Your Vocal Journey Questions Answered
The best part of my job is helping singers with their specific questions or concerns about their vocal journey. With that in mind, if you have a question about singing, let me know. I would love to help you trouble shoot and get you on track toward your next vocal victory!
45 replies
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Hi Heidi,
I've been taking opera singing lessons as a tenor for a year and a half and recently got admitted into a conservatory. However, I'm also passionate about strength training. I used to go to the gym nearly everyday but I found out it created a lot of tension around my neck and jaw, and it hinders my support as well due to loss of ab flexibility even after stretching. I've been really struggling to find my vibrato, and even though I've worked a lot on good posture, good support, etc., muscle tension always comes in the way. I made the experiment of taking two days off the gym prior to my conservatory audition and there I've been able to sing with vibrato. Then I took a couple of weeks off the gym and continued to make progress in this regard. Last thing I've tried is incorporating a neck and jaw stretching routine by kinesiologist after the gym, but the tension made its way into my singing practice once again.
My question is: is strength training (i.e, weight lifting and the like) necessarily incompatible with singing? After doing some online research, that seems to be the case. But I've also seen a couple of singers (coincidentally baritones) who are rather muscular, and I wonder if there is way of making these two passions of mine coexist. Training has a very positive effect on my health and emotional well being, so I would like to find a way around this issue. Any thoughts or experience on the matter?
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At the moment I'm trying to get a more consistent and less forceful breath flow- I have a bad habit of pushing too much air through my voice. My problem is that when I attempt to use less breath, the tone is much better but I struggle to support as well. Any advice would be appreciated.
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So this is actually a pretty painful topic for me.
I need to learn to like my voice more. whew....
For the majority of my career, I was hired to be the floaty straight-tone soprano. That was the voice I knew, relied on, and felt comfortable with - even though between it and teaching full time ended me having two successful vocal cord surgeries.
7 years ago, I started studying voice with Don Brinegar and discovered that I had what I call my "big girl voice" and have learned to use it in ensemble, which at first was kind of scary. And now, I've learned to use it as a soloist. It's nice to sing pain-free and to have a healthy technique. However - I'm still not 100% used to the sound of it, and quite honestly, need to love it more. Part of that can be due to the fact that I have hearing loss in my right ear. A friend suggested that my ability to hear formant would be off because of this. This could also be why I prefer my straight tone sound. I've had to learn to instead, not rely on what I hear, but instead, what I feel. I'm not consistently studying to do that, though.
The honest truth is - Singing is the hardest thing I do. And I know that's because I've got to get out of my head, play, and not think so damn hard. So any help I can get with that...not getting in my own way.....
I'll attach some blogs that I've written on my voice if you care to read them.
https://jennyshouldblog.wordpress.com/2019/01/13/healing-the-past-part-1-my-voice/
https://jennyshouldblog.wordpress.com/2024/10/01/singing-its-the-hardest-thing-i-do/