Is Your Voice Stuck Down A Rabbit Hole?
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00:00 Welcome to The Voice Vibe
00:20 Unlocking Vocal Freedom: The Dream of Every Singer
01:44 The Pitfalls of Vocal Techniques: Getting Stuck Down a Rabbit Hole
01:51 Mastering the Five Fundamental Coordinations of Singing
03:49 The Danger of Overemphasis in Vocal Techniques
08:27 Finding the Sweet Spot: Avoiding Vocal Extremes
09:07 The Importance of Embouchure in Vocal Tone
19:24 Navigating Vocal Challenges with Professional Guidance
21:52 The Five Fundamental Coordinations of Singing Revisited
29:29 Intensive Training for Vocal Mastery
33:35 Conclusion: Finding Balance in Vocal Techniques
Welcome to The Voice Vibe: Understanding Vocal Freedom
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Philippe Hall: Hello and welcome to The Voice Vibe. I am your host, Philippe Hall. Today we're going to talk about is your voice stuck down a rabbit hole? All right, what does that mean? Is your voice stuck down a rabbit hole? Well, I see this all the time. It's happened to me as a singer. And this is how it works.
The Journey to Vocal Freedom: Insights and Personal Experiences
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Philippe Hall: As a singer, you're always looking for ways to improve your voice, to find vocal freedom, that feeling that when you're singing, everything feels comfortable.
You feel empowered. You feel confident. You know, That when you sing, the notes going to come out, you know, it's going to feel good. You know, it's going to feel right. You know, it's going to sound good. You know, it's going to be healthy. You know, that as you're doing it, you just full of confidence. This is great.
It's this liberating, wonderful experience and there is nothing like it except during singing, right? So if you've experienced this, it is exhilarating. You finally feel like, Hey, my voice. Is working I figured it out. I finally learned how to sing. I finally found that one thing that I needed to improve so that I could find my stability in singing.
It's like the dream, right? It's what everybody's working for. And I want to tell you that it's real. You can get to this point. All right. It doesn't mean that you never have to work again. Even the best singers in the world are always practicing because they're chasing this dream. They want this feeling.
They know what it's felt like. And you can experience this too. So how do we get stuck down a rabbit hole? All right, what does that mean?
Navigating the Rabbit Hole: The Five Fundamental Coordinations of Singing
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Philippe Hall: Well, first, I'm just going to give you some context. There are five fundamental coordinations of singing. Five. They are your air source, the power source for your voice, your airflow and air pressure.
That's number one, working from the air up. Number two, are your vocal folds. Your vocal folds can do different things. They can be thicker, they can be thinner, they can be longer, they can be shorter, they can adduct, they can have more tension or less tension. And so those are the functions of the vocal folds.
Then we get up into the pharynx. The pharynx, what is the pharynx? It's the tube that connects your nose down through your larynx, your airway. Okay. And the pharynx has coordinations. The larynx can go up and down. It changes its depth. The soft palate can go up, that changes its height. And inside the pharynx, it can also narrow in different shapes, creating twang, ring, resonance.
Now we go on to the tongue. The tongue creates your vowels, the tongue creates your consonants, the tongue is a huge, has a huge impact on your resonance. And enables you to sing different styles, if it's agile, if you have good coordination. Then we get on to the embouchure. What is the embouchure? The embouchure is the opening of your mouth.
The shape of the opening of your mouth. And guess what? It's, you think about your lips, right? Well, lips we can only do so much. Try and immobilize your face and just move your lips. You can only move your lips thanks to the muscles in your face. It's actually your face moving your lips. So, all the muscles you use to smile, to laugh, or facial expression, they're the ones moving your lips.
You want to raise the curtain, raise your upper lips, you actually have to use the muscles in your cheeks. Okay, plus you have the jaw, the jaw joint, the jaw joint can open, can close, can be loose, can be tight. So that's how we get opening. So those are the five fundamental coordinations of singing, and you've got to master these five fundamental coordinations.
The Pitfalls of Overemphasis: Finding the Sweet Spot in Singing
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Philippe Hall: So what happens when we're singing, we discover something new. We learn, let's say, for your airflow. You learn a trick you learn a technique on how to support your voice now I know there are lots of different approaches to this and I'm not going to get into that because that's a whole different podcast Livestream it's a different topic, but let's just say let's just say for example sake you discover that you can use the intercostal muscles between your ribs To open your ribs and maintain your expansion.
Okay, and you do it and you get an immediate result. Everything in your voice improves. All right, so you started out here with your ribs not doing anything. Oh, they're like, Hmm, well that was okay, but can it be better? Spam my ribs. Oh wow. That was a huge difference. Okay. So all I needed to do for my singing was expand my ribs to use my intercostals.
That's fantastic. And now everything you're going to do in every, every time you're seeing is you're going to just focus on those ribs, focus on those ribs, focus on that, those intercostal muscles, and guess what likely is going to happen. You're going to take it, you're going to get to that sweet spot, and then you're going to go too far.
Now you're stuck down a rabbit hole because now you're tensing all the muscles in your ribs. You're not, you're not holding expansion anymore. You're just tight. And now you're stuck down a rabbit hole. And you're like, what happened to my voice? Things are getting tight again. I found, I found the answer.
Now it's slipped away from me. This can be very, very frustrating, and you might not even be aware of it. Then, let's say, you've, you've learned twang. What is twang? Well, twang is a narrowing inside the pharynx that gives our voice incredible focus, and clarity, and power. And we, so we get We are singing, let's say, The Show Must Go On from Queen.
The show must go on! Show must go on! And somebody teaches you twang. They get you to make a sound like a duck. And then you add that.
And now you get this incredible clarity and this rocky sound in your voice. And you're like, yes, thank God. I learned it. I figured out what my voice was missing. It was just missing some twang. And now you get excited about that. You start applying twang everywhere as you should. It's new, you go with it, you go with it.
And then you pass that sweet spot and you exceed it. And now everything's tight again. Cause you're squeezing too much. Are you following my logic here? You find out that. If you raise your soft palate, you get a little bit more space. All right? You get some, you get some space in there and you're like, oh, that's amazing.
If I raise my soft palate, I have more height in my vocal track. Wow. You're like, oh, wow, that, that's amazing. And then you start raising your soft palate for everything. But what you don't know is when you raise your soft palate, your larynx goes down, and so you over raise you overcorrect. And now you can't hit your high notes anymore because you got stuck in the rabbit hole.
You got deceived that the soft power was all you needed. So all of these things we're learning are, it's incredibly valuable and we need to use them. But what can happen is, you're just gonna, you're gonna see that as the answer and the solution for everything and you're going to pursue it. And you should pursue it.
You should experiment with it. You should apply it, but you've got to be sensitive about the limitations. You see, every good thing is also a bad thing. In excess, every good thing is a bad thing. So, all the good that you're getting out of your airflow. Your rib expansion, your pharyngeal tuning, your tongue placement, your embouchure, yeah?
It's great, but if you take it too far, you'll get stuck. And you might not notice, so what I want you, what I recommend is to that you do is continue to experiment and use these things, but as soon as you find something helpful, start experimenting with the range of motion. And I have this helpful t shirt here, right?
So the white zone, that, the right where those lines connect, okay? That's the sweet spot. If you go too far in any one direction, what's gonna happen? You're not, either not gonna have enough, Or you're going to have way too much. And if you have too much, you have too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
Alright, let's talk about your embouchure. So, the embouchure colors your sound in many ways. If your lips are forward and rounded, you're gonna have a darker sound. You're gonna have a slightly lower larynx. You're going to have a darker sound and if your embouchure is more wide and spread, you're going to have a brighter sound and your larynx is going to come up.
So in the beginning, you may have heard, Hey, use the singer's bite, smile a little bit and that'll give you some brightness that'll help position your larynx. That's great. It does work. But guess what? If that becomes your solution for everything. You're going to get stuck where? Down a rabbit hole. Because now you're going to be spreading, and that's the negative side of spreading and singing.
It's not that we don't need the width and the brightness. It's that if we only use that, our, our sound is going to get tight. So, um, I'm going to pull up this, this, uh, song. Everybody, well, you might know, Daughtry, right? Daughtry. And it's got this song, Alive. Alive is a cool song. Um, people, I think you know it.
But let's say, let's, we go to the chorus, right, and I can't play much of this because I don't want to get flagged here. But, here we go.
So let's say, you, you don't have any bite. I'm still breathing. I'm still breathing. And somebody tells you, hey, just raise your cheeks a little bit. Smile. Show me some upper teeth. I'm still breathing. I'm still breathing. And suddenly it clicks and you get that metallic sound. That's great. What happens if you just take it further?
I'm still breathing. I'm still breathing. Well, it's going to get tight. The larynx is going to come up even further. The inside of the back of your mouth is going to get stretched really tight, and then you'll have a very shallow, tight sound, and it won't feel good anymore. So as you learn, everything you learn that brings you some relief, use it, experiment with it, but be careful and be mindful that If you do too much of a good thing, it's like getting stuck down a rabbit hole.
You'll be stuck, you won't know why, and you need to learn to use these. Within their range of motion. Where is that sweet spot? All right.
Unlocking Vocal Potential: Avoiding Common Traps and Solutions
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Philippe Hall: So I've got, I've got an intensive training coming up and I've thought a lot about this because this happens all the time. Singers will come to me. They've, they've been very successful as an artist.
They have YouTube channels. They sound really good. And then they get stuck. They get stuck down a rabbit hole. Inevitably, what's happening is they're just doing too much of, of a good thing. So the one singer came to me, it's been about eight months and the last person they worked with worked with him to get their larynx really low, really, really low and try and get the larynx to position, stretch the vocal folds.
For higher notes in a lower position. That's great. I do that too. That's that's very very helpful However, there was overemphasis on this so the singer came to me trying to sing high B's and C's with a depressed larynx with a strong strong pull down He was stuck down a rabbit hole. He couldn't sing. I mean, his voice was like cracking, wobbling.
It was obvious to me he was under an incredible amount of pressure. Also psychological pressure and pressure to perform and put out new content. Otherwise, hey, you lose your revenue on YouTube, right? If you're not posting, if you're not getting enough views, that, that revenue stream is going to dry up. So it's stressful.
So what we had to do is unlock that, relax that. And it took quite a bit of work because he was so set on maintaining that low larynx and he trained it so hard with so much power and force. That now he was stuck because he developed a habit. You see, you get stuck down a rabbit hole when you develop a habit.
Habit is a powerful thing and how we sing and how you sing is your singing habit. Okay, I want you to think about that. How the way you sing is your singing habit. Literally, it's the way you sing because why? You've developed a habit. Habit. Muscle memory. What is a habit? It's when the neurons in your brain connect in a specific pathway, you open your mouth and that comes out.
So if we want to improve your singing at all, we've got to improve the way we think about singing. We've got to develop a better singing habit. So that's difficult if you're stuck down a rabbit hole. So you've got to unhook those connections and relearn it. Well, the good news is this singer was able to let go of all that powerful force that he was pulling down on his larynx.
The larynx was still able to ride lower, but it got some flexibility again, and he was able to unlock his voice again and start singing the way he Was used to sounding now that is brings so much relief for a singer So again a good thing, you know getting the larynx to ride low and relaxed and position And stretch the vocal folds for the higher notes in a lower position very very valuable very valuable, but If you overdo it You're gonna get stuck.
You're gonna get vocal problems. Let's talk about adduction. Hey, do we need adduction in singing? Of course, we need adduction in singing. What is adduction? It's simply the process of bringing the vocal folds together. Now, there's some force involved in that. They're not very big muscles, but they can exert force like every muscle.
If you can develop more adduction power, you can use a lighter adduction. Ah, Ah, Ah. And you can do the same thing with more adduction. Ah, Ah, Ah. Right? It's a difference in the sound. What if Your adduction in your effort to get more adduction and these things work together This is why I'm saying this you also You also recruit your pharyngeal constrictor muscles to help you with the twang.
Ah
Can you hear that tight now, let's go back to a light adduction no pharyngeal constrictor muscles
Light adduction. Now let's do clean adduction. Now let's give that a little bit of twang.
Okay, what if, what if they get coupled? Now you're thinking, I need more induction. I need more induction, so I'm going to, I'm going to get a strong induction. Ah, ah, ah, everything's tight. Even if that node's coming out, it's too tight. And what's gonna happen when you try and go higher? Ah, ah, ah.
Everything's gonna squeeze so hard. No more sound will come out. Then you'll be in that downward spiral where you're just gonna push harder with air pressure to try and get some sound out. And all you wanted was more adduction. Ugh, so frustrating, right? Well the good news is, it's not that frustrating.
All these things are very beneficial. You need them. You need them. But, we only need them. To do what they need to do to give us the result we're looking for. Anything more than that is simply too much. So as soon as you find one of these tools, it's helping you. Let's work on finding the sweet spot. How much of that do I need?
In the beginning, you're probably going to do too much because you're learning it, you're overactive, and that's, that's just part of learning. So nothing to worry about or get stressed out about. This is just part of learning. In order to learn something, you're probably going to do too much. a little bit more than you need to in the beginning, because it's new.
So as soon as you find enough air pressure, adduction, twang, the right tongue position, the right embouchure, as soon as you find it, if you'd want to get your voice unstuck and not get stuck down a rabbit hole, as soon as you find those things to help, don't overdo it. Try and use a little bit less. If it's not enough, you fell off the scale of it, the side of it, it just wasn't enough, do a little bit more, and then do more yet till you find the boundaries, till you find the limitations of the range of motion of the coordination you're using.
That way, You'll know that's too much. I've got to tone it down. And then you're going to come from both sides and find that central spot that's efficient. If you're looking for efficiency and you're being mindful of doing enough and not more, You're going to be doing very, very well as a singer and you will avoid getting stuck down a rabbit hole.
Let's say you're stuck. Okay. You don't know, you don't know which one of these coordinations is out of balance. Well, that's the time you need to seek out some professional help. And that's what I do as a vocal coach. I listen to singers, I analyze what's going on, and I look for the coordinations in their singing, be it their airflow, their vocal fold coordination, their pharyngeal tuning, their tongue position, their embouchure, where, which one of those, or which ones of those are out of balance.
And I guide them to finding balance again. So, when you do feel stuck and every singer hits their walls and their plateaus, that's when you get some guidance, alright? And it's always a good idea to have continuous coaching during your development. I did. I was a professional singer for over 30 years. And I always had coaching.
There was a phase when I didn't. And guess what happened? I got stuck down a rabbit hole. I started getting pitchy. I started not hitting the notes and I didn't know why. So I got myself coaching. I worked hard. I got unstuck and I kept going. I would never do a professional performance ever without getting coaching.
It's just that valuable because. You can't hear yourself and see yourself the way somebody on the outside can. But you can do a lot yourself, and you have to do everything yourself. You need some guidance, but at the end of the day, a coach like myself can only guide you. I can only guide you to discover the balance within yourself.
You're the one that has to make that happen on the inside. So self reflection and practice and experimentation is how you find the boundaries, the limitations, and the truth. and find the sweet spot. Yes, it helps to have guidance, and everybody needs it. But, that said, it's still you, the singer, that has to do everything that your coach is recommending.
Alright, it's you that have to discover how do, which vowel, shade, which vowel, do I need to hit that note in an efficient way? And how much subglottal pressure does that take? How much airflow does that take? How much ease and relaxation in the body is necessary. Where am I getting tight? You're not going to be able to figure out everything on your own.
That's why coaches exist. All right.
Mastering the Five Fundamental Coordinations for Vocal Excellence
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Philippe Hall: So five fundamental coordinations of singing. We've talked about this. Five fundamental coordinations of singing. Your air flow and air pressure. Your air is your power source with no air flowing through the vocal folds. There is no sound. They cannot move. You have to have air moving through your vocal folds to make any sound at all.
Then we get right to the vocal fold coordination. How much thickness do I need? How much thinness do I need? How, how much tension do I need in there? So there's different muscles that regulate that, and that is a coordination you have to develop. Because if you're singing everything at the same level, you're gonna hit limitations, you'll get stuck down the rabbit hole.
Then we've got our pharynx. Do we need twang? Yes, we need twang. Well, there's a lot of different definitions of twang. So my definition, I'm using the word twang because you've probably heard it before. But my definition of twang is, it is a narrowing in the pharynx. There are different narrowings and different amounts of narrowing within that pharynx that produce different sounds.
Okay, you've got the, Oh. Ah, that's one type of twang. You also have the, Oh, Ah, produces a different sound. So coordination of the pharynx is so vital to your singing. You've got your tongue. Is your tongue quick? Can you do la di da di da di da di da di da di da di da? And you move that tip of your tongue up and down, up and down, and you move it up and it returns right to the vowel you want.
Hmm, can you do the back of the tongue? Ga gi ga gi ga gi ga gi ga gi ga gi ga gi ga gi ga. Can you make it quick with no tension? Tongue coordination is not just about your vowel position. Because, yes, we have consonants, right? Why do we have consonants in language? Because it separates the words. It allows us to create different words.
Otherwise, we'd be Communicating in something like Morse code with different sounds. Ah, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha. Right? We'd just be making sounds with no consonants. Your language has consonants. Singing has consonants. Singing has lyrics. And those lyrics need to be understood.
So, the ability of your tongue agility to move to the consonant required and then jump right back to the vowel and then move again. Wow! The tongue is incredible. But we need that agility. We need to train the tongue so it's quick and light and accurate in the tongue position. Um, now we need to train the embouchure.
Why? Because the embouchure impacts your sound. Any sound on any pitch will change just by changing your embouchure. Ah, Ah,
Eh, Eh. Eh, Eh, Eh, Changes in the embouchure impact your sound. All of these five fundamental coordinations of singing, they all work together, and this is the secret. The secret is every style of singing and every sound you want to make. Whether you want to be an opera singer, whether you want to be a country singer, whether you enjoy singing R& B and pop, it doesn't matter.
All of them are combinations of the five fundamental coordinations of singing. You've got to have the right amount of air pressure, vocal fold coordination, thickness, thinness, length. Pharyngeal, twang and narrowing, the right vowel and the right embouchure. The, they combine to create singing styles. So the five fundamental coordinations are universal.
It doesn't matter if you're a death metal singer or if you're a jazz singer, you have to have control of the five fundamental coordinations of singing. If you don't, you won't be able to execute. So last summer I did an amazing workshop with a lot of wonderful professionals on belt and mix voice. And it is so valuable.
We still have that available on [00:27:00] my website as a webinar version. It's, it's incredible. I love this course. But, what I discover, what I discover every day with singers, and what we discover during the intensive is, it doesn't matter if you know the formula if you can't execute the five coordinations of singing.
So the better you are at those coordinations, the better you'll be able to combine them to execute the style of singing you want. There are no real secrets. There's know how, there's experience, there is a definite recipe to create a belt sound, a gospel sound, a jazz sound. There's a definite recipe, a definite formula, but it's a combination of those five.
So, if you really want, this is what, this is actually what vocal technique is. Vocal technique is the ability to develop the coordination over these five fundamental coordinations of singing so you have a high ability level to combine them any way you want. If you've seen people, even like Ariana Grande has been on social media doing a lot of impersonations, why can she sound like all these famous singers?
Because she has control of the five fundamental coordinations of singing. That is invaluable. Once you have developed this coordination and you continue to refine these coordinations, you'll be able to combine them to sing anything you want. Anything you want. Maybe you don't want to sing everything.
That's okay. I don't want to sing everything either. But I like to be able to do it. And the better I can coordinate those things, The better I'm going to be able to execute what I'm singing. If I'm singing a musical song, if I'm singing an opera song, if I'm singing a pop song, a rock song. If I have no coordination, no control over those five, I'm not going to have that experience of freedom.
Freedom. Okay, so learning the formula, learning all the tips on how this is how you belt, this is how you mix, That's great. It's very valuable. But if you don't have the skill level, you won't be able to combine them and execute to your satisfaction. Then you're going to find, oh, all I needed was a bit of twang.
Great. Now you go crazy with the twang. What happened to all the other good things you were doing? You're neglecting them. Now you're stuck down a rabbit hole again. All right, so let's get unstuck. I want to help singers get unstuck. I want to share my experience and knowledge with singers. On not only the formulas of how you create these sounds, how much embouchure do you need?
How much jaw opening do you need? How far does your tongue need to be forward? All of these things are vitally important, but if you don't have the ability to control them, you're stuck. You're stuck.
Intensive Training and Final Thoughts: Elevating Your Singing Technique
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Philippe Hall: This is why I decided to, to create intensive trainings for the five fundamental coordinations of singing.
So in June here, we're going to work on our coordination of airflow, air pressure and vocal fold coordination. These two kind of go together for me. It's going to be an intensive training at all. We're going to do is work on those coordinations, getting targeted exercises to help you improve those coordination.
Because, guess what, this is the magic. This is the magic. If those improve, if your air flow and air pressure control improves, everything improves. Everything. All the other things you're not even focusing on are going to get better because why? You have improved your skill level of one of the coordinations of singing.
Now we're going to add the vocal folds to that. If you have better vocal fold control, now you'll probably be able to mix. and belt, you probably be able to manage your passaggio better because you can control vocal fold coordination and air pressure and airflow. These things are fundamental for everything.
We're not going to try and tackle everything all at once. So I'm going to do an intensive training spread throughout the year on each of the five fundamental coordinate of singing because I sincerely believe This will help you, any singer, at any level, in any genre, improve what they're doing, because they're fundamental.
So, it's gonna be a lot of fun. So, to get your voice unstuck, and avoid being stuck down a rabbit hole, You must remember that what you discover that is helping you is valid. You need to explore it, but don't overdo it. I, I, just a funny visual image for you. One of my clients and I were talking about this and he was just nailing the twang, nailing the twang.
Sticking his tongue way out and, and raising the larynx and it just all got stuck. So I said to him, look, if you're a pilot in a plane, you sit in the cockpit and you, you drive the plane. You're in the front of the plane and that's where you belong, but you don't want to be slammed up against the very nose of the plane on the window.
That's too much. You don't need to be that far forward in the plane. You've got to be where you're at. So there's always. The right amount. When you discover something, explore it. But find the limitations. Find out what is not enough. Find out what is enough. I need to do this much and then do more so you find out and discover This is too much and then back off.
Back off, come back to the efficient setting. Don't overdo it. Just because you discover something new doesn't mean it's the solution for everything and doesn't mean it's that the amount of pressure you'll need or the amount of twang you need or the height of the back of your Tongue or the spread of your embouchure.
It's not going to solve every issue. You've got to figure out how much of that do I need that to make a difference and find the relief and the freedom in my singing. So that's your challenge. You're going to make it. You're going to be just fine. I'm going to put in the description here of this live stream.
I'll put in the description, I'll put in a link, a link to the five fundamental coordinations of singing, intensive training. Or your air flow, air pressure, and vocal fold coordination. So, if you don't see it right away, it's because I haven't put it in yet. So be patient, but come back to it, and leave a comment.
If you're interested, just leave a comment on this video, and I'll reach out to you. Sound good? Great. Thank you for tuning in to The Voice Vibe. I hope this has opened your mind to How we get stuck down a rabbit hole in singing, why it's, it happens and it does happen to everybody and how you can start getting yourself unstuck.
Have a wonderful day and I'll see you next week on The Voice Vibe with my special guest, Rush Dorsett. You got to tune in for this one. This is all about mindset and how you can meditate as a singer and get yourself in the right mindset for your performance and your practice. Have a wonderful day. I'll see you next time on The Voice 5.
