Always & Never

[Moresco]

Originally Posted by Kferd

When we talk about singing from the mouth (at least when I talk about it), we mean pinching the sound of high in your throat so as to put limits on the resonating chamber. And yes, there are certain parts of certain songs where Claudio sings almost exclusively in a very tight, pinched off fashion. This doesn't mean he can't project like a mother, but if you're still learning how to work with your voice this isn't the greatest way to start. It's kind of like how Dizzy Gillespie puffed out his cheeks when he played trumpet, he still sounded fucking amazing but I'd be hard pressed to find any instructor telling a 1st year trumpet student to follow his example.

Well there's a difference between a strained, pinched sound, and a thin, light airy head voice sound. I've never in my life heard Claudio singing in a high pinched, strained sound - unless you count some live performance where he wasn't singing at his best. You'll have to name an instance where you think this has happened like on a record or something.

Yeah, you gotta crawl before you walk and all that jazz, I agree. But there's all this misconception in vocal instruction, like when they say sing from your diaphragm. Just hearing the words "sing FROM your diaphragm" is misleading and it's an extremely misunderstood concept. Throwing words around like support, or cover, or zipping up, etc, gets a new vocalist confused and turned in the wrong direction.

Most of the time when a new vocalist starts going for the high notes, their larynx tends to rise too soon and cuts off the sound, creating that pinched dying cat sound. To compensate for the lack of air and the brain perceiving that the sound is too small, the throat muscles tighten, pitch in, and usually it ends up in a yell or screech if the singer keeps pushing. It actually builds throat muscles up, which is not good at all...and damages the vocal folds.

So when you say, "don't sing from the mouth" you should probably say "do low larynx exercises to keep your throat from tightening up, and keep your larynx down so you get more resonance....keep your tongue loose in the back by doing lip trill warm-ups and keep it flat and down when you sing" etc.

Not trying to be annoying here, I'm just saying all this because when I started singing I got all kinds of stuff thrown at me, and it really wasn't helpful at all.

And while I'm bringing it up, doing vocal scales on the sounds "mum", "goog" and "gug" are decent low larynx exercises. Another great thing to do is "la-ga" and whilest doing these, make sure you keep your chin down and it shouldn't bob up and down as you do them. Put your finger on your chin or look in the mirror when you're working on it. These are good warmup techniques and will help tremendously to defeat the squeezed "throat singing" sound.

Cheers.