Delaney Simplified Singing Voice™ Training

A woman I know in town gave me an CD of her singing.  She sings jazz and I really was impressed with the fact that she sounded like herself and I could as well understand all the words which is pretty rare nowadays; and the power is in the word and the sound combined.  And  the musicians who backed her up were great!

I was aware, though, that she was limited in her range and her ability to put any power, or what my teacher called ‘meat’, into her voice.  The next time I spoke with her, I asked her how she had learned to sing and she told me of a women who she studied with.  And then she showed me an exercise that this woman had taught her that is suppose to exercise the respiratory diaphragm.  It involved a quick panting while engaging the belly muscles.  And in doing this, she was involving her throat (read ‘vocal chords’) and it was under allot of tension. And then it made sense why she had limited range and limited power.

In a way, this approach to singing is keeping her from using her full instrument, from my point of view.  The way I was taught, you never involve the throat or vocal chords; everything for us starts at the front of the mouth near the teeth.  I mean, when I talk I don’t involve my throat; there is something that happening there, yes, but I am not consciously involving it.  And yet she was consciously involving it with her exercise.

And I see this all the time.  I have spent the last 35 plus years listening to how people talk and how they sing and so I have a very keen sense of what is happening with people. This is why I could say to her that I appreciate the fact that she sounds like herself, even though there is an entire aspect of her instrument that she has not found yet.

What would I tell her…

I haven’t gone her yet because she is confident and loves what she is doing and I have to be careful not to meddle in her process.  She didn’t come to me for help after all.   But over time, I might be able to say something if a ‘window opens,’ if you know what I mean.  She has the basic principle, yes, but it is not refined enough to get her to the next level of vocal production, where she can increase her power and resonance.