THE SQUEAKY WHEEL GETS THE GREASE

If you've ever taken a lesson with me (or been my therapist) you know that I talk in metaphors... a lot.  For everything I try to explain, for some reason I feel the need to come up with a correlating analogy. Maybe it's because I like working with kids but I assume that for every idea I have, I need to have a corresponding children's book to drive my point home.  So I would like to present to you the simplest way of thinking about why being squeaky on your top notes is the way to go.

Think of your Vocal Tract as a Garden Hose:

Think of Sound as the Water:

Think of your Audience as the Flowers:      

Today you have to water the flowers but the hose doesn't reach and there is no spray nozzle:

If you're not allowed to touch this....:

What Can You Do? 

Mission Accomplished.  Your flowers have been watered and your audience has sufficiently been deafened. 

Now, you increased your efficiency because you were able to reach a further target, but you did not increase power.  How is that? 

You decreased space.  By putting your thumb over the hose, you decreased the amount of space the water had to get out, therefore increasing speed and intensity (frequency) of the water.  If we need to water our flowers (let our audience hear us) on a daily basis but we don't want to muscle it, how can WE decrease space?  Luckily for us, we have many "thumbs" that comprise our vocal tract and determine how much space we allow our sound to move through!  We can raise our tongues, we can spread our lips, we can lower our soft palates, and we have the ability to raise our larynges (so fancy!) as we please!  As long as we're not doing this, right? 
















As long as we're maintaining retracted false vocal folds (not squeezing or pushing), with the right combo of thumbs we can easily reach our audiences without dialing up the power through a performance.  We are increasing our own efficiency by increasing the frequency at which our sound is moving out of our bodies, and the "service you are providing" to your audience is comparable but much easier on you.Why kill ourselves trying to make the hose reach when we can put our thumbs over it?   The flowers will never know :)

TAKE A LESSON FROM THE EXPERT OF SNEAKY SQUEAKAGE, 12 YR OLD LUKE!

This week we talked about "headvoice" and "chestvoice" and the doors that mixing opens up when singing songs that cover a wide range of notes... This is a follow-up post, so if you haven't seen it already, check this post out:  BEING SNEAKY ABOUT THE SQUEAKY: DO WE REALLY NEED LABELS?

Introducing... Luke! This is the student whose lessons inspired the phrase, "Be Sneaky About the Squeaky" over a year ago! The first time he ever came to me, he was just a little boy (He grew like... 10 feet this year.) and used to have to be sneaky about the squeaky just to extend his range in general for his old favorite songs like "I Won't Grow Up," "There is a Santa Claus," and "Electricity." Now he's almost a teenager so we can't work on his little boy songs anymore... BUT he's also got a couple more years before he starts going for leading man roles! So now the squeaky that we have to be sneaky about is just accessing his old little kid voice (even though it doesn't come naturally to him anymore) so that he can reach some higher notes in his adult songs just like the rest of us! I mean, could there be a better of example of somebody who could be worrying about whether he's in headvoice or chestvoice? He's got it down to a science.

Listen and see if YOU can find all the different voices he's purposely choosing at any given moment. There are 4 of them! If you weren't listening for them, would you guess he's switching in and out of his little kid voice and his newer grownup voice?   It sounds pretty seamless to me! This song could potentially have been a Peter- Brady-does-Bruno-Mars but Luke was open to weaving in and out of a couple of different voices and does it like a BOSS!  So take a lesson from 12 yr old Luke.
Also, he gets major extra credit for the vibrato placement a la pop music and not musical theater... AND for all of the glottal onsets! Evidence that this guy only PRETENDS not to pay attention to what I'm saying :)

BEING SNEAKY ABOUT THE SQUEAKY: DO WE REALLY NEED LABELS?

Lately I've been working with a lot of angst-filled Mixie Chicks.

Now, the girls (and some guys!) who I've been seeing are stressed the ^$*# out about sides they're getting for auditions (namely Norwegian Cruise Line Legally Blonde and Bring it On National Tour).  Some songs sit on high F's and G's... pretty insane assignments to learn in less than a week.  Over the course of the lesson we'll get it to a point where it sounds goddamn amazing. I'm screaming "Yes, yes, yes!" behind the piano and if you were a bystander outside the studio you'd be wondering what's going on in there...  We're weaving in and out of whatever voices are necessary to make it sound like one cohesive voice (aka successfully Mixing)...  but then... out of nowhere...they literally stop the brilliance mid-phrase and say, "I'm in headvoice now," with this satanic looks on their faces.  

First of all, would I ever let you sing (let alone go to your audition singing) "So Much Better" in "headvoice?" I think not.  Secondly, this mixing thing may feel headvoicey to you because it's not as heavy or effortful as the full "chest" belt you're accustomed to...and this is why you're having an NBD.  You're afraid you're not doing enough.  But let me ask you a question:  If it's easier and it sounds pretty much exactly the same if not better from the outside ...  what is the problem?  We are capable of making more than two sounds, so why are we so adamant about classifying with one of these two labels? 

Hey nonny, nonny no!

A Bit of Blasphemy:

Let me give you a little bit of the history behind the dreaded "headvoice" and "chestvoice."  Believe it or not, these are not some crazy terms a teacher came up with in the 80's for her students auditioning for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals.  These terms were coined in the 1200's in France.  So they were invented at a time when nobody in their right mind had to make a high G# sound like it was being belted.  The terms were then popularized by singers using the Bel Canto vocal style.  In relation to musical theatre, to me, these terms are almost obsolete now.   Since the 13th century, we've had the capacity to do X-rays, Cat Scans, what have you... to see what's ACTUALLY going on in there.   This vocabulary is literally medieval and we're being asked to sing some very advanced stuff, especially within the last decade, never mind the last 8 centuries!  So worrying whether you are in headvoice or chestvoice while attempting your Bring It On sides is like saying you left your Beeper at home.  It doesn't really matter that much.


Mix-Hating Epidemic:

A friend who saw The Last 5 Years at Second Stage this summer was eavesdropping during intermission and heard a girl bitching about how "Betsy Wolfe was mixing all of the high notes."  Now, I'm sorry but BW is a pretty proficient singer... but also, do they not recall that Sherie Rene Scott almost exclusively (and successfully) mixed the whole show ten years ago, as well? (If you've read any of my other blog entries you know she's my favorite so I'm allowed to say it.  I also don't mean it as an insult.  It's actually one of the best compliments I can think of besides the fact that I think she's the queen.  There.  I said it.)

For all those who hate on mixing... I think we have to get clear about how many kinds of mixes there are and how many options you have besides headvoice and chestvoice!  In fact, many of our favorite "belters" are mixing more than you'd think! 

Even though the words "Head" and "Chest" are like curse words to me, this is how I'm categorizing the mixes for the purpose of our discussion today:

Head Mix without Twang-  Not operatic but still sweet/legit with main characteristic being an airy, Marilyn Monroe component. Can have straight tone to add a contemporary feel but otherwise sounds borderline legit.  Think Amanda Seyfried in Les Mis.  High soft palate.

Head mix with Twang- Not airy, but still very bright, sweet, high larynx, and can be used in contemporary legit settings (i.e. Miss Dorothy in Millie). Think Laura Osnes.  Can also have a mid soft palate.

Chest Mix- Has twang and mid larynx but still utilizes a variety of different ingredients (i.e. nasalizes [sings with mid soft palate], raises tongue, or whines [tilts thyroid], et. al. to thin it out so that it still isn't as heavy as a classic belt.  Think Sherie Rene Scott and sometimes Sutton Foster.  To me, it's like the difference between whining "I don't wanna!" and... 

Chest Voice- Patti Lupone yelling, "Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop taking pictures right now! Who do you think you are?!!"

Mixing is Not the Curse-Word!

This guy doesn't care if it's his 
head or his chest.  
Why should you?

From the recordings I'm hearing on YouTube, BW used all three of these mixes interchangeably throughout the show: Chest Mix for the majority, Head mix with Twang for the higher notes, and PERHAPS a few Head Mix without Twang for the highest stuff in the score.  I'm also going to take a wild guess and say the girl was saying she didn't like the mixing that she heard specifically on the high notes, but ironically, BW was probably mixing the entire time (not just on the high notes) and was making it sound like belting because she's good at it. She may have just lost the twang for a hot second (which could have been a choice!) and that's what the audience member heard as inconsistent or un-Sherie-like. 

SRS is a human mixing board.

Sherie Rene Scott mixes almost exclusively in all of her performances but she skillfully and ingeniously equalizes twang throughout her entire range, meaning she can gauge how much or how little is needed on any given note to make her entire range sound like one voice even though she is actually using a variety of different voices.  In other words, she was being sneaky about the squeaky and making us think it was one big voice.   
So if people are really comparing these two performances... it's not the fact that one is mixing and one isn't... because they both are.  It's actually the type of mixing and use of twang or lack thereof.  Again, many of our favorite belters are mixing more than we think... BW was following suit but may have just picked the wrong mix at the wrong time for ONE SECOND and didn't please that ONE audience member (You can't win them all).  In all actuality, if that person in the audience was looking for belting, then Betsy Wolfe was their woman because she was serving something way closer to Patti Lupone on the lower stuff than Sherie ever does! The problem was more likely that BW was actually thickening up too often on the low stuff, so much so that it possibly made for harder transitions.

   
Honestly, though, in my opinion nobody should be singing that show (or any show) in a full belt 100% of the time when you can use a chest mix or a head mix with twang and get the same results, especially when the score goes up that high and you have the advantage of being on a microphone.  It's a 2-person show.  If she were in chestvoice the whole time, she would be dead within one week.... as would you!  And this, my friends, is why I am such a lover of mixing... I am not trying to sabotage your auditions; I just want it to be easy as hell for you, too!  There's a reason why I can teach all day and not lose my voice. 

In terms of our own singing, if we're constantly singing at a full belt (a 10 on the mixie scale), of course when I ask you to thin it out it will feel like a headvoice to you because it's thinner than your regular balls-to-the-walls chest voice.  In the same respect, if you're living at a 2, when I ask you to bump it up to a 6, that's going to feel relatively cray cray and you're going to accuse me of trying to give you nodules because it's too belty.  When I prescribe some squeak in these high sections, I'm not making you sing in chestvoice.  You're actually mixing! It's not headvoice or chestvoice, really.  And it doesn't sound weird. I promise. Think of it like a magic trick; the audience will see it as the rabbit disappearing and the magician knows it's just a trick and the rabbit is under the table.  The magician can't be sad because he knows what the trick is. The audience will still be fooled.

This week alone I've had to have 4 people play their lesson back in front of me so they can hear for themselves that I'm not making them do some squeaky headvoicey thing in their belty songs for my own amusement; it actually works and sounds like an extension of the voice you're using that feels chestier on the bottom notes.  All have agreed.

As your mixing therapist, I say: 

As long as you're happy with how you sound and feel, why do you need to put labels on things? In fact, you may need to swing both ways in all of your songs... I do!  Say "nonny-nonny-no" to labeling. It gets better. 

BELT LIKE OPRAH! ANDY COHEN SHOW

Recently, Andy Cohen asked Oprah during an interview to yell his name! And she did it!  I guess we're not the only ones who noticed!

PRACTICE LIKE A 6 YEAR OLD: AMELIA TELLS YOU HOW