Day 2 of 5 of the YADA Voice Culture Workshop on October 6, 2020
Channel: Raj Rajagopalan Voice Techniques Channel
Date: 03/11/2020

Notes on the second day of the workshop

Today we focused on voice resonance and how to improve one's resonance with simple exercises. We started with a relaxation technique and then added new exercises while maintaining the relaxed pose and big belly.

These are the basic exercises we practiced.

1. Yawning and yawning with sound: keeping the internal shape of the oral cavity unchanged from the top of the yawn
2. Lip trilling to relax the lips and mouth area
3. Humming: keeping the inside of the mouth cavity as open as possible, hum with lips barely touching to get a lip buzz
4. Humming with sound: starting with a hum, open your mouth just a tad with nothing else internally changed. Sing a upward and downward sequence of notes (such as SRGMPMGRS - in vowel sound only) while keeping the shape and staying absolutely still
5. The "ng" sound for pharyngeal resonance: starting with a word such as "sing", hold the "ng" sound at the end for as long and as loud as possible
6. "Ng" with sound: do the above and sing a sequence of notes going up and down like the above.
7. The tongue exercise: stick your tongue out as far as it will go and then sing a loud note with both mouth and nose.

Homework exercise:

Sing the Humming exercise repeatedly at different notes. I.e. Do exercise 4 above repeatedly for different pitches. Do not worry about range. Do this only for notes that you can reach comfortably. Repeat each note 3 times for the body to get used to the sensation of singing any note in a completely relaxed manner.

Extra credit exercise:

Sing exercise 6 above (NG with sound) with this pattern: SRGMPMGRS, RGMPDPMGR, GMPDNDPMG, and so on. Stop when the top note becomes uncomfortable. Then jump back to the beginning and repeat. Do this ten times. You can  start slow and increase the speed every so slightly every time. The test is to be able to do it at any speed without any change whatsoever in the shape of your mouth cavity or the nasality of your voice. You will discover there are natural limitations in this exercise.


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