Be An Asset Tip No.3 "Isolate!"

Isolation Exercise: Isolating the Mid-Section

(You should have read Tip No. 2 'Be conscious' for you to really understand this particular post.)

*Ok, this is not an AB Crunch Instruction. The image is just to attract you. :)) Seriously, this is Part 3 of my "Be An Asset Series" for choral singers. :)

Our purpose is to maximize and maintain the breadth of our (human) sounding board (to produce a free and ringing voice very conducive to choral singing) without stiffening in all other areas. For the inexperienced, when you expand your ribcage and attempt to hold it while you continue breathing and singing, you may find it hard to relax on some other areas as the chest, neck, face, scalp, arms, even legs. It may be very evident in the chest and neck, but if you become very sensitive to it, you may be surprised to find that even the scalp and facial muscles can be under undue stress. Facial tic, headache, during or after singing, anyone?

For the process to be all-natural, our body needs to be used to the routine. MHM! Muscles have memory. Yes, they do. So, our best shot is to train them. How? By employing the Muscle Isolation Technique. Upon mastery, the next time you stand up to sing, your body would automatically shift to 'singing mode' meaning every body part will synch to provide you, the singer, with the state of the art sounding board, so to speak.

In the gym or at the exercise corner in your home you learned to isolate certain muscle or body part from the rest of the body to maximize the full benefit of certain exercises. E. g. as you do arm curls with a dumbbell, you learned to keep your upper arm (bicep) glued to your sides, never allowing it to swing in front of your profile. That way your biceps really get worked out to the core. You may find every tiny string of muscle tingling with the stress. You do not let your arms 'cheat' so as to really benefit from the exercise. That's the point. Isolate.

So, let's try it. Stand or sit erect (do not sit back), keep your alignments as if you have a string attached at the center top of your head to the ceiling. Breathe in three large amounts of air without exhaling in between. As your lungs fill up, you may also feel your muscles grow taut and stiff; the chest, neck, upper arm, and facial muscles to mention some. Hopefully you also feel your back ribs while doing this routine. If you reached this point, you are doing fine. Now start to relax all the previously mentioned muscles while maintaining the wide midsection. Keep doing it until what is left un-relaxed is your ribcage and abdominals (I prefer to combine the two and call it midsection). Once you enter this point, REMEMBER the feeling. Relax everything afterwards.

Now, do it again but do so by springing back directly to the REMEMBERED feeling; i.e. a wide and taut midsection minus any contraction anywhere else. Now, 'open the masque' i.e. defy the gravity's pull from your facial muscles. Put a sparkle in your eyes and keep a pleasant countenance. There.

Remember that people will never notice what you just did. So don't worry that you would look like a cadet trainee on attention when you need to do it before singing. What they would see is a person exuding calm and confidence.

Keep that 'hollow' feeling in the midsection, never allowing the ribcage to sag through the entire length of the song; remember what I said about those 3rd and 4th images here. There is always the right way to sing. Keep growing in your singing knowledge. Till next time.

Be An Asset in the Choir Tip No. 2

Be Conscious!

"Be Conscious?" you ask. Ok, ok, I say: never be self-conscious. But the title, besides being an eye catcher, also serves a purpose, believe me. If I caught your attention, it has served its purpose halfway.

Of course, to be self conscious is to perform poorly; so never be.

But I say, be conscious of a few things. And if you do, you can sound a lot better and sing a lot more precise and relieve yourself of unneeded anxiety in the process. So that's hitting several birds with one stone; not bad eh? Here goes. . .

♫ BE CONSCIOUS OF THE WHOLE CIRCUMFERENCE OF YOUR ABDOMINALS.

As you breathe in very deeply, try to 'feel' the whole 360 degrees of your ribcage. If you cannot feel the back ribs as well as the front ribs, you have not breathed in as deep as you need to.

Try this: Drink in the air (as if drinking from a large glass)! Do this by taking at least three successive BIG inhales (that is, without exhaling in between inhales!!) until your lungs get filled to full capacity. Now we are feeling the back ribs aren't we? Very good, we're getting there.

And what do we do with it?

♫ Try to DO THAT BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO SING--(and I'm not done yet)--♫ AND TRY TO HOLD THAT FEELING THE ENTIRE LENGTH OF THE SONG.

I mean hold the ribcage outwards; right there, and never let it go up and down as you inhale and exhale naturally (see Josh and Charlotte above). Imagine a balloon inside a laundry hamper. The balloon is your lungs and the wide hamper is your ribcage. The balloon (your lungs) inflate and deflate while you breathe in and out naturally while the hamper (representing your ribcage) remains rigidly wide and roomy; that is, retaining its widest capacity; not 'pumping with' the lungs. (See images 3 and 4)I think you got it by now. If you can do it, half the battle has been won.

Why? The problem of a narrow air passage was hurdled; resulting to a freer breath flow. You will eventually find that with this process, you gain full control of your air flow, thereby avoiding 'off-pitches' and wobbles, and shortness of air. Why, because the ribcage, when unheld, drives out the air quickly as it deflates; I mean it squeezes the air out fast.

And you know what? Just like a balloon that 'shrieks' when you let go of its opening, your voice come out less controlled resulting to several singing problems as 'pitchy' singing, wobbles, and shortness of breath to mention a few.

". . . Relieve yourself of unneeded anxiety in the process" Did I say that? Yes, I did. When you focus on your breathing, your 360 degrees of ribcage, and the holding out of the said body part for the entirety of the song, your performance tensions get set aside. Get the picture? Your mind gets so busy focusing on these things there is little room if any, left for fear and self-consciousness.

So there. Hold it right there! I mean, expand the ribcage and hold it there. Yes, to the end of the song at hand. Be conscious of your back ribs, never let go. But before I go, remember to relax all the surrounding muscles and body parts from the chest up and the waist down. Because there is what I call...

The SETBACK: Quite understandably, it's weird to do it the first few times. It may feel so unnatural and you may stiffen in some areas like the chest, the neck, the shoulders, the arms, even the scalp and facial muscles. I tackle this issue ( learn the ISOLATION TECHNIQUE) on my next Singing Tip (No.3) so please proceed there right after reading this. Just in case you're reading this sooner than I post the next tip, just remember to relax everything else but the mid-section. Maybe that would help a bit. Till then.

Slogans/Thoughts to Remember:

1-PMP - Practice Makes Permanent (Training the body to naturally do the routine)

2-MHM - Muscles Have Memory (Well trained muscles develop useful reflexes to engage the task at hand.)

3-From the gym:" You grow (you improve) every time you push yourself to the limits." Your weak muscle fibers get sore but improves dramatically after it heals from the previous routine. You discover on your next visit to the gym that you can easily heft the 30-pound dumbbell that gave you such a hard time the last time you tried to use it. :)

Tip No. 3 - "Isolate"

Be an Asset in the Choir

Performance Tip No 1 - VOCALIZATION

It has been standard practice; for it has been proven as an imperative part of the choral training. But sadly for some, this is something they'd rather skip--if they can have their own way.

Never undermine its benefits. It warms and prepares our vocal tracts for the work ahead. Synonymous to stretching the muscles before embarking on a strenuous workout at the gym. It not only eases our singing. It also protects us from vocal harm. We hear of singers growing one or two nodules in the throat-one of the consequences of undisciplined singing.

Going back to the analogy of weight training, a very eager trainee would rather go straight ahead to the workout without preparing the muscles by warming them up to make them flexible and adaptable. Muscle tear is a painful consequence. The same is true with singing. You repeatedly punish your vocal cords, you eventually reap your grim rewards.

The vocal cords, (very fragile) muscles in their own right, becomes adaptable to varying demands of singing, and the well prepared singer would find himself singing smoothly and with relative ease. A well warmed up throat and vocal tract becomes like a well lubricated machine; so able to go with the flow and cope up with the 'uphill climbs' and 'rough roads' of singing.

The un-warmed singer would find himself singing awkwardly, or hitting notes off-pitch, slurring upwards to hit high notes, and thus become a liability to the group, not to mention the punishment he inflicts on himself. Always remember to warm up!

A Singer's Goal: A chorister must be a team player. He walks, glides, hops, leaps, runs, and stops at the same moments with everybody else. And he becomes a reason why the choir is where it is. There should be no one who would be like an injured team mate who needs to play despite his injury, or a weakling who needs to be constantly spoon-fed and cared for by others. He should be able to develop his own skills by constant and disciplined training and not rely on his buddies to assist him all along.

SonBeams to SM City

The EBC SonBeams Choir will be serenading SM City Foodcourt this December. Last year, they sang with the EBC Salmo Chorale in the same mall, but in The Event Center. Then after the Cantata, they serenaded the stores until about 10 PM. They were very happy as they went home with a lot of treats from all the stores they delighted.

They have been excitedly rehearsing for the upcoming engagement, bless them. Salmo could have sang again too, but due to some reasons (one, the original plan was for them to serenade homes instead; and two, many singers have other plans for the Yuletide season, so quite a number of them won't be able to join this year's Choral Christmas events). Sigh.

*The image was taken last year in the church, as they sang carols in the Vesper Service.

The Advantages of Singing in the Choir

Click the title.