Janalois - Either way.

Alois

My first original in a long time. Recorded in my home studio so its not top notch. But i think its good enough for a demo

highmtn

NIce tune. Good to hear from you, @Alois. I think you could beef up your support and that would help you to get a little better consistency from your voice. Not bad.

Bob

Alois

Thank you Bob! Im realy struggling with support

highmtn

You will find it down below. It's kind of like pushing down on your stomach from up above. You put some effort into this downward push on your innards, and that helps to reduce the amount of air and air pressure passing through your cords. This results in more consistent and controlled air, and increases the ratio of tone-to-air. So you'll notice your tone gets a lot richer and your pitch becomes more stable when you finally have your "AHA" moment with support. You'll hear more consistency in your sound.

When we grasp ahold of support, all of a sudden we focus much less on our throat and much more on our gut. That's why the term "Sing from your Gut" or "Sing from your Diaphragm" seems so elusive. But it really means to literally move our focus and our power away from the larynx and towards controlling our air with this opposition to letting the air escape on its own.

Alois

Dont get me wrong KTVA has really helped me get from singing bad when noone hears to singing good enough and given me confidence to sing for others. But when it comes to support i think ive had that Aha experience many times but then it shows that i was wrong. Maybe its "Aha! ive gotten closer" rather than "Aha! ive nailed it!".. Im gonna put more effort on the support and glottal compression. Is it stil the basic Lah scale that is the best for me to show you or is there anny other exercise on volume 3 i should record and post?

highmtn

The basic LAH triad scale is the laboratory standard that really lets us measure the most functions of your voice at once. The other scales require other skills and techniques, but we are comparing apples to apples when someone submits the LAH triad, and we have a lot of experience at comparing different singers doing this same exercise.

Many singers report inconsistency in their ability to recall the support sensation after first discovering it. I had the same issues. That was when I was newer to KTVA and I would have AHA nights, and then completely lose my ability to recall the support I had mustered the night before.

It's a process that can take a while to embed to the point that you can rely on your ability to get right into it night after night. For some it is harder to establish, or to recall once it is established, while others stumble right into it and have no further issues. It's an internal process, so we can have someone tell us everything they know about how to do it, but until we translate that into our own bodies, our own experience, and our own abilities to recall the full feeling consistently, we just have to keep trying until our own experience will embed it according to our own individual process for learning and adapting to physical/mental/experimental/experiential advancements.

Your consistency will come with repeated successes. To get there, you will probably experience some, if not many, minor failures. Those are key to discovering how to consistently succeed at support.

Success is right around the corner from our struggles. We just might not be able to see it from our present position along the journey.

All the Best.

Bob

Alois

Thanks, I think that my latest "aha" was real but then i lost it, Doing some backtracking to volume one and two, combining that with what i leard about glottal compression i get this "Aha" this is what i found the last time. I think how ever my problem is that i get thrown out of "compression" soon as im using consonants. So i think thats what the current problem is right now. Im gonna record the Lah scale for you and then also record a short phrase with and without cononants to see if i can show you what i mean and if im understanding this right.
I can realy feel an increase in airflow after the first hard consonants. While i realy have that holding my breath feel before it.

Alois

Sorry for a crappy job but i got a few mins over while my daughter is a sleep. So it is a little unprepared and not properly warmed up but i think you get the point of where i am at when speaking about compression.



While doing this i realy have the sensations of holding my breath. Is this the tecnique i should work on or do i need to change somtehing so i dont spent alot of time doing it wrong?

highmtn

You've kind of got it, but it's not consistent enough.

The first low notes in the first few scales are off-pitch because low notes need support too, in order to have nice, consistent airflow down low. It's a different-feeling support, more one of keeping the air steady when singing low notes but it feels different because of low pressure and greater airflow for low notes.

After the first 3 scales, you're doing better, but you're needing to hold the diaphragm down more on those top notes. You can even see it in the "waveforms" on the soundcloud track. Your best scales in this are the ones without the spike in them, when you're coming back down after the highest scales. You can see that in the waveforms, and if you listen to those specific scales as compared to the others, those are the best ones, the ones that are the most level and consistent. You are supporting most correctly on those, whether by design or by accident, that is what you need to be doing in order to get the benefits of good support.

It IS a matter of compression, but it is also a matter of regulating that compression so that as you move up and down the scales and at different volumes, you are able to maintain the consistency and richness of your tone. Look at the most even waveforms, and listen to those scales represented by those waveforms. Those are the ones you want to replicate. It may turn out that you can make great waveforms and lose your support, but on this particular demo it certainly correlates.

Getting your support helps you with overall consistency, with more accurate pitch, with better tone, and helps protect your voice when singing with power, not the least of which is when you really push down to hold back the air (compress) even more when singing high notes.

Be paying lots of attention so that you can catch yourself more and more when you find yourself doing it right, and take note of the feelings and sensations, because nobody is going to be able to describe it in the way that it feels for you. Seize those moments and turn them from fleeting butterflies into anchors to ground your technique so that your muscle memory starts coming more and more into play. The more that happens, the less you'll have to think about the mechanics, and the more you'll just have to remind yourself "Oh, yeah. Support!"

So really increase that support for those high notes, and even out those spikes into slabs.

Consonants can build up a lot of breath and create plosives and sudden releases of excessive pressure. We reduce the overuse of consonants so that we can maintain a more consistent Open Throat throughout our singing. Consonants interfere with that process, so they need to be minimized.

Bob

Alois

Thank! Thats a great advice looking at the peaks. So i gues the goal is to have about the same volume on all notes?

Im gonna do some workouts a few days with focus on this and upload a new scale. I think i am actualy on to this now!

highmtn

All notes won't have the same volume, and the higher notes tend to have more intensity, so they "sound" louder, even if you're not trying to make them sound louder.

You do want to have as much consistency in the sound and breath as possible.

Bob