HEXT METHOD
- A BRIEF OVERVIEW -
A lot of the time, teachers tend to be over-cautious with their approach, whereas children’s voices can achieve a great deal. Children over the age of 7 or 8 can learn and apply basic breathing technique and they can learn to use balanced posture when singing. By the age of 9 or 10 they can learn to differentiate between how they make breathy or clear, constricted or open, chest or head, nasal or denasal sounds. By 11 or 12 they can learn efficient vocal projection using resonance without strain. Throughout this time their bodies and larynxes are growing and getting stronger, so the possibilities are continuously increasing.
The fundamental goal of my approach to coaching a young voice is to guide each individual performer to a place where they are comfortable, sustainable and safe in their unique facility. But, more importantly, keeping the training fun and exciting. Too often singing lessons can (albeit unintentionally) become dull and mechanical, and it is easy, at least in my experience, to forget about the joy of expressing one’s voice and the love for singing.
Inspired by Young Actors
On deciding to become a kids vocal coach, I figured where better to start in developing a Method than with the Kids themselves. At the time, I was lucky enough to be performing with the School of Rock UK Tour, hence had ample amounts of ridiculously talented and astute young performers to ask these questions to. Some of which had had some variety of coaching in the past, and others that had never had a lesson in their life. Their responses provided me with a framework to shape a Method around their needs.
I asked three simple questions:
1. What do you think about/feel when you sing?
2. What do you struggle with / What is the thing you practice the most?
3. What doesn’t work for you? (in training or practice)
So, what were the main things I took away from these chats?
Breath – “singing from my belly not my throat”
Unsurprisingly, nearly every single one of them labelled their breath as being one of their main obstacles. A young voice has a lot of challenges that comes with it, from an ever-evolving larynx to the dramatic changes puberty can bring. On top of all of that, there is the simple hurdle of their small lungs! They increase in volume year by year, but nothing drastic until their growth-spurt in adolescence. So, there are obviously physical limitations from the get-go. But, as with any voice work, breath is our starting point, it is the foundation on which everything else sits.
We look at four simple things:
- How to breath. Sounds simple right? Been doing it my whole life! But dropping the breath correctly, releasing unwanted tension and controlling air pressure is harder than it sounds!
- How breath influences and enables different vocal qualities.
- Using your breathing muscles to support and anchor your singing, making safe, clean and supported tone.
- How emotions and breathing go hand in hand, and how you can use that to your advantage.
Connection to the Text – “I just think about the words I’m singing”
Words are packed with meaning. They are little bundles of sounds that help us to transmit the subtleties of our ideas, thoughts and feelings to others. They have the potential to be incredibly powerful tools if used correctly.
As with most things, if not used correctly they can be pretty redundant.
It’s important to get the right attitude to words themselves – looking at how to engage with the vowels and how to articulate the consonants so that you can release the full potential of the word.
So much of good communication in English is about the vowels. This is because vowels offer a space and time to fill with expression. If a speaker doesn’t use their vowels to transmit feeling, then they will struggle to share their feelings with their listeners. And anyone listening to an emotionless speaker will struggle to stay focused, and the same is true for singing. This may seem quite a bizarre thought but think about it. Emotions must be shared through something: partly through your body language and partly through the words that you choose, and the remainder is through the sounds you make and how you say it.
This is why it is my belief that after Breath, the second most important thing is the text, and how those words influence your emotions, your breath and hence your singing.
Different Vocal Qualities – “switching between head and chest voice” “switching from speech to song”
Every voice is unique; each voice will have a different facility and therefore have its own range, governed by the Vocal Qualities. My own training is routed in an Estill and ‘tilted’, Legit foundation, and although I do firmly believe Legit is the foundation of a healthy voice (just as Ballet is the foundation of dance), my approach to younger voice is different. The closest we get to playing with ‘tilt’ is exploring ‘Whine’ (also known as ‘cry’) This allows us to access a combination of actions resulting in a brighter sound (resonance), easy access to higher pitches (cricothyroid flexibility), reduced vocal fold adduction (register) and lack of breathiness (Lateral Crycoarytenoid + Interarytenoid activation). It is a complex recipe, with a simple emotive, primal trigger - Whine.
From that we can start to explore adding some stylistic vocal qualities such as twang (a very good friend of my own voice), thin fold work and some Rock qualities. These stylistic choices are a powerful tool in aiding each individual voice to support the sound they want to produce; combining (so called) head and chest voices to create ‘Mix’.
However, again, there are limits to a Young Person’s facility, that encourage constant monitoring:
- The child has a higher larynx, it's nearer to the back of the jaw rather than midway down the neck, and so the tube between the larynx and the lips (vocal tract) is shorter. A shorter tube has different resonant properties, and the sound has more high frequencies, making it sound brighter.
- The child has shorter and thinner vocal folds, this means that the range of dynamic contrasts (loud and soft) is less, and the difference between thick and thin- fold (chest and head) is less.
- The smaller larynx is also unable to achieve the pitch range of an adult voice. The lowest comfortable singing pitch at pre-school age is about middle C, this drops gradually until pre- puberty when the lowest note is generally the A or even G below middle C; the range can’t be extended downwards. Often the comfortable upper limit of the child’s voice is lower than the adult soprano, this will extend over time with a bit of the right sort of encouragement.
- Within the larynx, the muscles are not as coordinated, and the cartilages are softer. This limits things like rapid coloratura passages. It also limits sustained high singing.
" when I think about singing, I think about being free "
Ava Masters (aged 12)