Rapid Vocal Results

Are you one of the many singers that has struggled to sing higher notes without squeezing on your vocal cords or applying excessive force to your voice? Yes, there is a better way to safely increase your vocal range without blowing out your vocal cords! Read on to find out more.

First, we need to understand where the mechanism for creating pitch and changing vocal registers is located within your body. The answer is of course that everything related to producing sound (phonating) is housed in your larynx.

The larynx is also more commonly referred to as the “Adam’s apple” or the “voice box”, which is more prominent on men. It is located near the top of our airway (windpipe) and is essential for our breathing, vocalizing (phonating), as well as ensuring food doesn’t get stuck in the trachea and cause choking. Positioned just in front of the esophagus, the vocal folds are located here, making this organ absolutely vital for phonation (making speech sounds). It visibly moves up and down when people swallow. Most women’s larynxes are smaller than men’s, which is why they don’t protrude as much (or at all).

🤓 Nerdy fact: Did you know that women’s vocal cords and their larynx are generally smaller than their male counterparts?

Inside the voice box are the “true” vocal cords, as well as the false cords and a whole host of micro muscle groups that produce coordinated efforts to thin down the vocal cords and create higher pitches and, conversely, shorten and thicken up the vocal cords to produce lower pitches. This is what your vocal cords look like up close!

The larynx is made up of the thyroid cartilage, which sits on top, and the cricoid cartilage, which sits on the bottom. When we are singing predominantly in “chest” voice, from our lowest chest voice note until we start to feel the beginning of a strained sensation as we sing higher, we are predominantly relying on the cricoid cartilage, tendons and ligaments to anchor our chest voice so that it doesn’t prematurely jump registers (also known as a “vocal break”).

When our chest voice starts to feel heavier and we are beginning to experience resistance in the voice, the voice becomes reluctant to be able to carry that bigger chest voice higher in our range. We want to learn how to create the right kind of space and freedom in our larynx so that the cricoid cartilage is able to begin to tilt forward and this is our natural vocal anatomy design to thin down and lengthen out the cords so that we can not only sing higher, but also change the registry in our voice (remove the uncomfortable weight from our voice) and achieve the equivalent of a lighter, stronger mixed voice. This coordination that we are now entering is referred to in classical singing as “the passaggio”.

The passaggio is a narrow passageway where we reduce the girth or width of our chest voice to allow the thyroid cartilage to tilt and thin down the vocal cords, creating a lighter register which is able to combine chest voice and head voice together and this sounds like one long, connected register in the voice (in an upcoming post, we’ll talk about this exciting register, called middle voice).

Stay tuned for part 2, where I explain how to get your voice in and out of passaggio!

I fell in love with music at an early age.

I was very lucky in our house. My mother had the radio playing constantly in the kitchen. I was exposed to all kinds of artists from country singers, John Denver, through to Neil Diamond, etc. I would have been about 13 years old when I bought an album called ‘Masters of Metal’. It was a compilation album packed with loads of amazing artists. Bands like Aerosmith, Krokus, Judas Priest and many others.

The moment that I heard my first metal screams, I was fascinated with the world of grit, gravel and raspy vocals. I vowed right then and there to understand how these singers were able to produce these sounds, and that I would learn how to produce them for myself (safely), within my own vocal style.

Fast forward a few years down the track and all of a sudden we had death metal and extreme low metal screams became the holy grail sounds to aspire to for singers all around the world.

The long and the short of it is that my brain struggled to understand what my ears were hearing and after many, many, many failed attempts at producing anything like a gritty, gravelly scream, I was more confused and more perplexed than when I started. Clearly I was missing some critical pieces of the puzzle in terms of producing the right vocal and breathing co-ordinations to create these aggressive sounds.

Where do these sounds really come from? Well, the answer is that grit and gravel is largely produced by a combination of vibrations of the false vocal folds (sometimes called false cords). When you apply the correct form of diaphragmatic support you create a stream of air energy that rises steadily upward and will vibrate soft tissues in your throat. If your placement is correct, these vibrations will even travel right up into your uvula (at the back of your throat) and vibrate soft tissues above the uvula as well.

The false vocal folds are the folds that we don’t use directly for every day speech. They are able to safely hold back more air than our true vocal folds, which are the ones that we use for everyday speech (and clean singing!).

The purpose of this blog post is not to get into the technical anatomy of the false folds, as that can more easily be shown in videos and there is a wealth of great information out there on sites like YouTube. The purpose of this post is to provide some assistance to the singers that are struggling to produce convincing false cord screams and to help those singers who are on their way to making these sounds, but are blowing out their voice because they are using incorrect technique.

The good news is that both guys and girls both have false vocal folds!

The most important thing to know is that safely screaming is not done by putting pressure on your true vocal folds. If you do this, your vocal cords will overheat, swell up and you will then lose your voice.

Extreme screaming tip number 1: Good screaming requires an understanding of good singer’s breathing and good diaphragmatic support. It takes a surprisingly small amount of air to create your false cord screams and to get the screams underway. The power comes from being able to engage good diaphragmatic singer’s breathing and understanding how to use good diaphragmatic support (muscles that provide healthy leverage that allows you to project your sounds further.). The better your support, the louder your screams will be.

Extreme screaming tip number 2: In order to be able to get these screams going, you must be able to safely locate your false vocal folds and to be able to get them to vibrate freely. The easiest way to do this is to visualise your vocal cords being open. So open in fact, that you can pass a fist through your vocal cords. This visualisation will effectively send the clearest message to your brain that the sounds that you are about to make require relaxed vocal cords. Only when you relax your vocal cords completely, do your false folds start to vibrate and take the lead in creating the right sounds.

When you’re learning to scream, it is normal to feel a little bit of dryness in your throat. That is because vibration of the false cords can sometimes cause unwanted muscle contractions in and around the back of your throat which will leave your voice feeling a bit drier than usual. Over time, you’ll learn how to activate your false folds correctly while maintaining a relaxed airway and throat. What is not normal is any amount of pain. If you experience any of the following symptoms immediately after your screaming attempts, then you are applying far too much pressure and tension in your throat and larynx and you should stop practicing immediately for the day, and only resume practicing when your voice feels like it’s back to normal. Depending on your age and how rough you’ve been on your voice, this could take 1-5 days, or sometimes longer if you’re a mature singer/screamer.

• Extreme dryness that creates the urge to drink something
• Tickles, itches, pain or soreness
• The feeling of strain or uncomfortable tension
• Sharp needle-like pain, coughing or tears in your eyes

Below is a progress video with Dan, one of my awesome vocal coaching students demonstrating the technique. If this is something that you’re interested in learning yourself, get in touch and let’s chat about a customised coaching programme for you.

Please note; there are other types of metal screams called ‘fry’ screams that require a more advanced combination of false cord and true cord co-ordinations. When you’re learning how to scream, I highly recommend starting with the false cord scream first and master the fundamentals of that technique before you attempt to move onto fry screams.

Here’s another video with Gilles demonstrating the same technique. You can read more about what Gilles things of Rapid Vocal Results here.

In this RVR Singers Blog, I want to share some of the positive learning outcomes I have observed through working with my singers that have diagnosed, or previously undiagnosed learning challenges. In general people with learning disabilities are of average or above average intelligence. There often appears to be a gap between the individual’s potential and actual ability to confidently grasp the concepts required to master a new academic or physical skill.

First, let me state the obvious. Human beings are incredibly complex creatures. Our rate of processing new concepts, and our ability to learn new skills and muscle co-ordinations varies dramatically from person to person. I often have singers that come to me who experience various levels of anxiety when they find themselves in an unfamiliar position that requires them to learn new soft or hard skills, much like the skills required to learn to sing and develop their voice to its full performing potential.

The long and the short of it is that there are plenty of clients that I have met that find it hard to learn new skills using traditional learning methods. The result of disappointing learning experiences in the past can trigger increased anxiety the next time the client is confronted with a new learning opportunity. The client’s lack of ability to successfully learn new skills when employing a traditional learning method often creates a great deal of frustration and embarrassment on their part. These kinds of negative learning experiences can directly contribute to lower levels of self esteem, feeding the fear that the person is a slow or poor learner, which often isn’t necessarily true.

This is not a positive belief system for anyone to operate from successfully if they want to enjoy a happy life and maintain a positive outlook for their future.

The truth is that their brain may be wired slightly differently compared to the average person that thrives off traditional learning methods. That’s where the RVR ‘Nu Learning’ system can really make a difference.

Everyone’s brain is unique. Some people’s brains are naturally wired to rapidly learn the skills to play music at a virtuoso level with little or no formal training. Some can reproduce amazing works of art simply by converting what they see to brush strokes on the page – et voila! they have created an epic master piece. Most people seem to have brains that can happily learn some basic academic and physical skills, yet find it difficult to master advanced fine motor skills that some other people take for granted.

My point is simple. It’s not right to judge someone’s learning potential based on an outdated or draconian learning method prescribed to them. If a student is experiencing poor learning results, we shouldn’t start with blaming the student for their lack of ability to learn. We should be taking a second look at the learning methodology that is being prescribed and we should make sure that the learning methodology is effective in making the student enthusiastic about learning new skills.

Yes, many singing teachers and vocal coaches are guilty of using outdated learning methods from the turn of the century. If it sounds draconian and the learning method fails to capture a student’s imagination, then the learning method is ineffective and will deliver dissatisfactory results. This is why the RVR ‘Nu Learning’ system is about tailoring a customised coaching programme to your brain’s preferred way of learning.

I have been coaching for over twenty years and have worked with people from all different areas of society, all different ages and from all different types of backgrounds. I have successfully coached people that wanted to learn to sing and/or improve their public speaking skills. This includes people who have Asperger’s Syndrome, ADD, ADHD, as well as students suffering from brain injuries brought on through head trauma, heart attacks and strokes etc. In short, I have worked successfully with clients with a varied assortment of learning challenges and have been able to create successful learning outcomes for all of the above.

So what’s my secret to produce Rapid Learning Results? The key components to all successful learning outcomes are:

• DESIRE. You must genuinely be excited to learn a new soft or hard skill.
• METHOD. Every person’s brain has their own preferred way of learning, which is based on how each brain is individually wired to experience pleasure and excitement through learning.
• PERSEVERANCE. Once we’ve jointly identified your brain’s preferred way of learning, we stay in that learning mode as often as we can during your coaching sessions.

In summary, if you find that you experience difficulty when trying to confidently learn and retain new skills, knowledge or concepts, don’t blame your brain. Instead, try a more customised ‘Nu Learning’ system.

Contact me now to discuss how a customised RVR ‘Nu Learning’ system can benefit you.

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.

I have been coaching & mentoring and developing singers and professional public speakers now, for over twenty years. I couldn’t begin to count the times, over those years when aspiring singers and professional speakers have walked through my doorway and immediately, started pouring their hearts out to me about how much they love to sing, or speak and how they want to make a living through their respective crafts. These people are full of desire to make significant vocal improvements, in respect to the way that there voice currently sounds and performs. Music to my ears right? I mean I love everything to do with vocal development and especially the part about helping my clients achieve their vocal goals!

These same clients speak to me with great conviction about their willingness, to move heaven and earth, to overcome their current vocal challenges and achieve their voice goals etc. In other-words they are saying all the right things, on day one of their Rapid Vocal Results, Vocal Diagnostic Session  i.e.  there’s a visible fire in their eyes and they carry themselves with purpose in both their manner and in their body language etc.

So why do 70% of my clients go on to achieve their vocal goals and usually exceed their own initial vocal growth expectations? Why do 30% of my clients start off with great enthusiasm and quickly loose interest in achieving their vocal development goals and drop out long before they have exhausted their true vocal potential?

In both cases it’s the same answer 70% of my singers and professional voice clients understand the importance of working closely with me to help them develop rock solid positive mindsets, that enthusiastically support achieving their vocal development and musical career goals. As a result these clients are now primed to soak up each and every vocal and diaphragmatic breathing co-ordination insight and instruction that i can share with them, and they go on to experience rapid vocal results!

30% of my singers and professional voice clients, are not willing to change or strengthen their mental out look! See they are happy to perform the physical vocal and breathing exercises and co-ordinations for a short time. But sadly they neglect to take the time to work with me to develop a rock solid positive mindset. Positive supportive mindsets would have helped them to stay the course, and would have significantly reduced the time it takes for these people, to achieve their vocal development and musical career goals. Instead they quit early and never discover their true performer voice.

Let me start off by saying that, the quitting epidemic in our society is wide spread it’s even an acceptable part of our culture.

Why do so many people quit or throw in the towel before they achieve their goals in life?

The answer is that we live in an age of instant gratification i.e. we want results and measurable improvements immediately, but many people aren’t prepared to work to get the outcomes they desire!

Successful people know that the 1st step to achieving any goal you set for yourself is to create the right positive supportive mindset (or state of mind). Its vitally important to get your mind on board before you can hope to achieve any significant goals and make dramatic improvements in your life.

Suppose your friend dared you to jump over a narrow creek. So you accept the dare and immediately create a short term goal for yourself to jump over a creek or river bed and land safely on the other-side. The distance you need to jump is a challenge, if you underestimate how much energy and vertical height you need when you make the leap you can wind up short and land in the river and get wet! Most people would take a moment before they jump to visually measure the distance with their eyes (that’s called calculating the odds for success) and give themselves some kind of quick momentary pep talk to convince themselves that they can indeed, take the necessary actions to make the jump and land safely on the other-side (that’s a example of mental priming) i.e. preparing your mind to achieve success. That’s stage one of building a supportive mindset to generate the right kind of mental and physical energy that’s required to help you achieve your short or long term goals!

Next they would make a mental note to themselves, about the physical actions they need to take in-order to execute the jump properly, (that’s called preparation & strategy ) It might go something like this you’d need to back up a few paces remove any debris or fallen branches out of your way and give yourself, a good run up in-order to be able to get up enough speed to make your jump and easily cross over the water and land safely on the other side.

The last step is the most critical factor in determining a successful outcome for our river jump.

Visualization is (the tool that all successful athletes and business people/ and movie and music stars, use to create a supportive mindset to reduce the time it takes them to achieve their life goals).  The act of seeing yourself achieve goals by using your imagination to create powerful mind movies see yourself in-advance already having achieved the goal your working on! I use various visualization exercises with my students to help them to immediately over come existing vocal challenges, the coaching results are outstanding.

In this example lets visualize ourselves making the river jump etc before we physically do it, see it going smoothly in our minds eye. We might repeat this visualization five or six times until our body, feels physically comfortable with the physical activity we are about to perform.

Visualization exercises will prime our body and mind to achieve our personal best!  Here’s how visualization works…When you learn how to make the visualization real enough (i.e. employ all of your natural senses during the activity or goal you want to see yourself achieving. imagine every sound every sensation of what your body would experience, hear see, and feel as you achieve your goal etc Because when you use all your senses during the visualization your brain can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s been visualized)! If you close your eyes when doing this exercise the visualization will be that much more effective and powerful. Visualize often enough and with a high level of emotional intensity your brain will think you can already achieve the things you set out to do)! (That’s stage two of creating a supportive mindset to generate the right kind of physical and mental energy and focus needed to achieve your goals).

Without a supportive mindset it’s much more difficult to align all your bodies’ senses and energies to achieve your most important goals.
There’s an old saying that where your mind goes your energy flows.

Henry Ford, (credited as been the father of the modern motor car industry) is famous for saying “whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t your right”!

Basically too many beginner and intermediate level singers or aspiring public speakers allow their minds to entertain negative thoughts that create self doubt. That’s why, before we go to learn any new skill including singing or professional speaking. We need to create a positive mindset, that will literally support higher levels of achievement! Work on strengthening your mind at the same time as you work on improving your vocal and breathing co-ordinations and singing muscles etc and your vocal progress will be much faster and smoother.

Creating a supportive state of mind is the key to experiencing higher levels of  performance.
So before you throw in the towel and give up on your dreams if you find it hard to stay motivated to achieve your voice goals.

Try these great exercises to build a positive state of mind that will help keep you fizzed up and excited and on track to unlocking your performer voice. 

If you’re like the 70% of my successful singers and aspiring professional speaking clients, that are already committed to achieving their voice goals and career ambitions. These same exercises will give you a massive shot in the arm of additional energy and motivation to dramatically increase your vocal growth and performer potential!

If you’re like the 30% of my clients that start off with great intentions and have a history of giving up before you reach your goals, the exercises below can develop the staying power you need to realise your vocal goals and ambitions.

1.    When you wake up in the morning the first thing you say in your mind is that “I am a good person I deserve to achieve my voice goals.  Now repeat that same sentence out loud  at least five times with enthusiasm and excitement!

2.    Write down your vocal development goals on a piece of paper or on your phone, tablet etc and speak each desired goal out loud each day in a clear positive enthusiastic voice. (Seeing and hearing your vocal goals on a daily basis creates a massive amount of emotional excitement and internal energy) Let’s use that to our advantage.

3.    Talk to your vocal coach and share any negative thoughts that might be impacting on your singing…. that way your coach can help you get over your case of “stinking thinking”. If your coaches response is “suck it up buddy” or similar line of advice then you need a new coach!

4.    If you struggle to get excited at the idea of doing vocal practice change your vocabulary! I.e. the phrases “home work” or “practice time” sound boring so instead make up your own unique name for your practice time. For example it’s time for me to get going with Paule’s vocal gym. (I’ve always loved the discipline of establishing daily practice routines). My personal best is 36 days in a row of “Paule’s vocal gym”! This included some marathon three hour vocal gym exercise sessions, ( don’t try that at home!) unless you really know what you’re doing! But that’s just my idea of a good time. Those marathon vocal gym sessions helped me to obtain a wealth of valuable insights, regarding innovative ideas and concepts to improve the effectiveness of both my coaching and development services and also provided me with a wealth of valuable insights about how the human voice functions, and how our central nervous system, diaphragm and vocal and breathing co-ordinations are naturally designed to work in harmony with each other to reach your full vocal potential! These incredible insights ive gained over the years from completing  these marathon vocal gym sessions became the basis for my unique Rapid Vocal Results coaching method.

5.    Diary your practice times…… it’s easy to skip anything that’s not scheduled into your calendar or diary….. Laptops phones and tablets are great because you can even set reminders to help you stay on track with practice.

6. Visualize your self achieving your goals. Use this exercise on a daily basis for a month to see how powerful this tool really is for fast tracking your vocal progress or career goals.

I can teach anyone to sing and significantly reduce the time it takes a singer or public speaker to achieve their true vocal potential. The unique coaching insights to dramatically transform your voice come from me …..

The desire the passion and commitment to experience Rapid Vocal Results, has to come from you! Your rate of vocal achievement is driven by your emotional energy and intensity levels. Your emotional energy can run low especially if you lead a busy life style (who doesn’t right)? So make sure to top up your emotional energy levels on a daily basis by following your six step plan (as out lined above) to create a positive mindset that supports top performance.

I work with all of my clients young and old to help them set realistic vocal development goals (i.e. to achieve anywhere from 50% of their natural vocal growth potential  (for casual singers)  through to a 100% of their natural vocal growth potential (for singers aspiring to make music a full time career, and or established touring artists that need to perform at their very best vocally night after night on the road or in the recording studio).

Regardless of the singers level of ambition. I work tirelessly, to help all of my clients achieve their vocal development and career goals, by providing ongoing performance and success mentoring. I share with each of my singers the power of goal setting, and visualization exercises and various other techniques that the world’s most successful athletes and business people/ and famous musicians and actors use on a daily basis to achieve unbelievable commercial and personal success.  

The simple six step programme I’ve shared with you,  will help you to develop a positive supportive mind set, this will pave the way for you to experience higher levels of vocal performance and improvement, the mindset programme can be applied to any kind of worthy goal or ambition that you want to achieve in life. Theirs no substitute for hard work in the vocal gym but if your mind and your body are aligned and working together on the same goal you will achieve Rapid Vocal Results in half the time!

The power of goal setting and developing a positive supported mind set is not for everyone …because it takes regular effort and a willingness to prepare for greatness.. But it can work wonders for anyone that is willing to make it a daily practice and that’s the no “Bull Shit” for this blog post.

Better singing everyone!

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.