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Welcome everyone to Thursday Night Live. Welcome! Hey everyone, hi! I'm Mike Gelson, founder of voicelessons.com. It's my pleasure and privilege. Dr. Matt Edwards, thank you for showing up again. Absolutely awesome.
So, we've got a great show planned for everyone tonight. Um, so many wonderful topics to talk about. And myself, just as I was going back through so many of the questions that many of the singers and the students out there have asked, and we've seen just a huge number of these questions come in. Um, obviously, since, uh, everyone's been, you know, living, working, going to school from home, there's been a huge surge of traffic. And so, literally, over 500 questions have been coming in. And so we realized, hey, we've got to go back to kind of what started, kicked off our show in the first place. Let's go back and pull out some questions. So Matt and I went through the list. Matt's got a great list curated. So, Matt, let's jump in. I'm excited.
All right, let's do this. So, uh, first question, what we got? Can you be a good singer from nothing? This question comes in from Leah. Great question. A lot of people always want to know, like, hey, can I actually go somewhere with this? Uh, do I have a natural voice? A lot of this is in the same realm. So, yeah, let's, let's, uh, I got a couple ideas on this one.
I know, right? So, um, what's the history of singing, right? Let's talk about that. The history of singing goes all the way back. They believed in Neanderthals, right? Right back. They think that Neanderthals were vocalizing melodies and a calling pattern to each other that then became words. And we, you know, think about it. You just reminded me of the, uh, of the movie. My, my daughter and I have been watching *The Good Dinosaur*, and Spot on there's calling to his father on the mountain, you know? Anyway, so, and then that became singing. So, ever since humans existed, we were singing before we ever spoke. That's what, like, all the sciences kind of came to as a conclusion. We were singing first before we actually tried to come up with speech patterns that became language. Okay? And babies sing before they ever speak. And stroke patients can learn to sing before they can speak. Again, Gabby Giffords is one of them. That's means Leah. And the reason I'm saying this is, Leah, you were born to sing. In fact, every single one of the people watching the show today was literally born with everything they need to sing. It's part of humanity since, you know, probably from the first days. Okay? So you're not just making this up. On the continuum of, like, getting just being able to speak, we actually develop coordination that that is song-like or singing-like before speech. Okay? They sing to themselves all the time. Listen to them. They'll be, they're pulling up from their nap, and they're cooing, and they're making sounds. They're exploring their voice. So, look, we were all born to sing. And then at some point along the way, somebody said something about your voice, and you thought you weren't born to sing. They probably said, like, "Don't sing so loud," "like, you sing quieter," or "don't think so harsh." Well, they turned right. So then you got in your mind that you weren't supposed to sing. But here's the thing. You probably danced when you were young, too. And eventually, you realized, "Hey, I can't dance the way I want to." So I'm going to start taking dance lessons, right? I'm going to learn from TikTok videos or whatever. And you had no problem learning that coordination. But people have a psychological connection to their voice. And so the second that their voice doesn't do what they want, they're like, "I can't sing." And the reality is, is just like you could dance as a child, you could take lessons to get better. You could sing as a child, and you can now take lessons to learn how to coordinate the movement of your voice. What you end up singing is going to vary. And that's where most people start to again, on the second time, think that they can't sing. It's when they try to make their voice do stuff that their voice just is not designed to do. So, for instance, you know, you, you really have this small, quiet, breathy voice. And no matter how hard you train it, it doesn't get to be huge. And yet you're trying to force yourself to be an opera singer because you were told you should do that. So you're sitting there forcing yourself to be an opera singer to try to get this idea of what you think your voice is supposed to be. Instead of going, "Whoa, hold up. I've got this really nice, breathy voice that sounds great in jazz ballads, right? Going on over in that direction and using your voice to tell stories through that music." Right? And there's a whole lot of shades of gray in the middle of that extreme scenario. But there's so many times that somebody's got a great voice, they're just singing stuff that isn't really a right fit for their instrument. And if they just kind of adjust, they're there. Right? But we wouldn't send the piano to a rock concert and expect it to take the place of an electric guitar. You just can't. So we shouldn't sit back that your voice is going to be able to take the place of somebody else's voice and take on all those vocal qualities.
Awesome. So that's speaking to, like, the individual's size of their voice and their individual shape of their mouth, the oral pharynx, the cavities, the tongue, all of that, right? And then there's actual, you know, good singer, right? So, just to break that down, I mean, obviously, there's different levels of that. But you can, anyone can train their voice, just like Matt said. Him, you know, even in learning to speak, it's there's patterns and steps to go through. And so through with motor skill development and get working with a coach or having exercises that you're training with and someone's guiding you with that, that you can develop certain skills that you didn't have. And then through that, you can have the freedom to express your, uh, emotions through song. So.
And the thing, and it truly is, I mean, people of all physical abilities as well. I'm just sitting here thinking as you were thinking about, you know, "be a good singer from nothing," and people I've worked with in the past who became great singers for what they wanted to do. And, you know, and it hasn't held them back. You know, whether they be in a wheelchair, whether they have a, you know, an issue with their legs of some sort, or, you know, even mental, uh, health issues that get in the way in the rest of their life. And singing brings them peace. So I think that it's, you know, we're meant to do it. It's, uh, we're meant to do it no matter, and, you know, what our physicality is, our being, our race, anything. We just need to go and play with our voice till we find what fits the best. And, uh, yes. And there's a lot of other science which, you know, I know we, I don't know if we've done a show on this, but just for the joy and happiness that comes there's like the, the endorphins and stuff they get released from just from singing. So it's a great thing to do.
Absolutely. Okay, next one. This is, this, this one's yours. Oh, Sophie. So Sophie's asking, he said, "I wish I knew why my voice is different from my friends." Okay, so Sophie, I'm going to try to like, keep this simple. But, you know, like, sometimes I get a little, you know, one of those models. I'm going to grab a model. All right, Sophie. You and your friend have all of the same stuff together. You all have this inside of your head. I'm going to show you the parts that matter about singing. This is the windpipe that connects your lungs to your larynx. And then your larynx is where you make the buzzy sound, the "ah" inside of your throat. That's the vocal folds. Then that little buzz travels up here through this tube and comes out of your mouth. And then on top of that buzz, we add the sound of your mouth, whatever shape it takes. So the two main components are what happens down here with the buzz, and then what happens up here in the mouth. And the reason that you and your friends sound different is because your bodies are different. Okay? Just like no two fingerprints are alike, no two vocal tracts are alike, right? They're not identical. And so we get close sometimes. And that's how you get people that can imitate someone else. But even imitators, if you actually take what's coming out of their voice when they're imitating, we can use forensic audio software to prove that they're not the same person. And it's usually pretty easy to identify that, nope, that's an imitation, right? So they are all unique. So Sophie, your vocal folds could be thinner than your friend's, or they could be thicker than your friend's. And both of those things are going to change your voice. Whoever has the thicker folds might have a little bit of a louder voice. Whoever has the thinner folds might have more agility.
Sure. On the same lines, right? It could be, it could be the length. Could be in length, right? Uh, Sophie, I'm assuming if you're a biological female, signed female at birth, um, then your vocal folds are somewhere around 10 millimeters to 17 millimeters long. But there's a seven millimeter difference in there, right? And so, like, what Mike just said, you know, we can have differences in length that will impact your tone as well. Then we go up and everything is in your mouth. Maybe your jaw's a little bit wider than your friend's, maybe it's a little more narrow. Literally, we're now finding out that the distance between your upper molars and the depth of the distance between the bottom of your molar and the roof of your mouth affect the timbre of your voice. So you may have a slightly higher hard palate in the distance from your molars, and that will change your voice and make it different than your friends. So it's every little curve. I mean, maybe you just got a big mouth, too, and you just, you're just talking a lot, number, right? And it comes out. So, you know, but every one of those little things can make a difference. And so that's why your voices sound different. Neither one is better than the other, right? We sometimes, so, so, and so is better at that. Well, if you try to sing the same song, I guess we could probably get some people who would say one of you is better than the other. But they also say the same thing about Selena Gomez versus Ariana Grande. They would still say the same thing between, like, you know, Barry White and John Legend. You know, they'd look at, you know, singers and be like, "Oh yeah, that one is the better one." But they're still great singers, right? And so, yeah, we can always find somebody who thinks one person's better than the other. But most people can go use their voice in an enjoyable way with others and find funny of other, plenty of other people who enjoy singing with them. So it's really about just accepting who you are, Sophie, and knowing that you're unique and you're special. And all of the most successful people in life, no matter what they do in any field, it is play up their strengths. And they either strengthen the weaknesses, or they realize, "Hey, that's just not something I'm that interested in, uh, strengthening," and it doesn't matter to me. So I'm moving in that direction over there. And you move in the direction that you want to go and you dedicate yourself to practicing and, uh, you can get wherever you want to take it.
Absolutely. I mean, Matt, Matt, you hit the nail on the head with what the vibrator does. So what happens with the vocal cords and then what happens above that, you know, what is the resonance doing, right? And so those two things are so interdependent. Um, and so with that, each person is setting up their own different little formula, right? For that specific sound quality that they create. And that's why, you know, when you hear them speaking, "Oh, that's, you know, that's Mike. That's Matt." You can hear that with us talking, uh, right now. So.
Well, don't think about that with your friend. Like, you know, maybe sit down and compare, like, "Oh, we got a bigger jaw, a smaller jaw." I mean, all of that stuff's gonna be different. So it's all gonna change the color and the timbre of the sounds that are coming out.
Well, and then the other thing that you just kind of, something you just said made me think of, is that we're all also bringing our own unique life experiences to any song that we sing. And, you know, it's the performing and the storytelling aspect that if I'm singing "Amazing Grace," it means something different to me than Mike. And so the way I use my vowels in "Amazing Grace" are going to be different than the way that Mike does. Right? I mean, just because you're a way bigger singer than me. You'll, absolutely. You'll actually maybe connect with it a little bit more. Now, I'm just kidding. We're all, you know, thank God, praise Jesus, uh, for forgiveness for all of us. I totally get your point. Like, you're gonna emote it differently. You're gonna have a little bit different feeling. And, and probably, if you know, if you're, you're Christian, you're going to religious ceremonies, you might have heard other people sing it. So you have these other, um, versions that you've heard in your mind that are kind of guiding you on how you want to sing it and perform it. And maybe I haven't heard those, so I'm going to sing a little bit differently.
Yeah, so, and it is, yeah, and it's right because there are, there's one person in particular that sticks in my mind. You're always used to singing that I always think of. So it is stuff like that. And those are, yeah, we get, we get these mental ideas of, "Oh, I want to sing it like so-and-so." And I always love it when a singer comes in, they like, "I want to sound like this other superstar famous name," you know, fill in the blank artist. And in first, kind of like, "Well, let's figure out, assess your skill level and where you are on that continuum." But also, you know, you may not have the same instrument. So you just can't force the sounds to come out. And if you do, you can wind up in trouble. So please, you know, do listen to what we are saying. Everyone has their own unique voice. And that's what makes them very, you know, Matt's, uh, thumb prints. But I also like the snowflakes. They're just so individual. And everyone's got to kind of figure out where they are in learning and development and then work with a coach that can help you get where you want to get to.
Absolutely. 100%. All right, what's the next, next one? What do we got? Oh, say, so from Kim. Excuse me, it's allergy season here in Virginia. Uh, what exactly is proper singing technique? This is, uh, I'm gonna give you tonight, Kim, the short Matt answer instead of going for the long Matt answer. Proper singing technique is, uh, the agility it gives you agility in your instrument and gives you the coordination to get your voice to do whatever it is that you want to do without it hurting you and in a way that you feel good about. An audience is like. And I can tell you that we could go through 30,000 teachers and I could find a bunch of different combinations of types of teachers who have different approaches than me, but will still be kind of going towards the same general area. And then people who have this slightly different idea of the end goal, who will use all kinds of variations of the same ideas of techniques and get you to that other equally successful end goal, right? So there's lots of ways to get there. Now, that's the surface picture. And that is assuming that there's lots of good techniques out there. And, uh, Mike's laughing right now because I know you don't want to. And anyone, and so please allow me to maybe. So, but here's the biggest one. Mike's now going to tell you why that's not completely true. And then he's going to turn it back over to me where I'm going to give my, uh, call to the community. We're just talking about church. I'm going to make my altar call for people to come join this new wave of voice teaching because we need to end the past. So my, the past, you know, the big, the biggest thing here that I would just say, it, you know, proper singing technique, it's going to be very subjective because at the end of the day, we judge a singer by kind of that, that, the final vocal outcome that we hear. We, we hear that final sound. And there are many ways sometimes to produce the same note with similar color, but maybe little different degrees. You know, is, was it, uh, a head, uh, chest dominated mix? Or, you know, was it just a fully open, uh, throat sound? Like, where, where was in the continuum? There's a whole debate on, you know, how we name, name the sounds. But technique, I'd say the biggest one is freedom, balance, right? So you want to have freedom and balance, and you want to be functionally free. So I think the big movement that we're, um, you know, Matt and I both believe strongly is functional voice training, right? And there's a number of great pedagogues that have kind of charted that, um, you know, the path there. The lot, a lot of people are standing on the shoulders of giants, as they say. And so with that, you know, you want to have a voice that functions, that's free, that's unencumbered from tensions, and is balanced, right? From the bottom to the top. Now, there's many, listen, all roads lead to Rome. So there's many paths, as is Matt saying. And so, um, I, I don't think we want to get into which path is better. And there's going to be some debate on which path you can take. But I would just say freedom, balance. You want it to be functionally healthy and sound good. And so, um, proper singing technique, but especially with some more rock styles and stuff, some of that stuff is borderline. Is it safe? You know, but people like it, and they'll spend millions of dollars and sell out a concert. And, um, some of those singers are, you know, working with their coach all the time to keep that sound the way it sounds.
So I will add one thing. I'll put, uh, one little bit out there about what's proper. What you're being asked to do actually has to be achievable. That's how your body actually works. Because, right? Because, like, for instance, I was watching an interview of a teacher one time, interviewing for a job where I was doing the hiring. And they told the student to get their soft palate up. And they said, "I want you to lift your soft palate." So, "Go feel your soft palate lift." Well, when you do "ng," there's MRI proof and X-ray proof that your soft palate literally drops down low, and all the sound goes through your nose. And you can prove this because if the soft palate is up and you do "ng" and pinch your nose, nothing will change. But Mike, sing an "ng." Dang it. It's a great way to sign up. Done. Yeah, I mean, right. Game over, right? So, so literally, I'm watching this teacher telling the student to do something that's the complete literal opposite of what she just told the student that was happening. And that's where I do have a problem.
Got it. You're saying, can you not violate the huge natural laws? Natural laws? Not only the physiology, like that muscle is connected to that ligament, and literally when you do this other movement, it has to go there. There's no way. There's no way around that, right? Um, and then the other, like, the acoustic laws. Right? We know that a certain pitch, a certain number of freaks, I'm sorry, of hertz, um, creates a certain sound in certain, here, audibly. So those, you know, ultimately, you want to be searching for, um, a technique or a philosophy that doesn't violate natural law.
Yeah, that's the biggest thing. Yeah, I mean, I'd, and, you know, it's, and it's okay if they introduce something that doesn't, right? Like, so there's some, uh, one teacher that, uh, used to teach somewhere I did, who said, um, "Sing through your unicorn horn." Well, clearly none of us have unicorns. And if a student sang better by singing through their unicorn horn, okay, fine. But the problem was, is that whenever a student didn't, this teacher would say, "Well, I just don't know what else to tell you. You need to find your unicorn horn next week." That's not proper singing technique. That's putting, uh, a teacher's lack of understanding up against the student, kind of holding it against the student. And that's not good, right? And so I think that we do want to make sure that we are, though, getting those things that, uh, you know, actually do what we think that they do. So I would just end that with, you want a philosophy that's going to increase your range, not shrinking range, and freedom, balance, function. So definitely not the unicorn horn. That gives me anxiety.
Which is our next question. So, okay, I'll take this. Can you help me get rid of anxiety? This one comes in from Iris. So I'm imagining you're getting ready for your show or your upcoming audition, and you've got to sing that song, and oh my gosh, it either scares you or bothers you. You're going to be on the stage, and there's the lights in your face, and the audience is out there. So, yeah, there could be performance anxiety. I mean, yeah.
So a lot of performance anxiety, uh, relates to what are called cognitive distortions. And cognitive distortions are these false beliefs that we create in our mind. And, you know, two of the big ones are magnifying, making something worse than it is, and catastrophizing, which is making it the absolute end of the world. If you're like, "My voice feels really off today. It'll be a horrible performance." You're magnifying other things a little bit, right? And there's all kinds of, you know, other, I'm just kind of using these two as an example. So in a lot of instances, that's what's happening. You're walking on a stage, and you're concerned about something, and you're magnifying it because in your mind, it is magnified. You're going, "God, I know my tongue always pulls back on this pitch. And oh my gosh, is my tongue going to pull back? Is it going to pull back?" The audience doesn't know your voice that well, right? Maybe a few people have heard you sing before, but everybody's hearing you for the first time. I can't tell you how many times they don't hear, which voice teacher hears what you hear, right? I mean, I have, I cannot tell you how many times I have students that have a technical issue that's driving me up a wall, going in front of a casting director or an agent, and they're like, "You're incredible. You have nothing to fix on your voice." And I'm like, as in my mind, I'm sitting there and combing their tongues. This little teeny thing. Sure. Well, over the years to relax, you know, relax and back off after a while. Absolutely. You know, but yeah, I'm going to say when, you know, you're working with a coach at your level and, and, and a lot of the coaches out there, you know, when you see the same student, you know, week in, week out, you know, that's why you keep, that's why you keep studying and keep going. So they can hear and know like, "Oh, well, this week it sounds, you know, like you're in great shape." And the next week they go in there, and the coach hears just saying two scales and goes, "I know exactly what we need to work on today." Yeah, because, you know, they start to develop, you know, hear the sound. So, but to catastrophize, I mean, I can definitely remember, uh, times of my, in my own, uh, performing where you think something is like, "Oh, but, but this one note." And at the end of the day, you go back and watch the, you know, the tape or the recording, whatever you, you produced, and it sounds great. And, and then you go back and you think, "Well, why was I feeling all those emotions and those thoughts? Like, why was I torturing myself before they're performing?" Um, and if I had to just, you know, maybe relaxed and, God, calm. So a lot of what I try to shift, um, and I'm curious, you know, Matt, what you recommend to you singers, but, you know, is things like yoga, uh, you know, relaxation techniques, like meditating and breathing deeply, and trying to find a calm. A lot of things that I've done before performing is just get it, you know, nice, calm, quiet space and just really try to get centered so that you can give that best performance, um, unencumbered by a lot of the other things, noise that might be going on in your mind. And you're really just focused on communicating in that moment, the text and the song and the story and the drama, and letting that come out.
Yeah, and sit, I mean, that deep, uh, breathing, the diaphragmatic breathing that you're using, uh, you know, when you're singing, or the yoga breathing, they all excite the vagus nerve, and that helps send signals throughout your nervous system to, like, "Chill out." Right? You up your oxygen in your body, and, you know, just a calming. There's plenty of studies on meditation that show that it literally changes the brain. So that's great advice, Mike.
You're, you're hardly alone. The term that you want to look into a little bit more is overcoming performance anxiety. And you're going to find that there are performance anxiety specialists in every field that has to do with performing. That means like athletics, right? Doing stuff like that. Even magicians, Olympians go to see performance anxiety coaches. Public speakers will do it. CEOs will do it. So this is, Iris, this is not a singer thing only. So look at the field of performance anxiety. You should get some good ideas. I'm sure there are specialists on YouTube. And, you know, maybe we should look for a guest at some point to have on. That'd be a great topic.
I mean, you mentioned the Olympics, just made me think of Michael Phelps. And I was fascinated with the, you know, get Michael Phelps, I can't even count how many, uh, gold medals this guy won. I was not, seven, nine. It was a, it was a lot. And my point is, his coach would actually have him mentally go through and kind of play the whole race out in his mind before doing it. So, you know, in addition to the meditation, which if you're not doing that, I'd say try that, you know, twice a day, 10 minutes. Try and find a meditation practice. And then before you go, go out and perform, uh, get into a quiet place and try to watch yourself from a third-eye view. Like, walk onto the stage, walk out there, imagine a beautiful, you know, performance, and go through the motions of actually hearing yourself sing in silence. Don't actually sing, just listen to yourself sing in your mind. And, and, and make that mental, um, exercise for your imagination. One, it'll do wonders for you when you actually get out there and perform because you'll really be able to live that moment. Um, but, but two, it'll give you that confidence that'll likely reduce some of that anxiety because you'll start to build this mental image of just the success you already know you want to have. Um, and you'll, you'll already, instead of creating, "Oh, I'm worried about how it's going to go," you're doing the opposite. You're creating a pattern, a belief pattern of, "Wow, I'm going to do great." And so it just becomes easier to believe that and, and then live that, uh, into action when you actually go out there and do your performances.
Yep. Great advice. All right, well, we hope that helps Iris. And, uh, good luck, everybody. Eventually figured something out. We can all work through it. So there is light at the end of the tunnel. All right. Performers that still get jitters, no matter what, so they're able to successfully perform. Like, they don't get the jitters. But most people figure out a way through it, you know?
Absolutely. Yeah. And, and, you know, a lot of the times, you, you then become, you expect a little bit of that. And some of those nerves are good, healthy nerves, um, you know, because they just push you. So.
Next one we got here. How do you release pressure caused by the tongue? Greg, uh, wrote this one in. And Matt, I thought this would be a great one for you because I know you personally, I think, had some, uh, unlocking experiences, right? In your purse.
Oh, yeah. I mean, I had, I struggled for years and years and years and years to figure out what was going on with my tongue. And I finally conquered it along the way. And I've helped hundreds and hundreds of other singers conquer their tongue tension. And I actually think it's one of the biggest problems for a lot of singers, more than their breath, more than their posture, more than their, you know, even sometimes registration. It's that they get so locked up that none of that wants to work because their tongue is fine. You know, if you fix the registration first, then the tongue will get free. After. I'm just going to throw that. I, it can, in some instances. But somebody tried that approach, uh, with me for a while, and it didn't work. I know Mike and I go back and forth on this all the time. And I, he knows, look, there's, if you're watching your teacher, there's a point of view that fixing things at the registers will fix everything else in the system. And then there's another point of view that entanglements of the rest of the system are causing you problems with, uh, registration. And, uh, I think they're both right. I think they can both come back and forth. So we just like to razz each other about it. But, um, you know, if you're interested, then go look at Cornelius Reid and kind of see a little bit about what he talks about on the idea of that you can fix these problems from, uh, registration first. And Greg, we've talked about that a lot in some of the past archives. So, you know, uh, you can, uh, you know, jump on over and either look down through the archives. Those are gonna be going away soon, though. And if you're gonna want to get access to those, you're gonna have to jump over and, uh, sign up to get notifications about our new course that's coming out about how the voice works, which is, uh, how-the-voice-works.com. But, you know, when you sign up to get more information about that, you'll be able to, as part of the package, eventually get access to those archives so that you'll be able to see, uh, our past conversations about registration.
So tonight, uh, I think we should probably, uh, touch on something I've never really touched on before because we have talked about tongue a lot. And Greg, if you go back in the archives, uh, either through How The Voice Works or going through the Facebook page, uh, you're going to be able to find me talking about extended tongue phonation. You can go to my blog, edwardsvoice.blog, and you can find articles on extended tongue phonation. You can also find about use of Altoids in between or corks in between your molars to help you improve tongue agility. And then I've also got a lot of tongue agility exercises. But I realized the other day, I don't think on this show we've ever talked about trying to release the digastric, mylohyoid muscles underneath, which have lots of connections into the tongue. So I thought we'd talk about those tonight. There is an article on the blog about that as well, but we'll walk you through it.
Underneath the microphone. What did you say? The, the digastric and mylohyoid? Okay. So what is the digastric? What is the gastric muscle? Is one of the muscles that helps us open our mouth, and it's right under there. Okay, right here. So I'm trying to see. Do I have my other head? No, I think my wife moved it. Um, so I leave body parts all around. Days. So, but this is the digastric, right there. And it comes up back here behind your ear. And when it engages, it runs from the tip of your chin past that highway bone and then up to the back of your skull. And when it engages, it helps you open your mouth. Okay? Then the mylohyoid muscles run along the bottom of your jaw, and they connect to the hyoid bone. And when they engage, they try to pull that hyoid bone up. Great for swallowing, terrible for singing. So those muscles attach to the tongue, as you can see right there, right? So there's the geniohyoid. Geniohyoid. So the genio is the name for the chin. Hyoid bone is over here. The geniohyoid also runs through the space under your chin. So we have that geniohyoid. We have the mylohyoid running from the corners of the jaw down to the tongue. And then we have the digastric from the tip of the chin that runs up to the back of the skull. Now, you don't have to memorize all those names. All you need to do is know that there are a group of muscles in there. They cause us problems. And you're going to stick your thumb on them to monitor what they're doing. So stick your thumb right underneath your chin and swallow. And what you're going to notice is that when you swallow, those muscles bunch up and then they release. Okay? This is what's usually causing that pressure that you're finding is that these muscles are trying to engage. Now, sometimes they're pulled in to be engaging because of other muscles inside your tongue. Sometimes they end up engaging because you've got bad posture and your chin is jutted out so much or took so much that they start to lock up. And sometimes you're pushing so much with your abs that you get a high larynx, and you actually feel that hyoid bone pressing into your chin. I have an MRI image of it. You literally see the tongue move to make way for the larynx to push up into it. So that can cause pressure as well. So, you know, all those things would be, uh, other ways to address those. At least you know what they are. In cases, what I'm about to show you doesn't work. What you're going to do, though, is get your thumb under there and figure out what swallowing is and engaging us. And then we're going to go into the lower part of your range, and we're going to try to do an "ah" or we're going to figure out which one works best for you. Everybody's a little different. And the goal is, is to be able to just speak an "er." We'll start with that tonight. That does not engage this muscle. So as I do that, I don't feel any pressing down. Now, I can usually make it press down. It's me clenching some of those muscles. And then you hear that squeeze. Now, here's the thing. I've worked so many years on getting those disengaged that when I do engage them, it sounds artificial and fake. Yours will not have necessarily that artificial Kermit the Frog kind of a sound to it. Even if there's tension in this, it'll have a more subtle sound. Okay? But mine is not engaging at all right now. So that's what it will sound like when it's free. Some variation of that. Okay? Then you're going to find a comfortable pitch and then start sustaining it. Out. The first step when we were just speaking "er" was getting our tongue into the vowel position and then making sure that muscle didn't engage. When you go to sing on a pitch, your voice or your body may sense that you're phonating and try to clench that muscle. So this is the second step of finding freedom. It seems like it's really closely related to just going, but it's not. Your brain interprets "e" as a spoken word. And "ah." And a lot of times, our brain has a program in it that it thinks it has to engage a bunch of things in our body to move that vowel from lasting for a millisecond into lasting for three to five seconds. It's literally no different. You're just picking to sustain it in one range of speaking voice for a longer amount of time. Just keep reminding yourself that I'm just sustaining a word like "ed." Right? That's singing. Then we find where that pitch is. [Music] Then we do glides. Now, what that glide does is it starts to move and tilt the thyroid cartilage, which can bump up into the tongue. It's attached to that hyoid bone, and so things start to shift. And this guy might try to freak out. So this is the third step. The third step is teaching this that your larynx can tilt and change pitches and this doesn't have to engage. So we started on that small. When we can do that successfully, moving it up and down. [Music] We'll go back to the lower comfortable part of our voice and then we're going to do it on thirds. Then we can move up to fifths. When you can do fifths with gliding, because gliding is smooth movement inside, we can then move to more jumped out movement by going on a one, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one pattern. [Music] Here again, you're now adding a layer to it. So your body might respond differently. So you'll master that. Then you'll do arpeggios. It's more like a song. Then you can expand into octave arpeggios. And as you get around some of those little teeny breaks, you might feel a quiver or a little teeny movement of it. But you should not feel the swallowing part of it engage. Now, when you get into the upper part of your range, at the uppermost part, you will feel this start to engage a little bit more because your larynx is really moving up quite a bit on that upper range. And this is going to react. Yet again, though, we don't want it to react to the degree that it does when you're swallowing. A little bit of movement on the uppermost part of your range is okay. We just want to get it as free as we possibly can. Then once it's free, start playing around with other vowels. So we could go from, then go from "ad." Right? Go from like, uh, we can go back to "ed." "Ah." And then we'll go to "e." And on "e," the way that your tongue moves, it does engage this. We just don't want to go as far as swallowing. "E." Right? Then on the other side, we can go "o." And "o." And on the "ooh," you might feel a slight little move because the tongue does go back for an "u" vowel. Just again, make sure it's not as much as swallowing. So "u" and "e" are likely to feel some movement down here. Breaks, passaggio points are likely to feel a small twitch around there. And the highest part of your range is more likely to feel it trying to engage again. But never as much as in swallowing. So Greg, I would take that and play with it. You can sing little phrases of songs, feeling under on this muscle thing. Make sure I'm even catching myself to it as I'm demonstrating. I'm ending up jutting my chin forward to get more of my thumb underneath, and that's getting my vocal tract out of alignment. So we got to make sure that our skull is balancing on that AO joint, which rests right in between our ears. Okay? So always check in and, you know, after a couple repetitions and make sure you're still where you want to be, and get that thumb back under there and then go again.
Yeah, that's great. Greg, hope that helps out. And also, I think Matt mentioned there's, we, we have covered similar, uh, question like that before. We have a lot of, um, other answers in more detail in our archives. So check those out. All right, I think we got time for one more question. Can a person's voice return to normal after vocal nodules are gone? This one comes in from Cecilia. Cecilia, I really hope that you don't have vocal nodules. If you did, I'm sorry that you, uh, possibly got those. Maybe you're asking for a friend, too. So, but that's cool. So, can they, can they return? Yes, in most cases, yes. Yes. Right. So we're getting much better at treatment of vocal pathologies. Every year, we just are getting new and new advancements. So, yeah, nodules used to be a thing that terrified people. Now, I kind of look at it like a sprain, right? In most cases, if you catch them early, it's like a bad sprain where you sit there and go, "Yeah, you can't run and do your sprinting for maybe a couple months." Here, we might need to take two, three months off and really recover. But you're gonna be back to normal, right? Where it becomes, uh, even more problematic is maybe for the superstars. And when they get it, and then they get a lot of pressure that says, "Better hurry up and go get a surgery." And then they go under the laser or whatever happens, this, the knife, and next thing you know, the voice is not the same. Well, you know.
So I think what Matt and I are initially trying to say is, the prescription that we would suggest would be no surgery. Let's try and deal with this, you know, through some, some therapies. And definitely want to get, if you do think you have nodules, you're probably gonna want a team of people, not just a voice teacher. You're gonna want, um, an otolaryngologist. You're gonna prob, maybe you want a speech language pathologist. You're gonna want several different people on your team to help you in that recovery process.
Absolutely. Yeah. So you would look for a voice care team at a voice center. So in most of your major cities, you're going to be able to find a voice center for professional voice users because, you know, they work with singers, but they're also working with the TV personalities, TV anchors get nodules all the time. They're going to be working with any radio disc jockeys, again, a group of people that's voice damage all the time. But then they're also going to be working with professors, teachers, our classroom teachers get injuries a lot. And then your big cities, you know, they have voice therapists who are constantly just making a living helping teachers get back on their feet again. Right? In smaller towns, it can be a little harder because there's not as many people seeking out a voice specialist. So you may find someone who says they're an ear, nose, and throat doctor, but they really specialize in hearing aids and, you know, nasal surgeries and allergy shots and removing tonsils. And I'm not being sarcastic, like, literally, they're a generalist. They've learned those general skills as part of their degree. But these laryngologists at a voice care center spend another two to three years specializing only on the voice. So they are high-level specialists who are going to be able to look at your situation and say, "Yeah, minor nodules." Because most of the time, if you get to a doctor as soon as you notice a change, going, a lot of times we even say they're pre-nodules. They're just little baby bumps that are creeping up. And with voice therapy, they go right. If you live on it for a while, maybe like even three, six months, maybe a year, then we are probably into real nodules. But they'll still go away with therapy in most instances. Where we start to run into problems is somebody who, like Mike said, has a bunch of performances coming up. They're like, "I can't deal with this now." And so they just try to push through it. And they go, "I can't deal with it." They push through it. And then you start forming enough bad scar tissue in there that even therapy may not actually bring everything down. And those, the horror stories we hear about the horror stories are two kinds. Most of the times, either somebody who didn't stop when they needed to and go see a doctor. And the other horror story is the person who went to your regular ear, nose, and throat, uh, person who wasn't a laryngologist and had a surgery done that only a laryngologist should have done. Right? If you're like my dad, who's a factory worker, who gets nodules, and they're annoying, and nobody's gonna tell, right? Like, my dad could go to an ENT and get his nodules taken off, and everybody would be fine. But you, as a singer.
Are not that person. You need to go to that specialist. And like, uh, you know, the specialists now will all tell you voice therapy first. Even if they know you're going to get surgery, they're going to give you voice therapy ahead of time. Start teaching you how to reuse your voice so that way when you do get the surgery done and you come out with new vocal folds, you're already speaking differently. So then it's like a real smooth takeoff, right? You do the hard voice therapy work when the voice isn't quite there. Then maybe they do a surgical innervation and you come out of it, you just skyrocket and you're back. And so that's an ideal outcome if we do have to go under the knife.
But, you know, the doctors, there's so many great doctors in this country. Uh, even throughout the world. I go to the Voice Foundation annual symposium, Care for the Professional Voice. It's a median of about 300 ear, nose, and throat doctors and other 2, 300 speech language pathologists. About 50 of us voice teachers. Uh, we're trying to increase those numbers so more voice teachers need to come. But, um, you know, I go to watch the new surgical techniques people are developing. And, uh, they're really getting a lot of headway where even people who have had major voice injuries are recovering. So, uh, yeah, just go see a doctor, get the help right there. Help you out.
Yeah, if you know, if if you if this actually is used, Cecilia, with, you know, rest, obviously that's like the best thing you can do. Um, avoid singing on the actual nodule. Right. It sounds like a common, but if you know, like there's a part of your voice that's not sounding the same anymore, or you lost that note, or you get up there, it gets pitchy, well then don't sing that note anymore. Sing below it. And then if you are going to do some work on your voice, then you want to do the work below the nodule and above the nodule, but definitely not on the nodule. And so that's just some simple help on that. And, you know, just you're going to do some basic stretching type of things where you're just going to do long glides, you know, stretch your cords, um, lengthwise, and then stretch them, stretch the mass and do some stuff with their retinoids, but just easy things. Um, and definitely seek out the help of professionals. Um, if you know, you're in that boat. Yeah.
Excellent. Well, like you said, I mean, great, uh, great questions tonight. Lots of things to, uh, you know, and be thinking about and playing with. Go back into those archives. Um, if this idea of understanding how your voice works and, uh, us and giving you fact-based answers is of interest to you, you want to learn more, uh, jump on over to howthevoiceworks.com. You can pick up our pre-launch special, special pricing right now. It's only $47 for four hours of 4K content filmed in LA, a Hollywood studio, a 100-page workbook that goes through, uh, goes along with it. You get access to the archives. Uh, regular price is $199. So it's a great and great deal right now if you want to learn more about how the voice works.
And, uh, Mike, any final thoughts? You know, we just have so many great questions tonight. We can only handle, I don't know if we get six or seven in there, but, um, Matt and I love doing this show. Uh, we've got many more interviews coming for you guys this month. Uh, so stay tuned. This season, I mean, and, um, we've got hundreds of other questions to get to. So if you don't know if you, if we didn't ask answer your question, you still have some more, maybe some of the things we talked about tonight created two or three more questions for you. Drop that in, uh, you can just download our app, sign up, or you can even just drop the question in on one of these videos. We're happy to help. Um, our singers and our teachers and share the information. And just thank you guys so much for tuning in.
Yeah, check by next week. As Mike said, we do have some great guests coming up next week. We have Jessica Baldwin and Marsh and Michelle Marquart Devoe, who are going to be coming on here to talk about some of the diversity, uh, initiatives they've been taking in their studio to help diversify repertoire. I know if we had a while, we had a Broadway star, Jessie Hooker on here a couple weeks ago, you can find her in the archives talking a little bit about, uh, diversifying our training for artists. We have a couple other guests coming on as well. Other people on the dock. We have Heather Lyle, who's going to be coming on a little bit later in October to talk about her book, Vocal Yoga. We have Elizabeth Benson coming on on the first week in November, coming on to talk about her new book about, uh, contemporary commercial singing. We have, uh, Dr. Trenice Martin, uh, going to be coming on soon to talk about, uh, doing gospel singing styles. She wrote a book, So You Want to Sing Gospel. I've got Melissa Foster coming on to talk about hip-hop and rap. So lots of great guests on the way. Zedri Means Weekly is going to be joining us towards the end of the month to talk about singing multiple musical theater styles. So we're going to get all these dates up here soon. Just, you know, been Mike and I dealing with the chaos of life with children and, uh, we'll drop them in Facebook so you guys can can start to see where they are. And, uh, thank you guys so much. It's just you're helping us grow and with that, we're able to then get, uh, even more, uh, authors and speakers and interesting content. If you have suggestions, um, please just drop us a note. Um, you know, we're here to create some fun, engaging, interesting, different topics to talk about, some of the tabby ones that I know sometimes we don't really talk about. So we're trying to get them all out there and, um, do it in a great way to help benefit everybody. So thanks again, everyone. Thank you so much.
Sounds good. All right, good night, everybody. We'll see you next week.