Humming  mm is one of those activities where we’re making sound, but with the mouth closed  or semi closed, which is what one I’ll show you later. And the reason why I tell you that is because if you’re ever researching, exercises online, you can discern between what is an actually an open vow, like,  ah, or what is a closed mouth like, Hmm. And they have their different purposes.  So we’re going to use closed vows  within the whole range because there’s less chance of us tiring our voices out or hurting our voices.
So they’re quite important to do daily and before you sing, or rather in this point where you’re trying to figure out what’s going on. Â Now when we do these exercises, as you go up from the bottom to the top, allow your voice to break freely into the next register. Try not to make strain your way to, erase any crack or break that is there.
Just accept it and let it happen whenever it’s gonna happen. Okay?  Now, this first one to do on the full range is, is one of the easy ones that we can do. It’s called a lip tril. Now, if you take your fingers and you place them on your, just on your jaw line here  And lift your cheeks slightly,  so it feels like your lips have kind of  just slightly bunched up, not inwards, not loose for,  but just slightly up in that direction,  which will allow you to do this.
And just to create  a voice through that lip.  Now that’s the beginning sound we have, I have got another option for you if that’s kind of tricky, but try it first anyway.  And with that,  from your very lowest note that you can find up to your highest note. So obviously the, the female singers will go much higher.
The guy singers won’t goes high, but from the lowest note possible to the highest note possible.  And just try that for a second. Just go down and up, up to the top  and back down again to the very lowest pitch and repeat  and just repeat a couple more times.
So we’re looking for about a minute’s worth of this,  and now we’re gonna add to this ’cause it’s, it’s fun to do two things at once to kind of speed up the process.  Now we’re gonna use the tongue on this next one. Imagine you were gonna say, ah, a  within that literal like this, And  Give that a go.
Now as we go up,  try and add that into the siren like this  and  give that a go.  And if that feels good,  if that feels like, oh, actually  that makes getting up there kind easy,  then it might suggest that yeah, your, your tongue and your articulators, they could do with some movement within your warmup.
I know when I warm up I need to involve the tongue because I seem to get more flexibility when I add stuff like  vow changes and tongue twisters. But this one helps us to warm up  and we can combine exercises to keep it kind of quick.
If it makes you gag, Â it might be well, well yeah, it might be, that might tell us something about how your voice, is working. Â But don’t worry if you have that feeling somewhat when you sing. then maybe, there’s something to do with the throat muscles that are getting into some kind of swallow, as you feel like you’re going up. But, another way to do this is like this, Â which is a raspberry.
So you might prefer,  or you might prefer  Instead.  Now give that one a go and if that’s a suitable alternative, then use that one instead  and gradually go up for your full range in that one.
If you can’t do this one,  it, it sometimes suggests that the tongue just gets  quite tight or maybe, generally we get tight in this area when we are sing and that holds us back from a lot of stuff. so, don’t worry, but persevere with it and it might work. Another option to try is,  which is rolling your eyes,  and now you could give that a go. And so that’s three alternatives for you to explore  your full range.
And we are using things there that have external vibrations. There. It’s the lips  there, it’s one part of the tongue in the lips, the tongue. Then  when we do this one or when we have an external vibration, it means we have to keep some level of consistency and flexibility in the muscles that we’re using up here.
So it’s really great to persevere with these exercises. ’cause once you can do them across your full range, you’ll know you’re getting in control of tensions that might interrupt your voice. So it’s really interesting, to try and persevere with this stuff.
we need to explore your character. I Â presume a lot of you might get that reference down there. but there are plenty of techniques out there to help us connect to our more like gregarious side.
And they usually start with character. after all, like more intense singing, isn’t really underpinned by emotions like meh, you know, those kind of things. There’s some level of emotional energy underneath that’s fueling the process of, of intense singing. Â So that means that some common, ways of doing this that you can explore would involve things that involve character or rather using speech. Â Those things can be like, hey, taxi, those kind of things.
where we can be a New Yorker hailing a taxi that’s used by, a famous teacher in New York. Â We can do something like a happy yell, which is like, oh, hi, hi there. You know, when you’ve seen some over the road and you’re like really chirpy? Â You can try that one. Try a happy yell of someone you’re really pleased to see. Â It’s not like you’re like, oh, hi. It’s not like trying to aggress, it’s just like, oh, hi. It’s that kind of thing with a particular energy.
And the reason why it’s important to try like, hey, taxi or oh hi,  is because it helps you to find specific characters that work well with you and your voice and the way you are,  because it’s quite, quite a slog to belt high notes when you don’t use your voice in that way in real life. like I said earlier, like the speech aspect. So we have to, in a comfortable way, start to use things that aren’t too aggressive  that generally have, a nice or silly emotion behind them actually, to help us get forward on this.
ability to do, high intensity singing.  Another one would be a baby cry,  That kind of thing. which as you might notice is, is quite intense in a different way. It’s not like really  loud when we do it, but it seems to carry, really intensely over noise.
so Baby C cry is something that we can use. also something excited or shaky.  Like, I’m really excited to tell you something and I’m about to bring over, but I’m not gonna really lose it, but I’m, I’m nearly there.  That’s another voice quality that we can use. So  by all means, take that song segment that you’ve already had and that we’ve woo that we’ve, warmed up that is,  and try and sing it with a sentiment.
Now, first of all,  take one of these at random. Take baby cry, oh hi,  or, or a really shaky, excitable person  And just read your lyrics  in that way. So if it was like, I always sing Donnie Hathaway, I always sing like a song for you. I’ve been so many places in my life and times, right? So if that was a happy yell, it’d be like, I’ve been so many places in my life and times, you know, that kind of thing.
Or I’ve been so many places in my life and die, you know, that kind of thing where it’s baby cry. Â Use one of those tactics to see if in the same key or rather up in the same sort of place. One of those sentiments can help you to ignite a different sound or a different sensational function in your voice. Â So give one of those a go. Â Even as, if I was gonna sing that same song and it was excited, it would be like, I’ve been so many places in my life and times, it’s like, really, I’m really excited.
Similar thing is start to apply that to a melody and see if it helps you or it hinders you. Â Let me know what you discover. Â Yeah, John character means attitude. Â Attitude could be a good way to, to look at different types of character traits if you like.
I like what John says. recently I’ve been talking to my cat in a higher falsetto voice seems to have helped the higher range. Â Why? How you doing? Hello? That kind of thing. Yeah, I do that to my cat as well. Â But last week my cat had diarrhea, so I didn’t talk to him like that at all. Â I was just going, you, like that and instead, which helped with my aggressive singing, I imagine.
but yes, incorporating things into speech translates to singing. They are a use of the same apparatus, right? So within that,  whether it be an exercise of an excuse to raise your voice every day  in some way that’s like a controlled environment.
You use a character, research characters online, Â cry, sob, any emotional attitude, you can start to call words and start to call phrases and lyrics for very short amounts every day. And explore a different way of using your voice that’s not normally your, character or personality. Okay?
