The Choir Room Podcast
This podcast exists to promote and encourage two long-time traditions in our society that seem to be dwindling…The Choir and Corporate Singing. We hope to revive the excitement and joy experienced with singing in a choir, as well as inform and educate the listener on all things singing, and all things choir related.
A weekly podcast featuring discussion and interviews with choir directors, choir members, and other guests representing church choirs, college and university choirs, community choirs, show and theatre choirs, composer of choir music, and other.
Segments include tips and instruction from skilled and professional disciplines within the choir community covering topics such as choir culture and community, choir directing, vocal training, ear training, sight reading, and more. A monthly virtual live audience episode allows the listener to engage with hosts and guests during instructional and Q&A segments via the live recording, chat, email, on various social media platforms.
A production of Metromusic & Arts, Inc.
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The Choir Room Podcast
Proper Hydration, Choir in this Generation, and Vocal Training 101: Dr. Catherine Hall, Coach Tara Simon, and the hosts mix it up with a LIVE Virtual Audience. Training the Voice, Navigating the Decline of Choir Culture, and a Dive Into Vocal Exercises.
Ever wonder why hydration is crucial for both your health and singing ability? Or why choir participation among teens is trending downward? Tune in as we, your hosts, along with Dr. Cathering Hall, and vocal coach and YouTube sensation Tara Simon, get to the root of these issues. We'll puncture the myth of modern hydration habits and how they affect not only our daily health but our vocal prowess as well. We also promise to shed light on a revolutionary healing approach from and former incarcerated doctor in Iran that emphasizes our bodies' basic need for water, more than anything else.
Do you think the culture of choir still resonates with the younger generations? Mietta, along with Greg, Dorian, and Coleman, will explore this week's CRQ and share our unique insights. Tara Simon, the vocal virtuoso, joins us once again to share her experiences, insights, tip, and tecniques. As we navigate these waters, we will also discuss the gospel choir scene in colleges and the spiritual undertones within it.
In our final segment, we will hear about the importance of vocal exercises and pitch training for beginners from Tara Simon herself. She will walk us through some fascinating exercises like Z-Zaw Z that she uses with her new students. We'll discover the importance of lip trills, and the different teaching approaches for male and female vocals. If you have a passion for singing, this episode has invaluable insights that you wouldn't want to miss. So, join us, let's quench our thirst for knowledge, let's sing, and let's dive deep into the harmony of life, together.
Perpetuating and Promoting the Christian and Positive Idea Through the Medium of Music and Other Arts.
Welcome to the choir room, season 1, episode 26 of the Choir Room Podcast. Welcome to the choir room. I'm Greg Tomas, your host, and I'll soon be joined by my co-host, dorian Johnson. Welcome to the choir room, be it a Stanso Pharrar and who we like to call the 4th Wheel, coleman Smart.
Speaker 1:This podcast exists to promote and encourage to long-time traditions in our society that seem to be dwindling away, and that is choir and corporate singing.
Speaker 1:We hope to revive the excitement and joy experienced with singing in a choir, as well as inform and educate the listener on all things singing and all things choir related. So if you love singing and you love choir, we encourage you to subscribe to this podcast. Anywhere you get your podcast downloads, you can also subscribe by sending the word subscribe in the subject field of an email to the choir room at metro music dash arts dot com, and when you subscribe, be sure to give us a five star review, as your review helps us keep this podcast alive and share it with a friend. And now you can also engage with us on the choir room podcast Facebook page. Our guest contributor today is vocal coach and YouTube sensation Tara Simon of Tara Simon Studios. Have you ever stopped to think about how important water is to your diet and to your overall health, and how it affects your singing ability. Well, our dear friend Catherine Hall is back with us again with the importance of hydration and some other tips that will help bring longevity to your singing.
Speaker 4:Jesus often spoke about water. He was speaking to people who lived in the desert climate and of course there was a vital importance of water when he said I am the water of life. Just as you can't live without physical water, without me, the spiritual water, the spirit, you may as well be dead. Our bodies are 75% water and our brains are actually 85% water. We are essentially water people and we are chronically dehydrated. The water is not just there as a passive solute that allows the various compounds to circulate water. It has very important functions of its own, since every single cell in our bodies needs water to function. The body has very active and sophisticated systems to ensure that every cell of every organ and muscle and vessel receives the water it needs, along with the nutrients it carries. And if we are not taking enough water in, then these systems begin to prioritize and triage. Water is reduced to areas of less importance in favor of the most important organs, like the brain. We are born with a clear understanding of our need for water. Babies actually cry because sometimes they need a liquid or water. In my field there is some evidence that the morning sickness of a woman who is pregnant it may indicate dehydration of the mother and baby.
Speaker 4:Unfortunately, modern life quickly starts to make us ignore our bodies. Many cries for water and the strong thirst sensation we had as children slowly fades, we actually suppress it. Not now. It's too inconvenient if you will Too heavy to carry and then I'll need a bathroom. I just can't drink that water. You all have been there, I'm sure. Finally, we're left with just one final ultimatum from the water department a dry mouth. If we get to that point, it actually means we have ignored all else, and things are really very serious. Certain necessary processes are already being slowed. If this happened just once, we could quickly recover. This is the pattern almost every day of our lives, and we wonder why we begin to have chronic pains and problems.
Speaker 1:You may mention of a doctor in Iran and that he used water as a treatment. Can you tell us a little bit?
Speaker 4:about that. There was a doctor in Iran who was put in jail and they didn't have a lot of medical care in the jail, in the prison. And so all the prisoners went to the doctor and said I'm really, really sick, I'm really sick, can you do something for me? And he had nothing, no medications, nothing. So what he did is he started using water as medication. How so? So if someone had an ulcer, they may not drink during mealtimes, but they would drink after mealtimes. Okay, if someone had a kidney problem, he would have them sip water all through the day and all through the night, but never more than a cup at a time. And what he found was that people were actually getting better. And in fact, he was brought to the authorities in the prison and they said you've been doing good work, we're going to let you go. And he said actually, I'm in the middle of a study. Do you mind if I stay for another month, because I'm healing people and I'm actually wanting to see how far I can go with the healing? And so they allowed him to stay and he got out of there and, with his traditional medical training, he turned and wrote a book called You're Not Sick, you're Thirsty. Wow, that's interesting, and that has been a very, very important book with my patients and me through the years.
Speaker 4:I know that dehydration can be very, very serious because we don't even know we're dehydrated, as I just said, and dehydration is associated with many indicators, including things like rheumatoid arthritis, even back pain, heart pain, headaches, colitis and, of course, constipation. These are actual signals, and the medications we receive for these pains just dull the signal. They don't fix the problem. I use the analogy with my patients a lot that you're driving along in your beautiful car and you see the signal light, a little light go on in the dashboard, and so you get a little hammer and you hit it and it goes out and you think, oh great, everything's fine. What you need to do is stop, look under the hood and see what's really going on, and that's what I like to do for different conditions. Why is a patient not feeling well? What is happening under the surface? The root cause of the problem is what I look at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's much like all of life. We can spend too much time looking at the symptoms and never dealing with the cause of the symptom, the root issue. And obviously dehydration can have a negative impact on our entire body, and that obviously includes impacting our ability to sing, or even speak, for that matter. So hydration is critical.
Speaker 4:I could tell you many stories of patients who have heated what I've told them and had enough water which is half your body weight in ounces a day spread throughout the day on a consistent basis.
Speaker 4:And even sometimes I will tell them to put a little bit of sea salt in there, which has about 87 to 89 minerals, and it actually helps open up the cell and get the water into the cell so the cell can do its thing. When the cell is working and every cell works like a manufacturing plant it heats up and so water is part of what that cell needs. And sometimes, if the water is not mineralized enough, it actually just stays on the outside of the cell and it doesn't go in and so it almost squishes the cell and makes you dehydrated. If you go to the Caribbean, you'll see that their water has salt in it. Whenever you buy water it's mostly has just a tad of it. Now I'm not saying to use table salt, because that raises blood pressure, but just a tad. A little bit of salt in a liter of water maybe a half an eighth of a teaspoon in a liter of water every day will help really get that water into the cell.
Speaker 1:So then, what should the average choir room person or the average singer be doing to remedy this deprivation of water to the cells?
Speaker 4:So what do we do about it? Where does this go? When I'm talking to the people who are listening right now, the choir room. We've all been in a rehearsal where you're coughing or your throat is dry or, worse, where you have to sing a solo and you're not quite ready because you've been eating salted fries or whatever the night before, the day before, and you're quite dehydrated on top of it. So drinking water on a regular basis actually smooths over the vocal cords and actually gives you a much more of a fighting chance.
Speaker 4:Sometimes the body actually wants to lubricate the vocal cords with mucus, so because it needs some sort of liquid to work properly, and that's the body's response to try to fix the problem which causes mucus in the throat, which is as a singer. We all know that that is not what you want. So, basically, water again half your body weight announces throughout the day, and not just getting home from work and thinking, okay, I'll drink a liter of water. Now it has to be all through the day and over time you will get used to drinking that much water. Your body will, instead of running to the bathroom all the time, you will actually get used to being hydrated and that frequency of going to the bathroom will decrease. So again, the Lord has built the body in a certain way and we need it.
Speaker 4:Again he made it really clear. He talked about water, the water of life, and again because the people were in the desert and so he was trying to drive home the whole idea of water of life. But I know he also would say drinking water for our bodies is how it was made, meant to be. So I encourage you, as singers and just as people, to really elongate your health by drinking the most water you can. And if you want to live a productive life and sing long into your 70s and possibly 80s, then there we go Drink water, Drink water.
Speaker 1:Dorian has our hymn of the week.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, greg. Over the last several hymns of the week we've been looking at our appropriate and right response to all that God has done for us in Christ, and some of those past hymns of the week have called on us to love God, to love Christ more. We've looked at trust as well, and this week's hymn of the week adds obedience to trust. This week's hymn of the week is Trust and Obey. In his 1906 book the Story of the Gospel Hymns, ira Sankey, who was an American gospel singer and composer who partnered with DL Moody on revival campaigns in the United States and in Britain, wrote this about the origin of this hymn. He says Mr Moody was conducting a series of meetings in Brockston, massachusetts, presumably in 1886, this is written, and I had the pleasure of singing for him there. One night a young man rose in a testimony meeting and said I'm not quite sure, but I'm going to trust and I'm going to obey. I just jotted that sentence down and sent it with the little story to the Reverend John Samus, a Presbyterian minister. He wrote the hymn and the tune was born.
Speaker 3:The hymn was published in 1887 and has Proverbs 1620, which says Whoever gives thought to the word will discover good and blessed is he who trusts in the Lord. Chorus goes this way Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. And each verse then points to the Christians need to align our lives with the word of God and by allowing more and more of our lives to be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. First, on five, two and three says by this we know that we love the children of God. When we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome. Verse one says when we walk with the Lord in the light of his word, what a glory he sheds on our way. While we do his goodwill, he abides with us still and with all who will trust and obey.
Speaker 3:In Exodus 19, five, we read Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine. Second verse says Not a burden we bear, not a sorrow we share, but our toil he doth richly repay. Not a grief or a loss, not a frown or cross, but is blessed if we trust and obey Romans 12, one and two. Paul, and writing to the Roman believer, says I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that, by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. The third verse says this but we never can prove the delights of his love until all, on the altar, we lay for the favor he shows, for the joy he boosts. Those are for them who will trust and obey. And then we hear the words of our Savior in Matthew 28,.
Speaker 3:In the Great Commission, we read verses 19 and 20,. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. And the final verse not only points us to glory, but also calls us to live life surrendered to the Lord. It says Then, in fellowship, sweet, we will sit at his feet or walk by his side in the way. What he says we will do. Where he sends we will go, never fear, only trust and obey. And how much we need to hear that word, that refrained today to trust and obey our Savior. In such uncertain times it can feel as if the world is spinning out of control and in true chaos. But we know that he ultimately is in control of all things and as we live out our Christian lives, as we seek to glorify him, we can do no better but to trust and obey our faithful God.
Speaker 1:Thanks, dorian. A classic hymn presented in that classic Dorian fashion, as we do each week. Crq is an acronym for choir room questions and Mieta always gets those and submits them to us and we discuss them a little bit, and today is no different Mieta with our CRQ.
Speaker 4:Welcome to the choir room.
Speaker 5:Thanks, greg. Well, here we are tonight with our CRQ. Now, this CRQ is more of a statement than a question, and so this will require a little classroom participation, if you will. And so here goes. A lot of people from our generation grew up in church, in church choir, and for those who actually went to college, we ended up joining choir, college choir, college choirs, I'm sorry and music programs. This generation, however, doesn't seem to be interested in that as much. Now, that's interesting. That is interesting.
Speaker 5:I did both church choir and I did school choir as well. And I must admit before I allow the gentlemen to chime in I must admit, when I went to high school in particular, I had no interest in doing choir. In high school. I did enough church choir so that was enough for me, it was more than enough for me, and that took all week of every month. So going to school and singing in school choir was really not my thing. But I will say I am the better for it, because I was sitting in a study hall class, which meant I wasn't doing anything really, it was just a study hall period and the concert choir teacher at that time I don't know how she found out, but she somehow was in the attendance office and saw my name and some paperwork and my last name in particular piqued her interest Because my last name was Stancil. Now there were some other Stancils that had gone to that particular high school there were a few of them.
Speaker 5:That's what I'm getting there A few of them had gone there and she realized there was another one in the building. I was the last generation. No, I'm sorry, she was gone by the time my daughter went there, but I was the last generation that was interested, I should say, in singing. She found me. She came to the classroom that I was in and pulled me out of the classroom and said you don't belong in here, you belong with me.
Speaker 5:I ended up for the next four years of high school a part of the choir and that's where I met Greg. In fact, on a more personal level, met Gregory Thomas. I enjoyed it. I am aware I also sang for the William Patterson Gospel Choir for a while and there were a lot of young people. That was a part of that and that was their life the whole time that they were in college. We traveled and had some great times experiencing college choirs from all over the country, but I am recognizing now that you don't hear about that as much anymore.
Speaker 5:Coleman may have a better perspective on the college choirs and young people being a part of that, more so than I would. But I have to agree with this statement in particular you do not find. Unfortunately, you do not find, and it was such great community in doing that. Being a part of that, it really enriched your lives more than you could have ever imagined. So prayerfully. Hopefully, through a medium such as this, this podcast will get people back to engaging in that again, because it is so, especially in our colleges. With all of the things that are happening around us, that's a safe place Most times. That's a safe place for our young people to go and to share and to pray and to worship, because that does happen, believe it or not, in those college choirs. That does happen. So prayerfully, through this medium, as I said, that will change and people will start to get back to that.
Speaker 6:What say you. Well, I'll go first, since you made mention of me a second ago, because I do have some recent experience with this. I might have a unique experience because of the world I was living in in college. It was a Christian liberal arts university and so there are thriving choirs there. I understand that that's not necessarily the norm everywhere, but the musical tradition there is so strong and they've maintained their identity. All the different groups have maintained their identity.
Speaker 6:But, taking a step back from my collegiate experience, I want to challenge this statement and actually say I think the interest is still there.
Speaker 6:It just looks different in 2023 than it did before. A lot of younger people be that millennials, gen Z, whatever you're considering young some of them are still glad to be involved in more traditional looking choirs, but a lot nowadays we're seeing a lot of modern worship groups and churches utilizing a worship choir in their services. Again, it doesn't quite have the same sound or structure that it always did, but the aspect of having a choir, a group of people on stage leading people into the presence of the Lord and everything, is still very much alive. I know for the last 15, 20 years we saw a decline of it, but now we are seeing a rapid increase again, and there again there are places where churches or ministries or colleges or whatever have maintained the identity of more of a traditional choir. But what I'm making note of is organizations that we would say are extremely modern, the most cutting edge worship groups, that kind of thing. I put air quotes around that because sometimes we consider worship music a genre.
Speaker 6:That's another conversation for a different day.
Speaker 6:But in the most cutting edge worship music, the choir is there in almost everything you're finding nowadays. We've had these conversations on the podcast before, but if you want to look at groups like Maverick City and Elevation and Bethel and Gateway Church and Upper Room and People and Songs and that kind of thing I could just keep going on and on those are all very group heavy on the vocals nowadays. Belonging Co. They just put out a new album that's heavy on choir. So it's out there. It might just look a little different than some of us grew up with, and I think that's okay. I love to be able to still reach back and do some of the things that we know and love, but we also have to know that for an institution to survive, it has to adapt over time, and so, yes, it's possible to maintain the DNA and some of the things that we love and also move forward as well. So that's what I think we're seeing a lot of right now.
Speaker 3:So I will jump in and I will say that when I read this statement it was interesting, because one of the things I think we're seeing in society and some of it is even coming into the church is more of a desire for people to set their own parameters in some way. And so, as we think about just the rise of the individual more so than the group, we've definitely seen that that has been something that has increased over the last, I would say, generation. You definitely see that more in this generation than in past generations, and I would say even to what Coleman shared. I mean, those groups are much sort of. They're smaller groups with a specific sound, and so the idea of choir is that you are going to a group and this is typically gonna be a pretty large size group, and you're gonna have your, say, musical taste challenged. Oftentimes You're gonna have things. You're gonna sing songs that you don't necessarily like to sound of or wonder where the sound came from, and you're gonna sing some that are kind of in the wheelhouse.
Speaker 3:But I do think that there is something to be said Just about something that we're seeing going on in society as well.
Speaker 3:I often will hearken back to the fact that folks are still streaming church and that is how they see church. They don't see church as something where you actually go and interact with other people, and so I think in some ways we're kind of seeing that as well and develop even more so in this generation. So I have a different take on it than Coleman, which isn't unusual, but I definitely can understand that, the context that he's talking about and how it looks different. But I also think that there's an element there where we see some of what we see going on in the wider society. I mean, think about the fact that a lot of young people now find it more enjoyable to play sports on video games than to go outside and actually play sports. I mean, you see that in other areas as well, and so it's just something that we have to be aware of and it's something that we just have to seek to counter if we are to keep the not only the idea but the actual, the reality of the choir intact in our churches.
Speaker 1:I think I say this in every podcast. When we speak about choir, we're generally speaking from a church choir perspective and because that's where we are.
Speaker 1:That's where we've come from, but I want to remind the listening audience that there are college choirs, universities and even community choirs. They've all been affected to some extent by the events of the past three years or so Now. Personally, I didn't do choir in college either. I did it in high school and those were some of my best years. But, as Miyaeta stated, or made reference to community, I remembered the college choir coming into our community and would frequent churches from time to time as well.
Speaker 1:It was often an opportunity for the colleges and universities to reach out to the community and try to gain interest in their schools from students in that community, and some of these choirs were even touring choirs from different states. Now, sometimes this was about awareness for the school or publicity, and other times it was fundraising, and sometimes it was both. Now, music being the universal language that it is, it was a great appeal to get people into the music programs, and then, of course, you can't just go to school for music. You had to take all of the other courses as well. So it wasn't an awareness campaign, a fundraising campaign, and a lot of the gospel choirs that did go out were not always comprised of Christian singers and musicians all students, but not necessarily Christians. So I want to be clear about that.
Speaker 1:Now some will argue that this was the school's opportunity to expose students to Christianity and ultimately make converts. I don't believe that that was the school's purpose, but I'll leave that where that is and let you think about that yourself Now. Suffice it to say we probably aren't seen as many students engaged in choir today. There is an increased interest in music technology and therefore a lot more singing and a lot more playing. Now we can get into the semantics of what you consider playing and what you consider music, programming or sequencing two different things. So I would agree that this generation probably doesn't have as much interest in choir as generations before, but I think the interest in music overall will be a little higher than it's ever been with the advent of this technology.
Speaker 5:You know, greg, I will say this, I'll tag on and then I'll be done with it, talking about the administration and those people that were in charge of those choirs. Interesting enough, when I was a part of the college choir in particular, it was interesting because the person who was in charge of that choir we talk about the spirituality of the person who was in charge of that choir oddly enough they were the minister of music at the church. They didn't even go to the college at all. I don't even know how he got the job. I don't know how he got the job, but he got the job and I was glad that he had the job, quite frankly, because it just kind of carried over from even our churches. It helped us in that. Now I don't know what that looks like down. Do you still have that same type of presence in gospel choirs, in particular in our colleges? But this particular leader, he was a man of God, right.
Speaker 5:And so he functioned in his church. He was very faithful in his church, so he understood what was needed in terms of the spirituality part of it. He understood what was needed if we were going to convey this message, this gospel message, through song.
Speaker 1:So that was a plus for us, but I am aware that that is not the case in every situation and so, yeah, I'm aware of that and a lot of times these schools or colleges would contract these musicians or choir directors so that they didn't have to deal with having one, that choir director, on staff and then two having to deal with the backlash that comes with having a minister or a reverend leading a gospel choir in a non-Christian institution. Now, I know Dorian and Coleman have more to say and we would, on a normal occasion, continue in this conversation, but we're gonna discipline ourselves tonight because we have guests. She's been waiting in the wings along with our live audience and we are so grateful to have my dear friend with us again. Vocal coach Tara Simon. Welcome to the choir room. Let's hear it for her. Tara, thanks for joining us again. How you doing.
Speaker 7:I'm good. How are you? It's good to see you.
Speaker 1:Well, you've had a pretty cool and busy summer.
Speaker 7:I did have a pretty cool summer, best summer ever, to be honest. Take me back.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm gonna point our listening audience to episode 15, when you were with us last, and so, for our listening audience, if you wanna know more about Tara and hear her heart, you can hear it there in episode 15. Yes, and this episode we're gonna get a little more technical and get into your methodology and your best practices for coaching, and some of our listening audience has already sent in their questions, and so we'll get into that and then have you whip them in the shape a little bit later. Now, these are somewhat rapid fire questions. I asked Catherine Hall the same questions earlier and so there's no right or wrong answer. We just wanna know what the coach thinks and why. Here we go For the coach pasta or chicken, chicken Running or weightlifting.
Speaker 7:Weightlifting.
Speaker 1:Summer or winter?
Speaker 7:Summer.
Speaker 1:Soup or salad. Salad. Coffee or milk Coffee, but I don't really drink either. Okay Juice or soda Juice. Don't drink either. Last question Sparkling water or flat water Sparkling Cool. So number four you chose coffee over milk, but you really don't drink either of them. I don't drink either, but I'll say coffee. So the follow-up question is why?
Speaker 7:I'm wired as it is and you don't want to see me on coffee. It looks like heart palpitations. You know I don't need it. I just don't need it.
Speaker 1:So it's not a health thing, it's just because you're wired.
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't have. It doesn't affect your voice at all. Well, I will say this I do drink tea.
Speaker 7:Angel, yes, in the comments I will say this If I there's a funny thing that happens to me, because I'm so wired that when I drink coffee there's this like sweet spot after probably like an hour after drinking coffee, where, if I want to do really fast riffs and runs, that is the moment. Like everything, angel's, like what? Yeah, everything is quicker, like my hummingbird's wings. I'm like, yeah, like it just goes really really fast. So anytime I might want to practice like speed riffs and runs, because my vibrato is quicker too, because everything's quicker, I will drink a little coffee, actually.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, interesting, all right, all right.
Speaker 7:So the juice or soda you say I'm a water girl, like I, just wasn't raised like that. We didn't get juice or soda. We got, like you know, a heathenistic accoutrement that we apparently my mom got her food from an organic truck that came once a month, so we, like we had it rough as kids, you know.
Speaker 7:But on the flip side it was good, because I we just don't. I don't have that in my house now. We have orange juice for Jaden. It's fresh squeezed and that's it. And he's, he likes that and that's. That's all he knows.
Speaker 1:Okay. So if you're a water girl, you like sparkly. Are you drinking sparkly now?
Speaker 7:I don't drink it Like it's. It's like if I'm out to dinner or if I'm enjoying something. Sparkling water with lemon or lime is like my go to, but flat water is what I drink and as a singer you're not trying to think burp mid song, so I do drink flat boring water. I'll just up with like lemon or something, but this is just straight up flat water right now and I try to get through a lot for today.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. Well, you answered the next question already and that was a follow up. Why? And it's pretty clear that the bubbles will make you burp and there's really no way to control that mid song.
Speaker 7:No, there's not and that's not good. And and also there's um there's some people where it can even incite acid reflux or like indigestion or heartburn, even, um, when drinking sparkling water. Because sometimes, depending on the kind you buy, they they say natural flavoring but it's not natural at all and the the chemicals in it um can do a number on your digestion and digestion Digestive track. So, yeah, gotta have the booty.
Speaker 1:So real quick how many students have you seen today?
Speaker 7:You know, I do my best not to coach as much anymore, Like I have coaches that I've trained, that are like me, with a different face, that do that. However, today, um, I have some celebrity clients and they I try to put them all back to back in one day. So I've done them all today. So I've, I've I've had like a lot of coaching time and it's, it's huge, it's. It's usually for me I like to just be in that mode, that like coaching mode. So this is nice that it's tonight and just do, do, do, do, do, like get it done because it's a total. What I, what else I do, is a totally different mode, like content creation, management systems, operations, all those crazy business owner things. That has nothing to do with vocal coaching. Most of my time, um, it's, it's a different brain switch.
Speaker 7:So, I like to just do one, one brain thing at a time and then move on to the next.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the behind the scene stuff. Otherwise the business just doesn't flow. Somebody's going to do it, yeah.
Speaker 7:The lessons are like the home plate part of it.
Speaker 1:There's a whole other round of bases to keep it going, so yeah, Good, well, let's get to some of the other questions that were sent in. The first question here is what type of vocal exercise would you recommend for the beginner vocalist?
Speaker 7:So good. Well, first of all, I will say this I'm doing a free three day workshop this week. Actually it's kind of divine timing, but, um, wednesday, Thursday, friday of this week, I'm doing a free one hour workshop each day, just dedicated to pitch and helping people learn how to sing on pitch. So it's 12 PM to 1 PM Eastern standard time. Um, I will, I don't know. I'll send Greg, I'll text you a link that you can like then put in the chat or something.
Speaker 7:All you guys need to do is click on the link to register. Like I said, it's completely free, there's no strings attached. I don't rule like that. So, if you just, I did a poll at one point and I was like, hey, like people of my subscribership, what's the biggest vocal pain point that you have? And a lot of people said different things but, like the general average consensus was pitch and not and these are singing people, like people that loved saying and these people said, well, I just it's not that I necessarily can't sing on pitch, I just texted you.
Speaker 7:But I don't always know, like, if I'm in the center of the pitch, because there are gradients of being, even on pitch right, it's like there's acceptable, there's right in the center, like locked and loaded, and then there's like acceptable right beneath it, and then there's just sharp and flat, you know, and then there's rules, so there's there's gradients, like sunset, of color, you know, of pitch, and so that's something that I'm passionate about because, you know, to me, pitch is one of the three main vocal components of actual singability. So, like, what defines someone who can sing? To me, pitch is one right Rhythm, being able to sing on key and on the tempo of a melodic line. There there's like the two basic rudimentary foundations of being able to sing. And the third and this this can be debated, but the first two you cannot. I'll fight you on it. The third to me is vibrato, because that separates someone who sounds like they can sing versus someone who speaks things like happy birthday to you versus happy birthday to you. It's like a totally different ball game, and that's because of vibrato being the third one. So all that to say, if you're someone who struggles with pitch, I'll save that for the workshop and I'll give you something else here for the people who are on here and not there and I.
Speaker 7:One of my discovery vocal exercises I do with a student who's new is an exercise called Z-Zaw Z, and I like it for a couple of different reasons. It goes through a fifth of range. So we are, we go through like a one to five, back down to a one, and you go from a closed mouth out to an open mouth out and back down to the close again. So it goes Z-Zaw Z, and then we modulate up, we discover where they fall apart, going upwards, and then we modulate back down and we discover where they fall apart, going back down and again the reason I like it is for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 7:One it's yes, you're skipping range, so you're testing their ear to see if they can skip instead of step. But two, you're going from a closed mouth out to an open. So I'm checking visually and sonically for temporal mandibular jaw dysfunction, tmj, because if you're dropping and you're doing this Zaw, or if there's a click, or if there's like a wince of pain, then I'm going to say, okay, we need to address that first, because that can not be necessarily fixed by vocal lessons, but we can use it actually as a tool to say, hey, that click that you're feeling need to go past that, like that's your safe spot. No, like you're dropping all the way or enough. So I'm testing for that and I'm also I'm testing for their range to see how far they can go down, as well as their pitch accuracy from going from that one to five to the one.
Speaker 7:So I love Zee Zaw. Zee, it's actually in quite a few free tutorials that I have on my YouTube channel. So if you go to Terra Simon Studios and you and you look up like Terra Simon YouTube tutorial for beginners, you're going to see like a whole playlist of videos there with exercises in each video, and Zee Zaw Zee is definitely in there, as well as a few more. I also love lip trails I think there was a question about lip trails, actually, so but Zee Zaw Zee is like one of my go-to discoveries, and we use it like in every first lesson.
Speaker 1:So the Zee Zaw Zee exercise for that beginner vocalist, when they are unable to make the break transition smoothly, whether that's head to chest or what have you, when they're unable to make the break, once they reach that point, do you start bringing them back down a few keys or do you start to focus in zeroing in on that breaking point and giving them different exercises to focus on that transition?
Speaker 7:Yeah, so there's two scenarios on the way up right.
Speaker 4:Someone's either.
Speaker 7:well, I'll give you my scenario. I'm a natural belter and I learned to mix later in life because I didn't have a teacher who could teach me in a way that I can understand, hence why I'm a coach now. It's a little annoying, but you end up becoming what you didn't get. So when I go up, I will push the belts until the cows come home, because I'm not comfortable mixing. I had to learn that later, right, right.
Speaker 7:I'm going to go home because they've heard me saying. They're like oh yeah, but you're either going to push that belt and then you're going to totally crash and burn I'm going to take you to failure or you're a natural mixer, which means you start to leave the chest register earlier than you really need to, you go into mix and then all of a sudden you're in head voice and you break up in the head voice.
Speaker 7:You're going to break either way. The question is do you end up mixing, breaking into head voice, or do you end up mixing pushing the chest? You're obviously break if you break into chest because it's louder and more voluminous. But we're going to know, okay, if they're breaking in their head voice, they're a natural mixer, which means we need to train their belt because, most likely, if that's their comfort zone, they're pumping that muscle of their voice and leaving this one to atrophy, just like adversely.
Speaker 7:If someone's singing in chest all the time, like me, and they're not working on their mix, then that muscle is what's going to be atrophy, and I should spend more time working on that. So it tells us so much. When we discover the range and, yes, regardless of where and how they break, we do go down and we take them to failure on the way down too, because a lot of coaches focus on the upward only and while we do focus a lot on the upward because that's what most people end up singing and they have the most problems with the bottom is still very important for this reason, for this main reason If especially a female's voice is not stretched and extended on the low end, what happens when some of their mean choir teachers give them a song like that name from Yolanda Adams and they don't want to sing?
Speaker 3:it in the original key.
Speaker 7:Greg did that to me and they don't have any. I'm having trouble. I'm having trouble flashbacks.
Speaker 5:What happens if you don't have that?
Speaker 7:range and you cannot modulate lower because they can't hit the lower notes in the song. They're stuck having to just muddle and struggle through on those top ends. So you need a low end too, so that you have a little bit of breadth and a little bit of wiggle room as to what key you're actually going to sing it in yeah. Your choir teacher is nice enough for you to change the key.
Speaker 1:I think I did change the key. I at least moved it a half step, didn't I? You did not, and I didn't have.
Speaker 7:I just sang that song in the original key and I burst like five plushies. I was too embarrassed to ask. I was like I do not ask you to change. That was why I was young and dumb. I was prideful. I've learned from my wicked ways, Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, it served you well, it served you well. So, obviously that exercise can be done for male or female boys, absolutely, and if any of them were training a male voice, we would start lower by probably an octave.
Speaker 7:I usually like my sweet spot. Let's see, when I start with females, my sweet spot is F3. And when I'm starting with males, my sweet spot isI don't know what to say in octave. Actually, I'd say probably an A3. Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, it's ironic because my low register is all but disappeared. Really, yeah. I'm not even comfortable singing a low F at this point. I can do it, but then anything below that is just. And you used to, yeah, I used to, but my high register, ironically, is the same, in fact a little higher Greg can go into the last guy, so I don't know what that's about.
Speaker 1:Really, and it's got. I don't know, maybe it's the Pepsi. So anyway, let's go on to the next question. Are there any specific exercises that you would do with female vocals, that you wouldn't do with male vocals?
Speaker 7:Ooh, that is a good question and I thought about that. And it's not that I would do any exercise for a male, that I wouldn't do for a female, but the approach and the goal would be slightly different. And I can give you an example. So, men, they and okay, I'm not like a yes, I know vocal pedagogy, but in order for people to understand what I'm talking about, I'm not a like a fancy terminology girl, I'll say it, but then I'll explain it. And a lot of men, especially Classically trained men, they say like things like flagellette and falsetto and things I call it head voice okay, you're not singing in Chess Boys anywhere.
Speaker 7:You're singing up here, that's where you feel it. Just call it what it is. But for for these people, anybody that wants me to say that falsetto, if I'm training a guy and we're say doing let's even say Zee, zaw, zee, since we were on that topic my goal for him and where my goal would be for him and how he hits that goal as far as note phonation which is singing, by the way and placement of that note would be Different and I would probably go about it in a different way. So men tend, I would say on a nine out of ten ratio, to scoop up to nose. I don't know why it's a thing, but they like to ease their way up into it.
Speaker 7:So I have to pay more attention in a male's voice to have them hit the note from above, like like up and over, rather than underneath and up, and women don't do that. If anything, women overshoot it. I think I've taught two women in my entire life who scoop up like men, and they were really low altos, so they had like the same. So I'm looking for a different approach, I'm looking for the way they hit it, I'm looking for a richer tone and that they don't thin out as quickly, because that falsetto and a man does still have and we're talking there are exceptions to this because of tamper and tonality and stuff Vocal classification, but in general men tend to have, even in head voice, this deeper, richer kind of a thicker sound and quality to that transition than women do. Women really have to fight for that and and so I'm focusing on men maintaining that well then, instead of if it's a woman building that into her voice.
Speaker 1:Yes, make sense. Next question how helpful are lip trills? Some vocalists and coaches go right to vocal exercises that focus on the throat and skip lip trills. How helpful and how important are they?
Speaker 7:Okay. Well, I think that there's a misnomer about trills, and I call them vibratory exercises tongue and lip trills right, because whenever you're making a sound beyond a breath, you're using the same larynx in the same way that you would be if you were singing a song or a vowel exercise. Okay, so there is no lesser than if you're trilling. There is an. And also, though, because when you're trilling, it is a vibratory exercise, and so you are like, if you're flimmy, if you're congested, think of it is like Everything inside your throat doing that. It's gonna like vibrate the gunk off. And I say they're one of my favorites, they're my go-tos and they're my vocal health exercises when I'm sick. For the reason I just explained, I also think they're a really great training wheel exercise because your mouth is closed. You really can't hurt yourself doing them.
Speaker 7:So if you're someone who's new and you're on store as like, I don't know if I'm practicing right or how to practice right, lip trills and tongue trills are my absolute go-to's. For people like you, because your mouth is closed, it's not like you're not giving enough space. It's not like you're going too high or too low or you're cracking with a mouth and you're pushing too hard, you can't. Your mouth is closed. Only so much, you can, only push so hard before the trill stops.
Speaker 7:What I will say about them is that I use them in my life almost on a daily basis and I use them as my first go-to exercise. So yes, for range discovery and vocal capability discovery, in first lessons we do Z-z-1st, but we always teach trills and I always do trills for myself at the first of my exercise sequence, because they're a great warm-up, their vibratory that get the blood flowing, the best for me. And then I slowly segue into open mouth exercises that eventually get me into more like almost Plyometric vocal exercises that are more explosive, and then, you know, force the chest or force different ends of my range, but I usually always start with lip trills. I love them.
Speaker 1:I think that they are great exercises, especially for beginners. Some of them have problems with consistency. Yes, during the trills they break up and they're not able to to maintain the trill. Yeah, what?
Speaker 6:do you?
Speaker 1:suggest to your students when they find it difficult to maintain the trill Do they dip in lip balm? Do they Dip?
Speaker 4:in water.
Speaker 1:I mean yeah they do to keep the lips in condition for an effective and a proper lip trill.
Speaker 7:Yeah right, well, actually I'm glad you said that, because no to lip balm for women. You cannot have lip gloss, lipstick, nothing on your lips. Okay, it's just, it's gonna act like glue and you're gonna be stuck. I, I was training someone that was just coming off set from filming in LA two weeks ago and I was doing trying to do this show turn. She still had all that stuff on our lips and she was like I'm like what that stuff off and then you'll be fine, you know. So nothing on your lips.
Speaker 7:You do a quick lick, lick your lips, wet your lips, and then this is like kind of a failsafe. If you're having a problem Trilling, there are a couple reasons why. One, you're giving too much air and it's stopping, it's kind of like sputtering out. And the other would be you're giving out enough and you'll see that effect where sounds coming out and your lips are separating, but nothing happens. There's that close of a when it's exploding, goes really fast and stops us too much. That is too little.
Speaker 7:And If it's not the breath, if your lips are just still not trilling, take your two fingers, put them to your jawbone, raise it up an inch, like this, so we're kind of alleviating the loose skin not to say that we have loose skin, but like there's weight there, you know. So just one inch up and then try not to smile because that's also hard and then just trill. So you kind of push your fingers into like I wouldn't go higher than where you can feel your bottom teeth, that's too high. Just just to the bottom, where you feel your bottom teeth, and and it should be a nice slow, relaxed trill and that will fix the issue if you're having problems trilling. Great information If you're listening to this podcast, you know that once a month here in the choir room.
Speaker 1:We do invite a live virtual audience and we have such an audience with us today. I see a few hands raised and our first question is going to come from David. Question as church musicians.
Speaker 2:I'm not actively in a position right now, but even as a substitute, when I went in, if I was taking care of choir on a Sunday morning for a warm-up, typically that could be quite early in the day, and so I love your Zizazi exercise. I would do something like that, but I would allow them to to slide, just because in the morning our voices are so low To begin with and and it's a very challenging you know time of day for soloist or a choir. So let us know what your thoughts are. What's what would be best in that situation? I love that question.
Speaker 7:And something that I always loved when warming up choirs myself, because I did have the chance after leaving TSC to do some worship leading in choir, directing myself, and I really love not just training the voice and warming that up but also warming up the ear when we're. When we're talking about choir, we're trying to sing in one voice, right. So it's not just about our own personal voices but it's about the people around us too. So I love a hum on a sustain and then you direct the, the alto, the tenor is the bassist, the sopranos, to do like a harmonic triad. Or if there's four, then you can do the bass and sopranos matching, or maybe even do a seventh, be fancy and and have them hung. You can grow them, you can make them go softer or slower, stop, modulate up and do it again.
Speaker 7:I love the hums. You can have them do it on a trill. If you wanted to move to that arpeggiation doing ZZ-Z151, you can even make that into a trill without the vowels and then go back and do it on the vowels if you'd like. But I love the slidey nature and the vibratory exercises that you can modify any exercise to, especially for the ones in the morning. I just really am a fan.
Speaker 7:Though when you see we're talking originally about like a person's voice in the context of choir, like a singer's voice that's on here but when you talk about like a choir in and of itself, like as a whole, all of those voices being one, I wouldn't waste any time thinking of the individual's voice. I would think about, when I warm up a choir, how to warm up everyone's voice and their ears to hear and feel one another, and that's why I would not go to like one of my vocal exercises that I would do in a lesson for a student. I would go to that hum, I would go to different dynamics, I would popcorn note arpeggiation around, because I want them to warm up as a whole instead of just as a voice.
Speaker 1:Thanks, david, for your question. Tara, thanks for joining us this week here in the Choir Room. This week we'll continue with Tara and our virtual audience with some live demonstration. Coleman is going to take us to our thought of the week.
Speaker 6:Yeah, it's great to be with you guys tonight. Thank you so much, tara. That was so much fun. Enjoyed that, you know.
Speaker 6:I want to share a thought with you that kind of attacked me a little bit when I first heard it, so I don't know how easily it will sit with your spirit when you hear it at first. Maybe it'll have to be one of those things that simmers with you and then you'll get on board later if maybe you won't, but we'll see. It's about the concept of calling. I don't know about you, but I'm in a church culture and grew up in a church culture that I really emphasize the concept of calling, rightly. So you know, what do we believe? God is speaking or what do we believe that he has spoken to us about our lives and the direction of our life, or something that we need to do with our life, vocationally or not? But let me break from that for a second. Let's think about these questions. Have you ever gotten so carried away with something that you forgot the reason why you started it in the first place? Or have you ever been so inspired to do something just to lose the fire that you once had for it? Or have you ever gotten so zealous about one aspect of your passion or your job or other things that so that other things that you're responsible for in your life or job, they got neglected unintentionally. And I know I'm casting a really wide net in these questions because they all seem kind of unrelated. But it's about to make sense, because I feel like these situations all take place so much in the ministry world across the board, whether you're a vocational minister, a volunteer or something in between.
Speaker 6:So many people develop a romanticized vision of what they're called to. Some people get carried away with it, and I don't mean that in casual terms, I mean it carries them away from the path that they're walking on. It's like you feel called to something and suddenly that's the only thing that you're chasing. And now this is again not an indictment on calling. I believe in calling and I believe in pursuing what you believe God has called you to Absolutely. But have you ever thought about how Jesus didn't call his disciples to ministry, he called them to himself. Let me say that again. Jesus called his disciples to himself. He said follow me. And then he said and I will make you. But he said follow me, I will make you. After that so often we who step into roles of ministry and ministry leadership and platform ministry I am in the choir room platform ministry we sometimes forget that it's not our calling to chase the platform. It isn't our calling to seek the biggest stage that we can sing on. It isn't our calling to do so many of the things that we want to do sometimes. No, our calling is to Christ. Sure, we are commissioned and we are to serve the body of Christ with our gifts and we are to obey when God speaks to us.
Speaker 6:About coupling our lives with ministry or any other thing Lots of things can be ministry, but at the end of the day, we sometimes end up seeking the calling more than the caller, the one who calls. When we realize that we're called to Jesus first and not to our work for Him, we realize that those other things lack the ability to sustain and inspire and refresh and restore and reveal. Stephanie Gretzinger, who is a well-known speaker and worship leader. She says it like this that so many of us want the water, but Jesus is the water and the well. We all want the living water, but he's the only place that we can get it right. Those things that I'm talking about. They're not the reward. Nearness to Jesus is the reward. He has to be our complete satisfaction.
Speaker 6:So many of us, as soon as someone discovered that we could sing, we were thrown into the choir loft. So many of us who have certain talents, are thrown into ministry roles before we're able to realize that the crown put on our heads is too heavy to hold up without the structure of intimacy with Jesus built in to hold it gracefully. To paraphrase Stephanie Gretzinger again, again, I'm not saying that being launched into ministry at a young age is bad, because it's not Because I was. Many of you were.
Speaker 6:But what is bad is, when we do that without discipling people, that there's more to it than just the platform, that there's more to it than just the gift and the call that our platforms require intimacy with he who favored us enough to give us a platform. So what's the call to action? What are we taking away from this? What are we supposed to leave with? A renewed desire for intimacy with Jesus Christ. Right, since I'm talking to choir folks and singers, I'll say it like this A renewed desire for intimacy with the giver and the sustainer of our song. So God bless you guys. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1:And remember, if ever we put the messenger before the message, we have failed to present an unblemished gospel. I'm Greg Thomas and I'll see you guys next time on the Choir Room.
