Tuesday 31 January 2017

VOCAL TIP #3: How to identify and fix a nasal voice.

VOCAL TIP #3: How to identify and fix a nasal tone or voice

Singers and Vocalists often complain about sounding nasal or having a nasal tone. The article talks about how to identify a nasal sound and how to fix it.

Nasal voices are caused by the improper flow of air whenever you speak. You may not know it, but the nose is a very important organ in speech. Aside from the movement of your mouth parts and the vibration of your vocal chords, airflow is very important in producing speech sounds.

Illnesses like colds, sinusitis and influenza can cause people to have a nasal voice.

You may be surprised how the quality of your voice improves if you breathe properly. If you take in too little air when you speak, you'll end up with a very exhausted, hushed tone that comes across as a very nasal voice. If you inhale and hold in too much air whenever you speak, your nasal passages expand and more sound resonates through the space, giving you a nasal voice.


To check for nasal voice, sing part of your favourite song and hold you nose. If you have balanced, resonant sound, your sound won't change and you can successfully sing while holding your nose. if the sound does change, you likely have a nasal sound.

The irritating nasal sound, or nasality in some singing voices is a result of a soft palate which is not lifted properly. Your soft palate is the soft tissue on the rood of your mouth. A soft palate that lifts helps create the ringing sound that you want. If the soft palate doesn't lift, the sound is nasal. Exercise your soft palate so that it lifts on command and you avoid that nasal sound.

To feel the soft palate, pretend that you're snoring in your sleep. Snore with your mouth open and take in air through your nose. If this only gets your nose quivering, put your fingers on your nose and close off your nostrils. When you closed your nostrils, try snoring again by breathing through your mouth. That quivering you feel is your soft palate moving.

Keep playing with that exercise, variously pinching and unpinching your nostrils while singing, until there is no change in the sound between the pinching/unpinching and no presence of air pressure into the nose when the nostrils are pinched. This will train your mental concept of your sound, your ear's adaptation and sensitivity to the output of that concept, and your physical/anatomical position into a memorized habit that automatically excludes all conditions which allow nasality. Bear in mind how it felt and looked to have your soft palate lift and to have your tongue touch your soft palate. These movements, when coordinated, keep your sound from being too nasal.


BlueTimbre is a Music Education and Performance center in India. BlueTimbre also provides complete end-to-end Music Education solutions for schools. BlueTimbre management team comes with a decades of cumulative experience in running structured businesses, music curriculum development, music education and performance.



Sources:

Sunday 22 January 2017

3 Ways to improve Music Education at your School

3 Ways to improve Music Education at your School

Principals, every child needs and deserves access to subjects that go into being a well-rounded, well-educated person. Music programs are constantly in danger of being cut from shrinking school budgets even though they're proven to improve academics. 

Article 1: How to Improve Music Classes in a New Era of Education, TIME Online
We believe there is a need for a paradigm shift in how we define outcomes in our music students. And we need to go beyond the right notes, precise rhythms, clear diction and unified phrasing that have set the standard for the past century. 

We should define learning by a student's intimate knowledge of composers or artists—their personal history, conception and the breadth and scope of their output. Students should understand the style and conception of a composer or artist—what are the aesthetics of a specific piece, the notes that have meaning? They should know the influences and inputs that went into the creation of a piece and how to identify those. 

Selected pieces should illuminate the general concepts of any genre and students should be able to understand these and know their precise location within a score and what these concepts represent.  



Article 2: Supporting Better Music Education, Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM)
Effective schools consider that a good quality music education contributes considerable musical and non-musical benefits to pupils, parents and wider communities. Having a better understanding of how and why pupils make musical progress will help teachers deliver more appropriately challenging and musical lessons. This will help teachers and senior leaders understand how to accurately evaluate these lessons, with a greater focus on musical learning which is driven by demonstrable musical progress, not inappropriate assessment. Management and senior administrators should explicitly encourage and support music teachers to develop these approaches.

Action Points
Music Standards are all about  Music Literacy. The standards emphasise conceptual understanding in areas that reflect the actual processes in which musicians engage. The standards cultivate a student’s ability to carry out the three Artistic Processes of 

1.     Creating,
2.     Performing, and
3.     Responding

These are the processes that musicians have followed for generations, even as they connect through music to their selves and their societies. And isn’t competence in Creating, Performing, and Responding what we really want for our students? 

Students need to have experience in creating, to be successful musicians and to be successful 21st century citizens. Students need to perform – as singers, as instrumentalists, and in their lives and careers. Students need to respond to music, as well as to their culture, their community, and their colleagues.

BlueTimbre is a Music hub with Music Education spaces, Jam Room and Recording studio located in India. BlueTimbre provides complete end-to-end Music Education solutions for schools. BlueTimbre management team comes with a decades of cumulative experience in running structured businesses, music curriculum development, music education and performance.


Sources: