The 5-Minute Voice
Starting on April 1st, 2020 I’ll re-post the 52 video clips from my series “The 5-Minute Voice” on my YouTube channel, at the rate of one clip a day. I’ll leave each clip online for 72 hours, after which the clip will become private again.
What’s the philosophy behind these clips? Have fun, create vibrations, and acknowledge that the voice is a powerful and intimate dimension of your life.
Interested in buying these materials for your private use? Please email me.
1. Linger. Lengthen some of your sounds, and you'll gain control of space and time.
April 1st, 2020. Get your mind and your voice to work at the same speed.
The mechanism is called “here, now!”
Its effects are surprisingly wide-ranging and life-changing.
2. Good Vibes. Sense the vibrations you produce when you speak and sing.
April 2, 2020. Sensing your sounds is “sensing yourself.”
Strangely and wonderfully, sensing yourself is “sensing life.”
3. La La Land. Exercise your skills in making the "el" consonant in many variations.
April 3, 2020. Your mind asks the tongue to move and make a sound.
Your tongue obeys. It isn’t a banal event.
4. Don't Die. Not exactly a breathing exercise, more a sort of meditation on running out of breath.
April 4, 2020. The cure for running out of breath is taking a breath.
The cure for being afraid of running out of breath is also taking a breath!
5. No, no, no! Exercise your skills in making the "en" consonant in many variations.
April 5, 2020. Your tongue is versatile from birth.
You can make it ever more versatile by how you play with vowels and consonants.
6. Moving vowels. This video shows the interest in constraining a habit in order to free your voice.
April 6, 2020. It’s counterintuitive to change vowel sounds without changing the shape of your lips.
When you get the hang of it, it works better than the habit.
Be suspicious about habits, “they may be lying to you.”
7. "Oh, it's you again." Making friends with that famous stranger, the glottis.
April 7, 2020. We do many things well without being conscious of them in the least.
Sometimes (sometimes!) it can be very useful to bring the unconscious skill to the fore, and to “own it.”
8. Hum. An exploration of humming and its many benefits.
April 8, 2020. Do you hum? “Hmmm . . . let me think . . .”
You hum “hmm hmm” to let the other person know you’re listening.You hum “hmmm yummy.”
Now you’re going to hum “for life.”
9. Hong. The "ng" consonant yields delicious sounds.
April 9, 2020. Hidden corners of your vocal mechanism can yield amazing sounds.
To speak and to sing is to be an informal acoustic investigator.
10. Slide! Work on your sliding, also called glissando.
April 10, 2020. When you speak or sing, you can travel from point to point without producing intermediate sounds, or you can connect the points. Connection can be slow or fast, showy or discreet.
Flexible, adaptable, elastic . . . able to make choices.
11. The Yo-yo, Part I. Two little sounds close together . . . you can do a lot with them.
April 11, 2020. To speak and to sing is to create strings of sounds. Juxtaposed, sounds interact.
Or, rather, “when you juxtapose sounds you can sense their interaction.”
12. The Yo-yo, Part II. Two little sounds . . . you can do even more with them!
April 12, 2020. It’s possible to practice a simple exercise a thousand times and never stop learning from it.
And it’s possible to to something repetitively and never get bored with it. (Kissing your beloved, for instance!)
13. Nu-nga. Everything is about vibration. This is a good starting point.
April 13, 2020. A made-up word isn’t necessarily meaningless! . . . it all depends on your heart.
14. Mommy. For devotees of the "mmm" sound.
April 14, 2020. The “em-” and “mmm” sounds are primeval for all human beings.
The sound is born free.
15. Glow! Consonants and vowels, collaborating to make you feel good.
April 15, 2020. To speak is to pass back and forth from consonant to vowel.
The passage isn’t banal.
16. High on Hi. Take a short little word and enjoy exploring it vocally.
April 16, 2020. Linger, enjoy, loop, vary.
Enjoy, vary, loop, linger.
Loop, linger, vary, enjoy!
17. Love Thy Neighbor. Let's talk softly but audibly.
April 17, 2020. There are degrees of loudness and quietness, and degrees of clarity and unclarity.
Quiet doesn’t have to be unclear. It takes training.
18. Loudmouth. Let's grow that voice, organically.
April 18, 2020. The healthy voice has a potential for loudness.
Ask any kid about it!
19. Lemony. Exploring the world of tongue twisters.
April 19, 2020. Tongue twisters should really be called people twisters.
It’s wonderful when you get the brain and the voice to work absolutely together.
20. Motormouth. Pretending to be a motorbike is healthy for you.
April 20, 2020. The healthy voice has an irrepressible dynamism.
If you want to be healthy, it follows that you must un-repress the irrepressible.
21. Amlala One. A simple word becomes a deep chant.
April 21, 2020. Every word is beautiful in its own way.
But some words lead you to the oasis more quickly.
22. Amlala Two. Good exercises can be varied endlessly.
April 22. 2020. Sustained practice can take you to interesting places.
It requires a combination of doing the absolute same thing over and over again, and doing this thing in different ways over and over again.
23. Amlala Three. By varying an exercise, you own it.
April 23, 2020. You can practice something because you think you should do it, or because you want to.
“Amlala” is the perfect want-to exercise.
24. Jaws. Stabilize your upper jaw, free your lower jaw.
April 24, 2020. Open your mouth without stiffening your neck.
Very useful suggestion! . . . but if you don’t know how to implement, very useless suggestion. I believe silly playfulness helps implementation.
25. Hey Hew One. Five syllables to make you feel good.
April 25, 2020. Hi! Hey! Hew! Hoe! Who!
The “H-” is your friend, and the vowels and diphthongs that follow are your friends.
26. Hey Hew Two. Five syllables, varied intelligently and making you feel great.
April 26, 2020. “Natural” is difficult to define. Let’s just say that a smiling heart comes with a natural voice.
27. Hey Hew Three. Five syllables, affecting your mood for the better.
April 27, 2020. Words and sounds can be “nasty” or “nice.” Say a nasty word with a nasty sound a hundred times, and you’ll feel miserable. But if you say a nice word with a nice sound a hundred times . . .
28. Master of the Clock. Control time, and you'll feel "in control."
April 28, 2020. Like everything else, time exists as a material entity, measured by the clock; and a psychological entity, which we measure subjectively.
The clock is unchanging. But if you need more time . . . the mind is changeable.
29. Out & About. Don't be shy about expressing yourself in public.
April 29, 2020. The most important dimension of your voice is psychological. You can only speak and sing “if you agree to do it.” By “agreeing to do it in public” you expand your whole self, including your voice.
30. The Seal. It’s part of your nature to make animal sounds.
April 30, 2020. The animal-within has vocal control and breath control. You can tap into it by making certain bestial sounds.
31. Ha ha ha! Gain control, or lose control? Both have merits and demerits.
May 1st, 2020. There’s a frontier between letting go and holding on. What happens when you visit that frontier with a precise purpose in mind?
32. The Traveling Voice. Let's work on shaping our vowels.
May 2, 2020. Each vowel has its physical correspondence in the voice. Each change in vowel gets the physical voice to change shape. It’s logical and wonderful: your voice “moves and travels.”
33. Mindful Schlump. You can feel many interesting things when you relax.
May 3, 2020. There are merits and demerits to every one thing. Sitting up straight: good and bad. Relaxing, schlumping, letting it all hang out: good and bad. Here we find the good in schlumping.
34. Málaga. Take a simple word to work on your consonants and vowels.
May 4, 2020. Lips, tongue, jaw. Throat, soft palate, hard palate. Larynx, pharynx, glottis . . . lungs. Diaphragm. Vowels, consonants. Everybody together in one little word!
35. Hi Lo. Stretch your melodic range, and you'll "stretch yourself."
May 5, 2020. Our limits remain to be discovered.
The voice becomes flexible when the mind becomes flexible.
36. Ah Eh Aw. Pass from vowel to vowel, and feel how supple your voice becomes.
May 6, 2020. The exercise is very, very simple. How come its effects are so profound?
37. Caruso Takes a Shower. A new take on the old exercise: singing in the shower.
May 7, 2020. Exercises can be “technical” or “psychological.”
Or perhaps the distinction doesn’t exist.
38. Crazy Exercise. Nah, not crazy; just a way to direct and spread your voice.
May 8, 2020. The psychological dimension of your voice works differently from its technical dimension.
It means that some exercises can look, feel, and sound strange (from the point of view of the “other” dimension).
39. Rubber Band. Make your voice elastic and resilient.
May 9, 2020. Many qualities contribute to a healthy voice, but few are as important as elasticity.
The rubber band provides you with a working symbol of what you’re aiming for.
40. Dagger. Work on yourself and enjoy your consonants.
May 10, 2020. Every combination of consonants and vowels is useful to your vocal development.
Some combinations are particularly enjoyable in how they engage the tongue and the soft palate.
41. Skullery. Get your skull to vibrate, together with the rest of you.
May 11, 2020. If you’re relaxed and alert, your voice spreads from “the voice box” out in every direction, up and down and front and back.
42. Take It Easy. Let's speak or chant in a lovely monotone.
May 12, 2020. Monotone, technically speaking, just means “one-note.”
If you inhabit it, it’s very expressive and satisfying.
43. Head & Neck, Part I. Your orientation in space makes or breaks your voice.
May 13, 2020. Scrunch your neck, and your voice will suffer—together with the rest of you.
Lengthen your neck, and your voice will improve—together with the rest of you.
44. Head & Neck, Part II. More tools for you to organize yourself in space.
May 14, 2020. The difficulty is to share your attention: between your orientation in space and your voice, your voice and the words and sentences you say, the things you say and the thoughts that animate them.
45. Become Somebody Else. Let's work on our mental and vocal flexibility.
May 15, 2020. You are who you are. But who you are isn’t who you think you are. Within you there lurk talents, possibilities, behaviors, skills that are so different from your habit that you normally don’t recognize them as being part of yourself. And yet, they can and will come ou!
46. Don't Be Shy. Expressing yourself in public is a pleasure.
May 16, 2020. You make a decision: put yourself out there, or hide from the crowd. It takes training to make comfortable and productive decisions, whichever way you decide.
47. A E I O U. Let's systematize our vowels.
May 17, 2020. The vowel is your voice’s best friend. And since your voice is your best friend . . . guess who’s your bestest friend.
48. I E A O U. This sequence of vowels is divine.
May 18, 2020. We’re familiar with the alphabetical sequence, “a e i o u.” But the sequence “i e a o u” deserves to be just as well known, for acoustic reasons: you travel from highest to lowest overtones. And you can hear it! It’s marvelous! . . . well, just do the exercise again and again. It’ll come to you.
49. Yay! Let's make our vocal power condensed and flexible.
May 19, 2020. A controlled burst of energy has three elements: energy . . . burst . . . control. It sound as if I’m just teasing you, but the idea is essential in vocal work and in life.
50. How Wonderful. The playful and alert voice.
May 20, 2020. One important element in your vocal health is the behavior of your skull and neck. To put it simply, if you misuse your neck you misuse your vocal mechanisms.
51. Do nothing. Relax, do nothing, feel good, then sing.
May 21, 2020. You do things differently when you’re feeling bad and when you’re feeling good. Obvious, right? But then your responsibility is to find ways to feel good, as much as possible, as often as possible;
52. 1, 2, 3 . . . A very simple and rewarding exercise.
May 22, 2020. Counting is both child-like and sacred. And when you sing or chant the counting, you can have as much fun as the most fun a child can have, while elevating yourself to unsuspected heights.