not sure where to post this..

[darksoul]

Hey,
ive gotten into singing lately, and this seemed like the most logical forum to ask: the songwriting and lyrics forum.Some people there must sing 'professionally', so i thought that maybe someone could help me.
but they said to go here...so i did. lol


I have always loved opera, the shear power in the voice of an opera singer is really something to behold. With a vibrato unmatched and hitting notes so high a bird would freak out
I want to know why 'not everyone can become an opera singer'?
Is it because some people cant sing loud enough? is it they cant sing high enough? is it the vibrato?
Assuming the person in question is not tone deaf, what would hinder this person's ability to sing opera?
Yea, im talking about me. Not looking to make it as a profesion, more as a hobby

thanks
and i hope i posted this right
cheers :chug:

[Screamin_Demon_Auz]

Anyone can become an opera singer. To be an opera singer though, you need to have training and a special kind (usually Bel Canto). The smallest amount of time most opera's singers train is 7 years. I'd look into a lot of books like The Structure of Singing by Richard Miller. I have it and its pretty boring but has a lot of info, and is considered the bible of classical vocal work. Also of course you'll need lessons.

[usmarine911]

NOT everyone can be an opera singer. If you look at some of the best, most of themare tenors and are very large men. This adds to their resonance and alows them to power their voice with insane amounts of breath. So unless you are about 350 pounds and already a tenor youre gonna have a hard time. But you still can get good. It will just take you time. I recomend getting a good vocal teacher that has some accomplishment to his name and only working on scales and breathing for about the first year. this will give you good control of your voice and just crazy understanding of the notes. Good luck.

[darksoul]

ok thanks alot.

[Trigger_003]

Hey Dave, long time no see :)

I've got some breathing exercises I use for trombone and they've developed my lung capacity a lot. That's something you're going to need to sing opera, as mentioned. Are you interested in me posting them up?

[Screamin_Demon_Auz]

Usmarine,
anyone can sing opera. It's simple. Will everyone sound like Pavoratti? No of course not but opera is just a style. Anyone can sing any type of music with training and a lot of work; the more you put into it the better you'll sound.

Also the size of the body can actually do the opposite; dampen the resonance. I know that doesn't really make sense because there are so many big opera singers but its true even though I can never really tell a difference.

Resonation occurs mostly in the different cavities in your head, and for lower notes somewhat in your chest. But the size of the body really isn't going to add much if anything to the tone.

Also whatever voice type you are doesn't matter either. Tenors and sopranos are the most common and popular in classical I believe, but that doesn't mean there isn't just as many basses, alto's, counter tenors, mezzo soprano's, and all of the other subcategories. If there weren't so many different type of voices in opera, there would be no need for the subcategories.

[darksoul]

Hey Dave, long time no see :)

I've got some breathing exercises I use for trombone and they've developed my lung capacity a lot. That's something you're going to need to sing opera, as mentioned. Are you interested in me posting them up?

Yeah , please do.
and im sorry to say this, but i dont remember you:-P
dont be offended, its cause i have so many friends :-P
jking :lol:

EDIT:haha sorry, my name is David. i didnt realise you were referring to that other guy. my bad :P

[Trigger_003]

Haha, no worries. And I was referring to you :p.
You and I used to be pretty regular posters in the beginner's questions guitar forum... but I haven't seen you in there for ages.

:shrug:

Anyway, here are those exercises. There are comments relating to brass instruments but just ignore/adapt them to vocals.

Breathing
Brass, as you probably know, requires you to make thorough use of your air. Like in singing and playing wind instruments, you can’t usually just put it down to normal breathing. If there’s no air going into that brass, no sound is going to come out.
To play well, you have to make good use of something called your diaphragm. In case you don’t know, this is a muscle near your stomach, kinda in the ^ of your rib cage, that controls your breathing (let me know if you need pictures to locate that or anything lol). By training this up, you can take deeper breaths, breathe out for longer and maintain a steady stream of air while doing so, creating a fuller sound (i.e. sounding great instead of something like “blarp-*splutter*-blarhhh-”) by using enough air to support it.

But how do you do that? Well it’s kind of hard to explain, but you’ve got to stop “breathing” from your chest. What I mean by this is, well when you breathe now, most likely your chest will rise and fall, your rib cage expanding when you inhale. You don’t want that. When you breathe, you want hardly any movement from the chest area, and the majority of movement to be in that area under the ^ in your rib cage.
Some people describe it as breathing from your gut. That doesn’t – or isn’t supposed to – mean from anywhere around your bellybutton and down, but between that and the ^ section of your ribs.

Anyway, there are exercises you can do to improve your use of your diaphragm.
These are a bit weird to surrounding audiences who have no idea what the hell you’re doing, so just do them in your room or something. But seriously, if these make sense, do try them. They have improved my capacity so much.

I missed the very start of this workshop, so I don’t know if there was a specific warm up or anything…
1. The first thing to do is lay, back down on the floor with your knees up (feet on floor). Just as a side note, put a hand between your back and the floor and check out the arch in your back (don’t try to change it or anything, just see what it’s like. I’ll explain later).
Take a breath, and with your legs close together, slowly lower them to one side… let’s say the left… breathing out steadily as you go. By the time your left knee hits the floor (or if you’re not that flexible, gets down as far as it’s going to go), you want to have exhaled as much as you can/want to. Leave it there for a few seconds, then do the reverse; slowly swing the knees back up to their original position, inhaling in much the same way. Do this a few times (say ten or so) on the left, then start doing the same process on the right.

2. After that, if you can, place your right leg over your left leg (i.e. place your right ankle or area around your shin/calf muscle on the area just up – up meaning towards your head, not towards the roof – your upper leg from your left knee), and repeat the same process as above. And as stated in the first exercise, go down to both your right and your left sides.
Swap legs and repeat the process.

Alright, when you’re finished, stay in the original position and check out that arch in your back again. Has your back become flatter? The answer’s probably yes, or will be after a few dedicated goes at this. One of the things that helps you breathe is to have good posture. So the less arch you have there, the better for your playing. These two exercises help to stretch muscles in your back and around your stomach.

3. Get up. But as you’re getting up, roll over on to your gut and get up from that position. Typically, people get up from the above exercises by bending forward as though doing a sit up. Don’t. Apparently that wrecks the progress you just made.
Sit cross legged with your back straight, but not tensely so. That said, don’t let yourself go slouchy :p. Now, keeping your back straight, rock backwards and forwards slightly, not using your back to move, but the muscles around your lower back.
After a while, begin a slight rotating motion in the same fashion. Do not consciously bend/adjust/etc. your back to do this. Let the movement come from the muscles in your lower body.

4. Now you’re going to fill up your body with air in stages. Stand up and put your hands on your hips. Breathe in, focusing on taking the air down to around that area as you do so. Yeah, I know, the air doesn’t really go down there, it’s a mentality we use to get us to use the diaphragm. Then, without breathing out, move your hands to your rib cage and breathe in some more (but not as much as when you had your hands on your hips). Then, again without breathing out, move your hands up to the gap under your collarbone and take in a little breath. This is the air you’ll need for playing that last crotchet (eighth note).
Ok, that’s enough breathing in. By now you should be pretty full of air and wanting to breathe out, so go ahead and do so. Blow it out slowly though; don’t just let it all go in a couple of seconds. Try to breathe out in the same set of stages, keeping that air up near your collarbone for the very end. Do the process again, replacing that blowing with a “sss”. Time yourself if you want, so that you can monitor your progress.
After doing that a few times, do it again but replacing the “sss”s with a single note on your instrument. Hold that note for as long as you can. The guys at the workshop went for ages, it was crazy.

5. This one’s really effective. Take a normal breath (or deeper if you wish), and from a standing position, crouch down slowly, kinda bouncing down a bit further each time, breathing out with each “bounce”. By the time you get down low, you should have breathed out as much as you possibly can. Whatever you do, don’t breathe in. Stay in that crouched position for a bit and then stand up straight. Still don’t breathe in. Hold on for as long as you can, and when you absolutely have to, just open your mouth. Loads of air will just come gushing into your body without you having to do anything consciously. That’s because, as you went down and got rid of the air in your body, you were lowering the pressure in your body. This means there was a greater pressure surrounding you, wanting to balance it out, which it does by letting so much air rush into your lungs. First time I did this, it felt awesome. You seriously get so much air from this if you do it right.

6. There are some other quick things you can do to get a deeper breath. Here are some of them:
- Pretend you’re doing a tennis serve. As you raise your arm (the one which you would be holding the ball with), take a breath. Repeat and swap between arms.
- Ballet style (this is mainly why you’re hiding in your room when you do these): cross your arms across your chest and step out with your right foot, raise your right arm, breathe in. Come back to original position, do the same on the left, and repeat.

I can’t remember the others, but as I said, these just help you to get a breath quickly. After doing some of these my sister said I was looking like I was trying to sing opera or something, which led me to thinking maybe that's a reason for them to throw their arms around before a really long or powerful note... Who knows.

Oh yeah, here’s one last thing to do to see whether you’ve got an open or closed throat when you breathe:
Place a finger in front of your mouth in “shh” style. Open your mouth and inhale. If it’s a higher pitched sound, your throat is closed, or clenched, which is bad for your playing. If it’s a deeper sound, your throat is open which is awesome.
If your throat is closed, a way to open up is to breathe through a tube every now and then. For some reason this just makes the airways completely open up and let the air race in. If you do have troubles with an open airway, check it out with your teacher when you get one asap as it can present a lot of problems.

Hope that helps :thumb:

[kevbud187]

wow Trigger, you just love posting these don't you. Actually I recomended my Band Director to these and we've used most of them. My BD says, "Thanks for the refesher course".

Anyone can sing opera....how well is the question.

[darksoul]

Wow..just ....wow.
Trigger i love you :-P
thanks for all of that. I know what a diaphragm is though. and i know about the breathing with "your gut" thing. The rest though...i didnt. Its really awesome of you to write all that.
Would you be so kind as to give me your msn email or yahoo?
mine is " blazindav@hotmail.com " for msn, and " legendaryblaze@yahoo.com " for yahoo.
if anyone wants to add me go ahead.
some of the things...like the leg ones, i cant really picture. Would yuo be so kind as to draw or sketch some of them for me?
that was a crazy post. I might record myself with my crappy mic and you guys can judge the inner "pavarotti" in me. My idol however is Andrea Bocelli. He has an amazing vibrato, which is one of the reasons he became so famous among opera singers.
i dont venture in the guitar parts anymore because some of the people there are idiots.
im gonna go try these now:D

[Trigger_003]

Jee Kev, I'm touched that you did that. Say no worries.

Haha, true about Guitar there. They don't have any idea about copyright either (this whole tabs thing :rolleyes: ). Beginner's Questions is still fine though.

I'll add you on msn, but I'm kinda...
banned...
from using it at the moment. Haha, long story. Just a heap of rumours :(.
I'll catch up with you when I finally get it back.

I'll draw some up/take photos/something for you.

Oh and make sure you don't pronounce the words wrongly coz I study Italian and I'll know :p.
Nah, that'd be sweet.

And btw, I'm Trea :).

[Trigger_003]

Alright, done sketches (sorry didn't post sooner, had to go have dinner etc... even though you weren't on anyway - haha). I haven't drawn much in about a year so excuse the rustyness.

- For the first exercise. Top is the original position - where you are with full lungs. The lower is exhaled. The pic doesn't show it, but keep shoulders on floor whilst in this position (keep in mind that you don't have to go all the way down to the floor with your knees if you're not so flexible). Actually, keep your shoulders flat on the floor during the course of all of these.
http://www.tdknights.com/trea/files/1.JPG

- For the second exercise. Start in position of first pic here. When you go to the left, it should look like the second sketch, and the third is representative of when you exhale while moving to the right. Swap legs and repeat (as explained in that other post).
http://www.tdknights.com/trea/files/2-1.JPG
http://www.tdknights.com/trea/files/2-2.JPG

Hope that clears it up. My parents were wondering what the heck I was drawing :lol:

[airborne50caliber]

nice bulge he has there

[kevbud187]

leave it to a european to check out the bulge on a sketch drawing for breathing exercises...:lol:

[darksoul]

Well Trea, its an honor :)
dont worry about the italian thing. Im a canadian,and italian descendent. alora io lo parlo benissimo :P
thanks for the drawings.

and lol at airborne50caliber :P
cheers

[Trigger_003]

:lol: Trust.

Good stuff, and same with you :).