PUSH

I want to talk a bit about Forcing or Attacking the voice (Sometimes referred to as “hard glottal” or “aspirate attack”).

I find a lot of younger singers suffer this habit, often times not wanting to change. The idea they have is that in forcing the voice, it will be louder, and more mature sounding. Also, many singers “push” their voice in the top of their lower register to avoid singing in their top register, because they dont like their high voice sounding “airy” or soft. However, this phenomenon of the body "lightening" the voice is actually a wonderful defense mechanism against injuring the voice through forcing it, and can be changed by making the dedicated effort to stop forcing and changing to good technique.

In my experience, this can be one of the most challenging things to change, but the reality is that you will only damage your voice if you continue to "push". PUSHING AND FORCING YOUR VOICE MAY CAUSE PERMANENT DAMAGE!

• Difficulty with register transition

As I mentioned above, some singers will push in order to avoid dealing with the transition from low to high voice. There are several problems which can result. Firstly, there are only so many notes one can push to, before invariably having to jump to the next register. Secondly, serious and sometimes permanent injury can result from doing this. Learning how to deal with the bodies natural defenses and shaping sound to make singing easier and more efficient takes time, an understanding of what’s involved, and patience with a sound that you may not be happy with in the short term, but will change over time. If you keep at it, and not try to avoid it, have good guidance and can work through the frustration, you will come out the other end with a fabulous skill.

• THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO DO IS TO STOP DAMAGINGING YOUR VOICE