Ken,
My wife and I are enjoying Stage 1, however, we are new to singing
lessons and need some advice on how to practice. Should we perform as
many exercises each day as we can get through starting at the
beginning of Stage1 each day? How do we know we are ready for stage 2
(other than the three week rule?) Also, should we be concerned if we
feel we are having pitch issues with the scales. At one point in the
video you recommended recording our scales and making sue pitch was
right. Well, our pitch is not right for most scales and we have
trouble slurring the scales particularly ascending. Should we stop and
make sure our pitch is right or does this just come by swinging
through it? I am a guitarist and typically don’t like to practice bad
technique repeatedly, I’m assuming this holds true for voice as well.
I don’t want to “train” my vocal chord pitch incorrectly but again not
sure how to train pitch. Any advice here would be helpful.
Chris Huber
Ken Tamplin:
Hi Chris, those are good
questions.
I play guitar as well (was an 80’s shred king back in the day) but
there are exceptions:
First, the reason I want you to sing in a sine wave instead of a square
wave is to get you familiar with the initial stages of open throat technique
without the distraction of trying to do too many things at once.
Then as you get better at it, he brings in pitch and then zeros on more on
the specific notes.
The reason for this (and I will be putting out and ear training DVD soon)
is because when the vowel placement is correct, it is much easier to obtain
correct pitch. Then it’s more a matter of tweaking the pitch and ear
training, than all over the road singing. Again, it’s about eliminating
those moving targets.
