🎶 The “Connected Line” Mini-Challenge
Welcome to the Connected Line Mini-Challenge — a one-week exploration of legato, the art of seamless, flowing connection between tones. Over seven days, you’ll strengthen the relationship between breath, vowel, and resonance to transform your singing from note-by-note effort into effortless, expressive lines. Whether you’re refining technique or rediscovering your natural flow, this challenge will help you build the consistency, freedom, and artistry that define truly beautiful legato.
BONUS Inspiration: Start with this Legato Course on tonebase with the inspiring Michael Sumuel!!!
Day 1 – Define the Line
🧠Concept Focus: What is legato? Explore airflow as the unbroken thread.
🎧 Prompt: Choose one melodic phrase (from any song or vocalise). Sing it on a single vowel and record it. Listen back for any “bumps” or disconnects.
đź’¬ Forum Post: Share your chosen phrase and what you noticed.
Day 2 – Breath and Flow
🧠Concept Focus: Manage the exhale. Legato lives in the breath’s continuum, not its start.
🎶 Exercise: Inhale silently, then release an “sss” for 12 counts → 16 → 20. Then sing a short phrase maintaining that same even energy.
đź’¬ Post Prompt: What did you discover about your breath energy?
Day 3 – Vowel Connection
🧠Concept Focus: Unifying vowel shapes through resonance tracking.
🎶 Exercise: Sing a five-note scale [i-e-a-o-u] on a single breath. Feel the resonance “travel,” not reset.
đź’¬ Challenge: Post a short clip (10 sec) demonstrating your smoothest vowel sequence.
Day 4 – Legato Across Intervals
🧠Concept Focus: Maintaining line through skips and leaps.
🎶 Exercise: Use a leap-based vocalise (e.g., arpeggios). Aim to make it sound as if it were stepwise.
đź’¬ Prompt: Where do you tend to lose connection in leaps?
Day 5 – Text and Tone
🧠Concept Focus: Marrying diction and legato.
🎶 Exercise: Sing one line of texted repertoire (e.g., “Caro mio ben,” “Amarilli mia bella,” or a hymn). Keep the consonants fluid and the vowels spinning.
đź’¬ Prompt: Which consonants challenge your legato most?
Day 6 – Emotional Line
🧠Concept Focus: Legato as phrasing — shaping tension and release.
🎶 Exercise: Choose a 4-bar phrase. Record two takes: one purely technical, one expressive. Compare how phrasing influences connection.
đź’¬ Prompt: Post your reflection on how emotion impacts legato.
Day 7 – Integration + Reflection
🎯 Final Challenge: Record the same phrase you used on Day 1 — now with everything integrated.
đź’¬ Forum Prompt: What changed in your sound and awareness over the week?
40 replies
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Day 2 Post:
Breath work was actually what brought me back to singing. I have asthma and as a teenager I realized that taking my inhaler and singing had the same impact on my breathing (and on the peak flow meter). After having COVID I had fairly severe breathing issues for more than a year. I also often referred my own patients to a colleague that is an opera singer and Alexander technique teacher. Since he knew I had been struggling myself he offered to help. By the third time I saw him we had transitioned to largely singing lessons since he had realized how much classical music experience I had. That was about a year ago now.
In terms of the exercise, this is one that I have done quite often in my lessons and it is such as great way to manage the breath better. So often we just "lose" air too quickly and then find ourselves gasping for breath again, rather than making it to the end of the phrase. I do find that this exercise helps to realize just how long a good breath can be exhaled for. If I really control the exhale well I can make it for 40 counts. In the past, I might only have gotten to 10-15 counts. This is something I have spent so much time on early on in my work with my teacher. When you apply this to singing it is amazing how much easier it is to make it smoothly through a phrase and then breathing where it is appropriate in both the music and text. This is not always perfect for me yet, but I do find that it is getting easier and I definitely understand the process so much better.
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Day 3 Post:
So this is actual an exercise that I do quite often on different vowels. I chose the vowel "O" since I used "AH" for my last recording. I didn't do this as part of the recording, but as part of my warm up I almost do a lip trill ascending through the 5 note penta scale and full voice on the way down. I personally have found this to be really helpful in finding my resonance.
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Day 3: https://youtu.be/qXR26tswQ-c
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Day 4: no video
Prompt - I tend to lose connection in leaps when I am nearing the top of my vocal range and I forget to maintain breath energy. This is something we work on a lot in lesson, and my teacher almost always reminds me that on the top note of the series I need to keep the breath moving (or some such wording).
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Day 4 Post:
I have spent a good amount of time on arpeggio exercises and working on making them as legato as possible. Because of my music theory background, I tend to think about all of the intervals using moveable Do solfeggio as I have so much Kodaly experience. What helps me the most is really working on audiation first as I take a preparatory breath and then singing on a vowel. Where I tend to lose connection is if I don't take the moment to focus on hearing the interval well first prior to singing.
In learning actual music, I tend to have challenges when I over think the "reaching up" to a higher note. I typically like to smooth this out by using an open vowel (Ah or Oh usually) and fist starting an octave lower to get used to the interval in an area of my range that feels much easier. I will repeat the interval back and forth several times (i.e. Do-Sol-Do-Sol-Do/1-5-1-5-1). Once I have solidified this in the lower register I return to the upper register that the music is written in and do the same exercise trying to maintain the same feel in terms of breath support, embouchure, etc. I do typically have to change the soft palate some given that the note is higher. Then I will add the lyrics back in. This is a trick that I learned from my voice teacher and it has been really helpful. If this is still not working I will move to using a lip trill to learn the problematic interval. Usually though, the first exercise is sufficient. For me, I feel like it is old fears of being able to singer higher notes that get still occasionally get in the way of the technique I now have.
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Day 5 Post:
I decided to sing the opening of Schubert's An die Musk. Overall, this song is quite comfortable for me as I have been singing it for a number of months now. I would say that the letter K is probably the consonant that disrupts the legato the most. At this point it is fairly smooth, but I remember when I was first working on learning this song it was definitely one that got in the way of maintaining the legato feel the most.
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Day 5: D's and P's, depending on context and placement, seem to challenge me the most. The [k] sound can be a bit tricky as well.
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Day 6: This was interesting. Both the technical and the expressive were connected fairly well. With the expressive, though, I tended to smooth connections differently. Rather than being squarely and somewhat metronomically tied to the beat, I moved things around slightly within the rhythmic structure (using rubato) which tended to make legato easier because I could approach each word in the way that made sense to me without as much concern about being "correct."