Dive into the mechanics of vocal production—from vocal fold vibration and resonance to acoustic formants and register shifts.
This section demystifies how your voice works using clear, accessible explanations. These are all rooted in science and teaching experience.
Whether you’re exploring vocal registers, or learning how sound is shaped in your body, these articles blend theory and practice to help you sing smarter.
Vocal Relaxation and Resonance: Why Forcing the Voice Doesn’t Work I often talk about the importance of ‘balance’ in the voice. But what exactly does this entail? What we want is broadly this: that the various parameters/variables of the voice are present in appropriate measure, both relative to themselves, to each other, and for a […]
I was having a conversation with a client recently about vocal riffing: what it is, why it’s useful, and why it seems difficult to many. For the ease of discussion let’s say that anything that extends the melody beyond the original for dramatic/musical effect is a ‘riff’, and that riffing is therefore the act of
Tongue Tension in Singing: Why You Might Sound Like Kermit For most people, singing (at first) tends to involve unnecessary tension – especially tongue tension. Sometimes this is extremely obvious, e.g. veins and tendons popping on their neck. Sometimes it’s moderately obvious, e.g. the vocal tone sounds strained. And sometimes it’s downright invisible. I’ve seen
A year or two ago I delivered one of my vocal technique workshops to a choir. During one of the vocal technique discussions someone raised a question regarding older singers’ voices. I’m paraphrasing for the purposes of this article, but the question was broadly seeking confirmation to the idea that: “Do you find that voices
As a vocal coach, I hear a lot of very similar comments from singers and aspiring singers. In my many years of teaching singing, the most common self-assessment I hear from people discussing their own voice and who want to improve their singing, by far, is: “I think I’m doing a good job, I just
One of the most common questions that comes up in sessions, workshops, etc, is “Mark, what does YOUR practice routine look like day to day?“. So that’s what we’ll cover today. This also extends to “what should anyone’s practice routine include day to day”. The general answer works for most voices, but the specific exercises
This week I had a client in touch about preparing a set of songs for a wedding they were singing at. Amongst other things, they wanted to know how best to prepare themselves for singing through a lengthy set of songs at a wedding. This is a great question, so I thought I’d share my
Today I want to talk about descriptive vs prescriptive teaching methods We had a workshop recently, and one of the participants commented on how they had once been told by a singing teacher to “put the sound in THIS cavity” accompanied with a finger pointing to somewhere in the head. The main reason he brought
