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Tag: Vocal technique
Vocal Care
What is voice therapy?
Voice therapy helps people with voice disorders change vocal behaviors and heal their vocal cords. The therapy helps your voice sound stronger and more like before the voice disorder.
Voice therapy can also help prevent a voice disorder. And people who are transgender may benefit from a type of voice therapy called gender-affirming voice therapy.
What are voice disorders?
Vocal disorders occur when your vocal cords vibrate out of synch or don’t fully open or close.
Voice disorders affect your voice box (larynx), and can cause a consistent or inconsistent change in your voice. The larynx is the area of your throat that contains your vocal cords. It also has the muscles you need to talk, breathe, and swallow.
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Inhaling Exercise – Feel How to Open Your Back Muscles
It’s already strange enough as singers to have “breathing exercises” as everyone knows how to breath right??
Well if that isn’t crazy enough that vocal instructors reteach you how to breath… now we break it down even further to isolate what is happening when we inhale specifically when singing. I promise we are not over thinking this and if you practice your breathing along with your other vocal warm ups, you will see a dramatic improvement in holding that big note or adding some endurance and control to those delicate notes.
Therefore, let’s dive right in to an inhalation 🫁 exercise. This is vital to practice. As we say at Mille Studios, train your body, train your voice. Once you know and understand what your body is doing, you will prevent injury and vocal strain.
Let’s 1st feel How to Open Your Back Muscles:
Try this to quickly open your back for an easy inhalation:
1. Find a sturdy chair and sit with your elbows resting on your knees. In this position, you sit and lean forward, with your elbows on your bent knees and your back straight. You don’t have to bend over far only far enough to allow your back to relax.
2. With your elbows on your knees, take a breath and imagine that you can put the air into your back- as if your lungs are all along your back and you want to fill them with air. You may notice that the muscles in your back feel like they’re lifting and opening for the air to come in the body.
3. Take a few more breaths and notice the sensations of your back opening.
4. When you think you feel your back releasing and opening as you inhale, try opening your back more quickly. Open the same muscles along your back without worrying about inhalation. When you open the muscles, the air comes into your body and you don’t have to worry about inhalation – the inhalation happens because you’re opening the muscles.
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3 Tips For All Singers of All Levels
- Take care of your instrument which happens to be your voice as this blog is all about singing. You can’t go out and buy another set of vocal chords, so be sure to treasure them. This means, water water water 💦 It is so simple but we often skip it or do not realize how much we require. What to avoid before singing? Make sure to never stuff yourself, especially before a performance. Some foods and beverages to avoid prior to singing are mucous producing foods such as dairy, stimulants such as caffeine and spicy foods, soft drinks, refined sugars, chocolate, iced drinks and alcohol. Pro Tip! How to sing or perform when getting over a cold with excess mucous? Hydration in the form of steam (head over a bowl of boiling water, with a towel over your head), is seen by many singers as the very best way to get the folds hydrated, and to shift thick mucus which might clog them up. This saved me in 2018 when I was getting over a cold but had to perform Phantom of the Opera at River Rock Casino.
- Practice, practice, practice and be patient. Practicing scales, improving your tongue-soft palate coordination, repeating tongue and lip trills and simply humming are a few fabulous little warm-up exercises to get your vocal cords loose and ready for singing. To improve your range start your vocal warm ups with humming. Don’t push too hard or strain your voice. Humming is almost like a massage and if done consistently as part of your routine you will be able to increase your lower and higher range.
- Breathing – Never skip breathing exercises. No matter what level you are, every singer will agree that breath control is the most important foundational component to singing well, with ease and it will protect your voice so you can sing for a lifetime. This is what gives power to all your registers. Breathing exercises are an excellent start for those looking to improve their ability to sing and while it is tempting to just skip all the warm ups and learn a song by singing it over and over – you will not improve as much as you would like and often times it will cause injury. Breathing is what will make your tone, pitch and strength to your voice.
Being Consistent Gets Results Thank you for reading and I look forward to building this blog with suggestions from you. I will be taking each one of these tips and going into more detail with specific exercises for breathing technique. Lastly, there are many approaches to singing and vocal coaches will have their methodology. Rather than debating which way is right or wrong, I believe one of the most important parts of finding success goes beyond talent but being consistent. Think of your vocal training just like fitness training.
Welcome to Shannon Studios
Owner and founder of Shannon Studios – Shannon Chung “Don’t worry about failure. Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.” – Sherman Finesilver
Welcome to Shannon Studios – a creative safe space for anyone who has the desire to learn and/or share their artistic/musical knowledge and experience. I have been blogging since 2009 in the area of health and wellness (supplements and fitness), and in May of 2022, I started the Shannon Studios blog in an effort to support my students with a holistic approach to learning vocal techniques as well as the importance of everything that involves giving a complete performance. For the past 20 years, I have performed in every community that I have had the pleasure of being a part of, and I have also greatly enjoyed teaching along the way while raising three beautiful happy children, who also share a deep love and passion for music with me.
I am thrilled to finally begin this new blog venture with the official launch of Shannon Studios. What will make this blog unique is the holistic approach to music as I will incorporate my health and wellness knowledge from my Kinesiology background, as well as fitness training to truly support my students in a holistic approach to being the best version of ourselves. The goal is to have a lifelong journey of singing by taking care of your instrument, body, mind, and soul. In this blog I will share my journey with you as well as tips on how to:
Teaching as well as performing are my absolute passions and I am truly honoured to be able to elevate others in their expression of voice, whether I have students in elementary school exploring their voice for the first time, or work with the well-experienced singer-songwriter who wants to take it to the next milestone, Shannon Studios is ready for you to contact us to book your complimentary consultation for fit.
A bit about Shannon Studios
Shannon Studios aims to be student-focused – it is really that simple. While we are ready with lessons, techniques, and knowledge, we first want to get to know you and your aspirations. We first work together to find a plan that suits your goals, and expectations. Shannon thrives in collaborating to assist students in building not only their vocal technique but also their performing platform. It is thrilling to watch individuals hone and build their voice, as well as their confidence in performing.
When I am not teaching, I continue to perform throughout Vancouver and share and express myself through voice and visual arts (painting, drawing, and mixed media). I love to help others tap into their passions and this is what Shannon is all about… Finding your voice through the arts, and ultimately finding your power to make the world a little brighter.
Did you know? Shannon Studios was originally called Mille Studios. Where does Mille Studios’ name come from and what is its meaning?
This seems like a great place to start, from the beginning. When coming up with the name for a studio for the arts, I didn’t want to narrow in on only voice, painting, drawing, or performing because this studio is about all of my passions, and Mille in French means 1000… and on a simple level, this is the meaning behind the name. This studio embraces the 1000’s of things I love to do or be a part of when it comes to the arts.
But wait there’s more! Next is that I consider the number 1000 to be my Angel number… Angel numbers have been defined as, a series of repeating digits like 222, or 888, etc… and if you are noticing the same series of numbers in different places, some people think this is a divine message coming to you from the universe, God, higher power or whatever power you believe in. For me, the number 1000 seems to follow me, making my world brighter, and therefore, it has become my favourite number. For others, Angel number 1000 has been said it symbolizes that great things are to come when you put forth your best efforts with good intentions.
I thank you for reading and I look forward to building this studio together.