When I started high, I felt it in the upper half of my face. Jett said it was my ‘head voice’ because when I used that voice, the principal body part in resonance was my sinuses. As the tone got lower, the vibration traveled to the lower half of my face, chin, and upper neck. In this scenario, the vocal structure in maximum resonance was my hard palate (roof of the mouth). As I hit my lower notes, the sound vibrations were felt around my lower neck and chest area. Jett explained that this was the voice most people used during regular speaking. If I put my hand to the center of my chest when I spoke, I could feel it vibrate.
She explained that you couldn’t do one voice without the others. I had to think of it as a continuous spectrum. She warned that if I didn’t, I would risk my voice breaking as I tried to force the change.
Jett took me to the women’s restroom and had me stand in front of the mirror.
“I want you to say the vowels in the alphabet and watch your face.”
“A … E … I … O … U.”
“Did you see your mouth close at any time?” she asked.
“No.”
This must have meant I’d closed my mouth when singing.
“Now, do it again.”
When I was about to begin, Jett put two fingers into my mouth and forced me to say the letters.
“See and feel the difference? Your mouth needs to be opened about half an inch more. Try it again, with your fingers in your mouth. I want you to focus on how it makes your tongue and throat work differently.”
She had me do it five times. I finally noticed that she was right.
“Again, without the fingers,” she ordered.
It felt unnatural.
“Now, sing it.”
Jett had me do it again and again until it didn’t feel as awkward.
“Sing the first two verses of Silver Bells while you focus on keeping your mouth open.”
After I’d done that ten times, she stopped me and took me into the studio again. She had me sing the song.
“Play back the first few bars of the first one and then do the same for the second,” she directed the man behind the glass.
I listened to them both, and the second did sound better.
“Your sound resonates better and is louder. If you sang much, you would find that by doing it this way, there’s less strain on your voice when singing louder. The way you were doing it, you unconsciously tense up, and it affects your throat, jaw, and neck muscles,” Jett explained.
“Okay,” was my one-word response.
“We’re only halfway there. I think you can have a good singing voice if we work on your tone. The tonal quality of your singing voice depends on two important places within your body. The first place is where the tone is produced, and the second is where the tone resonates,” Jett said.
She grabbed my hand and put my fingers on my throat above my Adam’s apple.
“Swallow.”
I did and felt my throat move.
“Notice how the notch above your Adam’s apple moved upwards when you swallowed?”
I swallowed again and noticed that she was right.
“Now, sing.”
I sang the beginning of Silver Bells. I felt my throat do the same thing.
“It did it again, didn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s your larynx moving upwards. It can disrupt the tone of your singing voice. To fix that, we are going to do some exercises.”
The first one was to say the phrase, ‘Sally sells seashells by the seashore.’ Jett had me repeat it until I could speak it quickly, correctly, and with no breaks in my voice. She explained that by doing that tongue twister, it would also help with enunciation while giving me a better-balanced tone.
The next exercise was to sing scales. The reason I sounded better in my lower range was that my larynx didn’t go up until I tried to sing higher notes. Jett said I had to imagine it as an elevator being lifted by a counterweight attached to a pulley. As the weight went down, the elevator would rise. As I sang higher notes, I needed to imagine the weight, or my larynx, moving downward. That’s much easier explained than done. This was something I would need to work on.
As I said, the high range was my biggest weakness. Jett addressed that next.
“You notice that your voice is sometimes breaking when you sing the higher notes?” she asked.
I nodded my agreement.
“That’s because as the notes get higher, so does the tension in your throat. You eventually reach a point when your vocal cords can no longer take the tightness, and that’s when your voice breaks. I’m going to show you tricks to teach your voice how to stay relaxed when singing those notes,” Jett explained.
She showed me where the digastric muscle was located right under my chin. It caused my vocal cords to tense up when I sang high notes. It was another case where it tensed up naturally, and I would have to learn how to keep it relaxed when I sang. She gave me exercises that I would have to do daily for that to happen.
Jett promised that once I learned this, I would be able to sing the higher range as comfortably as I did the lower one.
