Improve your classical singing voice: mind your Ps & Qs

In this video ... a short introduction to the knotty problem of how consonants can sabotage your sound.

Everyone expects to sing vocal exercises on vowels, right? But not many singers will spend time examining how their consonants are formed, and how the articulators play their part. 

For classical (if not all) singers, vocal technique issues around the interaction between vowels and consonants - and the relationship they have when it comes to maintaining the breath and keeping a constant airflow to the source of the sound - continue to be a source of frustration.

Understandably, singers become primarily preoccupied with their sound - thinking mostly in terms of ‘support’ and ‘vocal tone’, underpinned by such considerations as ‘breathing’ ‘onset’ and ‘resonance’, and good use of vowels to carry it along.

Yet, getting to grips with the finer details of say, the articulatory system and perhaps where associated weak links can lurk, can be a bit vague - perhaps rather hit and miss.

Tongue twisters are both illuminating and fun:

• Three free thugs set three thugs free.

Try it. Or these …

• Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks.
• A synonym for cinnamon is a cinnamon synonym.
• Amidst the mists and coldest frosts,
  With stoutest wrists and loudest boasts,
  He thrusts his fists against the posts,
  And still insists he sees the ghosts.
• She is a thistle-sifter. She has a sieve of unsifted thistles and a sieve of sifted thistles and the sieve of unsifted thistles she sifts into the sieve of sifted thistles because she is a thistle-sifter.

What should you be looking for?

As a start, get those articulators moving. Work out what’s happening for YOU:

• Does any particular combination of consonants pose more of a problem than others?
• Do you notice particular triggers?
• Is your flow of air interrupted at all?
• Which patterns seem to demand more breath?

As long as you know what some of the answers are - and how each component relates to you and the sound that you make - identify some of the culprits, the trips, and triggers that give rise to vocal difficulties, then you are taking some important steps towards a satisfying singing result in the long-run.

Look at the infographic below. It gives clues as to why a smooth phrase in a song might be sprinkled with pebbles and boulders to trip us up. We need to pay just as much attention to the way in which consonants (always specific to the singer) might sabotage the flow of concentration and so lead to the idea of ‘drop-off’, or loss of support.

I created these visual thought-provoking infographics because they are a great way to make ME think as well. And, within my online mentoring group for singers, Virtually Vocalise, I also provided its members with a companion teaching video, just like the one shared here, where I expand the ideas and give more substance to their learning.

We continue to contemplate these issues and more throughout the year. Our resource library continues to grow. Drip, drip, drip.

Anyone can join us, just visit the website to find out more:

http://www.littlesoprano.co.uk/virtuallyvocalise

Or visit my Little Soprano online resources page: 

https://www.littlesoprano.co.uk/learningresources