How to Give Voice Lessons

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is David Kingery, and I am a professional vocal coach here in Miami, Florida. In this clip, I'm going to talk a little bit about how I give voice lessons. First of all, I have a degree in voice, and I've been studying singing for over 18 years. Also, I understand the anatomy of the body and how the muscles work to help produce singing. That's very essential. Also, I understand lots of different styles of music and different exercises to help strengthen the voice. I think of singing as a sport. So being strong and understanding the anatomy and using all different types of muscles in the singing process is very essential in...to giving lessons. And I try to rub that off on my students so they understanding singing as much as I do. I'm also an accomplished singer and have much experience singing in lots of different venues, and have the confidence to be able to give a good performance. That's also very essential. So let me demonstrate with a student what a typical lesson could be like. First of all, we're going to have him have good posture. So Paul, if you would stand tall, put your hands over your head, stand on your tiptoes, bring your arms down and your heels down and feel that tallness. Go ahead and bring your arms down, and just feel that tallness. Your spine is completely straight and your shoulders are a little back. Very nice. Now, another step in becoming a good singer in the lesson is breathing. Take a nice, deep breath for me. And now let it out. When you breathe in, you want to open your mouth, breathe through your mouth and your nose. And we don't really need to hear anything, so it's almost like a yawn. Give me a nice, good yawn, please. Yes, now let that out. You feel how much more air you got with that second breath rather than just breathing through your nose or just your mouth, that yawn really let you take in a lot amount of air in a short amount of time. Good. And then we go through some vocal exercises. Also, for the singing lessons, you want to have some sort of prepared music in something that you're going to work on. That's very important. So I teach posture, I teach breathing, I warm up with good exercises, and then we work on some material and help the singer become a better singer. Once again, this has been David Kingery, and thanks for watching."