QUESTIONS FOR CAROLYN:
email to: Melohawk@aol.com
Q: I understand that breathing is real important in singing. But I'm not sure how to breathe correctly and I can't hold a note for very long. Can you help?!

A: When you breathe, try to expand ALL THE WAY AROUND your middle....not just the front of the body and definitely NOT raising the shoulders. Your lungs expand in all directions...why can't YOU! Feel as if you are a balloon and you are filling yourself up. Take a deep breath...filling the lungs from the BOTTOM UP, like a pitcher of water. Feel the rib cage expand all around your body. Feel the back expand as well as the abdomen. If you really take a large breath, the last things that will expand outward are your shoulder blades and you can feel this if you lay the fingers of one hand, flat, between the shoulder blades and take a very large breath. The last thing, as you fill completely up, may be a slight forward motion of the shoulders and the blades will stretch apart, slightly. Now, doesn't it stand to reason that if the larynx is your carburetor (where all the noise is started), then this breathing apparatus is your gas tank and the air that it is taking in is your gasoline.

Q: I think I have fairly good pitch and I don't think I sing all that badly, but sometimes I don't like the sound of my own voice. The tone sounds bland. What am I doing wrong?

A: The mouth is the amplifier and the speaker. What you do with the sound here, will determine what the audience is going to hear. You can deflect the airflow with any manner of tenseness in the throat, epiglottal area (back of the roof of the mouth), or tongue. Once you deflect the air, you have "derailed " the tone you produced in the larynx and sent it away from the natural amplifier. This is what happens when you have a nasal, smothered or throaty tone instead of free-flowing, forward, open tone. Controlling what happens here in the mouth is what makes up a lot of the early voice lessons with most students.

Wonder what part of your anatomy is the accelerator? THE DIAPHRAGM! This band of muscle is your main control lever for keeping the air stream steady and responsive to your demands. The tone created by the air going through the larynx rides on that air until it gets to the mouth. If you have inhaled correctly so that the air you need is available to the diaphragm, and if you have relaxed the throat, palette and tongue, allowing the air, and the tone floating on it, to ride up into the amplifier of the mouth, then the last thing to do is to round out the sound by using the jaw and the lips.

Relaxation is the key. Allow the jaw to drop open on open vowel sounds such as Ah, Oh and Ooo. Allow the lips to form the vowels and consonants naturally. Don't try to be stiff, stilted and fixed in your lip or jaw movements. Singing should be as effortless as talking to a good friend. When you are THAT relaxed, your singing reflects it and your true voice will come out.

Q: I often find myself hoarse the next day after Karaoke. Why is that?

A: YOU are your instrument. How you treat YOURSELF will reflect in your singing. If you are not in good health and good shape, your voice won't be either. Rather than coughing to clear your throat all the time, try drinking water. If you have allergies, flush your system regularly with plain water to clear the phlegm that will interfere with clear tone production. Don't smoke, it coats the vocal folds with tar and reduces their flexibility...shrinking your range. Don't drink alcohol to excess. Alcohol tends to make you THINK you can sing those high notes and it will relax you enough so that you will get them...but the next day you will pay with a sore throat and stressed muscles. You will have to rest them after that kind of abuse. There really IS such a thing as a "whiskey voice" and it really is husky and rough.

You don't have to "baby" the voice, but you do have to be sensible. USE it, don't pamper it...it needs a workout everyday to keep it in shape just like the rest of your body does. However, just like any part of YOU, if you do strain it, give it a chance to heal and treat it with respect. If you do, you will have your voice for the rest of your life.
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