“The most important thing about all this is the fact that you get up into an area with release without going into falsetto. You can always make it harder and louder as you continue to experiment with it.”
- Maestro Seth Riggs
photo credit: dancesonclouds
In learning singing, we must get familiar with the feeling of “release”, if we are to conquer that part of the voice most call “the middle”. What does release mean and why does it matter?
When you begin to ascend in pitch, shifts in resonance occur along with the pitch in the singers body. If we just sang pure vowels up and down the voice all the time, making sure we don’t “hang on” to chest voice as we ascend by “releasing”, the whole world would be able to sing well! But most of us know, releasing is not always easy.
That break that we often experience in the middle of the voice is a manifestation of the minute change in resonance that must occur, or else the voice will “break”. We call this transition in the voice a passagio, or bridge. If we are to experience this gradual shift in resonance, we must allow ourselves to let go of the feeling of resonance we had previously in pure chest, without, as Seth Riggs says above, going into falsetto as we approach and enter the bridge.
Greg Enriquez, a Master Speech Level Singing based in Las Vegas says it another way. Going into the bridge, “you’re doing a slight internal dimuendo – that’s what a bridge is. You can’t bring into the bridge the feeling of what you’re trying to leave. You’ve got to acquiesce to the feeling that you’re going to, and that’s going to be a slight dip.”
Release is a precarious issue for nearly everybody. Our voices in our speaking range feel comfortable to us. But when the feeling starts to shift away from that familiar feeling of pure chest, we often resist that change. What we really need to do, is release the feeling we had, to get to where we want to go. Where we want to go, is away from chest, and into a blend of chest and head resonance. Once you get there, most report the experience as simply “easy”, as if they could stay up in a mix all day. The good news is, YOU CAN!
However, as it feels so completely unnatural in the beginning to allow that split resonance of chest and head, there is often a lot of resistance to it. It feels awkward, as if we have no control over it whatsoever – and in a way, we don’t. But letting go of the fullness of chest voice is the only thing you can do if you want to achieve a freedom and balance in singing in the upper ranges of your voice – the most crucial for singers.
If you are experiencing difficulties with release, here are some things you could try:
- Bend over as you sing into higher pitches. Often, it’s the psychological barrier created by the idea of going “up” that makes it difficult for us to release and transition through the bridge. Bending over helps to bypass the panic in both the body’s nervous system, and the singer’s mind.
- Practice using narrow vowels such as “gee’s” and “goo’s” in your regime of vocal exercises to experience release as you sing higher. Narrow vowels encourage higher harmonics in the voice, discourage the lower frequencies of chest, and therefor help to release through the bridges.
- Ease off the volume as you sing higher. Your ability to get stronger and louder with it, as Seth Riggs states above, will increase over time, as you learn to accept the feeling of release in your voice.
As always, all vocal issues are best handled by an instructor who is trained and experienced in guiding singers through the various registrations of the body without strain. If at all possible, find a Speech Level Singing Instructor in your area who can help give some perspective.
When you are able to practice singing in a mix of upper and lower harmonics with release, the singer can not only stay flexible with their singing, but develop a powerful and striking voice with tremendous upward mobility that will wow both themselves and their audience.
