Special Effects to find Head Register

Weekly Teaching Tip – Apr. 4, 2016
by Dominika Plonka

1) First excercise that I use to find head voice of your student is usually “oo” (u) vowel. I add to this vowel a simple emotion of “wow”. I ask student to say “wow” (like he would react at invitation for a great birthday party), and then- keep the emotion and say “woow” with “oo” (u) instead od “o”. This excercice goes from high voice to low one. So I continue work asking the student to sing octave down scale with the same feeling.

2) but more difficult is to go from low to high voice.
If my student already knows that ” there is life over chest” (Agata Pisko maybe will tell you the story about this funny qoute…) – we can try to go from chest to head.

There is one emotion, feeling, that helps me to find the small and easy place on top notes.
This feeling is SURPRISE. If you are surprised, e.g. hearing a good news that you don’t believe yet, you ask: reallyyyy?
I use often the french word: “oui”: ouiiiiii? If you say it with surprise, you will not yell, you will start it low and go high very easily finding small and nice ” place” in your head register.

So when you teach your student to say a word the way like he was surprised – he will be able to sing an octave up scale.
One remark: at first it’s better to use in your language a word with “ee” (i) or “oo” (u) vowel to help
your student find head register. Later you can try more difficult ones.

Have fun with “surprising” your students! 😉
Dominika Płonka