Help with "Nay Nay Nay" exercise

[Kilovolt]

Hello guys, this is me singing the Nay Nay Nay exercise on an octave repeat scale up to C5. Could someone please tell me if I am doing this correctly, and if not point me in the right direction? It's not really connecting, and even when I'm in head voice I feel a bit of strain. Maybe I need to lighten up and lower the volume? I'm kinda stuck here. Thanks a lot

 

here's the link: https://soundcloud.com/ntsla1856/nay-exercise

[PhilMoufarrege]

Hi Kilovolt,

I took a listen at your clip. You are thinning your voice out nicely, great job. Now you want to move onto vocalizing NAY with a neutral larynx not a raised larynx.

 

Firstly I will say this before my advice below: I assume you're training with singing success/mastering mix or seth rigg's course singing for the stars. If so, I would recommend just continuing through the course instead of getting stuck on the Nay trying to perfect it - simply move on, you are doing fine.

 

The reason why you are stuck has nothing to do with you needing to "lighten up the volume more". This is a trap I see many people fall into. You are already singing extremely light with very little chest connection and you are blending fine. Going lighter won't help you. Instead you need to add more weight to the sound NATURALLY.

 

The next step for you is to instead increase the volume and learn how to maintain more chest connection WHILE STILL THINNING NICELY.

 

The reason why you are most likely still feeling strain is because you are singing from your throat currently. Bigger sounds will get you more in touch with singing from the body.

 

But not just any bigger sound. The vowel needs to be tuned properly.

 

An exercise that will help you build more body connection:

- taking a nice low breath,

- then exhaling ALL OF YOUR AIR

- then do a scale on AW (as in "more") vowel.

- then repeat (breathe in, exhale, sing)

 

As you sing higher, you should feel the lower abdominals below the navel begin to contract and serve to anchor your sound. If you do not feel this then you will be limited to singing very light from the throat like you currently are.

 

the exhaling before singing ensures that you won't vocalize breathy. Vocalizing breathy will hurt your voice when trying to add weight to the sound. The AW vowel is a deep vowel which will help you get in touch with your body and sing with more depth. Don't be afraid of the clunkiness and heaviness of the sound. Embrace it. You will soon learn how to maintain this big sound and be able to thin it out just like you are in the clip you sent.

 

Currently you are vocalizing with consonant sounds, ie. nay nay mum mum go go etc. Once you can get a smooth sound on all of those wiht a neutral larynx you must than begin attempting the same thing without the crutch of a consonant. You must learn how to sing AH, EE, OO on a medium loud volume and take your real voice all the way up without strain.

 

If you want to see me demonstrating an example of tuning resonance have a look at this video of mine:

 

 

I hope you found this helpful