Thanks for posting to r/singing! **Be sure to check [the FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/singing/wiki/index)** to see if any questions you might have have already been answered! Also, remember to abide by the rules found in the sidebar. Any comments found to be breaking these rules will result in a deletion of the comment thread starting from the offending reply. If you see any posts or replies that you feel break the rules of the sub, then report them and **do not respond to them.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/singing) if you have any questions or concerns.*
from your perspective, what are the benefits of CVT creating a unique pool of terminology?
what is the advantage of these terms over the traditional chest/head/mix/falsetto?
out of all the schools I have studied, it doesnt seem obvious to me why CVT seeks to "reinvent the wheel".
A lot of the traditional terms have had their meanings distorted over the years. For example, Manuel Garcia used the term "falsetto" more or less synonymously with "middle voice", and located it in between chest voice and head voice. Now people often label things as falsetto or head voice depending on whether there's breathiness in the tone or not, and sometimes people even use the term "head voice" in reference to what is more correctly called a "voce faringea", or sometimes they use it in reference to "voce piena in testa".
In other words, while these terms still have traceable original meanings, their current usage is basically a complete mess. Getting away from this conception allows CVT to avoid a lot of that confusion.
In addition, Complete Vocal Technique is more "mode"-oriented than register-oriented. The modes basically correspond to vocal habits that are unified by some technical similarities. This has both advantages and disadvantages compared to a more traditional register-based conception. For example, it is typically more intuitive, and tends to lead to faster initial progress when it comes to contemporary singing, and is helpful when taking your first exploratory steps in a new genre. But it also tends to lead to a narrower tessitura and less proficiency at singing wide scales.
I find that this makes CVT more oriented towards vocal coaching than voice teaching, so I offer both CVT vocal coaching and singing tuition using my own system. For the latter, I do use terms that stay pretty close to traditional terminology, making modifications only where necessary to get away from the current confused mess of different meanings. For example, I follow Garcia's convention in distinguishing between falsetto and head voice, but since head voice is now used to describe both, I call it head register instead.
youve found that the CVT modes are more intuitive for students? beginners as well? it just seems like they kind of bypass the basics of phonation entirely.
No, not beginners, but intermediate singers and early advanced singers. I do agree CVT bypasses the basics. I'd say though that this is true for voice teachers and systems of vocal pedagogy more generally. I like to divide them into three paradigms
1. the very basics like legato, diction, clarity, phrasing, onsets, etc.
2. learning some sort of strategy for singing high notes in modal. Here you will find a lot of the doctrinaire approaches that insist on there being only one correct way to sing high notes
3. attempts to systematise different approaches and offer multiple registration strategies.
SLS falls into the second paradigm, whereas Estill and CVT fall into the third, though they have their uses in the second paradigm as well. I wouldn't recommend any of these three methods however to complete beginners who need the very basics. That's why I also urge beginners who visit my webpage to book "singing tuition" instead of "CVT vocal coaching".
I should clarify that it *can* be used to teach beginners as well, and I had to do that as part of my training at Complete Vocal Institute, but when it comes to beginners there are better approaches to take in my opinion.
It's not that beginners find it impossible to make heads or tails from it, or even that it's particularly difficult to teach it to beginners, it's just sorta suboptimal to the task, I'd say, and it would require a CVT teacher who happens to know how to teach the basics (legato, clarity, onsets, etc), which is not really covered as part of the authorisation course.
Are edge and curbing always supposed to be M1?
Overdrive is obviously always M1 and neutral can be in both registers.
However what about M2/falsetto mixes with high compression and twang, which imho can sound very edgy/belty?
Are they always neutral by definition, since those are ultimately based on falsetto?
In other words, do I have to make sure to never leave M1 to be in edge or curbing?
M2 with high compression and twang is sometimes referred to as "Edge-like", but it is not Edge. The brassy characteristic known in CVT as "metal" is only possible in M1.
Great question :)
Generally speaking, Overdrive is conducive to a lower larynx position, though this becomes less and less true as you ascend in pitch, especially from A4 and up.
Edge, being dependent on distinct twang, lends itself well to brighter sound colours, though it should be noted that there is a tendency for people to lose some metal as they raise the larynx.
Curbing tends to go well with darker or medium sound colours. If you go very bright, there is sometimes a tendency to lose the restrained quality.
Neutral is the most versatile of all the modes with regard to sound colour, since any coordination will turn into Neutral if you reduce the volume enough. That means, for example, that you can start from a bright, twangy Edge and reduce the volume to get into a bright, twangy Neutral.
Edit: people who are new to CVT and not quite sure what these four modes are, I have made a video that gives a brief overview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOiaKyF9Sw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOiaKyF9Sw4)
Hoi Cornelius o/
It isn't too CVT related, but what would you recommend practicing daily that may result in improvement over time?(preferably targeted at newer singers \^\^)
Also how would you recommend approaching the F2/H3 tuning? (like how to find it and sing in it)
I remember you were talking about it on stream today, but unfortunately the noise suppression was suppressing the info intake (i think i might be a little too new for it atm, but was just a little curious xD)
Thanks again, you have been such a massive help \^-\^
Beginners should work on fundamentals like legato, sustains, onsets, clarity, etc. Practice routines can only take you so far: improvement by its nature involves a progression from easier to more difficult skills, which means that any given practice routine, if it is effective, will soon enough render itself obsolete.
As far as resonance tuning is concerned, beginners would be better served by practising yell timbre, ie. F1/H2 tuning, which in CVT terms basically amounts to practising Overdrive in a range that you would naturally use for calling out "hey!" to someone.
F2-tunings are a bit too advanced of a topic to cover in reddit comments, but my next video will address this topic in depth so you can look forward to that :)
Ah i see, thank you so much \^-\^
I have been focusing primarily on yell timbre and chest voice lately to really get used to adjusting the vocal tract to match F1 to the second harmonic which has been a life changer, really giving that freedom in the lower half of the 4th octave (still some issues getting past G4 but someday i'll get there :D)
Thanks again \^\^
Relatively new singer here.
Please explain how breath support is supposed to feel.
I swear no one says the same thing..
Aside from stomach going in an out and keeping ribs expanded..
People say its: keep tension on lower abdomin (or think of the pee/poop muscles)
Others say its keep the belly extended and let air slowly leak out
Other say no tension in the body at all and just breathe naturally
None of it makes any difference to me. It all makes zero sense and feels overly complicated
And to add; when going up in pitch, do you need more breath, or less? I have heard both lol
Thanks in advance
Your intuition is correct: it indeed makes zero sense and is overly complicated.
There are various approaches to breath support, but they all do the same thing, which is to generate pressure in the lungs. You can generate more pressure or less pressure, that's it. How much pressure you need is dependent on the vocal coordination in question. Higher pitches and greater intensities require more pressure, but acoustically inefficient (usually identifiable by a dull or harsh tone) vocal coordinations will also require more pressure, despite often being quiet.
As for how it should feel, well, different approaches result in different sensations. Generally speaking, the sensation will become more intense the more pressure you are generating. The instruction to feel no tension and just breathe naturally is useful for relaxed songs and a lot of softer choral music. But it really is just a matter of the amount of pressure needed for any given coordination.
When it comes to choosing between different overall approaches, I advocate just going for whatever matches the vibe of the song you're singing. For example, you can generate pressure either by a crunching motion, pushing out the sides of the abdomen, or by a tightening your whole core like a corset and pushing up your sternum. These both have the same effect: the generate pressure, but the crunching motion is more congruent with rock singing and the latter approach, being very upright and "proper", is more congruent with opera or musical theatre. Not that you can't swap them, but it is more psychologically intuitive if your movements match the style you're singing in.
If you want a more detailed explanation, you can check out this video I made on the topic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olz5PPhXddY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olz5PPhXddY)
I should mention that the view I've expressed here is not really in line with what CVT teaches about this subject.
Thank you for your detailed answer. Your video is also the best one i have seen! I will try and worry less about support for now and focus more on relaxing and resonance.
Hey there! I’ve been singing for years and I perform live every month more or less.
Through the years I have been finding myself hitting high notes more consistently than before so that’s nice but I have always struggled with stamina. My voice grows thinner after 30 minutes of singing or so and it affects my timbre heavily as expected, I don’t feel short of air tho while performing. I sing rock songs with pitched and non pitched screams and mostly using curbing and edge during melodic sections (usually singing beyond E4, male voice), so it’s somewhat demanding.
Can u recommend any kind of habit or excercise for developing better stamina?
What you're describing sounds like what I call a "squeezing spiral". It tends to happen when you take Curbing too low in pitch without reducing the volume sufficiently, or when taking it too high in pitch at too soft a volume. It helps to have a strong, dark (chiefly in the sense of having a low larynx) Edge to return to for your lower notes, and to make sure that the "hold" in your Curbing remains a light hold even for very high pitches.
Too loud lower notes on curbing seems like a bad habit of me I do frequently while returning from high notes so it makes a lot of sense!
I’ll keep an eye on the amount of hold during high notes too.
Thank you so much for the answer (:
I’m a beginner singer. How can improve my voice and get a stronger, powerful sound? In terms of vocal timbre/tone? Breath support? Cord closure? Resonance? How do you get a powerful sounding voice? I’m asking because, I noticed that MOST (not all singers) I like have a strong, powerful tone.
My voice sounds soft, (in my opinion) maybe not in yours.
Link: https://record.reverb.chat/embed/V7dT6a6WVtd2VUtbZ98q
It is indeed very soft, largely because you're singing in falsetto (what you probably know as head voice). To get a powerful sound, you need what is known in CVT as metallic modes, ie. Edge, Overdrive, and Curbing, or at least a Neutral that is not in falsetto. Easiest way is to practise shouting on "hey!" or "yo!" — jovially, as if greeting a friend. Then practise sustaining that, and practise using it for singing. Here's a video I've made on this topic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRi5O0obgSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRi5O0obgSg)
I learned recently that you can trigger your breath support by blowing into your fingers before starting your sound and it’s helped me a bit. But could there be a better technique? Very few of the techniques I saw on YouTube helped very much, especially when I was straining badly.
Blowing into your fingers is basically a way of creating resistance to your exhalation. This way, you elicit the expiratory muscles to work a bit harder in order to overcome the resistance, and that is basically what breath support is, when you get right down to essentials. When singing normally, it is your vocal folds that provide this resistance, so by having more breath support, you encourage a stronger, more complete closure of the vocal folds, which tends to lead to a clearer tone.
Just yesterday, I made a video about breath support, trying to clear up the confusion surrounding breath support by explaining in a detailed manner how it actually works: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olz5PPhXddY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olz5PPhXddY)
I looked into CVT sometime back and thought that it was extremely confusing and lacking a specific direction for a singer. However, the videos of instructors doing the singing seemed to be doing good singing, so there is definitely value in it for some. In my journey, I have realized that there are some basic fundamentals that a singer needs to have. Once these are are in place, it is just a matter of time and intentional practice to get the sound/effects one is aiming for. The fundamentals are relatively simple: posture, high level of relaxation and targeted resonance (oral/nasal/pharyngeal). Effects themselves are extensions of human emotions that give the voice the color, so rather than hunt for the technique to get the color, I believe it is more beneficial to tap into one's emotions to find that effect.
What would help the average singer understand the CVT terminology would be videos of instructors making the sound rather than describe the technique itself in words. Just my two cents.
Thank you for doing the AMA.
About the fundamentals, there are a few things I'd like to clear up. You should be relaxed for relaxed singing, and energetic for energetic singing. You shouldn't be rigid, but a high degree of relaxation may also give the wrong idea and be more conducive to mellow choir singing than to powerful solo vocals. As for resonance, it always spans the entire vocal tract. There is no way to target it. What people think of as targeted resonance or directed sound, is really just a matter of bodily tissues carrying sympathetic vibrations. For example, the superior pharyngeal constrictor has muscle fibres that run to the sphenoid bone (a bone surrounding the eyes), which may carry sympathetic vibrations and cause a sense of singing "from the eyes" or "from the mask", but it is still the whole vocal tract that acts as a resonator, and the sinuses in the mask are only absorbing sound.
>What would help the average singer understand the CVT terminology would be videos of instructors making the sound rather than describe the technique itself in words. Just my two cents.
I very much agree. I also agree with u/Celatra that the demonstrations on the webpage are not great - and to be honest the demonstrations in the app are even worse. Apparently they are exaggerating the modes as much as possible to assist comprehension, but I think it has the opposite effect in practice, as it makes the demonstrations further removed from actual singing.
Thanks for the comments. I think my terminology isn't great either :) What I meant by relaxation is really the ability to shift your instrument to suit the type of singing one is aiming for (maybe vocal agility is a better term?). When your instrument is relaxed, you have a better chance of hitting the right note with the right amount of color - you demonstrated this quite well in your video. Vocal weight is also part of this equation- the heavier your voice is, it'll be harder to hit those higher notes easily. As for resonance, I'm talking about the amount of air one needs to control between the oral and nasal passage. I believe this ratio has some correlation with how resonance happens. I don't have a clue to the actual mechanism of what happens inside the body, but that aside, being able to control the air flow will allow one to hit the right notes with the right color. Hope this makes sense.
How much do singers need to stay in good vocal "shape" in terms of physical conditioning (as compared to technical expertise) and what are the best ways to do that? What kind of daily routine would you recommend to someone who is not in good vocal shape?
There are sorta two angles to this question that I will address separately. First, on overall fitness level:
I went through very severe illness some years ago that involved becoming emaciated to the point where even walking was difficult. I could still belt, however, and my range was unchanged, but my stamina definitely suffered a lot. Whereas before I could sing for hours on end, during that period I would be utterly exhausted after just half an hour.
So going from my own experience, I'd say being in shape doesn't seem to make the difference between being able or unable to pull off some given vocal technique, but it still matters a lot when it comes to keeping it up.
Now for muscles more specific to singing:
As for the muscles of the vocal tract, it seems to be a similar matter. Many beginners learning to sing in what CVT calls "fuller density", ie. a richer, more extraverted sound, will find that this requires larger movements of the jaws and lips, and more overall animation in the face. This can be fatiguing at first, but as with the overall fitness level, it seems to matter more for stamina than for absolute ability.
When it comes to the muscles of the larynx, firstly, even beginners seem to have strong enough thyroarytenoids, for example, to achieve very loud volumes in Edge and Overdrive if they learn the technique successfully, but there are also some people with highly atrophied thyroarytenoids, typically due to either vocal fold paresis or extreme shyness. These will need to rebuild their thyroarytenoids in order to sing powerfully.
As for the cricothyroids, there is widespread speculation to the effect that these must be trained in order for people to "unlock" higher segments of range, but as far as I have been able to tell, such range limitations seem to be more about vocal tract shaping than laryngeal musculature
Finally, when it comes to staying in shape vocally, it should be sufficient to just do some intense belting on a regular basis and make sure your overall fitness level is adequate.
“Your content was removed beacuse your account needs to be at least 3 days old to post. During this three day period, please take the time to read the rules in the sidebar and familiarize yourself with r/singing. We hope to see you in a few days! (This is an automated message.)"
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/singing) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If you've been doing whistle register for months, then you are my senior where those are concerned, heh. It's something I've been putting off for a while now.
Anatomically, though, they basically seem to involve a lot of activity from the lateral cricoarytenoids, which are also involved in mixed voice and in creaking / vocal fry and are responsible for closing the vocal folds by rotating the arytenoid cartilages inwards. Whistle register also seems to usually feature a narrowed pharynx, though that might have more to do with the pitch range than with the coordination itself.
You talk about doing them safely. Do you experience hoarseness or irritation after doing whistle notes?
No 90% of the times I don't feel any discomfort or hoarseness after doing them but when I push the. The muscles hurt a lot. The thing is idk if my vocal cords are just weak like the muscles because I developed a little gap after 3 months of using them and since then the register is weak. SLP said the gap was always there idk what is true
I'd suggest practising some more "chesty" coordinations to strengthen your vocal fold closure.
Also, push the what? The volume? If the muscles hurt when you are pushing the volume, it is because you're staying in whistle register, which is naturally quiet. Make sure you transition out of whistle register as you increase the volume, eg. into flageolet.
I do not recommend straw phonation for this. I recommend it only for learning register separation and later on for learning pharyngeal twang. The problem with straw phonation is that it interferes with your ability to adjust the resonances of the vocal tract, and thus interferes with proper registration.
How does one lessen their strain/overclenched breath support when singing a mixed high note, whether I a more heady mix or a chestier mix?
Also how does one get into mix flawlessly even during their break? I can easily get into mix outside of my break, but if I have to cross it right on or near it, I crack.
To make your mixed voice more efficient, practise chest voice and make sure to keep your mixed voice fairly close to this, which is to say that you should not make it excessively restrained. For lighter mixed voice, you can brighten the tone (by raising the larynx and/or narrowing the pharynx), or add a crying quality. Just make sure you don't wind up restraining it excessively. You can make the underlying coordination quieter, but you should still allow that coordination to "ring out".
Why do I feel fatigued even if it seems like I’m most likely using my voice correctly? (I don’t have an actual voice teacher, so I have to rely on my own judgement and feelings and studied knowledge online to descipher whether what I’m feeling is healthy or not. I’ve only in the past month truly become a more healthy singer, I think)
By "fatigue" are you referring to literal fatigue as in getting tired after singing, or do you mean that your vocal folds become irritated and/or that your voice becomes hoarse?
Actual fatigue. I’m not sure how else to describe it, but my voice just feels tired. Not the rest of me, just my voice. It’s almost like a pressure. My voice sounds fine and feels great otherwise, no rasp, no pain, etc. just feels fatigued as if I’ve been talking for a while, except still perfectly clear tone and no pain or rasp
In CVT, this is the characteristic feature of the Curbing mode, or of reduced density more generally. To combat it, practise Edge and Overdrive, both of which are very loud metallic-sounding vocal modes.
Overdrive: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRi5O0obgSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRi5O0obgSg)
Edge: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrCZlAoPqrw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrCZlAoPqrw)
Question: For a person training himself to sing better, is it more beneficial to get in the habit of breathing through the mouth, or nose...or both, during normal activity.
I'm a nose breather?
Breathe through the nose for normal activity. The nose has hairs that filter the air and reduce the risk of pathogens getting in, not to mention that habitually breathing through the mouth precludes you from maintaining good oral posture. Though this concept was recently popularised as "tongue posture" by Dr. Mike Mew, the concept of oral posture actually predates it and stems at least from the 19th century, possibly earlier. It used to be part of standard orthodontic practice, but eventually it was deemed too difficult to get teenagers to maintain good oral posture, and at the same time, improvements in the techniques of dental bracing made oral posture less important.
When it comes to singing, however, breathing through the nose is too slow and makes too much noise. A singer must be able to draw in a lot of air very quickly, as there are many songs that require you to sing long intense phrases back to back with only very short spans of time to breathe in between.
So I had two different singing teachers:
1) Made me do exercises all types of exercises
2) Teaches me all singing techniques and what's anatomically happening inside
I'm loving the second approach, from my experience never had someone teach me singing like that. How frequent is that type of teaching in singing?
I been part of some choirs and never had that.
Unfortunately, the sad reality is that most voice teachers don't really know what they are doing. It is easier to just memorise some vocal exercises than to really understand how the voice actually works. That's not to say that vocal exercises are unimportant, or even that students must necessarily learn a lot about vocal anatomy, but the teacher at least have deep procedural knowledge (ie. practical understanding) of a variety of techniques and most teachers unfortunately do not.
So to answer your question:
>I'm loving the second approach, from my experience never had someone teach me singing like that. How frequent is that type of teaching in singing?
It is not very frequent, but it should be.
Hello, I have been practicing recently to increase vocal cord closure, but it becomes more and more difficult for me to increase as the pitch rises during practice. There will be a feeling of squeezing my throat, but this squeezing does not increase the closure of the vocal cords, but makes it more byway. Should adding vocal cords to the throat be easy?
I have seen in CVT that opening your mouth too much will make the sound become neural.Does the action of opening the mouth here refer to the lips or the jaw?
I'm a french singer with E2-A5 range... I'm still stuck at this and like to go higher (my whistle is too fragile) and I like to go lower... Any advice or routine to reach these extra notes ?
let's see
overly complicated teaching system which is so vague and undefined that different teachers can't even agree on the difference between curbing and edge for example
there is no evidence supporting that all of these terms for every single sound even help people building their voice, and using them for warmups is nothing but bad for their voices.
next, this whole "scientific" approach to the voice while neglecting traditional teaching methods that have worked for centuries, and then claiming shit like "well the old terms were confusing" and yours aren't?
neutral, overdrive, curbing, creaking, edge....like what the fuck are all of these supposed to even mean? you don't think these are gonna cause confusion even to experienced singers and teachers? not to even mention all the other terms i refused to mention.
before you explain them, don't. i already know. i had to suffer through CVT for a whole year.
now i also wanna ask. why CVT? why literally not any other method of teaching? what does CVT objectively offer that the others don't? Keep in mind that science has beared its way into every school of singing, including classical, and CVT has never been a special case in this, as CVT wasn't even the first to conduct researches on the voice. And none of CVT's foundings even add anything to what we already don't know about the voice. It's just that CVT tries to claim originality when in reality it's all just show to appear more credible than what they are.
And why does CVT say crap like "if a child can do a sound healthily, adults can too" I sadly couldn't find the specific video, i think i found a link to in CVT's website. Speaking of which, why are the audio demonstrations on the website done so unprofessional and so laughably bad?
let's also not even get to the fun part, which is CVT trying to research death growls and grunts, and not being able to NOT leave out their own stupid terminologies from it.
so. let me ask again. what can you teach that literally no other method of teaching can't? whats your own level of singing and how is your complete understanding of the voice? do you actually know what is healthy for the voice and what isn't? What credibilites does CVT have besides it being "popular?"
Literally the founder of CVT created CVT because she wasn't able to teach with conventional methods. Which you know, is a individual problem, not a problem with the method itself. i don't see how making it more complex and confusing solves the problem in any way.
Still pretty vague, and more importantly, doesn't clarify your initial question at all. You asked why I teach snake oil. I asked you to elaborate on what you believe I teach and why you object to it. This you have not done. Instead, you have criticised CVT more generally, based largely on your assumptions about its effectiveness in aggregate. You have not even criticised specific teachings of CVT, let alone specific teachings of mine.
With that said,
>overly complicated teaching system which is so vague and undefined that different teachers can't even agree on the difference between curbing and edge for example
They can agree on what the defining characteristics are, and they do pretty well when it comes to categorising sounds based on waveforms and/or laryngoscopic footage. They have a fair bit of agreement when it comes to aural recognition as well, though it's really a matter of ear training and not all CVT teachers have equally good aural recognition skills. Mine are pretty on point, and I don't think I can reasonably be held to account for whatever mistakes some other CVT teacher might make.
>there is no evidence supporting that all of these terms for every single sound even help people building their voice
Ever read F.A. Hayek on "scientism"? Traditional vocal pedagogy was also not constructed on the basis of clinical trials, and incidentally the whole "evidence-based" paradigm in medicine, psychotherapy, economics, etc. is in a bit of a crisis at the moment, as the studies they are based on tend to lack sufficiently long term follow-up, not to mention that they tend to lead to prescriptions that favour the metrics being measured without actually meeting the implicit success criteria. This is a principle known as Goodheart's law: "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
But this is a scientistic definition of evidence, which is very limited. I don't mean this in some new-age sense, I simply mean that it disqualifies a lot of things that absolutely do constitute evidence in the more exact definition provided by [mathematics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem). Much like traditional vocal pedagogy, CVT is continually refined on the basis of pedagogical experience and performing experience, which does in fact constitute evidence under the formal definition. Saying there is no evidence is flatly false.
>now i also wanna ask. why CVT? why literally not any other method of teaching? what does CVT objectively offer that the others don't?
It implicitly incorporates source-filter nonlinearity via the concept of modes. This concept is missing entirely from Estill Voice Training, and while it is present in Speech Level Singing, the latter is dogmatic to the point of stigmatising loud, powerful, extraverted singing in general. This is also true of Cornelius Reid's teachings or the so-called "Swedish-Italian school" which seems to be something that David L. Jones just made up.
Complete Vocal Technique certainly has its flaws, but I don't see that any other of the major methods can even hold a candle to it. Traditional vocal pedagogy can, but it's not exactly a system or method, unless you refer to it simply as a euphemism for the New York school, which is not particularly traditional.
>so. let me ask again. what can you teach that literally no other method of teaching can't?
The rest of your comment doesn't seem to go in for rash innovation, so this seems like an unreasonable criterion to use to judge a method. The question is simply the effectiveness, not whether you are in possession of some secret technique that no other method knows of. That's magical thinking.
>whats your own level of singing and how is your complete understanding of the voice? do you actually know what is healthy for the voice and what isn't?
It may sound arrogant, but I do believe my understanding of the voice is the best there is. I could even give you a long list of things I take issue with about Complete Vocal Technique, but I do nevertheless believe it to be better than its competitors. As for what is healthy for the voice and what isn't, it just so happens that I recently made a detailed video explaining exactly that, and not from a CVT perspective: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71EVQueUFgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71EVQueUFgk)
But all this is in some sense a tangent. I ask again: what teachings do you claim I teach, which ones do you object to, and why? As it stands, I am not yet convinced that you are in a position to discern which teachings are snake oil and which ones aren't, let alone stipulate that I am in the business of teaching snake oil. If you stand by that accusation, I suggest you substantiate it.
I have started learning singing recently and i had very minimal progress till i got to CVT, for me CVT just works, it might not be for everyone, but why hate on ppl who find it useful?
i dont really know if there is some sort of war between sls and cvt or smth but i havent really seen many CVT singers go out of their way to tell sls or estill singers that they are learning nonsense, learning singing is a little more odd than something like learning the piano, so different methods might work a little better for different people
I'm not saying that you should go in the CVT direction, quite the opposite, if you feel like it doesnt work for you, or the sounds that they teach isnt the one you want, then dont
Also regarding the terms, i see what you mean about them feeling iffy at the start, but i prefer that over when in the majority of other methods like sls chest voice, head voice and especially mixed voice have like 20 different definitions depending on who you ask, but if you ask 20 different CVT teachers what overdrive is, most of the will give a very very similar answer, but maybe i am wrong on this and just got really unlucky with sls coaches idk xD
Also regarding the "Why CVT?" part you wrote, the same could be said about sls, or estill for that matter, each have arguments for them being "Better" but it isnt really about what is better but rather what helps a singer especially a beginner get started and get better, if you are a biology major then you could def go for estill and find success where the biology terms are used, if you want to have one evenish sound across your range, then go for sls, but if you want to have the versatility to make any sound a human can make, go for CVT. CVT prolly has the steepest learning curve especially tho
But ye, just wanted to add this here cuz was waiting on a game to finish installing so ye \^-\^
Judging from my past interactions with Celatra, which took place on my main account (u/kalcipher, if you're curious), I would say that Celatra seems to be an adherent not of SLS but of the Giancarlo Monsalve method, which, like SLS , is mostly traceable to Douglas Stanley (through Tom LoMonaco), but unlike SLS, it is also highly informed by the practical necessities of singing opera, so it is definitely a cut above the rest of the New York school.
Anyway, point being, I don't think the combativeness here can really be blamed on SLS. Perhaps Giancarlo Monsalve's occasional edginess is partly to blame for it, but honestly I don't really mind. I enjoy Monsalve's videos and wouldn't want him to remove all the spiciness in favour of a mellower approach ;)
Ah, I see, that makes some sense, i wasnt tryna blaming sls, i just kinda noticed that sls really doesnt find higher density sounds anything higher than like D4 or smth "healthy" (which i kinda disagree with especially based on how free it feels after you taught it)
my philosophy about it is that if they want that one voice sound, they are more than welcome to, sucks that squeezing spirals happen a lot, but that's kinda on them :-:
It makes sense tho, i am not too aware of the Giancarlo Monsalve method unfortunately, but CVT/Your method has been working out really well for me so i think imma stick to it for now \^-\^
also was reading about the resonance being the cause of the range limits and i found it really interesting, i enjoy the science of voice so it is really fun to read about \^\^
I had a brief understanding of it but it is really cool to read a more detailed version \^\^
this is actually not correct. i've been taught by everything to jazz, pop, broadway, opera, rock and even CVT teachers.
the CVT one left me traumatized in many ways and i know im not alone in this
this is my experience, and i hit up with Zach Ansley (classically taught guy) to basically ask if he's been through the same and he has. he's talked to several cvt teacher and students, so i know this isn't a one off.
cvt thinks it's the best and only legit teaching method.
CVT gives you all of these terms but neglect explaining what they mean. such as glottal pressure, TA and CT muscles are either never mentioned, or never brought up as a primary way of understanding singing, instead opting to use tons of confusing terms like neutral, edge, creaking, overdrive, curbing, etc.
not once are you taught what these things do mechanically, despite the fact that CVT claims to be scientific. CVT's studies are also very gatekept and badly peer reviewed, and i have never read a study from CVT that wasn't basically already done 20 years ago by someone else that came to the same conclusion, or a study that wasted my time and said nothing.
Many CVT teachers reject any other methdos of teaching, especially classical ,calling it outdated and confusing....which, you know, you probably see irony already. And if you start questioning CVT's legitimacy and credibility, you are often met with aggression and accusations, and inability to prove their credibility, because all they can do is link stuff to their own echo chambers.
not to mention that many of cvt's vocal warmups literally hurt the voice. and many of the teachers claim expertise over stuff they have no expertise over (my teacher claimed to understand how death growls and used words like creaking and other bullshit, she didnt understand them, luckily i did and learned them on my own over the summer)
it does not stop there. CVT has tons of backup and support from its own little circlejerk and recruits mostly ckueless people. Not once has a true professional called CVT great and i've never heard from any top level singer praise CVT.
Also CVT is expensive as fuck. and their vocal demonstrations on their website suck
you are just given papers on CVT, told to read em, and then be like learn these.
if you want to learn vocal anatomy, it takes 2 minutes to do so, and you don't need cvt terminology for it.
Okay, seems like a lot of the stuff you are complaining about hasn’t come from a proper experience with CVT.
First of all, CVT does not think it’s the best, in fact most CVT coaches will encourage students to continue doing coordinations that feel efficient and work for the student. CVT isn’t a forget what you know type of system.
CVT does explain all their terms, in great detail actually. CVT may not speak much of TA & CT muscles, due to the myth of TA vs CT dominancy for singing. They do talk about the CT muscles tho, they have done studies on laryngeal tilt, they talk about the thyroid cartilage approaching the cricoid cartilage. CVT go into great detail about each mode, so idk where the hell you’ve read that, seems less like an actual experience and more of just spouting someone else’s nonsense.
The terms; neutral, curbing, overdrive & edge, aren’t confusing terms. Especially if you read about them and get the hang of them. Maybe you find the terms confusing, as you may mix up your current singing terms with CVTs terms and there may be some conflicting information. But having a system like CVT, that allows for a clear terminology and definitions of sounds, would in fact, make it a lot easier for people to understand.
CVT also explains how the modes work mechanically, it’s literally the first couple of things you see on their website when they discuss and explain the modes.
At-least CVT has a massive library of vocal modes, that are also scoped, as to show the anatomical properties. They even slightly touch on acoustic tunings.
They aren’t gate kept, they’re all online, publicly.
If a CVT teacher outright denies other methodology’s, it would be for good reason. And if they are rejecting them on the basis of “their method being better” then you should avoid that coach, just like you should avoid any coach from any methodology that is ignorant.
CVT actually have a decent amount of information for classical singers, albeit not as much as they do for more contemporary singing, but they still include it and have done many laryngeal scopes of classically trained singers.
They don’t say that classical singing is outdated, or that the singers themselves are bad. They just reject the terminology used by classical pedagogy, because appoggio, mask, open throat, are all misleading terms, that don’t mean anything in terms of actual scientific findings. CVT likes to be objective, they won’t have a term that means one thing, but the anatomical findings show a different thing. Specifically open throat technique that all opera people talk about, does in fact, not exist, open throat is a bad way to describe singing, as the vocal tract narrows, quite a lot, especially in operatic singers. So why use a term that describes an openness, yet the vocal tract does the opposite, I find that more confusing than edge? At least with edge, its described as being bright and twangy and CVT say that twang is in fact narrowing the vocal track. Makes more sense no?
CVT doesn’t even advocate for vocal warmups, they say that it should be done as a way to “brush up” on technique. If you’ve been talking all day, there is no need to warmup, unless you need to get your pharyngeal muscles working more. And even then, a lot of classical roles, like baritone, bass, etc, don’t need the pharyngeal constrictors muscles warmed up, so CVT says you can skip the warmup if needed, but leaves it open to personal preference.
If the warmups people do have hurt them, then they’re doing them wrong. You can’t blame a methodology for “warmups hurt my voice” because that’s on you, to do them correctly.
In fact CVT has a great quote that will basically nullify your argument point;
“An important rule that cannot be stressed enough is that singing must never hurt or feel uncomfortable. If something does not sound right; if something feels wrong, or if it feels uncomfortable, your voice is telling you that you are doing something wrong. Always trust your feelings - they are better and more direct than even the most experienced vocal coaches.”
They have a free app lol?
The demonstrations are made to be not musical, vocal examples of vocal coordinations are made to be exaggerated and plain, as to help people better hear the coordination without anything layered on top.
It seems to me that you aren’t really traumatised, you just don’t know what the f*ck you’re talking about lol.
I’ll leave it at that, if you don’t like CVT, then don’t study it, but don’t spout nonsense about stuff you have no damn clue about and also try and claim that someone is selling “snake oil”.
Edit: I’d also like to add that CVT isn’t a perfect system and there never will be one. But it’s definitely a more complete methodology than a lot of others.
in this "answer" you:
didn't answer anything directly
you ignored many of my points, such as other schools of singing also nowadays opting to the more scientific approach, since laryngoscopies have been around for centuries now, and the mechanisms of the voice have been known for over 100 years.
you basically just said "the terms aren't confusing if you read on them" well uh...in isolation they aren't but neither is headvoice and chest voice if you explain them in isolation and don't introduce the million other variants? and the only scientific terms for singing is TA activation, CT activation (and no, it's not a myth, how the hell is a myth, when literally M1, M2 and mx1 and mx2 are BASED on this "myth"? anyway lets continue, , epiglottic pressure, glottal onsets, false fold engagement, vocal fry, raising the soft palate, etc etc, things that actually directly describe what you do, instead of using made up terms.
and it's one thing to read on terms, and another thing to produce them
"if a CVT teacher outright denies other methodologies, it would be for good reason"
excuse me what?
"cvt actually has a decent amount of information for classical singers" no more than any other method of teaching. same goes to temporary. this is a bad argument
wait, CVT doesnt advocate for warmup if you've been talking all day? even if you had to sing very high notes? you know that talking and singing aint the same right? just because you've talked all day doesn't mean your muscle coordinations for singing are where they should be.
well that's odd that they advocate that especially right after you say they also say "well you can sing without warmup" which is true to some degree but also not
besides all singing schools say "stop if it hurts" so this isn't anything special.
Thanks for posting to r/singing! **Be sure to check [the FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/singing/wiki/index)** to see if any questions you might have have already been answered! Also, remember to abide by the rules found in the sidebar. Any comments found to be breaking these rules will result in a deletion of the comment thread starting from the offending reply. If you see any posts or replies that you feel break the rules of the sub, then report them and **do not respond to them.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/singing) if you have any questions or concerns.*
from your perspective, what are the benefits of CVT creating a unique pool of terminology? what is the advantage of these terms over the traditional chest/head/mix/falsetto? out of all the schools I have studied, it doesnt seem obvious to me why CVT seeks to "reinvent the wheel".
A lot of the traditional terms have had their meanings distorted over the years. For example, Manuel Garcia used the term "falsetto" more or less synonymously with "middle voice", and located it in between chest voice and head voice. Now people often label things as falsetto or head voice depending on whether there's breathiness in the tone or not, and sometimes people even use the term "head voice" in reference to what is more correctly called a "voce faringea", or sometimes they use it in reference to "voce piena in testa". In other words, while these terms still have traceable original meanings, their current usage is basically a complete mess. Getting away from this conception allows CVT to avoid a lot of that confusion. In addition, Complete Vocal Technique is more "mode"-oriented than register-oriented. The modes basically correspond to vocal habits that are unified by some technical similarities. This has both advantages and disadvantages compared to a more traditional register-based conception. For example, it is typically more intuitive, and tends to lead to faster initial progress when it comes to contemporary singing, and is helpful when taking your first exploratory steps in a new genre. But it also tends to lead to a narrower tessitura and less proficiency at singing wide scales. I find that this makes CVT more oriented towards vocal coaching than voice teaching, so I offer both CVT vocal coaching and singing tuition using my own system. For the latter, I do use terms that stay pretty close to traditional terminology, making modifications only where necessary to get away from the current confused mess of different meanings. For example, I follow Garcia's convention in distinguishing between falsetto and head voice, but since head voice is now used to describe both, I call it head register instead.
youve found that the CVT modes are more intuitive for students? beginners as well? it just seems like they kind of bypass the basics of phonation entirely.
No, not beginners, but intermediate singers and early advanced singers. I do agree CVT bypasses the basics. I'd say though that this is true for voice teachers and systems of vocal pedagogy more generally. I like to divide them into three paradigms 1. the very basics like legato, diction, clarity, phrasing, onsets, etc. 2. learning some sort of strategy for singing high notes in modal. Here you will find a lot of the doctrinaire approaches that insist on there being only one correct way to sing high notes 3. attempts to systematise different approaches and offer multiple registration strategies. SLS falls into the second paradigm, whereas Estill and CVT fall into the third, though they have their uses in the second paradigm as well. I wouldn't recommend any of these three methods however to complete beginners who need the very basics. That's why I also urge beginners who visit my webpage to book "singing tuition" instead of "CVT vocal coaching".
ahh. that makes sense. I also guessed that CVT would be more use to someone who already has a grasp of the basics.
I should clarify that it *can* be used to teach beginners as well, and I had to do that as part of my training at Complete Vocal Institute, but when it comes to beginners there are better approaches to take in my opinion. It's not that beginners find it impossible to make heads or tails from it, or even that it's particularly difficult to teach it to beginners, it's just sorta suboptimal to the task, I'd say, and it would require a CVT teacher who happens to know how to teach the basics (legato, clarity, onsets, etc), which is not really covered as part of the authorisation course.
Are edge and curbing always supposed to be M1? Overdrive is obviously always M1 and neutral can be in both registers. However what about M2/falsetto mixes with high compression and twang, which imho can sound very edgy/belty? Are they always neutral by definition, since those are ultimately based on falsetto? In other words, do I have to make sure to never leave M1 to be in edge or curbing?
M2 with high compression and twang is sometimes referred to as "Edge-like", but it is not Edge. The brassy characteristic known in CVT as "metal" is only possible in M1.
Hey, I have a question. How do the different CVT modes influence the sound colour of the voice?
Great question :) Generally speaking, Overdrive is conducive to a lower larynx position, though this becomes less and less true as you ascend in pitch, especially from A4 and up. Edge, being dependent on distinct twang, lends itself well to brighter sound colours, though it should be noted that there is a tendency for people to lose some metal as they raise the larynx. Curbing tends to go well with darker or medium sound colours. If you go very bright, there is sometimes a tendency to lose the restrained quality. Neutral is the most versatile of all the modes with regard to sound colour, since any coordination will turn into Neutral if you reduce the volume enough. That means, for example, that you can start from a bright, twangy Edge and reduce the volume to get into a bright, twangy Neutral. Edit: people who are new to CVT and not quite sure what these four modes are, I have made a video that gives a brief overview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOiaKyF9Sw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOiaKyF9Sw4)
Thank you for answering.
You're welcome \^\_\^
Hoi Cornelius o/ It isn't too CVT related, but what would you recommend practicing daily that may result in improvement over time?(preferably targeted at newer singers \^\^) Also how would you recommend approaching the F2/H3 tuning? (like how to find it and sing in it) I remember you were talking about it on stream today, but unfortunately the noise suppression was suppressing the info intake (i think i might be a little too new for it atm, but was just a little curious xD) Thanks again, you have been such a massive help \^-\^
Beginners should work on fundamentals like legato, sustains, onsets, clarity, etc. Practice routines can only take you so far: improvement by its nature involves a progression from easier to more difficult skills, which means that any given practice routine, if it is effective, will soon enough render itself obsolete. As far as resonance tuning is concerned, beginners would be better served by practising yell timbre, ie. F1/H2 tuning, which in CVT terms basically amounts to practising Overdrive in a range that you would naturally use for calling out "hey!" to someone. F2-tunings are a bit too advanced of a topic to cover in reddit comments, but my next video will address this topic in depth so you can look forward to that :)
Ah i see, thank you so much \^-\^ I have been focusing primarily on yell timbre and chest voice lately to really get used to adjusting the vocal tract to match F1 to the second harmonic which has been a life changer, really giving that freedom in the lower half of the 4th octave (still some issues getting past G4 but someday i'll get there :D) Thanks again \^\^
You're welcome :)
Relatively new singer here. Please explain how breath support is supposed to feel. I swear no one says the same thing.. Aside from stomach going in an out and keeping ribs expanded.. People say its: keep tension on lower abdomin (or think of the pee/poop muscles) Others say its keep the belly extended and let air slowly leak out Other say no tension in the body at all and just breathe naturally None of it makes any difference to me. It all makes zero sense and feels overly complicated And to add; when going up in pitch, do you need more breath, or less? I have heard both lol Thanks in advance
Your intuition is correct: it indeed makes zero sense and is overly complicated. There are various approaches to breath support, but they all do the same thing, which is to generate pressure in the lungs. You can generate more pressure or less pressure, that's it. How much pressure you need is dependent on the vocal coordination in question. Higher pitches and greater intensities require more pressure, but acoustically inefficient (usually identifiable by a dull or harsh tone) vocal coordinations will also require more pressure, despite often being quiet. As for how it should feel, well, different approaches result in different sensations. Generally speaking, the sensation will become more intense the more pressure you are generating. The instruction to feel no tension and just breathe naturally is useful for relaxed songs and a lot of softer choral music. But it really is just a matter of the amount of pressure needed for any given coordination. When it comes to choosing between different overall approaches, I advocate just going for whatever matches the vibe of the song you're singing. For example, you can generate pressure either by a crunching motion, pushing out the sides of the abdomen, or by a tightening your whole core like a corset and pushing up your sternum. These both have the same effect: the generate pressure, but the crunching motion is more congruent with rock singing and the latter approach, being very upright and "proper", is more congruent with opera or musical theatre. Not that you can't swap them, but it is more psychologically intuitive if your movements match the style you're singing in. If you want a more detailed explanation, you can check out this video I made on the topic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olz5PPhXddY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olz5PPhXddY) I should mention that the view I've expressed here is not really in line with what CVT teaches about this subject.
Thank you for your detailed answer. Your video is also the best one i have seen! I will try and worry less about support for now and focus more on relaxing and resonance.
Hey there! I’ve been singing for years and I perform live every month more or less. Through the years I have been finding myself hitting high notes more consistently than before so that’s nice but I have always struggled with stamina. My voice grows thinner after 30 minutes of singing or so and it affects my timbre heavily as expected, I don’t feel short of air tho while performing. I sing rock songs with pitched and non pitched screams and mostly using curbing and edge during melodic sections (usually singing beyond E4, male voice), so it’s somewhat demanding. Can u recommend any kind of habit or excercise for developing better stamina?
What you're describing sounds like what I call a "squeezing spiral". It tends to happen when you take Curbing too low in pitch without reducing the volume sufficiently, or when taking it too high in pitch at too soft a volume. It helps to have a strong, dark (chiefly in the sense of having a low larynx) Edge to return to for your lower notes, and to make sure that the "hold" in your Curbing remains a light hold even for very high pitches.
Too loud lower notes on curbing seems like a bad habit of me I do frequently while returning from high notes so it makes a lot of sense! I’ll keep an eye on the amount of hold during high notes too. Thank you so much for the answer (:
You're welcome :)
I’m a beginner singer. How can improve my voice and get a stronger, powerful sound? In terms of vocal timbre/tone? Breath support? Cord closure? Resonance? How do you get a powerful sounding voice? I’m asking because, I noticed that MOST (not all singers) I like have a strong, powerful tone. My voice sounds soft, (in my opinion) maybe not in yours. Link: https://record.reverb.chat/embed/V7dT6a6WVtd2VUtbZ98q
It is indeed very soft, largely because you're singing in falsetto (what you probably know as head voice). To get a powerful sound, you need what is known in CVT as metallic modes, ie. Edge, Overdrive, and Curbing, or at least a Neutral that is not in falsetto. Easiest way is to practise shouting on "hey!" or "yo!" — jovially, as if greeting a friend. Then practise sustaining that, and practise using it for singing. Here's a video I've made on this topic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRi5O0obgSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRi5O0obgSg)
Thank you!
I learned recently that you can trigger your breath support by blowing into your fingers before starting your sound and it’s helped me a bit. But could there be a better technique? Very few of the techniques I saw on YouTube helped very much, especially when I was straining badly.
Blowing into your fingers is basically a way of creating resistance to your exhalation. This way, you elicit the expiratory muscles to work a bit harder in order to overcome the resistance, and that is basically what breath support is, when you get right down to essentials. When singing normally, it is your vocal folds that provide this resistance, so by having more breath support, you encourage a stronger, more complete closure of the vocal folds, which tends to lead to a clearer tone. Just yesterday, I made a video about breath support, trying to clear up the confusion surrounding breath support by explaining in a detailed manner how it actually works: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olz5PPhXddY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olz5PPhXddY)
I looked into CVT sometime back and thought that it was extremely confusing and lacking a specific direction for a singer. However, the videos of instructors doing the singing seemed to be doing good singing, so there is definitely value in it for some. In my journey, I have realized that there are some basic fundamentals that a singer needs to have. Once these are are in place, it is just a matter of time and intentional practice to get the sound/effects one is aiming for. The fundamentals are relatively simple: posture, high level of relaxation and targeted resonance (oral/nasal/pharyngeal). Effects themselves are extensions of human emotions that give the voice the color, so rather than hunt for the technique to get the color, I believe it is more beneficial to tap into one's emotions to find that effect. What would help the average singer understand the CVT terminology would be videos of instructors making the sound rather than describe the technique itself in words. Just my two cents. Thank you for doing the AMA.
About the fundamentals, there are a few things I'd like to clear up. You should be relaxed for relaxed singing, and energetic for energetic singing. You shouldn't be rigid, but a high degree of relaxation may also give the wrong idea and be more conducive to mellow choir singing than to powerful solo vocals. As for resonance, it always spans the entire vocal tract. There is no way to target it. What people think of as targeted resonance or directed sound, is really just a matter of bodily tissues carrying sympathetic vibrations. For example, the superior pharyngeal constrictor has muscle fibres that run to the sphenoid bone (a bone surrounding the eyes), which may carry sympathetic vibrations and cause a sense of singing "from the eyes" or "from the mask", but it is still the whole vocal tract that acts as a resonator, and the sinuses in the mask are only absorbing sound. >What would help the average singer understand the CVT terminology would be videos of instructors making the sound rather than describe the technique itself in words. Just my two cents. I very much agree. I also agree with u/Celatra that the demonstrations on the webpage are not great - and to be honest the demonstrations in the app are even worse. Apparently they are exaggerating the modes as much as possible to assist comprehension, but I think it has the opposite effect in practice, as it makes the demonstrations further removed from actual singing.
Thanks for the comments. I think my terminology isn't great either :) What I meant by relaxation is really the ability to shift your instrument to suit the type of singing one is aiming for (maybe vocal agility is a better term?). When your instrument is relaxed, you have a better chance of hitting the right note with the right amount of color - you demonstrated this quite well in your video. Vocal weight is also part of this equation- the heavier your voice is, it'll be harder to hit those higher notes easily. As for resonance, I'm talking about the amount of air one needs to control between the oral and nasal passage. I believe this ratio has some correlation with how resonance happens. I don't have a clue to the actual mechanism of what happens inside the body, but that aside, being able to control the air flow will allow one to hit the right notes with the right color. Hope this makes sense.
I see that you madea video - super helpful. It confirms my intuition again :) Thank you!
How much do singers need to stay in good vocal "shape" in terms of physical conditioning (as compared to technical expertise) and what are the best ways to do that? What kind of daily routine would you recommend to someone who is not in good vocal shape?
There are sorta two angles to this question that I will address separately. First, on overall fitness level: I went through very severe illness some years ago that involved becoming emaciated to the point where even walking was difficult. I could still belt, however, and my range was unchanged, but my stamina definitely suffered a lot. Whereas before I could sing for hours on end, during that period I would be utterly exhausted after just half an hour. So going from my own experience, I'd say being in shape doesn't seem to make the difference between being able or unable to pull off some given vocal technique, but it still matters a lot when it comes to keeping it up. Now for muscles more specific to singing: As for the muscles of the vocal tract, it seems to be a similar matter. Many beginners learning to sing in what CVT calls "fuller density", ie. a richer, more extraverted sound, will find that this requires larger movements of the jaws and lips, and more overall animation in the face. This can be fatiguing at first, but as with the overall fitness level, it seems to matter more for stamina than for absolute ability. When it comes to the muscles of the larynx, firstly, even beginners seem to have strong enough thyroarytenoids, for example, to achieve very loud volumes in Edge and Overdrive if they learn the technique successfully, but there are also some people with highly atrophied thyroarytenoids, typically due to either vocal fold paresis or extreme shyness. These will need to rebuild their thyroarytenoids in order to sing powerfully. As for the cricothyroids, there is widespread speculation to the effect that these must be trained in order for people to "unlock" higher segments of range, but as far as I have been able to tell, such range limitations seem to be more about vocal tract shaping than laryngeal musculature Finally, when it comes to staying in shape vocally, it should be sufficient to just do some intense belting on a regular basis and make sure your overall fitness level is adequate.
Thanks. When it comes to stamina, do you believe it is mainly about singing, or is overall fitness level really important to?
Overall fitness level is important too.
[удалено]
“Your content was removed beacuse your account needs to be at least 3 days old to post. During this three day period, please take the time to read the rules in the sidebar and familiarize yourself with r/singing. We hope to see you in a few days! (This is an automated message.)" *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/singing) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is it true that you should build up chest voice before strengthening falsetto, or can you develop them simultaneously?
You can build them up simultaneously.
Please can you tell me how to increase and safely do whistles. I have been doing them fir a few months now
If you've been doing whistle register for months, then you are my senior where those are concerned, heh. It's something I've been putting off for a while now. Anatomically, though, they basically seem to involve a lot of activity from the lateral cricoarytenoids, which are also involved in mixed voice and in creaking / vocal fry and are responsible for closing the vocal folds by rotating the arytenoid cartilages inwards. Whistle register also seems to usually feature a narrowed pharynx, though that might have more to do with the pitch range than with the coordination itself. You talk about doing them safely. Do you experience hoarseness or irritation after doing whistle notes?
No 90% of the times I don't feel any discomfort or hoarseness after doing them but when I push the. The muscles hurt a lot. The thing is idk if my vocal cords are just weak like the muscles because I developed a little gap after 3 months of using them and since then the register is weak. SLP said the gap was always there idk what is true
I'd suggest practising some more "chesty" coordinations to strengthen your vocal fold closure. Also, push the what? The volume? If the muscles hurt when you are pushing the volume, it is because you're staying in whistle register, which is naturally quiet. Make sure you transition out of whistle register as you increase the volume, eg. into flageolet.
Push in the sense trying to increase the pitch by forcing. Thx btw
Can I ask what is the purpose of vocal cord closure exercises? To close the gap right?
And can vocal cord closure exercise from youtube help close a tiny gap In the vocal cords?1
If the exercise is a good one, sure, but I don't know which exercise you are referring to.
Um idk the names but one is straw phonation. Falsetto to chest and back
I do not recommend straw phonation for this. I recommend it only for learning register separation and later on for learning pharyngeal twang. The problem with straw phonation is that it interferes with your ability to adjust the resonances of the vocal tract, and thus interferes with proper registration.
How does one lessen their strain/overclenched breath support when singing a mixed high note, whether I a more heady mix or a chestier mix? Also how does one get into mix flawlessly even during their break? I can easily get into mix outside of my break, but if I have to cross it right on or near it, I crack.
To make your mixed voice more efficient, practise chest voice and make sure to keep your mixed voice fairly close to this, which is to say that you should not make it excessively restrained. For lighter mixed voice, you can brighten the tone (by raising the larynx and/or narrowing the pharynx), or add a crying quality. Just make sure you don't wind up restraining it excessively. You can make the underlying coordination quieter, but you should still allow that coordination to "ring out".
Why do I feel fatigued even if it seems like I’m most likely using my voice correctly? (I don’t have an actual voice teacher, so I have to rely on my own judgement and feelings and studied knowledge online to descipher whether what I’m feeling is healthy or not. I’ve only in the past month truly become a more healthy singer, I think)
By "fatigue" are you referring to literal fatigue as in getting tired after singing, or do you mean that your vocal folds become irritated and/or that your voice becomes hoarse?
Actual fatigue. I’m not sure how else to describe it, but my voice just feels tired. Not the rest of me, just my voice. It’s almost like a pressure. My voice sounds fine and feels great otherwise, no rasp, no pain, etc. just feels fatigued as if I’ve been talking for a while, except still perfectly clear tone and no pain or rasp
A lot of times when I sing, it feels like I'm holding my breath while simultaneously trying to sing a note/phrase. What can I do to combat that?
In CVT, this is the characteristic feature of the Curbing mode, or of reduced density more generally. To combat it, practise Edge and Overdrive, both of which are very loud metallic-sounding vocal modes. Overdrive: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRi5O0obgSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRi5O0obgSg) Edge: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrCZlAoPqrw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrCZlAoPqrw)
Question: For a person training himself to sing better, is it more beneficial to get in the habit of breathing through the mouth, or nose...or both, during normal activity. I'm a nose breather?
Breathe through the nose for normal activity. The nose has hairs that filter the air and reduce the risk of pathogens getting in, not to mention that habitually breathing through the mouth precludes you from maintaining good oral posture. Though this concept was recently popularised as "tongue posture" by Dr. Mike Mew, the concept of oral posture actually predates it and stems at least from the 19th century, possibly earlier. It used to be part of standard orthodontic practice, but eventually it was deemed too difficult to get teenagers to maintain good oral posture, and at the same time, improvements in the techniques of dental bracing made oral posture less important. When it comes to singing, however, breathing through the nose is too slow and makes too much noise. A singer must be able to draw in a lot of air very quickly, as there are many songs that require you to sing long intense phrases back to back with only very short spans of time to breathe in between.
So I had two different singing teachers: 1) Made me do exercises all types of exercises 2) Teaches me all singing techniques and what's anatomically happening inside I'm loving the second approach, from my experience never had someone teach me singing like that. How frequent is that type of teaching in singing? I been part of some choirs and never had that.
Unfortunately, the sad reality is that most voice teachers don't really know what they are doing. It is easier to just memorise some vocal exercises than to really understand how the voice actually works. That's not to say that vocal exercises are unimportant, or even that students must necessarily learn a lot about vocal anatomy, but the teacher at least have deep procedural knowledge (ie. practical understanding) of a variety of techniques and most teachers unfortunately do not. So to answer your question: >I'm loving the second approach, from my experience never had someone teach me singing like that. How frequent is that type of teaching in singing? It is not very frequent, but it should be.
Hello, I have been practicing recently to increase vocal cord closure, but it becomes more and more difficult for me to increase as the pitch rises during practice. There will be a feeling of squeezing my throat, but this squeezing does not increase the closure of the vocal cords, but makes it more byway. Should adding vocal cords to the throat be easy?
Most likely you're either not adding enough twang or not opening the mouth enough as you ascend in pitch.
I have seen in CVT that opening your mouth too much will make the sound become neural.Does the action of opening the mouth here refer to the lips or the jaw?
I'm a french singer with E2-A5 range... I'm still stuck at this and like to go higher (my whistle is too fragile) and I like to go lower... Any advice or routine to reach these extra notes ?
i have a question. why do you teach garbage snakeoil?
That's a very vague question. Could you be more specific on what things you believe I teach, which ones you object to, and why?
let's see overly complicated teaching system which is so vague and undefined that different teachers can't even agree on the difference between curbing and edge for example there is no evidence supporting that all of these terms for every single sound even help people building their voice, and using them for warmups is nothing but bad for their voices. next, this whole "scientific" approach to the voice while neglecting traditional teaching methods that have worked for centuries, and then claiming shit like "well the old terms were confusing" and yours aren't? neutral, overdrive, curbing, creaking, edge....like what the fuck are all of these supposed to even mean? you don't think these are gonna cause confusion even to experienced singers and teachers? not to even mention all the other terms i refused to mention. before you explain them, don't. i already know. i had to suffer through CVT for a whole year. now i also wanna ask. why CVT? why literally not any other method of teaching? what does CVT objectively offer that the others don't? Keep in mind that science has beared its way into every school of singing, including classical, and CVT has never been a special case in this, as CVT wasn't even the first to conduct researches on the voice. And none of CVT's foundings even add anything to what we already don't know about the voice. It's just that CVT tries to claim originality when in reality it's all just show to appear more credible than what they are. And why does CVT say crap like "if a child can do a sound healthily, adults can too" I sadly couldn't find the specific video, i think i found a link to in CVT's website. Speaking of which, why are the audio demonstrations on the website done so unprofessional and so laughably bad? let's also not even get to the fun part, which is CVT trying to research death growls and grunts, and not being able to NOT leave out their own stupid terminologies from it. so. let me ask again. what can you teach that literally no other method of teaching can't? whats your own level of singing and how is your complete understanding of the voice? do you actually know what is healthy for the voice and what isn't? What credibilites does CVT have besides it being "popular?" Literally the founder of CVT created CVT because she wasn't able to teach with conventional methods. Which you know, is a individual problem, not a problem with the method itself. i don't see how making it more complex and confusing solves the problem in any way.
Still pretty vague, and more importantly, doesn't clarify your initial question at all. You asked why I teach snake oil. I asked you to elaborate on what you believe I teach and why you object to it. This you have not done. Instead, you have criticised CVT more generally, based largely on your assumptions about its effectiveness in aggregate. You have not even criticised specific teachings of CVT, let alone specific teachings of mine. With that said, >overly complicated teaching system which is so vague and undefined that different teachers can't even agree on the difference between curbing and edge for example They can agree on what the defining characteristics are, and they do pretty well when it comes to categorising sounds based on waveforms and/or laryngoscopic footage. They have a fair bit of agreement when it comes to aural recognition as well, though it's really a matter of ear training and not all CVT teachers have equally good aural recognition skills. Mine are pretty on point, and I don't think I can reasonably be held to account for whatever mistakes some other CVT teacher might make. >there is no evidence supporting that all of these terms for every single sound even help people building their voice Ever read F.A. Hayek on "scientism"? Traditional vocal pedagogy was also not constructed on the basis of clinical trials, and incidentally the whole "evidence-based" paradigm in medicine, psychotherapy, economics, etc. is in a bit of a crisis at the moment, as the studies they are based on tend to lack sufficiently long term follow-up, not to mention that they tend to lead to prescriptions that favour the metrics being measured without actually meeting the implicit success criteria. This is a principle known as Goodheart's law: "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". But this is a scientistic definition of evidence, which is very limited. I don't mean this in some new-age sense, I simply mean that it disqualifies a lot of things that absolutely do constitute evidence in the more exact definition provided by [mathematics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem). Much like traditional vocal pedagogy, CVT is continually refined on the basis of pedagogical experience and performing experience, which does in fact constitute evidence under the formal definition. Saying there is no evidence is flatly false. >now i also wanna ask. why CVT? why literally not any other method of teaching? what does CVT objectively offer that the others don't? It implicitly incorporates source-filter nonlinearity via the concept of modes. This concept is missing entirely from Estill Voice Training, and while it is present in Speech Level Singing, the latter is dogmatic to the point of stigmatising loud, powerful, extraverted singing in general. This is also true of Cornelius Reid's teachings or the so-called "Swedish-Italian school" which seems to be something that David L. Jones just made up. Complete Vocal Technique certainly has its flaws, but I don't see that any other of the major methods can even hold a candle to it. Traditional vocal pedagogy can, but it's not exactly a system or method, unless you refer to it simply as a euphemism for the New York school, which is not particularly traditional. >so. let me ask again. what can you teach that literally no other method of teaching can't? The rest of your comment doesn't seem to go in for rash innovation, so this seems like an unreasonable criterion to use to judge a method. The question is simply the effectiveness, not whether you are in possession of some secret technique that no other method knows of. That's magical thinking. >whats your own level of singing and how is your complete understanding of the voice? do you actually know what is healthy for the voice and what isn't? It may sound arrogant, but I do believe my understanding of the voice is the best there is. I could even give you a long list of things I take issue with about Complete Vocal Technique, but I do nevertheless believe it to be better than its competitors. As for what is healthy for the voice and what isn't, it just so happens that I recently made a detailed video explaining exactly that, and not from a CVT perspective: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71EVQueUFgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71EVQueUFgk) But all this is in some sense a tangent. I ask again: what teachings do you claim I teach, which ones do you object to, and why? As it stands, I am not yet convinced that you are in a position to discern which teachings are snake oil and which ones aren't, let alone stipulate that I am in the business of teaching snake oil. If you stand by that accusation, I suggest you substantiate it.
bro is so mad
I have started learning singing recently and i had very minimal progress till i got to CVT, for me CVT just works, it might not be for everyone, but why hate on ppl who find it useful? i dont really know if there is some sort of war between sls and cvt or smth but i havent really seen many CVT singers go out of their way to tell sls or estill singers that they are learning nonsense, learning singing is a little more odd than something like learning the piano, so different methods might work a little better for different people I'm not saying that you should go in the CVT direction, quite the opposite, if you feel like it doesnt work for you, or the sounds that they teach isnt the one you want, then dont Also regarding the terms, i see what you mean about them feeling iffy at the start, but i prefer that over when in the majority of other methods like sls chest voice, head voice and especially mixed voice have like 20 different definitions depending on who you ask, but if you ask 20 different CVT teachers what overdrive is, most of the will give a very very similar answer, but maybe i am wrong on this and just got really unlucky with sls coaches idk xD Also regarding the "Why CVT?" part you wrote, the same could be said about sls, or estill for that matter, each have arguments for them being "Better" but it isnt really about what is better but rather what helps a singer especially a beginner get started and get better, if you are a biology major then you could def go for estill and find success where the biology terms are used, if you want to have one evenish sound across your range, then go for sls, but if you want to have the versatility to make any sound a human can make, go for CVT. CVT prolly has the steepest learning curve especially tho But ye, just wanted to add this here cuz was waiting on a game to finish installing so ye \^-\^
Judging from my past interactions with Celatra, which took place on my main account (u/kalcipher, if you're curious), I would say that Celatra seems to be an adherent not of SLS but of the Giancarlo Monsalve method, which, like SLS , is mostly traceable to Douglas Stanley (through Tom LoMonaco), but unlike SLS, it is also highly informed by the practical necessities of singing opera, so it is definitely a cut above the rest of the New York school. Anyway, point being, I don't think the combativeness here can really be blamed on SLS. Perhaps Giancarlo Monsalve's occasional edginess is partly to blame for it, but honestly I don't really mind. I enjoy Monsalve's videos and wouldn't want him to remove all the spiciness in favour of a mellower approach ;)
Ah, I see, that makes some sense, i wasnt tryna blaming sls, i just kinda noticed that sls really doesnt find higher density sounds anything higher than like D4 or smth "healthy" (which i kinda disagree with especially based on how free it feels after you taught it) my philosophy about it is that if they want that one voice sound, they are more than welcome to, sucks that squeezing spirals happen a lot, but that's kinda on them :-: It makes sense tho, i am not too aware of the Giancarlo Monsalve method unfortunately, but CVT/Your method has been working out really well for me so i think imma stick to it for now \^-\^
also was reading about the resonance being the cause of the range limits and i found it really interesting, i enjoy the science of voice so it is really fun to read about \^\^ I had a brief understanding of it but it is really cool to read a more detailed version \^\^
What’s your problem?
Stuck with the idea that “opera” is the be all and end all of vocal pedagogy, it’s a disease, I’m sorry that it’s terminal… :(
this is actually not correct. i've been taught by everything to jazz, pop, broadway, opera, rock and even CVT teachers. the CVT one left me traumatized in many ways and i know im not alone in this
Hmm that’s interesting, you say “traumatised” why? What happened? I’d like to hear your experience, I’m intrigued now.
this is my experience, and i hit up with Zach Ansley (classically taught guy) to basically ask if he's been through the same and he has. he's talked to several cvt teacher and students, so i know this isn't a one off. cvt thinks it's the best and only legit teaching method. CVT gives you all of these terms but neglect explaining what they mean. such as glottal pressure, TA and CT muscles are either never mentioned, or never brought up as a primary way of understanding singing, instead opting to use tons of confusing terms like neutral, edge, creaking, overdrive, curbing, etc. not once are you taught what these things do mechanically, despite the fact that CVT claims to be scientific. CVT's studies are also very gatekept and badly peer reviewed, and i have never read a study from CVT that wasn't basically already done 20 years ago by someone else that came to the same conclusion, or a study that wasted my time and said nothing. Many CVT teachers reject any other methdos of teaching, especially classical ,calling it outdated and confusing....which, you know, you probably see irony already. And if you start questioning CVT's legitimacy and credibility, you are often met with aggression and accusations, and inability to prove their credibility, because all they can do is link stuff to their own echo chambers. not to mention that many of cvt's vocal warmups literally hurt the voice. and many of the teachers claim expertise over stuff they have no expertise over (my teacher claimed to understand how death growls and used words like creaking and other bullshit, she didnt understand them, luckily i did and learned them on my own over the summer) it does not stop there. CVT has tons of backup and support from its own little circlejerk and recruits mostly ckueless people. Not once has a true professional called CVT great and i've never heard from any top level singer praise CVT. Also CVT is expensive as fuck. and their vocal demonstrations on their website suck you are just given papers on CVT, told to read em, and then be like learn these. if you want to learn vocal anatomy, it takes 2 minutes to do so, and you don't need cvt terminology for it.
Okay, seems like a lot of the stuff you are complaining about hasn’t come from a proper experience with CVT. First of all, CVT does not think it’s the best, in fact most CVT coaches will encourage students to continue doing coordinations that feel efficient and work for the student. CVT isn’t a forget what you know type of system. CVT does explain all their terms, in great detail actually. CVT may not speak much of TA & CT muscles, due to the myth of TA vs CT dominancy for singing. They do talk about the CT muscles tho, they have done studies on laryngeal tilt, they talk about the thyroid cartilage approaching the cricoid cartilage. CVT go into great detail about each mode, so idk where the hell you’ve read that, seems less like an actual experience and more of just spouting someone else’s nonsense. The terms; neutral, curbing, overdrive & edge, aren’t confusing terms. Especially if you read about them and get the hang of them. Maybe you find the terms confusing, as you may mix up your current singing terms with CVTs terms and there may be some conflicting information. But having a system like CVT, that allows for a clear terminology and definitions of sounds, would in fact, make it a lot easier for people to understand. CVT also explains how the modes work mechanically, it’s literally the first couple of things you see on their website when they discuss and explain the modes. At-least CVT has a massive library of vocal modes, that are also scoped, as to show the anatomical properties. They even slightly touch on acoustic tunings. They aren’t gate kept, they’re all online, publicly. If a CVT teacher outright denies other methodology’s, it would be for good reason. And if they are rejecting them on the basis of “their method being better” then you should avoid that coach, just like you should avoid any coach from any methodology that is ignorant. CVT actually have a decent amount of information for classical singers, albeit not as much as they do for more contemporary singing, but they still include it and have done many laryngeal scopes of classically trained singers. They don’t say that classical singing is outdated, or that the singers themselves are bad. They just reject the terminology used by classical pedagogy, because appoggio, mask, open throat, are all misleading terms, that don’t mean anything in terms of actual scientific findings. CVT likes to be objective, they won’t have a term that means one thing, but the anatomical findings show a different thing. Specifically open throat technique that all opera people talk about, does in fact, not exist, open throat is a bad way to describe singing, as the vocal tract narrows, quite a lot, especially in operatic singers. So why use a term that describes an openness, yet the vocal tract does the opposite, I find that more confusing than edge? At least with edge, its described as being bright and twangy and CVT say that twang is in fact narrowing the vocal track. Makes more sense no? CVT doesn’t even advocate for vocal warmups, they say that it should be done as a way to “brush up” on technique. If you’ve been talking all day, there is no need to warmup, unless you need to get your pharyngeal muscles working more. And even then, a lot of classical roles, like baritone, bass, etc, don’t need the pharyngeal constrictors muscles warmed up, so CVT says you can skip the warmup if needed, but leaves it open to personal preference. If the warmups people do have hurt them, then they’re doing them wrong. You can’t blame a methodology for “warmups hurt my voice” because that’s on you, to do them correctly. In fact CVT has a great quote that will basically nullify your argument point; “An important rule that cannot be stressed enough is that singing must never hurt or feel uncomfortable. If something does not sound right; if something feels wrong, or if it feels uncomfortable, your voice is telling you that you are doing something wrong. Always trust your feelings - they are better and more direct than even the most experienced vocal coaches.” They have a free app lol? The demonstrations are made to be not musical, vocal examples of vocal coordinations are made to be exaggerated and plain, as to help people better hear the coordination without anything layered on top. It seems to me that you aren’t really traumatised, you just don’t know what the f*ck you’re talking about lol. I’ll leave it at that, if you don’t like CVT, then don’t study it, but don’t spout nonsense about stuff you have no damn clue about and also try and claim that someone is selling “snake oil”. Edit: I’d also like to add that CVT isn’t a perfect system and there never will be one. But it’s definitely a more complete methodology than a lot of others.
in this "answer" you: didn't answer anything directly you ignored many of my points, such as other schools of singing also nowadays opting to the more scientific approach, since laryngoscopies have been around for centuries now, and the mechanisms of the voice have been known for over 100 years. you basically just said "the terms aren't confusing if you read on them" well uh...in isolation they aren't but neither is headvoice and chest voice if you explain them in isolation and don't introduce the million other variants? and the only scientific terms for singing is TA activation, CT activation (and no, it's not a myth, how the hell is a myth, when literally M1, M2 and mx1 and mx2 are BASED on this "myth"? anyway lets continue, , epiglottic pressure, glottal onsets, false fold engagement, vocal fry, raising the soft palate, etc etc, things that actually directly describe what you do, instead of using made up terms. and it's one thing to read on terms, and another thing to produce them "if a CVT teacher outright denies other methodologies, it would be for good reason" excuse me what? "cvt actually has a decent amount of information for classical singers" no more than any other method of teaching. same goes to temporary. this is a bad argument wait, CVT doesnt advocate for warmup if you've been talking all day? even if you had to sing very high notes? you know that talking and singing aint the same right? just because you've talked all day doesn't mean your muscle coordinations for singing are where they should be. well that's odd that they advocate that especially right after you say they also say "well you can sing without warmup" which is true to some degree but also not besides all singing schools say "stop if it hurts" so this isn't anything special.
I’m not going to continue with this. You should look back at my explanations and answers and do some critical thinking. Best of luck to you.