Voice Training Basics 2

“Speech Level Singing is the ability to always maintain a speech level production of tone – one that stays connected from one part of your range to another. A teacher needs to know how to get each of his students to sing through their range in a connected, easy manner, without any “breaks” or sudden changes of tone quality. This is Speech Level Singing (training). You don’t sing like you speak, but you need to keep the same comfortable, easily produced vocal posture you have when you speak so you don’t reach up for high notes or press down for low ones… ”

- Seth Riggs

Q: Wait a minute!! Isn’t singing supposed to be EASY?

A: Yes! Singing IS VERY easy – but only when the mechanism has been properly developed and tuned through the RIGHT training.

In fact, the success of the Speech Level Singing voice training system is built on simplicity: Learn to coordinate a “Speech Level” across your entire vocal range. Although not everyone’s speech habits are necessarily the healthiest (and if yours is not, SLS has some some simple tools to help), training in the SLS technique helps you to ensure that the way you speak, and the way you approach your singing remain similar – nothing will feel different in your throat or mouth.

Your speech level (a relaxed larynx, and moderately closed cords) is likely an already natural phenomenon for you during speech. But for singing, you need access to a much wider range of dynamics and pitches. In order to acquire those greater degrees of vocal cord tension further in a balance, Speech Level Singing voice lessons help you to build and maintain a Speech Level coordination across all of your entire 2, 3, or even 4 or more octave vocal range. This way, you will have a naturally rich voice full of overtones, leaving it optimally healthy and in it’s naturally flexible state, so you can continue to experiment in any style you choose – and have a GREAT time doing it!

To help you find and maintain your *Speech Level*, you need only do 2 things on every vowel, across your entire vocal range.:

• Keep your vocal cords *moderately closed* (no breathiness, yet no excessive cord pressure/squeezing either), and
• keep your voicebox/larynx *in a low and stable position* (doesn’t ride up and engage your swallowing/word making processes on high pitches, or dip on low ones),

“The most important skill a singer can acquire is the ability to move smoothly from the chest to the head register as the pitch ascends. The secret to accomplishing this is to allow the resonation to move behind the soft palate as it moves into the head without reaching up or letting go of the adduction of the vocal cords, and this is done through the use of vowels.”

- Speech Level Singing Instructor Manual

Unlike the breathing mechanism, and thus probably why so many voice teachers try and teach singing as if the voice is in the stomach, the vocal cords in your throat can’t be seen. Nor can the voice be balanced by telling the student to “put” the “sound” somewhere. Such training advice can be ruinous for voices and do not teach the singer balance. With little understanding of how to engage the singer into the correct balance between the vocal cord and breath pressure across their entire range and on all vowels, excessive breath pressure can be disastrous, and the singer has no chance of reaching their potential, never-mind any possibility of singing safely.

At 3rd Voice, although advice on style or genre may be offered, vocal coordination to enable your vocal potential remains emphasized. By learning how to find balance, you can live in the muscular freedom you only dreamed about, remaining free to explore your voice as you choose.