Your Vocal Training Guide

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Introduction

Introduction

Preface

I started this project because after years of migraines, and being unable to sing without getting nausea, cluster headaches, tensions headaches, and migraines, the prospect of recording the vocals for the 20 pop songs I had written seemed hopeless. 

I had no clue as to how to go about training my voice. Who can afford a singing coach? I imagined someone singing scales along with a piano.

So I began researching.  Books. Internet. Blogs. Reference materials. Journals. Training courses. You-tube videos.

What I discovered was that the path to gaining control over my singing voice was also the path to treating the health problems and bad posture that had plagued me for decades.

And the tools I found, and employed, began working within weeks. And now, over 2 years later, they are still working.

The initial improvements were phenomenal. The feeling of lightness in my jaw was amazing. So welcome. It seemed so unnatural and so wonderful. I looked in the mirror and saw this guy with great posture, and then realised it was me.  After all these years of being told by girls that I had 'bad posture'. If only one of them had offered me a solution to it. To think the solution was so simple.

People who have undergone the most extensive and expensive treatments for the same problems I suffer will tell you that there is no cure as such, and you will have to be constantly vigilant about falling back into bad old habits, and taking anything for granted. But the improvement is amazing. I have learned the tools to take my health back into my own hands. I have gone from being a migraine martyr, to someone who suffers the occasional migraine. I have gone from taking 2 codeine tablets and living in fear of the next 3 days, to taking 400mg of Ibuprofen, and knowing that I have things more or less under control. Most days I manage to 'massage' and 'posture' out the symptoms before they demand a cure.  And this is really the key to this 'preventative' medicine.

It is the same with singing. The same problems that give me migraines were stopping me and you, from realising our full singing potential. It is all about tension and release. It is about the muscles you condition to relax, more than it is about the muscles that you learn to flex. It is about learning muscle co-ordination, and using less force to get the desired result.

I will divide this book into two sections. One section will deal with the speech level singing method and exercises.

The other section will deal more with muscle tension, breathing, and posture.

However as you will see, they are both intimately connected. You cannot sing with tension. You have to relax your muscles. Singing is more about relaxing muscles, than it is about flexing them.

I want to emphasise to those of you doing these exercises to relieve your problems with TMJ and migraines, that the vocal exercises focusing on the lower or ‘bass’ vocal range, enhance the effects of the more ‘chiropractic’ exercises.

I have cured my TMJ, and have experienced a great decrease in the frequency and severity of migraines, since making the exercises in this book a part of my morning routines. I repeat many of the exercises whenever I feel the tension in my neck increasing, or when I wake up with all the onset symptoms associated with a coming migraine.

I am confident that these exercises will work for you as they work for me. But remember that no matter what we do, we are limited by our holistic inheritance, and can only realise the potential we have. Not everyone has the same set of talents. We are all different. These exercises will help you find your own unique voice, and make the most of it.

Given the great benefits this program offers in terms of posture, breathing, health, confidence, and sex appeal, whatever finally becomes of your voice, you will enjoy great benefits from the new habits you are forming.

I wrote this book, because I wish someone else had written it decades ago, and made it available to me at an affordable price. Remember most singing courses offered cost hundreds of dollars, if not thousands, of dollars.

Please contact me if you work or study in a school that has the facilities to make not-for-profit videos of the exercises in this book. It would make a great school or college project. If I find the time and some ‘models’ to work with, I will do so myself, and post them on YouTube, on my TROONATNOOR channel.

I wish you all the best.

Clarissa Sophia von der Golz

Explanations

I have explained things when I had a good explanation, and when doing so would actually speed up your learning, and add to your understanding. But where I found that the attempt to explain something didn't add value, or was unlikely to help, I left it out.

I've viewed so many materials. They all have their bit to contribute. But none of them explained all the things they could have explained. Or as well as they could have, for those things where such explanations would be productive and would have represented added value.

Wax on, Wax off

Because we are training muscles you can't see, nor directly, consciously, and deliberately isolate and target, we have to target them indirectly. This is why many of the exercises won't make much sense at first. Because they are merely means to other ends. They are not ends in themselves. We use the exercises to target things we cannot target directly. And many of the exercises are only 'bridges' between other exercises.

The exercises are a little 'weird' and you will probably feel self-conscious when doing them, at first. But you will feel the results quickly, and this will motivate you to continue with a regular, daily routine, as you would with any other 'sport'. You will come to associate these exercises with the constant improvement in your voice and singing, and as such you will come to love them as your new best friends.

You will enjoy being a little goofy. People who are competent and confident have no fears of appearing a little foolish. They enjoy clowning around a little. Their self-esteem and confidence can take a pounding without showing any strain. They know what they can do. They know what they are doing and why they are doing it. They don't care what others think.

Your brain will be forming new neural connections as you 'lip roll' or 'Ng-a'.  New neural pathways will be opened up, and new 'lanes' will be built along the Vargas nerve from your brain to your vocal 'cords' and other muscles. You will be unconsciously training, stretching, and developing all the muscles used in singing, and building new neural networks and nerve connections.  You couldn't do this consciously and directly. So we do it indirectly, by way of these exercises.

Remember 'Karate Kid' and the famous ‘Wax on, Wax off'? Well he was learning how to do a quite technical set of moves, without consciously thinking about them. He developed the appropriate 'muscle memory'. And then one day he suddenly he found he could perform lightning quick, smooth, efficacious karate 'blocks'. But as far as he knew, his 'trainer' had just been taking advantage of him, getting him to polish the car, sand the floor, and clean the walls, while teaching him nothing! So don't think we are trying to make a fool of you. No. It is simply the most effective way to train your voice, to improve your vocal range, power, loudness, smoothness, and flexibility. One day you'll be singing, and wonder where all that power, strength, agility, tone, and clarity, suddenly came from!

Keep to the program. Warm up, train, and cool down. Each day. And soon you will begin to see the results in a rewarding singing voice that comes to you as easily and naturally as your talking voice does. In fact you can talk your way through a song, using the same pitches you want to sing, and you will be half-way there already. Remember never to push. Never strain. Work in the range that is most comfortable for you. Have faith that over time you will naturally extend that range to include higher and lower notes.

Start forming (new) good habits today

You will be able to read the description here and put it into immediate practice. And then keep practicing till it becomes habitual.  Till it becomes second nature. Till it becomes a conditioned reflex for you to automatically check for tension, and poor posture, and to immediately correct and remedy it.

I begin most days with about 15 minutes of head, neck, jaw, and vocal cord (fold) conditioning.

Whenever I feel a headache coming on I repeat the head and neck part of the program.

Videos demonstrating the exercises

At the moment I do not have any 'video' to offer. If you would like to collaborate with me in making some, please contact me.  In any case, if you take any word combinations from this book and use them as 'search' terms in 'you-tube' or 'google', you will find plenty of people demonstrating the various conditioning and TMJ exercises.

Singing and Psychology

Singing

And

Psychology

Now just imagine that!

During the course of our exercises we'll be imagining 'drinking in our breath like water,'  imagining saying 'K',  imagining beginning a yawn, imagining being pleasantly surprised and pleased, and imagining laughing hard, imagining smiling inside our throats. The power of imagination has been praised often enough. Now we have some concrete examples we can employ in our daily lives.

As you will soon see, ‘visualisation' forms and important part of what is known as 'The Alexander Method'.

Of course later we will deal with the more physiological aspects of singing. However as most people fail to reach their true physiological limits due to psychological factors, it is only logical to deal with psychology first.

Later the physiological and psychological will re-iteratively reinforce each other and you will discover a wealth of untapped potential that you never imagined, or dreamed of.

This book is about freeing you from limitations.

This book is about freeing you to be the best you you can be.

Self-confidence and Self-doubt

Creative people tend to feel both confidence and self-doubt in changing quantities. We need to sing, as someone put it, as if we feel no-one is listening. Only after we have gained some confidence, and have proven ourselves to ourselves, can we face the potential criticisms of others. And then the challenge will spur us on to greater heights of achievement.

Open yourself too soon to rejection and abandonment, and you take a great risk of failure. So train yourself up before facing this risk. 'Train hard and sing easy', to paraphrase an old arm saying. Don't jump into the battle unprepared. Take your time. Build up your vocal coordination. Remove the tension. Then when you are ready, take a chance. Life is risk, to quote Nietzsche. You've got to take a chance to be in with a chance, to quote one of my own songs.

So let's begin, shall we?

'Positive visualisation'

Many successful people use 'visualisation techniques’, such as ‘Psycho-Cybernetics', to overcome fears, and get themselves in the right 'frame of mind' for success.

I have managed to get myself to 'dive' off the 10 meter board at a public swimming pool. I stung my back, through lack of technique. Ouch!  But the point was that I managed to overcome my fears. So keep this in mind. It can be quite dangerous. Fear can be very healthy. As long as you always have the choice to override it.

Fear is our ally, when it makes us aware of risks and hazards. It helps us avoid unnecessary or unreasonable risks.  But fear is our enemy when it stops us doing things we need to do to succeed. Things which are not dangerous. When it stops us from enjoying our lives to the full.

The most common fear is that of speaking in public. Our pulses race just from talking with one person. We are taking a big risk at offending our interlocutor, making a mistake, losing status, losing acceptance and approval, and so on. So if you multiply this room for error by the number in your audience, it is easy to see why the thought of public speaking can fill us with terror. This fear stops us from performing to our highest standards. It stops us living our lives to the full. So we need to learn to overcome this sort of fear.

The same technique that is effective for overcoming such fears is also generally effective at learning any new skill or technique. It is called 'visualisation'. What you do is visualise yourself successfully doing the thing you want to do. In detail.

or example you could set up a 'dummy' car to practice driving in the peace and safety of your lounge chair.  You could visualise yourself ski-ing, to gain that counter-intuitive skill of leaning forwards, and out of turns.  Or if you need to overcome your conditioned reflexes of reaching for the gearstick with the ‘wrong’ hand when learning to drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road in a foreign country.

In the case of