Introduction:
In this workshop, exercises from four categories of vocal exercise targeting SOVTEs, chest voice, head voice, and mixed voice will be taught as a comprehensive training model to target registration balance for singers. These exercises can be useful for speech pathologists, voice teachers, singing voice specialists, and other professionals who are working to resolve a wide variety of vocal problems in the singing voice.
Background:
Singers with muscle tension and glottic incompetence present with a variety of vocal problems: air escape, onset delays, posterior resonance, uncontrollable cracking or “breaks” in the range, pitch problems, and low volume. This may be due to obvious muscular imbalance for register adjustments and suggests that registration imbalance over time may lead to poor adduction. Registration balance is a common strategy used by singing teachers and speech pathologists. While research evidence has helped us better understand how we produce vocal registers acoustically and physiologically, specific voice therapy protocols that target registration are lacking. The typical playlist of SOVTEs, flow phonation, and resonance exercises prescribed for muscle tension dysphonia do not address the underlying muscular imbalance and poor adduction.
Anecdotal Evidence:
Observation and experience over 20 years as both a private studio singing teacher and speech language pathologist in a voice-specialty clinic has consistently revealed registration imbalance in singers who present with muscle tension dysphonia and glottic incompetence. These exercises have been used successfully to improve adduction and resolve muscle tension in hundreds of cases with singers of all genres and backgrounds.
Presentation Plan: Four categories of exercise will be taught:
1. SOVTEs – subsystem balance: lip trills, tongue trills, raspberries, straw phonation (in/out water).
2. Chest voice/thyroarytenoid dominant exercises – nasal /m/ and semi-vowel /l/.
3. Head voice/cricothyroid dominant exercises – /u/ and pigeon trills (cuperto/tongue trill).
4. Mixed voice exercises – inflectional speech/singing exercises on Y-buzz resonant voice sounds.
Demonstration singers will practice doing the exercises and audience participants will practice together to become more familiar with variations in sound and approach. Discussion will cover modifications and creative strategies for implementing training of these techniques for a client-centered approach for best results.
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