After almost two months of singing practice with the Simply Sing app, I’m not sure if I’m getting any better at it, but I’m still enjoying the process. I like learning new songs; branching out from Brandi Carlile’s famous “The Story,” to some of her less well-known songs (that are just as hard to sing), and singing along with Nat King Cole and Selena Gomez and Vince Gill, as if we’re all just hanging out and hiding from the snow together. I’m finding that I know a lot more songs than I realized, so that even when I choose a song whose title and singer seem unfamiliar to me, half the time I’ve actually heard the song before and just didn’t know what it was called. It’s also been interesting to see which kinds of songs are easier to sing, and which ones are more challenging for me. I knew I would struggle with songs that go from very low to very high, or songs with notes that are held forever, but I didn’t realize just how hard it would be to sing a Taylor Swift song, most of which are so crowded with lyrics that there’s barely room left to breathe.
It became clear early on that the two minute warm up on the Simply Sing app wasn’t enough, so I usually go to YouTube for vocal exercises first. Sometimes I’ll mix and match a few short videos from the Dots Singing collection: one breathing exercise, and maybe one just humming, and then one for chest voice and one for head voice. And sometimes I’ll do a full warm up video with one of the voice teachers (Kathleen Hansen is fantastic!). My favorite exercise so far is “straw phonation,” because it’s all about blowing bubbles through a straw. You fill a glass of water a third of the way up, and then you put in your bendy straw and blow bubbles and sing through the straw. Straw phonation is part of the SOVT (semi-occluded vocal tract) family of exercises that have become very popular, where the goal is to keep your mouth partially closed while singing to “create back pressure on the vocal folds,” though I don’t know what that actually means. They say it helps make singing less taxing on your voice and makes the tone clearer, but it’s also just fun. The other SOVT exercises include lip trills (blowing air thought partially closed lips to create vibrations); humming; and singing on Z, V, or NG sounds. And for me, the most difficult one is the lip trills. Some people do them like blowing raspberries, with your tongue between your lips, but ideally the tongue stays in, and every time I tried to do the lip trills at the beginning all I got was air, no vibrations. Finally, I went looking for some how-to videos and found a method that worked for me: holding up the muscles on either side of my mouth as I try to do the trills. I don’t know why it works, but it does. I’m not sure if all of this is helping me breathe more efficiently, or sing more clearly, but it’s certainly entertaining.
Lip trills: https://youtu.be/mWw3cjRLrrY?si=M1tRdCoxrvx5SOmp
Humming exercises: https://youtu.be/ElDCTulc96w?si=PJLP1TW_BzO8tm57
Vocal warm up: https://youtu.be/uGnhla2dowg?si=xwNaKETmGKLkH6SQ
While I was back on YouTube looking for vocal exercises, and still watching Glee videos, I came across a voice teacher who has reaction videos to Glee, and to many other singers as well, where she explains how the singers create the sounds they make: like the “vocal fry” that Brittany Spears made popular, or the breathy quality so popular right now, or the rounded tones of musical theatre. She gets into a lot more detail than I’d ever heard before and it’s also just fun to hang out with her and listen to music together. She’s introduced me to singers I’ve never heard of before, like Dimash, who has a seven-octave range, including notes you can’t find on a piano. I can’t actually mimic the skills she’s describing in her videos, but it’s nice to have these usually invisible things explained in clear language.
The Singing Scientist watches Dimash: https://youtu.be/02gvDy61GhQ?si=jn7hjMZctK_KxG-T
The Singing Scientist watches Glee: https://youtu.be/Z9xz6sy2TPg?si=5Rc5AjBrybJ7vqtn
I’m still using cheap plastic straws for the straw phonation exercises, instead of a set of the fancy metal straws I keep seeing in Facebook ads, and I haven’t splurged on a voice mister, or a head set that makes it easier for you to hear when you’re singing off key, yet. And I’m still not up to interacting with a live human teacher, and having my voice judged and critiqued, because I’m pretty sure I would shut down in response. But I’ve noticed that my inner critic is finally getting some perspective, because as I watch the American Idol auditions, I’m not comparing my voice to theirs or wishing I could do what they do; I’m just enjoying the music and looking for songs I’d like to sing. And I don’t feel like a failure, anymore, for not wanting to sing on a big stage or be a professional performer, because I know that wouldn’t make me happy. I would love to get to the point where it’s not so hard to manage the transition from chest voice to head voice, though, and I’d love to become more comfortable with sight singing, so I could learn songs more easily. But most of all, I want to chip away at the tension that closes around my throat and keeps me from singing the music I really want to sing.
Pretty soon, I’ll be back in choir rehearsals, to prepare for the Women’s Seder at my synagogue, and I’ll see if the usual notes are easier to hit, or if I’m still running out of air too fast, and if I feel less self-conscious when I sing in public.
In the meantime, it’s still freezing cold outside, and I leave the house only reluctantly and with a bad attitude. But I do enjoy singing along to my Spotify list of Israeli music in the car and taking short breaks to complain about my fellow drivers, or the ridiculous snow formations on the side of the road. It’s the little things that bring me joy.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
rachelmankowitz 