PRACTICE SCHEDULE PART 3

Monday 

Tension. Work on various muscles tension such as neck, tongue, back etc by doing different relaxation exercises as well as stretches.
Breath. Baby crying/glottal oh oh. To help control the air release.

Tuesday 

Throat pulse. Breathe in as much as possible, breathe out, and when feeling out of breath, do pulses with your throat. Objective: increasing breath intake and control.

Wednesday 

Full siren lip roll. Sirens are excellent as a warm up and help you working on both your low and high range at the same time and help you decreasing the volume of your break. Lip rolls are excellent to develop your technique, engaging the diaphragm and releasing the throat tension.
Resonance. Nia nia, placing the sound forward. This will help me placing my high pitched notes better.

Thursday 

Ng Placement. This will help me developing my nasal placement and reasonance which is excellent to develop a nice belt.
String. This exercise is excellent to develop the belt without stressing your voice.

Friday 

Practice various songs, chest or mixed voice.

Saturday 

Practice various song, head voice.

Sunday 

Body relaxation to rest the voice. As a healthy body is needed for a healthy voice, and not to stress the voice, Sundays will be dedicated to throat and face massaging, gentle yawns as well as some yoga. 
I will also be doing some sight reading and repeating exercises on Sunday to practice theory.

LOGS Week ending 06/03

Monday - https://soundcloud.com/anne-munoz-1/voice-061

I think in this recording I still tense my throat far too much although my tongue is out when I get into the high notes and mentally give up before it even happens. I think I also need to focus more on placing the sound forward, in the mask. My target for next week is to relax more and focus on the sound placement.

Wednesday - https://soundcloud.com/anne-munoz-1/voice-062

I found this exercise easier to do, there was less tension in my throat and it felt easier to rich the high notes. It is probably due to the fact that the "Nia" sound helps me placing the sound in the mask, I feel like the more I practice this exercise, the easier the Monday exercise will be as I'll find it less hard to place the sound properly. I think next time I need to push myself more and try to go higher.

PRACTICE SCHEDULE PART 2

This term I'd like to focus mainly on developing my head voice. I decided to dedicate five days to it, while one will be used to work on my chest voice and the last day will be used to indirectly work on my voice by releasing the tension in my body.

Monday – Tension. Stick tongue out while singing various exercises.

To start the week I want to work on releasing the tension from my tongue and throat. Tension is one of the main reasons why I struggle to use my head voice, I'm fine when I don't need to make myself heard and just sing softly, but as soon as I need to make the sound come out more loudly, I tense up and make it impossible for myself to use my head voice. Sticking the tongue out while doing various arpeggios will help me releasing some of this tension and also get me into the habit of keeping the tongue forward.

Tuesday – Breath. Baby crying/glottal oh oh

I noticed that my head voice tends to get hairy, to get rid of that hairy sound, I will be doing some glottal sounds (oh oh) highly pitched as well as imitate the sound of a baby crying, as this helps starting a note without air.

Wednesday – Resonance. Nia nia, placing the sound forward

Then I want to work on the resonance of my head voice. I think one of the reasons why I don't do well in head voice is because of the classical training I had for a while, I think I try to make the sound resonate too far back in my head. This exercise will help me place the sound forward, in the mask. 

Thursday – Vocal chords. Woop woop high pitched

This exercise will help me pulling the vocal chords together, which will result in a less hairy sound and will make it easier for me to sing in my head voice, as well as prevent cracks. The sound "p" is what will help the vocal chords being closer together.

Friday – Practice Vocal Technique in short or “normal songs” CHEST OR MIXED VOICE

Friday will be dedicated to singing either full or part of songs as well as short singing routine in my chest voice and apply the techniques practiced and developed last half term, 

Saturday – Practice Vocal Technique in short or normal songs HEAD VOICE

Saturday will be like friday but focusing on the head voice. 

Sunday – Physical upper body warm up to help releasing the tension which will help increasing range

Finally I'd like to finish the week by resting my voice but still work on it indirectly. Therefore this will be a day dedicated to a physical warm up helping me releasing the tension from my body and therefore making easier for me to sing hard notes/parts.

VOCAL PRACTICE

NG PLACEMENT https://soundcloud.com/anne-munoz-1/ng-placement-1

Vocal Practice

MMH N SLIDE https://soundcloud.com/anne-munoz-1/mmh-n-slide-1

Vocal Practice

LIP ROLL SIREN https://soundcloud.com/anne-munoz-1/lip-roll-siren-1

Practice Schedule

Practice Routine to follow until half term :

Throat pulse - Breathe in as much as possible, breathe out, and when you feel out of breath do pulses with your throat

Objective - increase breath intake and control

Low to high Sirens Lip Roll I - Siren on a lip roll from low to high. Start with shoulders up and drop while going on high notes.

Objective - make my break less hearable, 

Full Siren Lip Roll II - do a siren on a lip roll. Once you reached your highest note, try and make it bounce here, then before going down, try making a higher note.

Objective - increasing my vocal range, developing a good technique by engaging the diaphragm and reducing throat tension 

Siren on n - sirens on a n, nasalised

Objective - developing the use of nasal resonances

Siren yawn on ah - yawn on ah on a sirene

Objective - developing a good technique by letting the larynx down

String - from one octave to another without any note in between in a "aeh" sound

Objective - make it easier for me to have a "big" jump in between notes.

Ng Placement 

Objective - develop nasal placement/reasonance

Mmmh-N-Slide - hum, start one up to 5th and back to 1st

Objective - focus on the "circular" aspect of the exercises, hitting every note in-between 1st and 5th

Nasty Nays on scale/arpeggio 

Objective - develop switching from lower to upper register without cracking

Resonance exercise - mmm ee mmm aa ee aa

Objective - control where I want my voice to resonate. (Quoted explanation after the exercises list)

Manyah - singing manyah on the same note, holding the yah and slight vibrato at the end

Objective - Control breath, do not start vibratos too early/too late.

Repeating a phrase

Objective - pick up a melody quickly

Sight reading exercises

Objective - develop sight reading technique

"When you sing, your voice echoes, creating vibrations throughout your head and chest. This echoing of tone is called resonance. Knowing how to change the resonance of your singing voice allows you to make a variety of sounds as you sing. Use the following steps and the accompanying figure to help you practice controlling your vocal resonance:

1. Sing the first measure in the figure, sustaining the sound of the mmm as if you were humming and then moving into the ee vowel.
   Notice the buzzing or vibrating sensation you feel on your lips. This vibrating sensation is from the vibrations of resonance of your singing voice. The ee vowel in this measure is the vowel sound in the word me. As you sing from the mmmto the ee, try to keep the vibrations happening in the same place. You may need to practice singing this measure a few times to keep the vibrations in the same place. The apostrophes above the figure are breath marks, indicating when you should take a breath.
2. Try singing the second measure, which moves from mmm to ah.
   The ah vowel is the sound in the first syllable of the word father. As you sing from the mmm to the ah, try to keep the vibrations in the same place (around your lips). You may feel the vibrations on the ah in the back of your mouth compared to the front of your mouth, which is likely where you felt them in Step 1 on the ee vowel.
   Tip: Record yourself singing through the first and second measures and then listen to the resonance. Pay attention to the change of resonance you hear from the mmm to the vowels.
3. Practice singing the third measure by starting right on the ee vowel and moving to the ah vowel.
   Notice whether you can find the same kind of vibrations of resonance that you found when you moved from themmm to the vowels in Steps 1 and 2.
   " (m.dummies.com)