Professional musicians who lead musical groups can get interesting requests and feedback. There is a lot of singing language floating around out there spoken by many. It can be confusing and not terribly easy to understand by civilians. However well intended, problems can result from implementing various suggestions especially with less advanced singers. From these popular singing adages: tension and restriction can come over dropping your jaw, lack of breath flow can come from forced singing from the diaphragm, affected timbre can come from excessive pinging into the mask, and back muscle pain can come breathing into your butt (lol.)
And the list goes on….
So from the above requests, my suggestions are below:
1. What exercise helps with harmonizing?
Harmonic Warmup:
Spell out arpeggiated chord Bass F3 Tenor C4 Alto A 3 Soprano F4
Sing on Mee May Mah Moh Moo
Modulate and module vowels to get blend across the sections
Vowel placement is suited to this exercise as you try to get a homogenized sound
- How can we work on major and minor scales?
Pitch Orientation: (Solfege on diatonic major and minor scales)
Major: Do re mi fa so la ti do
Minor: do re me fa so le te do
- How do you teach support?
Breathing basic demo: Take breath in expanding ribs and release on Ch or Sh or FF 5x (hold last one to expel the air) to demonstrate inhalation and exhalation
Breath Support: Buzz or rr on 1-5-1 for breath support. Extend scale degrees as ability increases.
- How do you explain placing chest, head and nasal cavity and work range?
Range Exercises:
Fah 1358531 or 1358108531 or 81058351 to move air and access low and high registers
Extend by using 5 Italian vowels (fee fay foh fah ah ah fee
This will help singers locate high, middle and low along with connecting the sound to breath with the non voiced consonant. I avoid talking about nasal cavity as it becomes problematic with less advanced singers. I find the right cavity integration is accessed as the sound is core sustained on free breath. I generally stick to accessing head and chest voice using these arpeggiated exercises.
- How do you work with Diction?
Work on enunciating vowels and consonants through work on choral pieces.
Teach enunciation via articulation (flexible and non tense lips teeth and tongue)
Locate challenges in diction and create exercises for warm up that focus on proper execution e.g. frontal l and r, modified Italian vowels
akintsucrooner 