After stretching your body, practicing your diaphragmatic breathing exercises, releasing tension from your face and tongue, and vocalizing to warm up your range, you are ready to sing. Today, I will guide you through my method for getting a tune into your voice.
Here’s how it works. Start by playing a phrase from the piece of music you want to sing on your keyboard. Identify the highest pitch in the phrase, and speak the text of the entire phrase on that pitch. Make sure you use what I call your “creative voice,” that singing speech sound that has a bit of a yawn in it. By doing this, you will feel the loft of your singing voice and create space for your pitches to circulate.
Pay attention to the vowel sounds. Relax the back of the tongue, and encourage the back of the tongue to move forward gently. Try not to make large movements of the tongue and jaw as you articulate the text. How smoothly can you move from one syllable to the next? Once you have worked on getting a tune into your voice by speaking the phrase using this method, you can now sing it as written. When you are done with one phrase, move on to the next phrase of music. You can repeat this process for each phrase in the song.
You never want to feel as though you are reaching up for notes. When you use this method for getting a tune into your voice, your voice will already be at the highest, stretchiest place it has to be. When you go back to sing, your body will already have a memory of that place. You will be able to sing the tune easily and naturally.
You can watch my students demonstrate this process of getting a tune into your voice in the video above.
