Dena Murray has been the head of Vocal Technique at Musicians Institute in Hollywood, CA, since 1996. With over 25 years of professional experience, some of her credits have included theatre production, summer stock, Shakespeare festivals, television and motion picture work, and voice-overs for commercial advertising. Some of Dena's private students include Sarah Hudson (Recording Artist, S-Curve/EMI Records), Judy Wexler (a jazz singer/actress who's appeared on Frasier, the Golden Girls, Divorce Court, and New Adam-12), and Douglas Wood (Rubber/Glue Records). Throughout her professional career, Dena has employed a style of teaching that helps to enhance the self-esteem of her students by creating an environment that inspires creativity while fostering confidence. In addition to her duties at MI, she teaches privately, working with both singers and voice-over talent. Some of these students have included voice talent from CBS, NBC, HBO, motion picture documentary films, television commercials, and session work. Ms. Murray graduated from Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. She has a Bachelor of Science in Speech Communication. This book is the culmination of her experience with hundreds of students and contains her complete vocal technique, philosophy, and method.

Vocal Technique - A Guide To Finding Your Real Voice

Your Voice (And How It Works) All About Breathing Right Placement Scales Singing Songs How the Body Produces Sound Why Squeeze, Hold or Push Pitch Controlling the Flow of Air The Four Breathing Rules Resonance Working with Vowels Bad Habits Placing the Voice Keeping the Throat Open The Pharyngeal Voice Nodes and Your Health Phonetics: How Words Sound

Stop straining to hit those high notes! Unlock your true potential and start singing easily and effortlessly with this book/2-CD pack by Musicians Institute vocal instructor Dena Murray. She teaches how to: breathe naturally; improve your speaking voice; stop holding, pushing and squeezing; develop your natural three-octave range; place your chest and head voices; and bridge the registers to sound like one voice. Includes two CDs with demonstrations, guided exercises, and plenty of practice tracks.

1154 BOOK $19.95

 

Excerpt from Vocal Technique: A Guide to Finding Your Real Voice

Controlling the Flow of Air

When the cords aren't able to keep the stretch for the resistance needed, the voice will feel like it's losing power. To compensate for this loss of power, or "weight," the tendency is to add more breath pressure for loudness. Without knowing how to rely on the vocal cords for the kind of resistance and weight needed, you rely on the breath to do it by adding pressure against it to force the voice out. This is what is known as overblowing, or pushing.

Pushing blows the mechanism apart by forcing so much air through the cords that they don't have an opportunity to adjust for the pitch until after the air has already started coming out. If the cords don't have enough stretch to create the resistance needed to control the flow of air, this will cause the air to escape too rapidly. Realizing you might not have enough to get to the end of the phrase, you begin to squeeze, hoping to save as much of it as you can. But if the breath is meant to take the voice out of you, how can it do that if it's being squeezed? Take an object in your hand and squeeze it. Can it break free? Squeezing the air to hold it in is only keeping the sound from coming out, and holding the breath makes you feel like you can't breathe! Though it's very true that the breath can add loudness and resonance to your voice, it can only do so if it is expelled properly.

Right Breathing, Everyday Breathing

The breath may not be the most important factor in voice, but if you're not breathing right it becomes the most important factor. So to get the idea of what it means to breathe right, let's start with normal, everyday breathing. When you take a breath in through the mouth, the stomach automatically expands. When you slowly exhale, it contracts. To demonstrate, sit in a chair with your feet firmly planted on the floor. Relax and sit back. Start by taking in a deep breath through your mouth and then exhaling it. Allow yourself to hear the breath as you take it in‹a "noisy" breath‹and then exhale it. Pay attention to your stomach. Feel it expand on the inhale, and contract on the exhale. Put your hands on your shoulders to make sure they are not rising up on intake. If they rise up, it means you are not taking the breath in deep enough.

The idea of this exercise is to experience your breathing as one continuous action, just as it is when you are sitting still with yourself. When you take in a breath, concentrate on whether you are holding it for a second, and then starting the exhale. If you are, this is what I refer to as a "start-and-stop." Every time you take a breath in and then stop it before exhaling, it means that you are holding the breath. Holding the breath in any way creates pressure underneath the cords, forcing them to release too much air all at once. If you find that you are starting and stopping, try to stop this habit before proceeding. As you take your air in, feel it as it hits the back wall of your throat and immediately begin to slowly exhale it. Do it until you feel this happening as one continuous action. Once you get it going without holding it in any way, try sighing with sound as you exhale. If you are truly sighing, then you should feel the first note of that sigh starting on top of the column of air created from the inhaled breath at the back of the throat. In fact, that first note should begin the moment you start feeling the air going towards the back of your throat.

Taking in the air and starting the note is a simultaneous action, meaning that the first note actually begins on the tail end of that inhaled breath. If you don't feel the sigh starting on the top of the column of air, keep doing it until you do. Don't try to push the sigh out. There shouldn't be any pushing involved. It should be completely relaxed‹a real sigh. To sing with ease and freedom, the vocal cords and the breath must be working as a team. This means that the action between the two must be a simultaneous one. Taking in the breath and starting the note must occur at exactly the same moment. One cannot come out before the other. If it does, it will require some kind of body effort on your part to make it work. The entire goal here is to make this an involuntary action; to have your voice work the way nature intended. After all, the mechanism of the human voice is an organ that lives inside of your body, and‹just like any other organ‹is ultimately meant to be working independently of you.

To find a specific song on any recording (or to find recordings by group name or CD title),
pick the search method and type the item you are searching for here:

By Song Title

By Group Name

By Recording Title

By Music Category Any Category Contemporary Vocal Jazz Barbershop Doo-Wop Choral Collegiate Gospel World

    or use our for more search options