Paule

Introducing the RVR Mind Over Matter Programme

Are you serious about rapidly removing all physical and psychological barriers that can impact on your ability to reach your maximum potential?

The simplest definition of Hypnotherapy is: The combination of a state of trance (i.e. Hypnosis) with therapeutic suggestions which are designed to make changes to the thoughts, words and actions of a person. Usually the changes will be in behaviors, but may also be in attitudes and beliefs.

When your conscious mind believes one thing and your unconscious mind believes something completely different, there is a powerful disconnect that is created in your belief system which will seriously sabotage your efforts to develop new skill sets and achieve your most meaningful goals.

This programme uses guided, custom-designed hypnotic suggestions that are aimed at your subconscious brain. These hypnotic suggestions rapidly help you break old, unhealthy performance habits by forming powerful new neural pathways in the brain that support and encourage higher levels of performance and achievement.

This programme is a “must have” to help you avoid the pitfalls of self-sabotage and is ideal for any musician that is looking to supercharge their natural performance abilities from the inside out. It’s perfect for anyone who lacks the belief in themselves and wants to feel better and more confident about taking the big, courageous steps they need to achieve their career and performance goals.

Clients also use this programme to achieve successful results when they need to get over stagefright or have trouble remembering lyrics.

Your concious mind, your subconcious mind and your body must all be in alignment and share one clear vision of purpose. This will help you to rapidly achieve higher levels of performance and supercharge your motivation and drive to achieve your most exciting career goals.

Book this coaching package

What is effective goal setting?

Fact: 90% of people that set exciting, substantial goals to improve important areas in their life fail miserably and quit on their dreams inside the first three months into their goal plan.

Fact: 10% of people from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, often coming from absolute poverty or struggling middle class families, set the same kinds of transformational, life-changing goals. They not only achieve their initial goals, but they then go on to exceed them and live a fuller, more satisfying life that is enriched in every way.

When you achieve substantial goals, you open the door to a brighter future for you and your family. Achieving your goals creates a bulletproof level of self confidence and boosts your belief in yourself. This helps you create a wealth of new personal and economic opportunities for you to pursue life on your own terms.

My background

During my formative years. I was bullied a lot at school; primary, intermediate and college. I suffered many insecurities about myself, both my self confidence and self esteem were flat-lined. I became determined to improve my character and develop personal courage and belief in myself so that I could feel better about my life.

Consequently I would set goals to learn and develop new skills to improve my life, but i would fail to achieve my goals. This happened a lot during my teenage years.

I started reading many books on the subject about how to improve personal performance and the power that your mind has over your body in regards to governing your level of mental focus and physical abilities. I became fascinated with the science of improving personal performance.

I began to observe my best friends and I realized that it wasn’t just me that was failing to achieve meaningful set goals. My friends were struggling and failing to achieve their meaningful set goals too.

A light bulb went off in my head because in that moment, I realized the real reason my friends and I failed to achieve our set goals was not because we were lacking the physical DNA to be successful or star performers, it’s because our varied goal setting methods were completely ineffective. We were all setting goals using our own methodologies and none of us really knew what we were doing.

This marked the turning point for me because i became determined to double my efforts to uncover the essential steps of effective goal setting.

It’s not enough to follow one or two steps of goal setting. You’ve got to know and follow all the steps of effective goal setting to the absolute letter if you want to achieve substantial goals. It’s all or its nothing! To quote from Karate Kid the movie, “Nature rule Daniel son, not mine”.

And to be honest, it became my biggest obsession in the days before the internet to visit libraries in my spare time and buy loads of books on the subject of mind power and goal setting.

The more I read, the more I understood that yes, the methodologies were by different authors, but the essential steps were always very similar. I also realised that by the time I had read my twentieth book on the subject, I was closing in on establishing the key list of effective goal setting steps that I needed to follow to supercharge my goal setting. Steps to get my mind, body and spirit in agreement to take bigger and bolder actions and achieve my life’s most ambitious goals.

I began rewriting my goals. This time, I followed all the steps i had learnt from my studies. Results began to happen! I stayed on track for longer and longer periods of time, and achieved goals I had otherwise felt were out of my reach. I still had goal failures but not nearly as often.

Now I knew that I was on the right path. I became positively obsessed with refining my effective goal setting process and wracked my brain to discover essential critical steps that were still missing from the methodologies that I had read, or the authors were hesitant to put into print.

I will spare you the ten thousand hours of research, study and leg work that I went through and simply say, “Eureka!” I discovered the missing steps that you must incorporate into effective goal setting to allow you to supercharge the effectiveness of your goal setting program.

What’s the difference between the 90% that consistently fail to achieve their goals, and the 10% that overachieve and go on to realise their wildest dreams?

The answer is that the successful ten percent of goal setters either discovered the secret techniques to effective goal setting, or someone taught them how to do it. It really is that simple.

Learn the secrets that the successful 10% of goal setters use from all walks of life to not only set powerful exciting goals, but also become energised to follow through and achieve your prize then you can positively transform every area of your life.

Fact: Successful people understand and appreciate that there is a tried and trusted formula for effective goal setting that requires a much deeper thought and action process than most people are willing to commit to. 

If you start setting half-arsed goals, just stop. You are wasting your time. A goal that is set half-arsed doesn’t even produce a half-arsed result. Instead, the act of goal setting becomes so mundane to your central nervous system that it fails to fire up your brain’s neurons and synapses. When that happens in life, you’ve hit motivational, inspirational and creative rock bottom!

Most people are too distracted by everyday goings on to realise and they keep digging deeper into the same old uninspired (soul crushing), negative thought and unhealthy reaction patterns. I salute the mavericks and the black sheep among us that harbor fresh dreams and ambitions. Those that aren’t afraid to strike out alone against a system that very rarely rewards individualistic thinking or maverick behaviors. The meek will never inherit the world (that’s just a great way to ensure that economic slaves are kept in line by their corporate overseers). The people that will inherit this new world (the decade of 2020) and beyond, will carve out their own niches by developing mastery in their chosen fields of excellence. Mastery of their musical instruments, singing, songwriting, developing a world class artist brand. As providers of unique, sought-after products and services. Cheers to the mavericks and black sheep the independent thinkers. You already know who you are.

So what’s stopping you from taking on the world and achieving your music mastery dreams?

Lack of self confidence, fear of failure and doubting your musical abilities, or perhaps you have a gap in your musical skill set where you haven’t quite got your playing skills to that level to take on the world?

If you are experiencing one, or all of the above performance road blocks, I can help you by teaching you the secrets of effective goal setting, 

Together, we can sharpen your alignment between your mind, body and spirit to supercharge your self confidence and become an unstoppable musical talent and realise your musical dreams.

I can help you learn to employ the correct steps for effective goal setting

Yes, you can go online and do the research yourself on YouTube or Google, but the odds are 99 thousand to one that you won’t find any one article or articles that include all the essential critical steps for effective goal setting in one place at one time. 

My RVR Effective Goal Setting programme is the culmination of 10,000 hours of goal setting and personal performance research (as it applies to musicians and creatives) condensed down into a KISS format (Keep It Simple Stupid). My programme is street-tested and it works.

By the time I was 25 years of age, I had already worked with my favourite hard rock artists and bands. I accomplished that particular dream inside of two weeks of been in Los Angeles, California. It blew my mind how easy it had been to achieve my initial music career goal by following the steps of effective goal setting and I quickly discovered the power that I had at my fingertips to make bold, audacious dreams come true.

Here’s the “No BS”: 90 percent of people fail to achieve substantial goals because they follow some of the basic steps of goal setting but aren’t aware of the critical steps that they need to take to turn wishy-washy goals into powerful, executive commands that recruit and capture the imagination of their entire mind, body and soul.

So if you find yourself making little or no progress towards achieving your life’s most exciting goals, it’s because your goal setting method (or lack of) is self-sabotaging your own progress.

I can literally save you days, weeks, months, years of performance frustration and put you on the shortest path to achieving your music performance and/or life goals. 

If you want to learn more about the correct methodology for effective goal setting, drop me a line.

Better singing everyone.

Paule
Diaphragm and vocal music performance training coach.

Singing is a highly athletic coordinated activity. 

Good singing is being able to sing seamlessly on pitch throughout the various registers of your voice with a consistent vocal tone and quality (while being able to choose the appropriate form of vocal expression and delivery style).  Good singing technique can be described as learning how to produce your singing voice with optimum efficiency and experiencing the least amount of tension and strain on your vocal cords and reducing demand on your singer’s breathing. 

Learning to sing correctly erases vocal cracks, wobbles or breaks in your sound. It requires the development of multiple fine motor skills that are capable of coordinating and operating smoothly at the same time, with minimal physical tampering or interference from the singer. 

Loosely explained, these fine motor skills include:

1. Diaphragmatic breathing coordination (RVR singer’s breathing)

2. Vocal coordination

3. Anatomic coordination to provide correct singers breathing and airway support 

4. Auditory coordination (ear training to be able to follow melodies and sing on pitch)

5. Balance (singer’s anatomical support to offset rising stress and resolve escalating body tensions).

These fine motor skills are developed through the act of building new neural skill pathways in the brain. The rapid development of these fine motor skills is achieved by programming the new preferred physical coordination in your body and requires a great deal of effective rewiring your brain to make the new coordination feel comfortable and like second nature. You need to be able to bypass the old neural highway of unhealthy singing habits and connect to fresh, new neural highways in the brain that store the preferred healthy coordination that makes singing feel free and easy.

There is an art and a science to successfully building new neural skill highways in your brain. I have developed my own complete RVR NLP system of brain reprogramming with lots of cool RVR “Jedi Mind Tricks” that is designed to ensure that we accomplish the goal of reducing the time it takes you to develop your confident, natural performing voice.

That’s the physical part of singing covered. Then there is the mental side of aligning your mind’s focus to deliver an optimum performance from your vocal cords and your body.

The psychology of singing is a fascinating subject and plays a critical role in the ability to consistently perform at peak levels during your vocal performances. Henry Ford, widely credited with being the father of the modern automobile industry, was fond of saying, “Whether you think you can or whether you think you cant, you’re both right”. Meaning if you’re about to sing a high note and your thinking is not positively aligned with your desired vocal action, your body will say “Yes!” but your brain will say “No!”

The resulting messaging conflict will cause a crash in the chain of fine motor skill co-ordinations and will result in a vocal note that sounds choked off or will produce a wobble in your singing or screaming voice.

Any significant event in your life that caused you prolonged psychological or emotional discomfort can end up having a profound, negative effect on your central nervous system.  Trauma events are very powerful emotional or physical experiences where we might be too terrified to speak or take action, or feel that our life is at risk, and the resulting trauma has a powerful, lasting effect on our body’s physiology.

While receiving counseling for these types of trauma events can be very beneficial, the actual muscle memory of the trauma event can be stored in our body’s cells. We can still be carrying that trauma around with us. If that trauma is affecting our personal happiness or our ability to freely express our voice in song or speech, or makes us feel uncomfortable sharing our emotions with the people that we love the most then there are great benefits to taking further action to resolve the effect that the trauma is having on our body’s operating system.

Put simply, the memory of the trauma is literally burned into the lining of your cellular make up. The memories of powerful Trauma events get stored in the  Adenosine Triphosphate, or ATP. ATP is the main source of energy for most cellular processes in the human body. The muscle memory of intense traumas can be stored in the ATP of your cells.

The muscle memories of intensive traumas need to be addressed and cleaned out if you expect your mind and body to feel comfortable about singing or screaming freely and reaching new heights of vocal freedom. Physical or emotional trauma that relates to negative associations that we might have experienced in the formative years of our childhood development often creates psychological barriers or mental handbrakes that prevent us from been able to connect freely and easily to the full power and tonal qualities of our natural singing voice.

This is where you will need the expertise of an experienced vocal performance coach who understands how to effectively rewire your brain to create new positive, healthy associations in your mind that will result in higher levels of vocal performance and free you from the shackles of past trauma events.

These historic trauma events can create severe discomfort and impair your ability to feel good about singing with a wide open, free voice. Chances are if you cant use your voice freely or you feel that you are severely restricted with how your body lets you use or express your voice, then you are operating under the restrictive limitations of unresolved trauma.

Get in touch with me and let’s have a conversation about how we can help you to move forward and finally remove these shackles and performance handbrakes from your life.

Better singing everyone,

Paule, the RVR vocal performance coach.

As a vocal coach with over three decades of experience, I’ve had the privilege of guiding countless singers and professional speakers on their journey to vocal excellence. It’s inspiring to witness their initial enthusiasm and determination to achieve their vocal goals. However, what separates those who succeed from those who don’t often comes down to one crucial factor: mindset.

The 70/30 vocal coaching rule

Why do 70% of my clients not only achieve but exceed their vocal growth expectations, while 30% struggle to stay committed and often give up prematurely? The answer lies in their mindset. The majority of successful clients understand the importance of cultivating a rock-solid positive mindset that supports their vocal development and career aspirations from day one.

These clients embrace every vocal and diaphragmatic breathing coordination with enthusiasm, eager to absorb every insight and instruction I provide. They are primed for success because they understand that vocal improvement goes hand-in-hand with mental readiness.

Conversely, the 30% who falter are often reluctant to invest in strengthening their mental outlook. While they may initially engage in physical vocal exercises, they neglect the crucial step of developing a positive mindset. This oversight significantly hinders their progress and leads them to abandon their vocal journey prematurely.

The role of mindset in vocal development

Creating a supportive mindset is not just beneficial – it’s essential for achieving Rapid Vocal Results. Here’s why:

• Alignment of Goals and Effort: A positive mindset aligns your goals with your actions, ensuring that every practice session and vocal exercise contributes meaningfully to your improvement.
• Overcoming Challenges: It helps you navigate obstacles such as self-doubt, fear of failure, and external distractions that can derail your progress.
• Visualization Techniques: Visualising success is a powerful tool used by successful athletes and performers alike. By envisioning yourself achieving your vocal goals with clarity and intensity, you prepare your mind and body to perform at their peak.

Practical steps to build a supportive mindset

To harness the power of a positive mindset for your vocal journey, consider these practical exercises:

1. Morning Affirmations: Start your day by affirming your vocal goals with enthusiasm. Repeat affirmations like “I am capable of achieving my vocal goals” aloud to reinforce positive self-belief.
2. Goal Setting: Write down your vocal development goals and read them aloud daily. Visualise yourself succeeding in each goal to ignite motivation and focus.
3. Open Communication: Share any negative thoughts or doubts with your vocal coach. A supportive vocal performance coach (like myself) will help you overcome mental barriers and stay on track.
4. Reframe Practice: Instead of viewing practice as a chore, reframe it as something enjoyable and essential. Create a unique name for your practice sessions that inspires you, like “Vocal Gym Time”.
5. Diarise Your Practice: Let’s make technology work for us. Schedule practice sessions in your calendar on your phone or computer and set reminders. Consistency is key to reinforcing positive habits.
6. Visualization Exercises: Dedicate time each day to visualize yourself achieving your vocal goals. Engage all your senses to make the visualization vivid and real.

Achieving Rapid Vocal Results

In conclusion, achieving rapid vocal results requires more than just physical exercises. It demands a mindset primed for success. By embracing a positive and supportive mindset, you align your mental and physical energies towards your vocal goals effectively. Whether you’re a beginner or an aspiring professional, investing in your mindset will accelerate your vocal progress and unlock your full potential.

Remember, the journey to vocal excellence is a marathon, not a sprint. Stay committed to nurturing your mindset, and you’ll find yourself achieving remarkable vocal breakthroughs sooner than you imagined.

If you are a singer and/or screamer and you would like to receive the benefit of expert, 1:1 coaching and world-class mentoring, let’s chat.

Here’s to better singing and lasting success!

As a vocal conditioning and performance coach. I regularly receive inquiries from singers that have found that the theatrical vocal style they have developed is now restricting  their ability to sing other styles of music with full confidence.  

Many of these singers have become frustrated or concerned at been type cast ie as been only suited for musical theatre type rolls. Which is fine if you aspire to performing in Broadway type musicals.

But what many of these singers want to know is how to reduce the time it takes to learn how to transition a theatrical dramatic voice to become an all round singer capable of singing pop/ rock/ and beyond!

The question is a good one, and I will do my best to provide some tips and free advice to help you learn how to make the smooth transition from a theatrical dramatic voice to been capable of authentically singing other styles of popular music.

First lets understand the general differences of the three main vocal styles, ie Opera, Musical theatre and Popular music (Country-pop rock,blues, heavy metal metal) etc

Operatic voices:

Desirable operatic vocal characteristics differ greatly between male and female singers.

Typically to be a successful male opera singer requires a broad deep resonating voice capable of extending the chest voice into the upper register with a minimum of mix or head voice added to the sound. The desirable characteristics for a female opera singer on the other hand is to develop a voice with bell like clarity where the high notes are mainly produced with maximum head resonance, primarily designed to ensure that the frequency range of both the male and female singers carries above  the orchestra to the back of the opera house accapela, (without microphones).

Musical theatre singers, are known for the dramatic often exaggerated manor in which they deliver a vocal line. There vocal delivery is adapted to match the broadway esque style of the music arrangement.

Typically Broadway songs are structured, written and arranged in a less than conversational style and the larger than life arrangements resemble a more modernised  version of an operatic performance.

Alternatively Pop, rock, blues, country singers etc tend to adopt a more laid back casual approach to their vocal delivery due to the more conversational song writing styles in these genres of music.

In essence there vocal styling is based on a conversational approach to singing, this style approach can be used to create raw, in your face vocal deliveries and performances  that allow the individual character of each singers voice to be easily heard and developed.

In popular music styles its the individual character of the singers voice that the audience is drawn towards and identify with. This is why we can have a number of personal fave singers in our record collections, because each singers voice has its own individual charm, from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen- to Michael Jackson – Billy Joel or Elton John or Dave Grohl or from Whitney Houston to Mariah Carey, to Amy Winehouse to Beyonce etc these singers all understand how to make the most of their conversational singing style.

Vowel styling:

Another big difference between theatrical singing and conversational pop-rock vocal styles is how the singers in each genre approach there vowel shapes.

Opera singers tend to utilise the widest broadest purest vowel sounds and while they do employ subtle vowel modification to allow the voice to change registers the objective of a male opera singer is to retain a manly voice throughout his range. That’s why a male tenor opera singer dose not normally sing higher than a c5, because in order to sing higher they would have to modify the vowel sound further and in the process they would be forced to reduce the width and girth of their manly voice on the highest notes.

IE “Nessun dorma” performed by Luciano Pavarotti

In performance, the final “Vincerò!” features a sustained B4, followed by the final note, a sustained A4. One main difference between opera singers and musical theatre singers and of course pop singers is that typically a tenor opera singer is never required to sing anything higher than a mens high C (C5).

For female opera singers, the desired voice type is the soprano in particular the highest soprano voice is known as the coloratura soprano. Coloratura sopranos are capable of amazing superhuman feats. The voice is extremely agile, singing short passages that ascend as high as the 3rd F above middle C (and in a few cases even higher). A particularly fine example is Lucia in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. 

Theatrical singers employ a broad vowel sound (closely mirroring operatic vowel sounds) in order to produce a larger more dramatic vocal tone. How-ever the larger and broader your vowel shapes become the more difficult it becomes to sing in an extended chest voice, ( ie refer back to  the previous Luciano Pavarotti example)

When a theatrical singer is required to sing higher notes up around mens a#4 or ladies C5 etc typically the singer will start to employ a lighter voice and utilise a combination of head voice or even falsetto to further extend their vocal range. This produces a vocal tone that is softer and while it is a desirable effect for musical theatre it typically sounds very out of place in a pop or rock performance etc.

Pop singers tend to approach there vowel sounds as though they were using there every day speaking voice, and only tend to broaden the vowel shape when they require a larger sound ie holding a power note. Pop/ rock/ country/blues/metal  singers enjoy all-most total freedom in regards as to how they approach there vocal production. The only standard rule of thumb been that regradless of how you approach your vocal production  remember to ensure that your extended voice ie your high notes need to retain a solid connected sound to your chest voice.

The vocal requirements for popular music singers can often be more challenging ie a rock or pop singer maybe called upon to scream or sing full vocal passages above a mens c5 or C6  for women.

How you go about forming your vowel sounds and where you choose to place or position your sounds in your throat (vocal placement), are largely down to what works best for the singer, and best compliments there natural vocal style.

Here is the two biggest challenges that most theatrical singers face when learning how to make the transition from musical theatre to singing pop or rock, country etc.

A. Learning how to approach singing in a more conversational style. This means that particular emphasis needs to be placed on how they form there vowels and consonant sounds. If the vowel sounds are pronounced to broadly the sound will end up splating as the singer ascends higher into his or her range. While this condition is true for every singing genre generally popular music arrangements span the largest vocal ranges of any singing genre. So its very important that pop rock and metal singers learn how to modify there vowels properly to maintain a connected tone over music that spans a vocal range sometimes as wide as 3 and 1/2 octaves.

B. Learning how to smoothly extend their upper register by using  vowel modifications to retain a conversational quality to their voice, while maintaining a solid connection or mix with their chest voice. The latter requires regular strengthening and conditioning of the vocal chords to safely load the desired amount of healthy tension to the chord so that the voice doesn’t flip over into a light theatrical heady voice.

Both skills can be learnt given enough time and patience.

Here’s an exercise that will help you make the transition from theatrical singing to pop singing much easier.

Learning how to develop these new kinds of vocal co-ordinations will not only improve your ability to authentically sing in popular music styles but also provide your theatrical voice with greater power and provide you with additional options and choices to improve your vocal dynamics.

1. Starting on a comfortable note closest to your speaking voice. Vocalise on a “hey”  sound  using your chest voice and progressively increase the pitch of the start note until you are just below the point in your voice where the voice wants to break or flip over into falsetto. Don’t yell aim to perform the exercise on 60% of your full volume potential. Remember to avoid sounding overly dramatic or stiff, keep the tone and style of your voice relaxed and conversational!

2. Cut back on the air that is passing over your vocal chords and aim to reduce the size and the width and the weight of the sound until you can comfortably extend your “hey” sound one or two notes past your previous break area. When you’ve sang as high as you can comfortably without straining then go down the scale again until you reach your start pitch and relax and try to sing one or two notes lower than your starting  pitch. Repeat the exercise again as often as appropriate and rest for twenty minutes in between practises.

This exercise will teach you how to safely extend your chest voice range over time without straining. A strong chest voice is very important if you want to sing popular music and is the required foundation for acquiring the vocal strength and flexibility to produce enough mass in the vocal chords so that your higher notes (in head voice have a mix of chest and head and sound fully formed).

As always if you think you would benefit from one on one coaching to help make this transition easier then get in touch via phone, email, carrier pigeon etc.

Better singing everyone.

This Rapid Vocal Results, blog addresses, the mechanics of how constrictor muscles work and how they can negatively impact on our vocal production. Very fitting for my first post for 2016, as it’s a big subject lots to tackle and its vital need to know info for every singer!

Regardless of your current level of singing ability, I am sure you will have experienced the frustration of going all out to sing a middle or high note with power and as you begin to produce the note or the scream you notice a feeling of tightness or squeezing in the back of the throat and correspondingly your voice simultaneously looses much of its dynamics, volume, tone etc and begins to sound small and choked off? If it has happened to you before on stage, or during a performance you will know exactly what I am describing and the negative effects it can have on your confidence as a performer.

That’s what happens when you use the big bulky muscles of the throat to support your vocal production. When you incorrectly sing this way , you’re going to automatically wake up the neighbours i.e. the “Constrictor muscles”.

Waking up the constrictor muscles is not the best idea when you sing, because it automatically reduces the internal diameter of our throat and significantly reduces the size of the resonating spaces (think, various mini amphitheatres or sound board areas) inside our throat whose job it is to naturally amplify and add rich over tones  to our sounds when ever we vocalize.

Put simply; Incorrectly engaging the Constrictor muscles when we sing sets up a vicious circle where the outcomes are always going to be the same:

A. Decreased volume.  

B. Severely impaired or muted tone. The poor singer sounds like they are being strangled.

C. The brain will recognise this restriction as a blockage in our throat and will automatically send the singer a message to push more air to remove the blockage and that unwanted excess air has to be held back by the vocal chords who will forget immediately about their singing duties and instead will tense up to withstand a barrage of hurricane like wind blasting at our vocal cords.

I am sure that you will agree, that any or all of the above aggravating conditions are less than ideal for melodic vocal production! When any one or all of these conditions is present in a singers voice, it’s a sure sign that the constrictors muscles are been incorrectly engaged in the job of vocal production.

If your reading this post and find yourself identifying with this unhealthy vocal pattern, don’t worry it can be resolved and remedied with some simple exercises to retrain these pesky constrictors muscles to remain switched off while we sing.

Before we go any further and suggest a remedy to the above vocal problem. Lets first understand what the constrictor muscles are and more importantly the vital role they play in our everyday lives to ensure our survival.

What are constrictor muscles? Where are they located? Why do we have them?

In simplified terms the constrictor muscles can be found inside our pharynx. Because these constrictor muscles are much larger than the micro muscle groups that are responsible for producing all aspects of our pitch, tone, volume and vocal effects ie grit rasp etc. Singers often make the mistake of feeling a strong connection to these big muscles when they sing.

The pharynx is, one of the major components of the anatomy that makes up our neck. Best described as a fibro-muscular tube forming part of both the digestive and respiratory systems and also plays a major role in our speech and singing production.  The pharynx is divided into three major sections extending from the base of the skull to the cricoid cartilage of the oesophagus.

The nasopharynx, the oropharynx, and the hypopharynx (also known as the laryngopharynx) lie behind the cavities of the nasal passages, mouth, and larynx respectively. Various micro muscles support the function of the pharynx, and these muscles and nerves are continually sending tiny electrical impulses (communication signals) via both sensory and motor nerves connecting to our cervical spine.

Singers that have experienced problems with compression in the cervical vertebrae brought on through previous blunt force trauma episodes i.e. sports, car accidents, falls etc. Can find these blunt force traumas have negatively affected the healthy function of the nerve roots and the various blood vessels involved in regulating pharyngeal function this can have a big impact on the mechanics of a singers healthy vocal production. As both respiration and digestion are served by this area, serious problems can arise as a result of trauma to the neck, or degeneration and chronic dysfunction in the cervical spinal region. So if you’re a singer it’s really important to maintain your overall body health but especially back and neck function, and I definitely recommend that you include back and neck and laraynx stretches as part of your vocal warm up routine or back stage warm up pre gig.

The constrictor muscles and their location

There are six muscles which play a significant role in the function of the pharynx three of these muscles are circular and are constrictors, and three of these muscles are longitudinal (run lengthwise) in orientation and form an inner muscular ring. The three major muscles which constrict the pharynx are the superior pharyngeal constrictor (SC), the middle pharyngeal constrictor (MC), and the inferior pharyngeal constrictor (IC). The arrangement and position of these muscles has been compared to three stacked pots as they form a circular pattern one on top of the other.

Constrictor muscles are largely responsible for changing the shape and position of our throat to ensure food is correctly guided and moved to our oesophagus and later down to the stomach. In simple terms constrictor muscles ensure that,  food ends up in our stomach as opposed to in our wind pipe! The problem is these same muscles can wreak havoc on our singing voice if they are incorrectly used to support our vocal production.

The SC (superior pharyngeal constrictor) connects the lingula of the mandible (lower jaw bone) to the hamulus (hook-like end) of the medial pterygoid plate. The MC originates from the hyoid bone’s greater horn. The IC (inferior pharyngeal constrictor) is connected to the thyroid gland and nearby cartilage and continues along with the oesophagus. All three constrictors join in the middle to form the seam known as the pharyngeal raphe. There are gaps formed by these three muscles to allow for certain structures to pass through.

When we sing, we need to know that if we incorrectly squeeze on the big bulky muscles in our throat in an effort to falsely support our vocal production, we will automatically switch on and engage the series of constrictor muscles and it will be virtually impossible to maintain our desired and coveted open throat position for singing.

Please note creating and maintaining an open throat when we sing is the absolute key and cornerstone foundation to allow the voice to smoothly connect up between our chest and head voice etc. A closed throat chokes off our available vocal tone as well as our range.

Pharynx muscles can affect nerve function

This is important, if we incorrectly squeeze and rely on the big bulky muscles in our throat to reach higher pitches or to artificially increase the volume or tone of our voice we run the risk of squeezing or compressing our laryngeal nerves.

The internal laryngeal branch of the superior laryngeal nerve passes through a gap between the MC and IC (inferior pharyngeal constrictor) along with the superior laryngeal artery from the superior thyroid artery. Finally, below the IC, the inferior laryngeal nerve and the inferior laryngeal artery are granted passage through the muscle. Excessive stresses, strains, create inflammation, and can lead to dysfunction of the muscles in this region. This can have significant ramifications for nerve function and circulation both to the pharynx itself but also the larynx and the thyroid. Conversely, inflammation or dysfunction in either of the latter two structures can greatly affect pharyngeal function and severely restrict the healthy closures of our vocal chords.

There is never a good reason to apply excessive force or tension to your vocal chords because you run the risk of not only damaging the vocal chords themselves but also the nerves that carry out the communication signals to the chords, this can result in a number of extensive vocal ailments, that i won’t go into detail on right now but one of the worst is a partial vocal paralysis of the chord its self. This can be brought on by a number of conditions, including a trapped laryngeal nerve etc.

Tom Keifer from the eighties Rock Band Cinderella experienced a similar vocal condition to the one I have out lined here its can have a debilitating effect on the singing especially in the upper register, it can require expert surgery to remedy and can take years to recover even then most ear nose and throat surgeons will agree that a singer that has experienced a partial paralysis of the vocal cord will never regain 100% of their original vocal cord function.

While there are multiple contributors that can cause partial paraylis of the vocal cords, including viral damage, etc. Singers need to understand that we can help maintain the health of our voice and lessen the risk of experiencing a partial cord paraylis by ensuring that we learn to sing in a healthy way that dose not place excessive pressure on our laranygeal nerves.

Worst case scenario. A Partial paralysis of the vocal cord means that the micro muscles that are responsible for producing vocal cord mass and vocal cord closure are weakened and one side of the vocal chords operates less efficiently than the other and due to the partial paralysis one side of the cord is unable to handle the same work load as before, leaving the voice unbalanced and prone to vocal wobbles and speed bumps cracks in the note etc.

Vocal exercise to re-train the constrictors muscles to switch off

If you think that your incorrectly engaging your constrictor muscles when you sing and its preventing you from reaching the full potential of your singing voice try this simple exercise to turn them off.

 A. Starting on a low note four or five notes above your normal speaking voice vocalise on a lar sound, make sure you have  a wide smile and 3/4 dropped jaw and yawn into the sound.

Then while maintaining all three actions simultaneously ie the smile and the yawn and the lar sound simply let your voice slide down again back to the original pitch of your speaking voice.

Observe as you descend in pitch were you able to maintain your lar sound with your 3/4 dropped jaw yawn? If you found that the back of your throat was closing as you slid down in pitch. Simply add more yawn and combine it with your lar sound until you can complete the exercise while maintaining your open throat position.

Then proceed to start on the next highest comfortable pitch and repeat the exercise over again. It takes time to retrain the constrictor muscles to remain switched off when we sing. Be patient it takes time to re train this type of unhealthy vocal habit.

For best results i recommend that you use a piano or guitar or similar musical instrument to accurately produce your starting pitch for each vocal slide. If you don’t have access to a music instrument like the above, there are lots of free software piano programmes online that you can use to help to make these exercises fun and enjoyable.

If you are having difficulty getting your constrictor muscles to behave and think you would benefit from one on coaching to reduce the time it takes to train the correct habits and vocal co-ordinations your welcome to contact me, via phone or email.

Better singing everyone.

Paule,

Conditioning and Performance Coach.

Hi everyone as a vocal conditioning and performance coach. I get to work with a lot of great singers of all ages and levels of ability. From absolute beginners to established recording artists and touring performers.

One question that seems to come up regularly among my new students and also with new aspiring artists, is:

How can I learn how to deliver a more powerful or electrifying , show stopping vocal performance? I want my audience to really sit up and connect strongly to my music.

The top singers from any musical genre, have the ability to simply make you believe and feel every word that they sing. These kinds of singers enjoy career longevity, ie they sell more records and book sold out tours. They also enjoy massive loyal fan bases that offset shallow -short lived fickle trends in music!

Chances are you can still recall where you were and what you were doing , when you first discovered that special singer or artist that seemed to reach right into your soul and connect so powerfully with you ,that they made you want to run out and buy there album or single straight away?

As a Singer. Thats the power of learning how to connect deeply to your emotions and allowing the emotions to seep into your vocal performance, ( put simply the vocal chords are an incredibly expressive instrument) capable of conveying not only a melodic message but also an emotional message to your audience. 

When singers learn how to tap into there emotions and use them as a performance tool.They are capable of deliverying a performance that not only sounds good but can capture the audiences collective hearts and imaginations!

If you’ve been following my previous blog’s then you will know that there are multiple components to master, in order to be able to deliver an authentic, electrifying, or compelling vocal performance. Regardless of your particular chosen music genre the vocal techniques and perfomance methodology are the same! 

Check out my previous blog’s to gain a good understanding of how the voice works including tips on how to make you a better singer.

1. Vocal Mechanics
First and foremost a singer needs to learn the correct vocal techniques to allow the vocal chords to vibrate freely when they sing on any pitch in there vocal range. This also requires a good understanding of how to engage your diaphragm to support your singing voice, to ensure that when you sing, that your using the correct minimum tension on the vocal chords balanced with the minimum amount of air passed over the chords so that the voice can resonate freely.

Typically if your a beginning singer and have had no previous singing tuition, most of my students learn to dramatically improve these two cordinations in the first 6-8 weeks of coaching.

Okay now that we’ve addressed the importance for the basic mechanics of the voice to be able operate freely and naturally.

We can move on to the 2nd component of how to learn to deliver powerful compelling vocal performances.

2. Becoming a method singer (Learning how to colour the voice with real emotions).
Put simply; great singers (share a lot in common with great actors). Both are entertainers, both draw on there ability to portray the full range of human emotions to deliver a compelling heartfelt performance. Both singers and actors have to allow themselves to become emotionally vulnerable, in front of an audience in order to deliver an authentic performance!

 To become a great singer we need to be able to draw on our full range of human emotions and
learn how to colour the voice with these emotions when we perform so that the audience is not just hearing our words they are literally feeling the corresponding emotions through our voice!

How- to tip for singers to improve there ability to convey emotions through there voice.

A. Never try to manufacture an emotion, when you sing.
ie if your singing a song that is sad try to let the sadness creep into your voice, (draw on your own past experiences)  and experiment with how much emotion you can add at the vocal chords with out over loading there ability to operate freely.

B. Use this exercise to experiment with all of your emotions, ie happy, sad, angry, excited, scared  etc. A good singer needs to be able to access the full range of there emotions.

C. Find a balance point that allows you to convey the desired emotion through your voice and still allow the vocal chords to operate freely and efficiently. This is important if you add too much emotion in your voice your central nervous system will believe you are feeling what you are telling your brain to feel and the vocal chords will respond accordingly.

This is not so good if you are over doing a sad emotion because you might trick your central nervous system into crying for real which will disrupt not only your vocal chords but also your breathing, this kind of excessive emotional overload will actually cause your vocal chords to loose there vocal coordination and prevent your voice from singing freely.

The same goes if your singing heavy rock . Dont over do the angry emotions etc.
(remember we want to add just enough of that authentic emotion) so the vocal chords transmit a healthy kind of angry energy and sound but we must avoid intentionally, exerting  excessive tension on the vocal chords because the voice will loose all ability to maintain its melodic edge.

The above exercise is really valuable to help you discover the just right amount of emotion you can add to your voice and still maintain your vocal freedom and vocal control. Introducing the right amount of balanced emotion to your voice has one additional performance benefit it actually stimulates and energises the vocal chords to become more flexible and your chords can produce additional vocal effects, that the audience can feel as much as they hear!

Method acting definition.

noun
a technique of acting in which an actor aspires to complete emotional identification with a part, based on the system evolved by Stanislavsky and brought into prominence in the US in the 1930s. Method acting was developed by Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg in particular, and is associated with actors such as Marlon Brando and Dustin Hoffman, etc.

Once you get really good at been able to call up your emotions to colour your voice you will begin to discover a whole new range of subtle variations that you can introduce into your vocal tone.  In other words you will have discovered new tonal colours that you can incorporate into your singing voice to improve your story telling capabilities and allow you to make stronger connections with your audiences.

As always if you think you need help to draw on your emotions while singing, or if your not sure if your doing the exercise correctly? Your welcome to email me, or call me with your questions.

Some singers will find this exercise easier to do than others. That’s because every singer is different we all have different vocal challenges that we need to over come in order to be able to sing and express ourselves freely.

Better Singing everyone.
paule@rapidvocalresults.com