Well, yes and no. This is the second time I am writing this article. The first time, I mainly focused on finding relaxation. Relaxation in the jaw, the tongue, the breath. But thanks to the Voice Construction® method by my teacher Maurits Draijer, I have now come to the progressive insight that this is not the whole story.
To achieve a relaxed feeling for singing, you need tension elsewhere in the body. And much more tension than most people think. In this article, I give four reasons why you might have a strained feeling in your voice. In other words: why you are probably far too relaxed in your body, causing too much tension to land on your delicate vocal cords. The first two are physical, and the last two are psychological. They reinforce each other.
A lot of people (myself included) are too weak when they start singing. The energy level is like a tea party without cookies on a rainy Sunday afternoon. As soon as you start singing at a tea party level, you will have problems with high notes. They will sound very vague, very soft, or a rasping sound will come through. Your throat completely closes up.
You are singing like a deflating balloon flying around the room. You have no control over where you’re flying and after five seconds you crash on the floor. You need to learn this control. You have to learn to control your airflow through exertion elsewhere. Tension, not relaxation. You must be ready for the note. A weightlifter also won’t lift weights without preparation.
Various singing methods have devised ways to teach you breath control (also known as breath support). Some focus more on tensing the abdominal muscles, others on expanding the rib cage, while yet others have you singing from your diaphragm. The method I use (Voice Construction®) is based on the body’s natural reactions, in this case, the startle reflex.
Additionally, it’s important that you’re ready in advance for the high note. Activating your breath support while you’re already singing doesn’t work well.
You can also practice vocal cord closure by starting notes strongly. There’s a fantastic video by Freya Casey about vocal cord closure with exercises:
The idea that your breath should flow freely through your vocal cords when singing is incorrect. You encounter this idea in various methods, especially for classical singing. It is incorrect, because you actually control the flow. A relaxed, flowing belly breathing will help you well in meditating, but not in singing. There is even the notion that as a good singer you cannot have a six-pack (I’m not making this up, this idea is very widespread), because your abdomen would not be flexible enough for a free flow of breath. This has REALLY NEVER been proven. So if you have a six-pack, just leave it for now.
What is necessary, is that the airflow is gradual and not with starts and stops. Many beginner singers lose half of their air and tension in the first half second of the phrase.
If you want to sing a powerful (higher) note, you need to put air pressure behind it. This requires effort and that takes energy. The degree of effort varies per note. Generally: the higher, the more effort.
‘Singing with air’ actually means that you hear the airflow along with the note while singing. The vocal cords then do not close completely. This is widely used in pop music and is not harmful in itself, as long as you don’t try to do it too hard. Young girls in puberty often have incomplete vocal cord closure and therefore a somewhat husky singing voice.
What I find important as a teacher is that singing with air is a choice, a color on the voice, and not the only option. Therefore, it is important to train singing without air and with full vocal cord closure.
The previous point was about what happens below your vocal cords, but what you do above your vocal cords also affects whether you get a strained feeling while singing.
Usually, you sing on words. If you were to sing everything exactly as you say it, you’ll run into problems as you go higher. Say an ‘ee’ and then make a sliding sound from low to high on the same ‘ee’ without adjusting anything in your mouth. Chances are you’ll hit a point where you get stuck. To comfortably keep singing the ‘ee’, you need to adjust your vowel. This is called vowel modification. If you don’t do this, you will have to work much harder than necessary to sing a high note.
Each method and music style has different strategies for adjusting your vowel. I’ll give you general examples of what influences the sound:
These are just a few examples of parts in your throat-mouth-nose area that can affect the sound and give you a freer or more constricted feeling in your voice.
For illustration, Tiley Ross singing in the MRI scanner and showing a vowel on different tones.
You can experiment with different positions of your mouth, tongue, and lips to see if this helps with the tight feeling in your throat. It is best to do this with a qualified singing teacher as a guide.
It is practically impossible to try all possible positions separately and control your body in them. Therefore, it is often about finding an optimal position for your mouth through metaphors. Metaphors I have encountered:
“open your throat,” “kiss and smile,” “put your mouth above your head,” “do a beginning yawn,” and “sing from a laugh.”
In singing lessons, we search for what is optimal for you. You learn to give yourself feedback on which strategies work. You need the right guidance, and your body takes care of the rest.
Sometimes it can also work to simply mimic a sound. But then it is important to try to figure out how it felt and what you did differently than before. Otherwise, you won’t be able to reproduce it without an example.
To be able to sing well, you need to adjust the position of your mouth and the vowel for each tone. You can use metaphors for this and experiment to find what works best for you.
Note: if you are not physically set on the note (see point 1), you can make the craziest faces and not notice any difference.
The first thing I practiced in my singing lessons was relaxing the jaw. The looser the jaw was, the better the sound became. Jaw clenching is a common strategy among beginner singers to maintain a sense of control over the note and articulation. Therefore, the jaw had to be loose and relaxed, but not too far open, as that wasn’t relaxing either. There shouldn’t be a lot of movement.
But just like with breathing: is it the best strategy to completely relax the jaw and let it hang? Not always. Again, experiment to see what works for you and don’t focus blindly on fully relaxing the jaw. I also like the point made by Dr. Dan: “The function of the jaw in articulation is secondary, subordinate to the tongue.”
What is evident from the points above is that to sing less strained:
– You must sing with energy.
– You must experiment with your voice and sound.
When a note comes up that never works, you should think: yes, I’m going to try something new again. But what most people think is: oh no, here comes that note again. You mentally brace yourself for the difficult note in a sort of freeze mode. You can only do what you did before, which didn’t work then either. So you’re not experimenting, and your energy goes to the fear of failing the note instead of the note itself.
What follows is a kind of half-baked sound of a tea party without cookies on a dreary Sunday afternoon via Zoom during a lockdown.
As soon as you feel fear of failure or an ugly note creeping up during practice, convert that fear into energy that you want to invest in the note. Come up with a strategy to apply and physically brace yourself for the note. If it works, do it several more times in the same way and analyze exactly what you did to make it work.
Don’t be afraid to do something different than you did and to fail. You can try again as often as you want; it’s not a game with three lives.
All beginnings are difficult. My friend and piano teacher Luca made a good analogy. When you are learning to drive a car on the road, you also have to think about every step at first: turn on the engine, press the clutch and hold the brake, release the car’s handbrake, put the car in first gear, move your foot from the brake to the accelerator, gradually release the clutch and give a little gas.
I still remember all these steps because it took me a loooong time before I could do it somewhat automatically. That was extremely uncomfortable, but necessary.
If you stop when you feel you have to think too much, you’re essentially giving up because it feels uncomfortable. That’s a shame. You can take a break in between, sing something easy or completely different and then try again.
And then finally, after many attempts, you’ve sung a fantastic note. The note felt free and it was as if your chest was open. The air could flow right through. You could hold the note for 10 seconds without any problems.
A day later, you try again. But what do you remember? That the note was very free and relaxed. See, you must sing freely, relaxed, and flowing.
What is often forgotten is that there is a difference between a free and flowing feeling and what you have actually done. You worked very hard for that fantastic note. But because you had an optimal strategy then, the note felt free afterward.
On a subsequent attempt, you try to sing just as freely. What happens then: you become limp again and are back to square one.
This is the phenomenon that we remember the good feeling rather than the work we did for it. Which is just as well, otherwise you would constantly relive pain and illness. My teacher Maurits Draijer pointed this out to me.
People want to sing freely, that is the goal. But for that, you have to: work, fail, think, and experiment. All things your brain doesn’t like so much and thus they turn them into: open sound, free voice, flowing breath, relaxation.
Don’t fall for the brain’s relaxation impulse: always remember what your strategy was when it went well and try to apply that strategy.
Only once you have automated the strategy, you no longer have to think about doing it. That’s your reward for your hard work!
What can you do first to resolve the pinched feeling in your voice? Start by asking yourself questions when singing:
To return to the car analogy, you’re really asking yourself: where is the gas pedal and what does the clutch actually do?
Afterwards, you can apply strategies to increase your air pressure and use your vowels efficiently. You can find these online and experiment yourself.
If you can’t figure it out, I recommend taking singing lessons from a certified teacher.
Extra: read here also the story of my teacher Maurits Draijer.
Are you also afraid of making a mistake when making music? You’re not alone. The problem with mistakes and making music is that you often only have one chance to do it right. But, is perfection really important? Or are you allowed to make mistakes in music?
There’s a taboo on singing poorly (or feeling that you’re not so good). That’s a shame because most people can learn to sing better.
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