As a singer, your instrument is different that any other. You can't see it; you can't touch it. So vocal instruction and learning, by necessity, has to be almost completely done by mental visualization and imagery. Unlike keyboards or guitar, you can't look at it and say 'put your fingers here' and that will get the job done. Your teacher has to give you mental images to approximate what's going on inside your voice. It helps a great deal to learn about the physiology and physics of the vocal mechanism, but even so you have to translate that into mental imagery to make effective use of it.
Make no mistake; singing is almost completely mental.
We have to be careful with the words we choose to describe what's going on with the voice and make sure that the terminology is clear and accurate, because we use these words to visualize what's happening inside our heads. For instance, I have been using the words 'chest voice', like many people, to describe what happens in your lower register. It is not completely accurate, however, because the lower register does
not originate in the chest, even though you feel vibrations in your chest when you sing in your lower range (becuse of the larger soundwaves that low notes generate). This can cause people to think that the voice does originate 'from the chest' and they will direct air pressure into that area, causing the air pressure to irritate the throat instead of directing the sound towards the hard palate. A better term than 'chest voice' would be 'low voice' or 'lower register' or 'full voice', neither of which make you think the sound should be aimed lower down towards the chest and throat. A bel canto teacher, Vernon L. Mackie, described the phenomenon as such:
"Chest Voice is an unfortunate term which can lead to much unnecessary confusion. To clarify let me use this analogy. I ask my students to hold the leg of my grand piano, and as I play upwards from the lowest note,they can feel vibrations in the piano leg, ever lessening as the pitch rises. I ask them, is the leg creating the sound? Obviously not! It follows therefore, that there is no such thing as ‘chest’ voice. All voiced sounds are initiated by the vocal cords in the larynx."
He prefers the terminology
'low voice' or
'palate resonance'. So it helps to be as accurate with language as possible when you're figuring out how to train your voice.
By the same token, some words or phrases that help you guide your placement properly may not be literally accurate, yet may help you to sing correctly. As long as the terminology does not induce you to sing
incorrectly, I think that whether it's literally accurate or not doesn't matter if the desired placement is achieved by it. For instance, some people will say that there is no such thing as 'placement' or direction of sound because sound moves at, well, the speed of sound, which is 770 miles per hour; and the sound is produced before you can make a conscious muscular determination as to where it goes. This may be true; nevertheless one can and does manipulate the breathing, muscles, cartilage and tissues so as to achieve a particular vocal effect, such as choosing which register to sing in - or, which set of vocal muscles do you activate to achieve this. So as singers we try to agree on vocal terminology which is the most effective in helping to understand what to do with our voices. Obviously, for instance, you don't
really 'mix' two registers together to get one sound like a cake recipe, but it helps to understand how to achieve this vocal effect by imagining the voice 'mixing' between the strong low voice and the lighter high voice to get a strong pharyngeal sound.
Since singing is conceptual first, and physical second, it is good to get used to the idea that we are training our brains before we train our muscles. Once the brain understands what it is supposed to do, we connect the brain and the muscles by using
muscle memory.
Muscle Memory
This may be the single most important concept to grasp in the development of your voice. Up to this point you may have relied principally on your ears to guide you when you sing. This is a natural tendency, but it can get you into trouble if you rely on your ears exclusively. Since your ears pick up vibrations from inside the meat-box of your head as well as residual frequencies from outside your head, you often do not get an accurate picture of what you sound like. As I said in my last post, you can confuse what you hear in your head with what is heard by others on the outside. The example of the singer who thought his pharyngeal voice sounded like falsetto because that's the way he heard it in his head is a good example. When he listened back to a recording of himself singing in his pharyngeal voice and compared it to the singer he was trying to emulate, he was astonished to find that his voice was much stronger and clearer than it sounded inside his head.
When you are singing live with a band, your connection with your ears can get you into trouble also - unless you make a conscious effort otherwise, your natural tendency is to sing louder and push harder if you cannot hear your own voice over the instruments or PA. This is where muscle memory can save your voice. If you know by
feel what the optimum volume to sing with is, then you can consciously stay at that volume even if you can't hear yourself.
A combination of accurate visualization and muscle memory will ensure your vocal health and strength. When I get students who have not sung very much, sometimes they have pitch problems when they try to access their upper voice. This is
not because they cannot hear the correct pitch! They simply do not know where it belongs in their head. The more you use your voice, the more you are aware where notes are placed.
I like to use the example of a dark room. If you enter a dark room that you have never been in before, you are liable to bump into all kinds of things, and you will have difficulty in finding the doorknob to get out. Most likely, you will use your hands to 'feel' along the wall until you come to the door. Once you have been in that room for a long time, you will know where everything is, and will reach for the doorknob and grasp it immediately. This is how muscle memory works.
As you learn where to place your voice, it's important to make a mental note of where that correct placement is in your head, so you can get to it again. When you are exercising with your teacher, and learning a certain placement to find where the resonance is, so that it 'rings' freely, you may have to try several different placements until you hit on the right one. You will immediately notice how different the right placement feels from all the other attempts. The wrong placements sound muffled, dull, and they feel strained or blocked. Then when you hit upon the 'sweet spot', the sound just soars out effortlessly, as of its own accord. You don't have to do anything except get out of its way and let it happen.
Now that you've found that spot, how can you find it again? With muscle memory.
Every time you take a physical (or mental) action, your brain makes a neuro-chemical record of this action. Your neuro-transmitter brain chemicals make a bridge for electricity to travel across to connect brain cells, creating a 'pathway' for that particular action. Your brain does not make a distinction between a right or wrong action - it simply records it without making a judgment. That is why when you make a mistake when you sing or play, you will probably make it over and over again in the same place. Your brain doesn't know it's a mistake. Every time you repeat an action, it makes a stronger pathway for that particular action. So if you want to 'erase' the effects of a mistake, you have to perform the correct action enough times, and 'dig a deeper path', so that the brain chooses that path instead of the wrong one.
So when you find the right placement, make a conscious effort to remember what it
feels like in your head, not what it sounds like. Try to pinpoint the location mentally so that you can get there again. Then practice on your own and repeat it as much as you can so that you don't have to think about where it goes - you can find it automatically. That's the essence of muscle memory. You want to transfer your conscious thought into automatic response, thus freeing you up to concentrate on the other parts of singing - the creative instead of the mechanical.
It's important to develop your muscle memory, because you can depend upon it in a way that you cannot depend on your ears. The more you use muscle memory to find the right placement, the more automatic it will become, and the more likely you are to sing correctly all the time, not just in your lesson when your teacher is working with you. That's something that many of my students tell me - that they can get it when they're in the lesson, but when they get on stage, it flies out the window, and they revert to their old way of singing. This is where the mental work comes in.
Your old way of singing has been reinforced in your brain through constant repetition. Your new way of singing has not yet become a habit through repetition, so when push comes to shove, your brain is naturally going to take the stronger path - your old habits of pushing, squeezing, straining. You have to make the commitment to making your new technique more automatic than your old bad habits. Until it becomes automatic, you have to have a game plan and stick to it. If you have a transition to make between your low voice and your pharyngeal, start thinking about it and visualizing your placement a couple of bars in advance. When you ride a horse in a hunter competition, you have to know the layout of the course in advance and know where the jumps are so you can prepare your horse to jump over them. If you don' t, and just unexpectedly come upon a jump, your horse may shy or turn away instead of going over the jump, or if it does jump, it will most likely be off-balance and may stumble and fall. Same thing with your 'vocal jumps'. If you do the mental work to prepare yourself to transition smoothly, it's much easier to go to the right place than to suddenly come up on that high note without preparation and have no idea how to get there in time. Then your old habits come in, and you're in vocal trouble. You push up in your lower voice as much as you can to reach the note, and you may even reach it once or twice. But the strain on the muscles controlling your vocal folds will increase and you'll start to crack, break or go flat later on in the song. Your voice will be tired and sore.
Singing correctly eliminates muscle strain and vocal fold irritation, and allows a free, strong, beautiful tone to sail out; but until you make it second nature by using mental preparation and muscle memory, the old habits are going to continue to wreak havoc upon your voice. Understanding not just how, but
why this works is the first step to successfully changing and developing your voice to its true potential.
