Fix Your Mix! with Lara Chapman
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00:00 Welcome to the Big Five Virtual Voice Summit
00:39 Getting to Know Laura Chapman: Busy Bees and Passion Pursuits
02:12 The Artist's Journey: From Excitement to 'What Now?'
03:18 The Big Five Coordinations of Singing Explained
11:44 Overcoming Vocal Challenges: Laura's Personal Journey
16:23 Decompressing Vocal Folds: Techniques and Exercises
21:45 Exploring Vocal Extremes: Finding Balance
22:28 Applying Techniques Across Vocal Ranges
23:13 Navigating Technical Challenges and Solutions
23:45 The Importance of Vocal Flexibility and Technique
27:06 Understanding Individual Vocal Needs
28:25 The Value of Specialized Vocal Training
33:24 Insights into the Nay Nay Exercise
38:44 The Significance of Tailored Vocal Exercises
42:24 Why Join the Big Five Intensive Training?
45:32 Closing Remarks and Upcoming Events
Introduction and Welcome
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Philippe Hall: Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the big five virtual voice summit
Our next guest is Laura Chapman and I am excited to welcome Laura here to the stream. Let's, let's say hello, Laura. Hello, everybody.
Lara Chapman: Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here. What a way to start your Saturday. I love it.
Philippe Hall: I love it too. Great. So, yes.
The Energy of Being Busy
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Philippe Hall: You are a busy, a busy bee, right?
Lara Chapman: I sure am! But I like being one because, I don't know if you're the same, but like, I get energy from being busy. Like, if I don't have, like, meetings, and lessons, and things to plan, and videos to shoot, and all that stuff, I get tired and I need to take a nap in the middle of the day from doing nothing. And I'm like, um, I don't know.
What? That makes no sense, because when I'm busy, I'm like, I've got all the energy in the world, so it's really weird how that works sometimes.
Philippe Hall: It is. It is. I think it does have something.
Chasing Your Passion
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Philippe Hall: Uh, to do with, with, uh, chasing your passion, you know, life, a lot of people said life is more enjoyable when you're in the pursuit of a dream or pursuit of something you want to do.
Um, and then you get there and it's great. And then. It's over.
Lara Chapman: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I haven't gotten there yet. For me, it's like, I'm, um, I'm an Aries, so, you know, multi passionate and always like I very much suffer from shiny object syndrome. And so, yeah. It's like, I just like, this sounds like fun.
Awesome. Let's go chase this. And then like, for me, it's very much to actually like reach very much difficult to reach a destination because I always get distracted by other things that I also want to do.
Philippe Hall: Yeah, but
Lara Chapman: it's okay. It keeps it interesting. It's never boring in my life and that's good. I guess
The Cycle of Performance
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Philippe Hall: that is I think it's good, but I think we're similar in that in that so it's but you've have experience as a singer as an artist also The, the joy and excitement of working towards something, let's say your concert, your performance, your show, your opening night.
And it's really exciting and it goes great. And then it's over
Lara Chapman: now. What? Yes, no, absolutely. 100%. You're like, I worked so hard on this. And now. And now what? Now I got to do this all over again. I got to audition for the next thing, or I got to go back and write another song and, you know, I got to go back and release a new album.
So I can put together a different show. It's, it's very much. Yeah. Like, okay. Oh, now I have to do this again.
Speaker 4: Not that you don't
Lara Chapman: enjoy doing it again, but it's a lot of work to do it again. Yeah.
Philippe Hall: Yeah. I, I totally understand. Now I'm going to make this, this. Absolutely. Connect all of this right to our topic.
It's going to be incredible. What does this have to do with, uh, the big five coordinations of singing?
Lara Chapman: Is that a question for me? Am I supposed to answer? No, no, no. I'm not going to.
Philippe Hall: You felt like you're on the spot. You're like, I have to answer. No. What does it have to do? Because you are always in your singing.
If you sing.
The Importance of Continuous Practice
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Philippe Hall: Stop your learning if you stop the pursuit of of what you love Then you will stagnate and need to take a nap in the middle of the day. It's it's staying intensely Passionate about what you're doing with your singing and one of the most rewarding ways to do that is to progress
Lara Chapman: Yes, all 100%.
And for me, it's also like, if you if you pause, like if you take a if you take a break, it's almost like you're restarting. And every time you restart, because you're what's that word I'm looking for deep degressing? No. Is that
Philippe Hall: digressing? Probably
Lara Chapman: digressing. No, like, no, but like when you're making like, you're not progressing, regressing.
Thank you.
Like there's,
there's some word right there. Regressing, you know, when you, when you basically lose some, some skills again, it's like, now I got to work on this again and get it back because you took a break, you stopped for too long, whatever. And that's happened to me. multiple times. And it's very much like a, oh, come on, work on this again.
But the good news is you can get it again, right? Like once you were able to do it. You know how to get there. You can do it again. It's just going to take a little bit of practice.
The Challenge of High Notes
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Lara Chapman: Like for me, high notes, what Vera and you were talking about, that's like my thing where I'm like, yeah, if I am not actively up there all the time, I lose those notes.
Cause that's just not what my voice naturally wants to do. I have to work really hard to get to high notes. And so, you know, when I was younger, that's all I wanted to do. When I worked on these high notes, And, you know, I was able to hit like E6 on stage over and over and over again, easy, no problem. And then I left college to pursue my own original music, never saying hi ever again.
And then I lost literally all of these notes up there. And now it's like, Oh my God, I have to work to get these notes back, which is absolutely doable. It's just a little bit of a pain in the bootay, but it's, it's doable.
Philippe Hall: So, yeah.
Taking Breaks and Vocal Health
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Philippe Hall: Well, let's talk about that because you know, it's okay to have it's okay to take breaks You know, you can you can go on vacation and not stress out.
You're not going to lose everything But if for a long time, let's say you change styles And you're working for months and months and months, maybe even a couple of years in another genre. And then all of a sudden you're supposed to switch back. Well, your coordination again has, has just dulled. It's like a language, right?
You grew up speaking Swiss German. I'm sure your German's great. And, and you've been in America, isn't it? When you go back? Doesn't it take like a moment to rethink?
Lara Chapman: It really does. I was just back home at the beginning of this month and it literally, it takes me two days to be comfortable again and like speak Swiss German with my family and my friends.
Like, it's not like, you know, I can't have a conversation with him, I absolutely can. But sometimes I start the sentence off wrong or I can't find the right word. And it's just like what is happening? And like literally, I was speaking Swiss German for like twice as long in my life as I have English. But my English is just my everyday life now.
Right. And has been for the last 10 years. I've lived in the US for 10 years now. And so it's like, Oh my gosh, I speak way more English than I do German. And so it's like a little rusty sometimes, but yeah. And, and I do want to say, you know, with my high notes, like I stopped doing it for years, not like two weeks or two months.
It was years. And that's why I lost all those notes up there, but yes, taking breaks is more than okay. Like, please go on a vacation and enjoy your time off. Like, or if you're sick, like. I get this question a lot, like, Oh my gosh, like I'm sick, but I don't want to lose all of my progress. What can I do to still practice?
And I'm like, you know what? You're not going to lose anything. Rest. You're going to be fine. If you want to do a little something, you can do X, Y, Z, but please don't feel pressure to do so. You're going to be just fine. But yeah, I'm talking about like months and years where you see the regression. Vacation.
Philippe Hall: First vacation I had in the middle of a running show. I didn't sing for like, Two and a half weeks I was so scared because I had to come back and go on stage that night. I was totally scared I'm, like, oh my gosh. I hope my voice is gonna work. You know what?
The Big Five Coordinations of Singing
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Philippe Hall: It worked great So having a little rest can sometimes be very beneficial So absolutely and to get your high notes back again, you're coming back to These this these coordinations these big five coordinations to re establish things So what, what do you think when I first, when we first talked about the big five, or when I said the big five coordinations of singing, what, what clicked in your mind that said, oh, okay, yes, these are, this is, this is really valuable for singers.
To be considering it and working on.
Lara Chapman: Yeah. I think a lot of times as singers, we get so caught up, um, with the end result. Like we're really just trying to get to the end result. We're trying to improve our tone or we're trying to increase our range, but we don't understand. What needs to happen to get there and especially in today's day and age where we have like a zero attention span and Instant gratification is absolutely a thing like if it's not happening right now, then oh, it's not meant to be I'll pick up a different hobby or you know, whatever.
Um, I just don't have the talent for it I can't learn it like no it just takes time And so when you were talking to me about the big five I was like Yeah, like it's really important to understand how all the different parts of your voice, how they all work individually and how they are connected so that you can get to the result that you want to get because then you can start.
Like almost coaching yourself because you have a certain level of awareness. You know that if you lower your larynx, your tone is going to get warmer and richer and just not as bright, right? But if you, if you, uh, lengthen your vocal folds, like you were talking about with Vera earlier, you know that you're going to sing higher, right?
And to do that, you need to tilt your larynx. And you know, like if you just understand all these different aspects and components and parts, Uh, of the voice, you can then put it together and coach yourself better because you know how everything's related and connected.
Philippe Hall: Yeah, I really like that you, you brought up this.
Thought of coaching yourself, you know ever people think they need a vocal coach all the time I'm a vocal coach. I work with singers when I was a professional singer. I had coaching a lot as well however The work you have to do yourself You have to become you one of your best coaches because you're going to be singing You're going to you're not you can't take me around in your pocket everywhere You're You know, it's hard to take Philippe and Laura nowadays with social media, you kind of can, but at the same time, you're going to have to be the one that, that makes this happen.
And our, our purpose is to guide you. And a lot of people, I, I asked you to speak about the big five coordinations in relation to how can you fix your mix? And I know people use the term mix broadly, but. But I know you're really good on this and about at this and I know you became really good at it because you experienced the diversity, the difficulty of being out of balance with the big five.
So,
yes,
um, that's, that's my segue to say. There you go.
Lara Chapman: Mixed voice. Yes.
Understanding Vocal Mix
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Lara Chapman: No, I mean, mixed voice for me was, uh, a necessity. It wasn't something that, like, I always wanted to learn it. I was always fascinated with it because I always felt like I was hitting the ceiling with my belt and, you know, it was like full steam ahead or absolutely nothing.
Like, not absolutely nothing, but like, uh, switching to a weaker voice, right? Or my head dominant mix was great, but There was still like a gap between my voice and so I was just pushing my chest voice higher and higher and higher and, you know, gaslighting myself into like, like, this, this is fine. This is this going to be okay.
And the more I do it, the easier it gets. And newsflash, it never gets easier if you just yell. But yeah, I was, I was definitely screaming. I was yelling on pitch.
Dealing with Vocal Injuries
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Lara Chapman: And, uh, for me, like, when I say like, I, I, you know, really got into the mix thing out of necessity is because like I developed a vocal injury and I lost my voice for four weeks.
I couldn't sing and I couldn't speak for four weeks. I was in so much pain. And, uh, you know, I developed vocal, they called it pre nodules. It's the same thing as a vocal nodule, but just not as big and as developed. It was just like itty bitty because it was in the beginning stages. But yeah, I mean my ENT, my, my laryngologist.
Was, uh, basically like, so the good news is you're fine, a little bit of rest, like, you know, a little bit of, um, speech therapy. I worked with an SLP, a speech language pathologist, um, and you're going to be okay. The bad news is if you don't make any changes, you're going to be back here every couple months.
And the timeframe is going to get shorter and shorter and shorter because. the voice is just getting less and less and less resilient with age as well. And so I was like, okay, well, um, if I want to keep my job, then I need to make some changes. And that's where I got really into releasing tension and making singing feel as effortless as possible.
And mix is A lot
Philippe Hall: of people in the commercial industry, like popular music, it's like the holy grail is to sing mix. And I, I understand exactly what you're talking about and, and what you needed to adjust. But I do think there's a lot of confusion out there too. What is exactly a mix? And so let's, let's just take the big five coordinations of singing.
We, you said that you were, you were yelling on pitch. So if we have like the five coordination singing airflow, air pressure, vocal folds, pharynx, tongue, and embouchure, if a singer is like overpowering and yelling on pitch. They are doing too much of several things, so let's backtrack it. You could actually have the perfect embouchure.
Your tongue could be in the right position. Your pharynx could be pretty, pretty close, but your, your vocal folds and your air pressure It's mostly the vocal folds.
Lara Chapman: Yeah, yeah, I would say, you know, like yelling on pitch. It's, it's mostly, you know, you have the length of the vocal folds is correct if you are on pitch, right?
Because the length of the vocal folds only determines what note you're singing, but it's the thickness of the vocal folds. That was just. Not it like way too thick, right? And way too compressed, meaning the vocal folds were just way like squeezing together. There was way too much compression, way too much.
Um, you use the term adduction, I think.
Philippe Hall: Yeah. Kyla's I can't wait for Kyla's, uh, to come on here as well, because exactly, adduction, compression, sickness, is there a difference or are they all related? So we're going to talk about that coming up.
Techniques to Improve Vocal Mix
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Philippe Hall: But yeah, so what did you do to adjust it and what's a tip you could give?
Singers that you're going to be talking about in our, in, in our intensive training program that that's coming up here that can help.
Lara Chapman: Yeah. So, I mean, it depends on what kind of singer you are. And I, I developed like a whole quiz for this, like to help you identify your vocal personality or your vocal persona.
Like, are you someone who tends to overpower or are you someone who's Who tends to be a little too soft. And I know you were talking about this with Vera earlier as well. But, if you are an over powerer, Like someone who's uh, pushing a little, a little too much, like I was, AKA, a little bit like yelling on pitch, or you're, you're, you're going like, Uhhhhhhhhhh!
Speaker 4: And then, Uhhhhhhhh!
Lara Chapman: You know, you crack up into a head voice. If that's what's happening, then your best friend to decompress the vocal folds is going to be to work on a, uh, breathy voice. So I, I truly believe in this, uh, like practice technique called over correction. So we're going from one extreme, meaning overly compressed, like vocal folds are squeezing together too tightly to the other extreme, which will be.
breathy, right? The vocal folds are not coming together enough. So there's like, too much air leaking through, essentially, just to relax this muscle here that's connected at the end of your vocal folds called the transverse arytenoid muscle. We need to relax that muscle a little bit so there's not too much squeezing happening.
And then we can meet in the middle where you're getting that air. balanced tone. So that's how you're going to get rid of the compression. And another thing is just really working on head voice. That's another way to get balance into your singing, right? So just getting that stretch going in your vocal folds is really important so that, um, you know, like you can actually Gradually get higher and higher and higher.
If you don't have the stretch you can't those are the two big things that I worked on
Philippe Hall: Yeah, that's excellent. I just my camera froze up. So i'm switching back and forth and i'm not i'm not growing as we speak That's why Okay. No, I don't know. It just froze up. So that's, uh, we'll, we'll fix that up. It's the day of, uh, technical challenges.
Maybe it'll switch back now. Let's see. Nope. It's still frozen up. So I'll disconnect that and then we'll, we'll, uh, we'll fix that in a minute. Um, excellent.
Lara Chapman: This is what you get for being live. You know, you gotta roll the punches.
Philippe Hall: Yeah, you do. You gotta go with it. Okay, cool. Uh, I loved everything you just said.
What is your, one of your favorite exercises that one person Door tools. And when somebody comes in and starts talking with you, singing for you, and you're like, aha, okay. They're like really overpowering things. How do you help them find a way to release all that compression and thickness? Is there. A tool or a kind of a, I'm sure you have many in your toolbox, but what's, uh, maybe something you'd like to share?
Lara Chapman: Um, too many. Um, okay. If I had to, Oh my gosh. Okay. I'm between two, one would be a flagella, guys, to get the stretch going, right. To let your vocal folds get thinner. Uh, and the other one would be a breathy voice exercise. Which one do we want to do, or do we want to do both?
Philippe Hall: I say you just start with one.
And if we have time, we'll do both.
Lara Chapman: Okay.
Breathy Voice Exercise
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Lara Chapman: Okay, let's do let's do the the breathy voice one. Because Vera was just talking about head voice stuff. So for breathy voice, what I would do is like a
it's not pretty. I know it sounds very weird. If it's not supposed to sound pretty, again, like Trust the process, forget about the end result that we're going for, but we're making it as breathy as you possibly can by starting on that H like that.
And hear how that's like in my chest said, not in my head voice. And then you just go up. Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha Now, if you're struggling with getting a breathy sound period, we would just start with doing some simple sighs, like just a, Or you're literally just sighing. We're not like singing or hitting specific notes.
We're just sighing, because anyone can do that. Right? We're basically pulling from primal sounds, sounds that we use in our everyday life. And we're pulling that on using that in our, in our singing. So just, doesn't have to sound pretty 10 out of 10 breathy. And then we can go to this
exercise. And again, still 10 out of 10 breathy.
You're running out of breath really quickly. And that's okay.
Exploring Vocal Extremes
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Lara Chapman: Let's do one more.
Again, we're going from one extreme to the other. This is not the end result we're going for. This is just another extreme so that we can then meet in the middle where it's nice and balanced.
Balancing Compression in Singing
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Lara Chapman: You have, that's like, Connected and balanced at not, right. That would be overly compressed and it's all really breathy, not enough compression
is the middle, the, the, the thing that we're shooting for. Right. But we've got to do the over correction first.
Philippe Hall: Hey, that was great. I love it.
Lara Chapman: And you can do that in your whole range, right? Like you don't, you, you, you can do this like, um, over your passaggio, right? Like where you're struggling with that crack that you're experiencing, but you can also take it like way, way, way up to, if you wanted to, it just kind of depends on, On what it is you're working on, usually I use this for chest voice and mix, like chest voice and passaggio, not really up in head voice because in head voice most people don't struggle with over compression, but rather not enough.
So, uh, yeah, but mostly I use it for chest voice and mix, like chest dominant mix.
Philippe Hall: Okay. That was awesome. I enjoyed listening to you while I'm like here juggling cameras trying to come up with a pretty solution here But I think I think we're gonna be okay. Yeah, it's something My phone might I got my phone stop.
I use my phone as a webcam because it works really well and for some something activated and like wanted to Download a whole bunch of information from Google photos and like, I don't even use Google photos. What's going on? Weird. Weird
Lara Chapman: technology.
Philippe Hall: So you use that puffy soft sound. That's a little diffused.
To, to loosen up the, the really, the compression, the tightness first until they can build it back in. I like it.
Lara Chapman: Yeah.
Using Larynx Position for Better Singing
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Lara Chapman: And, and another way to do that as well, to like get, like to loosen up that compression a little would be lowering your larynx, right? So we have a tendency as singers, like when we go up in pitch.
Your larynx moves up, right? And it's absolutely allowed to do that if you're singing contemporary music, right? Please let your larynx move up and down. That's important. But sometimes it gets stuck up too high. And the tendency that we have as singers is we have more compression in our vocal folds the higher the larynx is.
So if we just Inhale through a yawn. That helps us to quickly, like, lower the larynx, bring it back down, and then it can move freely again, and it's not stuck up there. That was another, another thing that I worked on heavily, just to stop squeezing so goddamn hard.
Philippe Hall: I, I'm so glad you said that because it's something I, I talk about a lot.
I experienced in some different methodologies with different teachers that their kind of go to solution for getting people to sing high notes was to raise the larynx. And I, I experienced so many singers that I've been working with that had had that training, the larynx just gets stuck. It's, you know, I say you just run out, you're going to run out of your range of motion.
The larynx doesn't need to be higher than it needs to be. And it can be a good tool in the beginning just to help people, um, begin to get the stretch. You know, it does make it a little easier. And it works also against if somebody's like,
And they're they're really pulling down on their larynx sure it could get them to loosen that up as well So I think that's really a key to watch out for in your singing
Challenges with Common Vocal Exercises
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Lara Chapman: Well, and one thing too, you know, like if you watch any YouTube videos or reels or TikToks or whatever, wherever you're getting information on singing, you know, everyone's like their go to exercise for mixed voices is And I'm like literally, like literally I tried this for years and it created so much tension in my singing Because I already had a larynx that was stuck too high and that whiny sound Even though like we can get that whiny sound without like an incredibly high larynx.
It's usually what happens. It brings the larynx up as well So it like There's so many teachers out there that swear by this exercise and it works for a lot of people, but it also doesn't work for some. And so if you're one of those people, this just does not work for you. There's nothing wrong with you.
It doesn't work for me either.
The Importance of Tailored Vocal Training
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Philippe Hall: I'm glad you said that it's not every exercise works for every person equally as well. So I think A lot of, um, I think it's unfortunate, but there's a reason behind it. A lot of singing coaches and teachers, they, they are convinced about what they want to teach because that's what helped them and help them break through their barriers and help them unlock their voice.
Or that's just what they've been taught, but, uh, they're not, not everybody's considering the fact that maybe. Other people have different issues. They don't sing the same way as I do. They need something different. And if I'm not equipped with a nice big box of tools and tricks, and I'm not sensitive to that, I could be going, why is this exercise not working for them?
It works work great for me. And, and they just, Hmm. Some teachers, like I literally had a teacher at one point and I was already singing professionally. Tell me me hmm. Maybe you're not really a tenor because her exercise just wasn't working And I'm like, come on, I've been singing up to like D's and higher for my, for years.
Of course I'm a tenor, but she just couldn't just, she just didn't know. And um, I learned a lot of good things from her in other ways, but that's, it's, it's really important to be sensitive to what you need.
Lara Chapman: Oh, absolutely.
Admitting Limitations as a Vocal Coach
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Lara Chapman: But it's also like, you can't expect a vocal coach to know everything, right? Like, I, like, on my Instagram stories recently, I had this, this box where it was like, ask me anything, right?
And somebody asked about whistle. And I'm like, I that's just not my wheelbarrow, like my wheel wheelbox. No, my wheel. My What am I trying to say? It's not my thing, okay? I don't do whistle. I don't know much about whistle. I personally hate it. I think it sounds terrible. It's more of like a party trick than anything like vocal technique and all that stuff.
I personally just don't really like it and have zero interest in it. So, if somebody asks me about whistle, I'm gonna tell them, like, Hey, I'm not the person for you. If that's what you wanna learn, please go see XYZ. I'm not the right person for you for that. But it's important that as a vocal coach, we can admit that and be like, Hey, this is wheelhouse.
Thank you. Thank you. We have
like, what am I looking for?
Um, not my wheelhouse. So yes. Um, not, not my thing. Please go see somebody else. Um, or, uh, yeah. And just like, admit that that's not your thing, or you don't know enough about it or whatever.
Philippe Hall: Yeah, I, I mean, I think it's really impressive too, those whistle tones, but it's like on my list of one of the things I still have yet to learn.
So I'm the same way. If somebody wants to learn whistle tones, I know how it works. I can. Goddamn, but I've never done, I've never taken the time to really do that as a man. So I would be, if somebody really wants that, I'm going to be referring to a whistle tone specialist, you know?
Lara Chapman: Yep. Yep. No, 100%. We all have like our strengths and our weaknesses as singers, but also as voice teachers.
And when I first started, I really thought I need to be like, I need to know everything, but that's just not the case. Like you're doing your students a much better service. If you're working with the right people for you, right? And not everyone is the right, is the right fit, but you need to know that and you need, you need to have experience to, to know who the right student is and who you can get really amazing results for.
But also obviously, please have a big toolbox.
Philippe Hall: Yeah,
Lara Chapman: that's important.
Philippe Hall: It is.
The Big Five Intensive Training
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Philippe Hall: And that's a reason why for me, let's say we've got the, the summit come up. But I want to just flash on the screen what we're going to be talking about what we're going to be training during this big five intensive training for vocal folds Air flow and air pressure balance.
You've got all these Coordinations that are happening with the vocal folds that we need to strengthen and be able to isolate a little bit more Just like Laura was talking about about having the vocal folds. Maybe that Compression is too high that the adduction the pressure all those things can shut you down really quickly You can show it down really quickly.
So, it's really important that you continue to, to work on these coordinations, and even as a voice teacher, one thing that I love, I know you, you were part of the intensive training last summer that I did. Every intensive training I do and every time I collaborate with another, uh, teacher and singer, I'm always learning.
Lara Chapman: Oh yeah. I learned so much last year. I was like, Oh Lord, I gotta go on my books myself and, uh,
you know, take notes.
Philippe Hall: So yeah, if you are coaching or just starting to teach, It's so valuable that you attend these sessions. It's not only going to make you a better coach, you're going to learn from some of the best coaches in the business.
They have a lot of great tools and they have years of trying different things out. They can tell you why this exercise works, why that one doesn't, what things to watch out for.
Benefits of the Nay Nay Exercise
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Philippe Hall: And as a singer, it's so beneficial because I, I've discovered in, during my evolution that, you know, everybody's using SOVTs, but nobody really took the time to explain to me how to do them right, or what to watch out for, or that they don't work everywhere, and it's not the, the end solution to everything, and how many times has a student come to you, Laura, um, who's been doing ney, ney, ney, ney, ney, ney, ney, ney for the last three years?
Lara Chapman: Oh, many times.
Philippe Hall: No, it's the, and nay, nay, nay is a great exercise. It has a lot of things that you can train, but let's just,
I don't know.
I, this, this is kind of an example about what kind of upgrade you can get in, in the big five intensive training. Not only do you get to work with all these great coaches and get their insights, but let's just break it down.
Nay, nay, nay. So, I'll give you, let's just play ping pong.
Lara Chapman: Oh, you and your ping pong! You always put me on the spot with your ping
Philippe Hall: pong! Yeah, come
on, it's easy, it's easy. Um, I will give one benefit of the Nay Nay exercise and then we'll bounce to you until we run out and maybe somebody in the feed can also, you guys can, you can chime in on the text.
So let's ask you, So, it's not just us two. And then I want to also look at what can go terribly wrong. So NeNe, I'll, I'll go first. It can help you learn to do, get the most out of your N consonant.
Lara Chapman: Yeah. And like for that also the placement, right, that N, it helps you place the, the sound.
Philippe Hall: Okay, great. So we got the nasal consonant end.
We got vocal placement benefit. Anybody want to put something in the, in the feed? Go ahead. Just type something. You have
Lara Chapman: to pick an exercise that I absolutely despise.
Philippe Hall: I know, but that's great because you're going to be so good at saying the things that can go wrong. So the next, next benefit, it can increase your tongue agility.
Lara Chapman: Tongue agility. Oh, cause you're going from meh, meh, meh. You're moving it up and down.
Philippe Hall: Cause you, if you do, we'll get into that. But what I'm saying is if you could do this. Na, na, na, na, na, na, na. You can use it to train your tongue agility. Fair.
Lara Chapman: Fair.
There you go. Okay, I see that. Well, if I go into embouchure, like the mouth, like the shape of the mouth, like you're not over opening on that exercise, which is great for, for transitions because sometimes what happens is when we go higher, we get louder.
And to do that, we. Open the mouth too much and there's like too much pressure coming through so
It's not like insanely open so I would say that's a positive
Philippe Hall: yeah good balancing pressure balancing pressure not over opening Here's a for your voice. Hey, buddy How's it going? Good to see you. Uh, in South, the vocal folds. Okay. You could work on not being too sick. That that's great. Balancing your pressure.
I like the fact that it makes you do a, and if you do it with an open mouth,
You're never going to get all the way to E. So if your mouth, your embouchure closes a little bit, it's still on the big five, you see how all of these work together. Then you get that E. Some people have freakishly long tongues and they can still get an E with their mouth all the way open. I can't. But what I can do is I can learn the path.
Because how many words have the A sound in them? A. So it's, I like that tongue movement, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A. Try and just immobilize the embouchure and isolate that little tongue. Because, guess what? That's one of the best ways to train how to sing a high, Delta high E.
Speaker 4: It's right, it's in between there.
Philippe Hall: And you think, uh, all right, if we got some other people, it can lower the palette to reduce a classical sound.
Okay. I wouldn't have even thought of that one, but I get where you're going with that. Yeah. You get out of the, right? Not out of that. Okay. So going a little wider, a little bit wider and keeping the pressure low. Cool. Good. So they're definitely good, um, good advantages to this exercise.
Common Problems with the Nay Nay Exercise
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Philippe Hall: So let's just go into now the problems when people, what are some of the typical problems where singers get stuck on the nay nay exercise?
Lara Chapman: Yeah, the larynx is too high. That's what always happens with me.
Philippe Hall: Larynx gets too high. So, yeah, good. Big five coordination. Um, number three, the pharynx. Bottom of the pharynx is the larynx, right? The bottom of the pharynx, the larynx goes up, the pharynx gets smaller, and you're running out of resonance room, and, Oh, you've got leftist neigh, neigh, neigh.
Just tiny little sound, and it's really tight, and then people say the twang, and then you squeeze the pharynx in. It can go wrong so fast.
Lara Chapman: Yeah. Yes. It can go wrong.
Philippe Hall: And, uh, that's actually, I have a client that they was asked to do that for years and years and said, I don't know, before I, uh, came to you and just my go to my voice lesson and it was pretty famous studio.
And all I do was do, they just have me do nay, nay, nay for several years. Like, well, what kind of sound do you want to make? It's like, I want to make a big. a really big open sound like Elvis. And I'm like, well, maybe that wasn't a good choice. Yeah.
Lara Chapman: But that is, you're bringing up such a good point here though, because like it, it's so matters what your goals are.
Like, that's always the first thing. Actually, the second thing I ask a student, like when I meet a new student first, it's like, what is your experience? And second, what are your goals? And if your goal is to get a big, warm, open. Juicy, rich sound, then we're going to do exercises that are going to help you get there.
Not twangy and bright. exercises like that because that just is not gonna help. So it goes back to awareness, right? Like you need to be aware of what certain things are working on and you know, what you need to change to get to the desired sound. So anyways, sorry, that was a little bit.
Philippe Hall: No, that's so on point.
It, Even when you're using the big five coordinations of singing, you are combining them to create the sound you want. And if you have flexibility in that, then you can move those fingers. It's still one hand. They're all connected, but if some of them are stuck, you'll just end up saying live long and prosper.
And that will be it with your singing, right? So we've got to learn to coordinate them in a way to specifically create the sound you want to create and is. That's where the artistry comes in, you know, that's that's what it's all about. It's not Singer not every singer wants to sing classically. Not every singer wants a light pop mix Not every singer wants to do riffs and runs, you know, not every singer wants to be a musical diva So it does depend on what you want how you're going to use these coordinations But my message is Our message is you have to have great skill level and control And the over these coordinations and the more coordination you have The easier you can combine them to get the exact right result you want
Lara Chapman: 100 percent and you know, sometimes it's like, and this is a mistake that I made.
I didn't want to sing high anymore after college. I was like, no, like my thing is low notes. I'm an alto. I love singing low and I love, you know, big belty and rich and all that. Cause I can do this easily. I can do this every day, all day long. And then because I stopped working on all these high notes, I lost my balance and belting became heavier, more difficult, and just more and more and more exhausting because I fell out of balance.
And so just because you don't necessarily want to do Like want to sing high notes doesn't mean you should never train them because they can absolutely like having that flexibility In your voice that comes to head voice Is crucial for certain other things that you want to do and that's where it gets tricky and that's where Uh, you know like working with a vocal coach is really helpful because they know that It's kind of a little bit like You got to trust the process and just be like, I know you don't want to do this, but we have to, to do this other thing.
But it's our job to make you understand why we're doing certain things. Because when you understand why, then it's like, Oh, okay. I can take one for the team. Like I know if I take cough syrup, my cough is going to go away. So sure. I don't like cough syrup, but I'm going to take it anyways. That's kind of that.
Yeah.
Philippe Hall: That's, that's excellent.
Why Join the Big Five Intensive Training
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Philippe Hall: Give us, um, tell us please, why should, why should singers and singing teachers Be seriously considering joining our big five intensive training this summer.
Lara Chapman: Why? Because I'm there and I'm awesome. That's the reason enough. No, I'm just kidding. Sorry. No, because so again, like you said, we were doing something like this.
It was a mixing and belting intensive last year. And I was, uh, like, I learned so much there, and I've been teaching for years, probably not as many years as you have, Philippe, you've got some years on me, but, you know, I've been teaching for a long time, and it's like, oh my god, like, I learned so, so, so much, and I also, like, learned how, Uh, there's different ways of saying the same thing, and we all mean the same thing.
So it helps you better communicate with your student, and as a student, it also helps you better communicate with your coach, right? If you have different ways of describing what it is you're feeling, it's so much easier to be on the same level with your coach. So both parties understand. What you mean and what it is you're trying to describe.
So just the level of communication increases dramatically, whether you're the student or the teacher. Now, if you don't work with a teacher, why should you be there? I mean, My friend, like, if you don't have anyone coaching you, you need to be there so that you can do a better job at coaching yourself.
Because you probably have been watching a bunch of YouTube videos or reels or TikToks and some of the things apply to you and they worked for you and most of the stuff probably didn't. And now you're frustrated and you're like. Why does this video have a million views, but it's not working for me?
Because it doesn't work for everyone, but if you understand the big five and all the things that we're going to be talking about in this video, month long event, then you can coach yourself better because you understand what applies to you, what doesn't apply to you, what you need to do in order to get to your desired result.
You know that if you want to mix, you also need to have a head voice up there too. Even if you want a belt, you need to have the agility and the flexibility and the lightness. Of the head voice, right? You, you can, you can then put all these different things together and have just a such a better awareness level, higher awareness level and coach yourself better, whether you're working with someone or by yourself.
It's crucial to understand these things. You make so much more progress so much more quickly when you understand this stuff versus when you're just typing into YouTube best vocal warm up and you just do a warm up blindly and you don't understand what to pay attention to, why we're doing these things, and why it's important, right?
So
Philippe Hall: yeah, anyway, that's great. That's how you should be. Wonderful answer. Very insightful.
Conclusion and Event Details
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Philippe Hall: Also, you came back to progress tying it up like with a nice bow on top where we were at the beginning of this stream It's just that progress keeps you motivated progress keeps you happy progress It builds your confidence Progress enables you to realize your singing dream Join us everybody.
Thanks laura so much for being here.
Thank you Join
us for the big five intensive training event coming up starting on june 8th All the info is in the description if you have any questions reach out to me reach out to laura. Have a great day We'll take a short break and we'll be back with kaihost.
karni. See you soon. Bye
guys. Bye
