Weekly Singing Carrots 🥕001

Hi there, 

Happy New year everyone!!  Welcome to our very first Carrot-newsletter 🥕📰, 

It’s a new year, let’s try some new things, let’s SING!

I’m Celina from 🎤singing Carrots🥕 and starting today, there will be a weekly newsletter with an educational series about:

>>>VOCAL TECHNIQUE📚<<<

>>>SINGING EXERCISES🤸🏽‍♀️<<<

>>>TIPPS AND TRICKS‼️<<<

– to become the owner of your voice!!

>>>NEW SONGS TO SING<<<

– for your repertoire

Who am I?🙇🏽‍♀️

I am a singer, Songwriter, Composer studying Jazz and Pop vocals at a Conservatory in the Netherlands and want to use the knowledge I’ve heavily studied for 3 years now, to help others! 

Let´s Go, let´s sing, let´s begin! 

In this week edition

📚 Topic of the week: How to analyze your voice

📣 „If you want to change or improve something about your voice, you need to listen to it first! “ – Ineke Van Doorn

When my Conservatory teacher said that sentence I realized that in order to become the owner of your voice, you need to analyze it and understand what you do and how it sounds, to know what you want to learn!

I have no idea who you are, how you sing and what you need, and I was wondering, 

DO YOU KNOW THAT? 👀💭

Have you ever properly listened to your voice? – did you realize that the voice in your head sounds different than on a recording? You might not even like how your voice sounds on a recording…. Well, that’s actually a universal human phenomenon, we hear our voices with different resonance and…more to that another time. 

📌First I’ll show you how you can analyze your voice! 

Get yourself a pen and paper and write down what you think are the strong and weak points of your voice!

Choose a tune you already know

  • 🎙️ Sing it and record it. (Recording with your phone is definitely enough!)
  • 📻 Now listen back to it and write down what you find out, concerning the following points.  

💡REMEMBER: 

Don´t be too hard on yourself, critique is good, but can also demotivate you! 

1. The Range: Are there notes that are too high/low? Was that piece may be sung by the other gender and isn’t in your key? 

✅ SOLUTION: 

Find out what your range is and transpose the piece to your key.

 2. Do you sound stressed while singing? 

  • Is the piece too fast for you? Try singing it slower 🧘🏾‍♂️, you can sing faster afterwards!
  • How is your articulation? Articulation can change a lot when singing, it gets easier louder, and more understandable!
  • Is your breath too short? How often do you breathe in, do you breathe high, low, a lot? How much you breathe, of course, depends on the piece you are singing, but can you define if you breathe low (your diaphragm moves outwards when you breathe in and is being sucked in when you breathe out) or high (your shoulders move up when you breathe in). 

🎥 You don’t know if you breathe high or low? Check out the video below, I made for you! 

 3. Do you always sing the same way? 

Everyone has habits! Sometimes they are good but often they also hold back.

Let´s say your favorite song-genre would be “ballads”, you always sing in the time signature 6/8 and in a middle Range, because it is comfortable. It could also be the other way around, that you prefer “Uptempo” numbers in 4/4 and always sing in a higher/lower Range because that´s where your voice sounds good. 

Either way is fine, and it´s good that you know where your voice feels comfortable, but you need to step out of your comfort zone and try new things! Try singing different styles, you aren´t used to, try it lower and higher, and slower/faster. This will help your voice get more flexible, and get you started on exploring what your voice can do! 

You might be missing out on hidden Potential!!

💡TIPP:

 When you explore your voice, your voice gets more flexible! What can you do to explore? 

  • When you have a piece and you don’t know how to start practicing, Sing the whole Song on different vowels, without the lyrics. One vowel at a time! – e.g. ah, oh, eh, ih 
  • Add consonants at the beginning – yah, zoh, meh, pih – whatever comes to your mind…. 
  • Now sing only short notes/only long notes
  • Sing Soft – what comes across when you sing Soft – Does it maybe sound more emotional, fragile? 
  • What emotion do you hear when you sing Loud? 

This list could be endless… If you want to dive deeper into the topic, read the article in our blog.

🤸🏽‍♀️Exercise of the week: Lip Trill

🎥 You don’t know what that is? Check out the video below.

I usually do that exercise at the very beginning of my Warmup. It activates the tongue and diaphragm and relaxes the area around the Mouthcavities.  

In a variation of this exercise you can also find out your voice break – the break between our Chest Voice – the voice we speak in, and the Falsetto Voice, high, more airy, maybe opera styli-ish sounding voice!  

📌 I would always repeat exercises at least 3️⃣ Times!

📌 Try out if movement helps you in your singing! 🤾‍♂️ – it doesn’t always help, but often! 

📌 Where do you breathe?💨 And how can you find out if you breathe high, or low? 

🎥 Wanna know a Trick to find out where you breathe? Check out the Video! 

🎶 Songs of the week: Top 10 most visited songs in 2020 on Singing Carrots

  1. Rufus Wainwright – Hallelujah
  2. Ace of Base – Beautiful Life
  3. Songs for children – Mary Had a Little Lamb 
  4. Sia – Elastic Heart
  5. Coldplay – Wish I was here
  6. Arias for Soprano – Ave Maria opus 52 no 6
  7. Moana – How Far I’ll Go
  8. Ella Fitzgerald – Baby, It’s Cold Outside
  9. Halsey – Colors
  10. Adele – Hello

That’s it for today. Hope you liked it.

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