Singing and posture–see Categories, About, Launch 4-2014

http://themodernvocalist.punbb-hosting.com/viewtopic.php?id=6360

“So my question is, how much and how quickly can the low range be extended? And does doing so compromise the high range? It certainly seems like working on the high range has compromised my low range – Eb2 used to be a pretty reliable note for me and now it’s always a stretch…but could it just be cause I’ve neglected the low range?

As far as I know, expanding the low range is mostly a matter of lowering the larynx and maintaining fold closure, any other tricks you’d suggest to increase the low range?”

>>>

IMO, extending lows and highs can be similar and simultaneous. (e.g., think of Tom Jones).

Bass can be increased by extending the vocal tract for greater resonance of low frequncies and reducing amount of sound trapped inside the mouth-throat (enabling more such bass sounds to be released).

Highs volume is increased by sending sounds up through the back of the throat and into the nasal and sinus areas.

Increasing both is by first creating a longer, more spacious vocal tract in uplifting the back of throat (this slightly enlongates the vocal tract, enabling for better low frequency resonance), lowering the larynx (this increases vocal resonance space) and opening the mouth larger (to emit more sounds).   Placing the high notes more in the back of the throat in this shape vocal tract shape enables for more high sounds to get to sinus and nasal areas and resonante more.

So, my opinion is to create a singular vocal tract shape that’s right for both highs and lows and work on developing the full effects of this singular shape.    This is supported by Alan Greene’s book, the New Voice.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324595704578241642030220064.html?mod=WSJ_article_comments#articleTabs%3Dcomments

Hi Michael,

That’s one way of looking at it.   A reverse way is perhaps sleeping (and also as described in my above post, daytime standing, walking, and sitting) positions can reduce stressors.

Certainly, when one is physically exhausted, falling asleep is rapid.   Why not, then, also mental exhaustion or agitation?  Eastern mystics have always emphasized the role of meditation in relaxing the mind.   How does sleep affect this?

The first and most critical step of meditation is to straighten the spine.  When one sleeps, one can become bent in numerous ways, such that some muscles are overstretched and some understretched.   A natural straightening of the spine will help these muscles to attain correct tone.

Stressors are usually compounded by out-of-tone muscles and glands.   The reasons why takes some time to explain and will be skipped here.  The general idea is to allows the stressors’ muscular and glandular compounding to be reduced by counteracting muscles, to achieve good muscular tonicity.   With this, the degree of stress felt reduces rapidly.

Hence, proper sleeping position, in my opinion, is optimal on the back, such that the spine’s S shape is properly stretched, and then stretching other muscle groups during sleeping movements. Unfortunately, to get to this point, one may need to do lots of extra stretching work.  Once one has sleeping illnesses, it takes some time and effort to recover.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324595704578241642030220064.html?mod=WSJ_article_comments#articleTabs%3Darticle

Nature’s millions years’ of evolutionary design has already predisposed mankind to proper sleeping position and posture.

Sleeping posture should be seen as part of overall posture.  This article speaks about treating pains with adjusting sleeping positions (and some parts are even inaccurate–for example, with acid reflux, do raise the bed, but don’t prop the head with pillows as article describes, because this bent head-chest position pushes the esophagus closer to acid).   But, the question remains of how is it people have differing sleeping pains to begin with?   How is it that different sleeping positions relieve, or should we really examine using reverse logic, what position-posture caused the pains?

Artificial comfort devices always has some kind of negative affect on evolutionary design, and the bed and pillow are artificial devices.  State-of-nature  sleeping surfaces are usually relatively firm and without pillow.  On such surface, the optimal evolutionary position is most frequently sleeping on the back.

So, how is it that sleeping backside is less common?   The bed and pillow enable these other positions, and over long time, contribute to the mentioned pains.   To properly solve these pains, the view needs to be taken of  incorporating posture-positions and ergonomic furniture during daytime, including sitting and head angles, (chairs, desks, shoes, and even eyeglasses are all artificial devices!) as well as degree of physical activity.

This is not to say changing sleeping positions won’t alleviate pains.  It does say that to prevent such pains involve changing the ergonomic environment daytime and nighttime, so that the efficient-Nature-designed body doesn’t have the pains to begin with.