Joe's Vocal Ped Blog

In Vocal Ped this week we covered the soft palate and the laryngeal tilt. These are two things that I have been aware of but didn't necessarily know the mechanics on how they worked. Often times I found myself with a low soft palate and ended up having a lot of nasality in my sound. The method of putting a kazoo in my nose really helped me feel that soft palate movement and how to adjust in accordingly. Something interesting pertaining to the soft palate that I've always thought about was that an ex of mine was told by one of her middle school teachers to always keep her soft palate lowered and she had an issue with it ever since. Now I'm not sure if she was just making excuses for not lowering her soft palate or if that teacher was that misinformed to tell her student to lower her soft palate always? I've never figured it out. Vibrato baffles me, as it is one of the most beautiful and useful tools in singing, but no one truly knows what it is or how it happens. I'v...

 This week in Vocal Ped we went over the false vocal folds and and low pharynx. These were topics that I had some previous knowledge of but I'm still glad to learn more about these two crucial parts of the voice. The false vocal folds and their use in singing is something I've always been aware of, but never truly understood how it was happening or that a separate pair of fold were causing the action. While some of my colleagues find this very difficult to perform or even conceptualize in their head due to their classical background where false fold engagement is never used, I have always found it easy to engage them and I tend to utilize this engagement when singing CCM or Pop. I find it to be one of the best tools I have in my musical arsenal, but I only bring it out when necessary like all musicians should. The low pharynx on the other hand, is something that I have more trouble with. I can always start a piece with widening, but once my mind starts to wonder to other parts ...

This week in Vocal Ped we covered pitch and timbre. In the past I've had a decent concept of what pitch and timbre was but once Dr. Hoffman covered overtones I was pretty lost. I don't think anyone can understand overtones until they hear them first hand due to it being such an abstract concept. It really makes one rethink their definition of pitch. But once you hear the piano strings echoing across octaves it all start to make sense. Thursday we went over the spectrograph and it's usefulness in singing and teaching. I enjoy the functions of a spectrograph because you physically see what is going on with your voice. You can see the physical changes when you sing low or high larynx or with or without soft palette raised or what notes are weaker frequencies or not. It is a very helpful tool when trying to understand pitch and overtones and their relationships. Something that baffled even Dr. Hoffman was that when he sang vowel sounds, the higher frequencies all sounded like ...

 In Vocal Ped this week we discussed fold mass and the different kinds of fold mass. Up until college, I had no idea about the existence of fold mass but I'm glad I have because understanding the different kinds of fold mass and what they are used for have solved many issues I've had about singing. As a tenor, I never knew that I practically live in the world of thin fold. I was always under the impression that if you wanted to sing a high pitch, instead of reaching for it, just lower your larynx to create that classical color. Now while that is part of the way to do it, I would do it in thick fold which was not the answer. Once I knew how to differentiate between the folds, singing became much easier for me. Br-ick and Br-in were very confusing at first, but after seeing people perform using the two masses it finally clicked in my head. Billie Eilish was an example we were given to help us understand Br-in and I suggest anyone confused about Br-in to listen to her, basically t...

      This week we started Phonation and man was that a heavy subject. Not that there was anything controversial or morally weighted but it was a lot of information to take in and process. Dr. Hoffman explained all of the working parts of the larynx including cricoid cartilage and the epiglottis and other names the sound like planets from Star Wars.  The workings of the TA and CT really intrigued me. Especially how the cricothyroid muscles lengthen the vocal folds to make higher pitches like a stretched out rubber band, the farther you pull it and flick it, the higher the pitch.       Seeing the functions of phonation was made much easier with models and multiple different ones at  that. It was nice referring to the large expensive plastic model to see everything bigger and with more detail, but the smaller paper model had things color coded and was able to move to show how these parts more in practice. If one truly wants to understand p...

      This week in Vocal Ped, we have been learning about the power behind breathing, respiration and  breath options. What this means is that we have been learning about why and how do we breathe? All throughout high school, my choir director would review proper breathing techniques such as breathing low as well as give us little run downs on the function of the diaphragm. It wasn't until college that I really understood the physics of breathing and the relation between the spine, diaphragm, rib cage and lungs all shared in the process of breathing. After talking about the physics of breathing over the course of about four semesters with Dr. Hoffman and after watching this weeks videos of breathing, I found some interesting knew tips and busted a few breathing myths.      One of the myths I learned was that low breathing doesn't always have to be your only method of breathing, there is also higher breathing called clavicle breathin...