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NEW ARTICLES

Sing Your Part Smart Handouts

Personal Readiness Evaluation

Checklist for Singers!

Finding Your Starting Note

INTERESTING TOPICS TO READ

Quartet Promoting!

Hints for a Successful Quartet

Ardeth's Breakdown of Judging Categories

Singing Smart - Zacchera

Section Leader Workshop - Gorton/Ashmore

Section Synchronization - Kirkpatrick

How to Be a Great Baritone - Kout

OUR MISSION STATEMENT
Northwest Harmony Women’s Chorus shares a love
of singing a capella four-part harmony through
performance, quality education,
lasting friendships, and fun.

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LEARNING NEW THINGS

Building Your Voice:
The Good News-Bad News of Being a Singer

As with many musical instruments, the voice has some advantages over other instruments, and some disadvantages. First, let's look at the advantages:

1. The voice is smaller and easier to carry than a piano, tuba, cello and even a flute or piccolo.
2. The voice can be warmed up in the shower or while you're driving to an event. (Try that with a timpani, clarinet or bassoon!)
3. The voice has unique acoustical qualities that still have not been duplicated by electronic instruments.

Now, let's look at some of the disadvantages:

1. You can still play the piano, guitar or violin when you have a sore throat, bad cold or cough. Not so with the voice.
2. You can't just take the voice apart and store it in a protective case until the next time you need it. It's always "out and vulnerable."
3. The voice has to be maintained and exercised in order to work when called upon.
4. The voice is strongly affected by the condition of the rest of your physical body (food, rest, exercise, stress etc.)

What does this mean to the average singer? Simply this: The voice is wonderfully unique. It is also a part of your everyday life whether you like it or not, and you can't ignore it and just assume it will be there when you need it. The voice is also the only instrument that depends on all of the following: Your posture, breathing mechanism, larynx, resonators, articulators (lips, tongue and teeth) and gestures and expression to create a great performance. Unlike all the instruments listed above, your voice gets used every day, 365 days a year. It can be damaged by poor speaking habits, poor posture or breathing or just wear out. Even noise induced hearing loss can affect how you use your voice.

The bottom line is this: What we call the voice, is really a combination of coordinated, complex systems of the body, including the mind and emotions of the singer. You need to care for all of these areas if you want to be a good, consistent singer.

Be good to your voice and it will be good to you. If, like most singers, you don't have a routine for care and maintenance of your voice it's not too late to start. Consider what would happen if you began using the drive-time in your car to learn about, and apply good principles of posture and breathing. Or, if you started, or ended your day with a 15 minute vocal warm-up and workout.

Cooling Down Is . . . COOL!
From a reader: I noticed that when I am through singing, even when using the right techniques, sometimes my voice would feel irritated afterwards. Then, I started doing cool-down exercises, like bubbling and humming, and I noticed that it reduced those effects. Can you explain what exactly takes place?

From Vocal Coach: The VOICE is really a collective series of very PHYSICAL systems in the body. (Posture, breathing, articulation etc. using dozens and dozens of muscles.) Warming up these areas helps maximize performance and minimize injury. Cooling down the voice is equally important. It is like an athlete cooling down their body/muscles and allows the PHYSICAL voice to return to normal SIZE, SHAPE AND TEMPERATURE gradually. It's the safe and smart way to treat the voice.

THIS IS ACCOMPLISHED by using much the same exercises that begin a good warm-up. Humming, singing simple scales that begin covering a full octave and end up as five-note scales in the medium-low range of your voice.