To last on tour - my three favorite tricks on stage!

Touring can mean long shows and wear on your voice, extensive, tiring travel, and very little sleep. To last on tour and to set yourself up for all the different sounds you want to use on stage - I’m going to share three of my favorite tricks to use! This is of course valuable even for just one off shows, before or on auditions, with your students, and so on!

Number 1) Using slack folds to get a little rest and reset in your voice or set myself up for a more talky quality. If you’ve been around my block for a while, you know I LOVE slack folds for so many things! As the name reveals, your vocal folds are “slack” and relaxed and are just producing an irregular cycle with a bubbling, frying sound. In Estill Voice Training we call it slack folds but it’s also called vocal fry and glottal fry. 

When we produce this sound, our voice parts often want to go to their neutral or mid position so it’s effective if you want to go back to your homebase so to speak, find thicker folds, a more poppy, speechy sound. But honestly I just love it to let the voice and all the muscles get some rest, even though you are not planning on a speechy sound. 

Slack folds are hard to produce if the subglottal pressure is too high so it’s a fabulous way to make sure you are not pushing air and instead letting the voice work in a functional way, setting yourself up for success. You hear - what is not to love about this sound!

Number 2) Raising your shoulders for effortless higher notes. This is something I get so many comments about when I suggest.. “Isn’t that dangerous?” We have many ridiculous norms still hanging on to us. It’s not dangerous to raise your shoulders. You shouldn’t have your shoulders by your ears all the time, that would be effortful and lead to lots of tension. But if we just raise them slightly for higher notes, that will lead to LESS tension! 

If we get a bit tired, the larynx sometimes wants to be “held”. The infrahyoid muscles, the muscles whose task is to lower the larynx among other things, are working a bit too much. By raising the shoulders, we are just telling and teaching those muscles to take a break 😁And then your larynx can go where it needs to go!

Number 3) Snorting for a more powerful sound! By doing this we are  activating our velum muscles, meaning our head & neck anchor. When just making a few snorts before singing, we get the soft palate (behind your nose) to get taut and high, providing a pingy, powerful voice with more ease! We are both making the sound more oral, meaning coming out from the mouth, not letting any air escape through the nose, and also making the sound waves boom out of your mouth since we have a harder surface in there. Imagine a room with lots of curtains and fabrics, compared to a room totally empty with hard clean walls. More eco and volume in the empty room, right!?

There are so many tricks to use your head & neck anchor but this is such a fast solution that will work even though you might be a bit tired that day or at the end of the show. 

To watch the video where I show you these tricks - GO HERE!

Let me know if this made sense to you and feel free to reach out with any questions or insights, I'd love to hear from you!

Don't forget to sign up for the waitlist to my signature course "Breaking Down The Belt" where you can dive into the proven system that will make your high notes fly! You will recieve a special bonus when enrolling.