Balanced Singing — The Singer’s Pyramid
If you want to sing well, I suggest you learn balanced singing. I find it useful to think of balanced singing as being in four parts.
Together, I call these The Singer’s Pyramid:
1. Build your core sound
You build a core of sound using many tools, including coupe de glotte, messa di voce and pharyngeal exercises. This core of sound is at once supported, free and connected.
A focused core sound is very efficient, acoustically. As you build, develop and refine this core, you will notice that you are capable of immense volumes with a remarkably small amount of effort.
2. Relax the throat
You must learn to relax all the outer muscles of the larynx. In addition to relaxing the voice box itself, this relaxation includes the muscles of the tongue, jaw, and neck.
You must train all of these muscles to remain as loose as possible.
These extrinsic muscles must remain flexible and free with no squeezing, imposition or undue tension.
3. Hold a noble body posture
A noble posture encourages a natural and spontaneous breath support. In fact, excellent support can only be obtained and maintained as a result of good posture.
First, your singing posture should include a tall sternum.
I recommend that you gently draw in your navel when you sing. Support not only your voice but your entire body when you sing. It is necessary to engage your core in any athletic activity, and this includes singing.
Supported singing is always flexibly firm. At no time should any part of the body be overly tense or rigid. Instead, right singing posture is tall, open, flexible and secure.
4. Balance all vowels
Regardless of what language you sing in, each vowel has its most optimal form, which can change slightly depending on the pitch, intensity, color, and volume you are singing.
Therefore, learn to refine your vowels (but keep your throat relaxed). You will discover that can you can add tremendous and varied amounts of color, resonance, power, and sheen to your sound just by learning to balance your vowels.
Balanced singing is “well placed.”
As you build your voice from this Square of Singing, you will notice that your voice begins to place itself with absolutely no help on your part.
Work with the principles of balanced singing, and you will find that breaks, flips, and cracks begin to become less noticeable, and you will eventually eliminate them entirely.
Balanced singing is right for your style
Since balanced singing will give you access to more vocal colors, dynamic range, and pitch range, just imagine how much you could do with all those tools in your performances.
So there you have it: balance your voice to build a stable, dependable and dynamic technique that can serve you for life.