to center and control our pitch and our tone. Now a lot of times what happens with singers is that they know that there are certain pockets for certain pitches in their range and they get a little worried about them because again they know that something is happening in their voice they can't quite control so they either double down and grab a hold of it reinforcing muscle tension or they just go ahead and flip into the next register. They sort of jump over that acoustic space. So what we're gonna do today is a very very simple exercise that is designed to expose everything. So having said that I want you to calm down. It's okay but it is gonna get weird. It is gonna get weird because the very idea that we're going to expose things in your acoustics means that you're gonna find something that's going go a little wildly it's gonna get a little wobbly and that's OK so we've got this this idea that your range is like a ladder and each note is a different rung of the ladder. And we also know that there are certain rungs of that ladder that are broken that we just sort of jump over or they're weak. So we're going to send the breath into those spaces and reinforce them we're going to strengthen them. My favorite way to do this is what I call target practice which is basically gonna sigh I'm going to sigh on pitch and we're going to start kind of low mid low and then we're just going to move through just over over an octave we're not gonna get crazy today we're just gonna get into the exploring of it we're gonna use a very neutral vowel h u h go ahead and say that with me on a side. Notice how you didn't have to move your throat your jaw or your tongue in order to create the sound you just moved only the air a ha there's our objective only the air moves we don't have to distort or demand like all you we don't have to do any of that craziness we're just moving the air so that means that it's going to kind of be a blah kind of tone and unfinished very neutral. Tone right so h you h we're gonna sigh and we're going to discover our resonating ladder now you're resonating louder it might be different from mine you might notice that bass note is in a very different spot in your body as it is in mine and that's OK that's the whole point of this discovery so I'm going to play this play. I just want you to hear it.
Now here's the big takeaway I don't want you to sing it Oh I don't want you to assess it I don't want you to try to demonstrate your vocal quality I just want you to say it out as neutral and as free as possible. OK we're going to do this three times. The objective is to let the air tell you where it needs to go right. You're not gonna put anything anywhere. So here's your mantra. Observe but don't control observe the don't control. Just relax keep your jaw your tongue in the back your throat Nice and soft. All you're doing is exhaling you're not trying to protect the integrity of the tone or the quality of the pitch or any of that you're just going to sigh and in your sighing you're going to set in motion a steadiness of exhale that will center the pitch. So if you notice that it's wobbling it could very easily be one of two things. One is that we're on a rung of the ladder that might be a little unfamiliar for you or two. There might be an inconsistency in the flow of your exhale which again is why we're doing it three times. So we do it again and again and again. It empowers the muscles that govern the breath process. They learn how to stabilize. OK. It's just like doing yoga. You were working the stabilizing muscles. I also want to encourage you don't employ any vibrato.