Joining Alexa this week on Singing Teachers Talk, all the way from Perth, Western Australia, is BAST founder Line Hilton. The topic of conversation in this episode will be one that many voice teachers will come up against when working with their clients, and that is selecting or designing the best vocal exercises in response to what they perceive as a vocal fault.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Teachers who have not yet found out how to understand what’s going on functionally, might not have the tools to go in and counteract whatever the functional issue is.
- When identifying problems, Line usually starts with the larynx. If the vocal folds aren’t coordinating in a balanced manner it could be because the larynx is in the wrong position.
- As soon as you are going over an octave you’re challenging the voice very quickly to have to negotiate between one register and another and go through the transition. As a vocal coach, Line doesn’t do that unless she feels the voice is ready for that.
- SOVTs are great to get the voice ready. Line usually does them at the beginning of every lesson to stretch the ligaments. It’s a great way to warm up the voice and stretch the vocal cords.
- If Line has a singer who she wants to get more airflow, she’ll make them use a fricative sound that has a lot of airflow, for example, a ffff or ssshh.
BEST MOMENTS
‘The problem is that with singing there’s usually more than one thing going on at a time’
‘I don’t want to set their exercises up in a way where they’re constantly failing’
‘I’ll move the voice in that direction depending on what I want to achieve’
EPISODE RESOURCES
Guest Website:
- basttraining.com
Social Media:
- @basttraining
Relevant Links & Mentions:
- Dr Ingo Titze
- (On SOVTs) Singing Teachers Talk Podcast: Ep.47 Finding The Best Air Pressures and Straw Configurations For Your Voice with Oren Boder
- Kim Chandler’s “Funky ’n Fun” vocal exercises: funkynfun.com
Link to podcast presenter’s bios
