There will be more about the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of humming later. For now, just try the following exercise.
For a start, this exercise is a useful indicator of your general vocal health. If the sound breaks up when you try to maintain a steady quiet hum for 10 seconds this can be because your voice isn’t in such good shape as it might be. If that’s you, don’t worry. You’re in the right place to fix the problem.
You’re also going to be using humming like this as a very effective and healthful way to start protecting and developing your voice. A lot of voice problems are caused when people damage their vocal folds by unconsciously pushing their voice from their throat, especially when they’re trying to produce more volume. Through humming you will start to move the focus of your voice from your throat into your head, allowing your throat to stay relaxed. This will improve both your vocal health and the good sound qualities in your voice.
Once you’ve got the hang of the humming you’ll learn how to expand that small sound until your whole voice is being produced safely and effectively from your head.
No – provided you’re doing the humming correctly, of course.
What the technique will do is give you a voice where each note has a centre or focus, rather than being breathy and woolly. In time it will also enable you to turn up the volume without strain.
Once the technique is well established you will be able to learn to add effects, such as breathiness or edginess, when you want them, and we’ll be covering that in Part Two of the course. But they won’t harm your voice as they would if you pushed them physically from your throat.
There will be more about the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of humming later. For now, just try the following exercise.
For a start, this exercise is a useful indicator of your general vocal health. If the sound breaks up when you try to maintain a steady quiet hum for 10 seconds this can be because your voice isn’t in such good shape as it might be. If that’s you, don’t worry. You’re in the right place to fix the problem.
You’re also going to be using humming like this as a very effective and healthful way to start protecting and developing your voice. A lot of voice problems are caused when people damage their vocal folds by unconsciously pushing their voice from their throat, especially when they’re trying to produce more volume. Through humming you will start to move the focus of your voice from your throat into your head, allowing your throat to stay relaxed. This will improve both your vocal health and the good sound qualities in your voice.
Once you’ve got the hang of the humming you’ll learn how to expand that small sound until your whole voice is being produced safely and effectively from your head.
No – provided you’re doing the humming correctly, of course.
What the technique will do is give you a voice where each note has a centre or focus, rather than being breathy and woolly. In time it will also enable you to turn up the volume without strain.
Once the technique is well established you will be able to learn to add effects, such as breathiness or edginess, when you want them, and we’ll be covering that in Part Two of the course. But they won’t harm your voice as they would if you pushed them physically from your throat.
