What Is Tonality And How Do We Improve It?
- Muscles & Vowels
- Pitch Vs Tone
- Direction & Energy
Have you ever heard someone singing and thought they were a natural born singer? Tone doesn’t have to be something that is decided at birth.
Yes, you can have a larger range or more notes, but would you know how to use it?
Some people are able to mimic songs perfectly while with others, it may take more time. When improving tonality, we need to know what it is.
We need to know what muscles make what sounds and how to gradually shift through them with ease.
For singing you use 8 muscles that contribute to your overall sound.
Imagine someone who is considered a natural singer; they may tend to use more of these muscles which change the way they sound.
Comparatively to a person who doesn’t use any muscles you’d be able to hear a difference.
Having good pitch, tone, and energy are skills that can be learned.
Just as you were able to memorize all of the alphabet and vowels, your muscles are no different.
Muscles & Vowels
You have 8 muscles you use when singing: cheeks, nose, tongue, vocal cords, diaphragm, lips, Jaw, and your soft palate.
Think of all of these muscles altering your sound just an inch in the direction of how you want to sound.
How you sing is dependent on what music you’re listening to. However, each song you listen to may use the muscles in different places.
Think of the vowels in the English alphabet. A,E,I,O, and U. These are the only vowels your mouth is open, therefore these are the vowels you will likely be singing or holding a note with.
Practice your enunciation, use words from the Voicercise kit to help you shape the vowels more accurately.
A and E sounds tend to be a little tighter as the tongue is positioned higher, sharpening the air leaving your mouth.
Many singers use this technique to introduce just enough tightness to where they sound just like an instrument.
Adele, Debarge, Amy Winehouse are just a few artists that tend to have more nasally sounds that we love.
Pitch Vs Tone
Pitch has to do with where you are located within your register. This has to do with your placement, are you singing higher or lower?
Tone is how you sound, this is heavily affected by the jaw, cheeks, nose. By paying more close attention to these muscles we can sound fuller, brighter, and louder.
Most songs that contain the word “love” in them will rely on the Jaw for a deeper enunciation.
Think of vertically extending your jaw muscles down at the time you say the word “love” to give the word more fullness.
Tone is something that may take some time to develop as you are essentially rewriting your brain on how you naturally pronounce things.
However, doing so will result in decreasing vocal strain, and improvements phonetically where people can hear you clearly on stage.
Direction & Energy
One of the biggest contenders to improve tone is energy. Some verses may have inflections where personality is needed to make it sound good.
This is the same as greeting someone and your voice jumps to a higher pitch from excitement. You want to be able to channel your energy into a song to where it means something.
There are a lot of soulful singers out there. Soul is something that comes from within, it is also something that you can learn if you enable yourself to be open to singing with feeling.
Singing a regular song is much like singing a musical, but less exaggerated.
You want to have a focal point as your singing to focus on what the song’s meaning is.
Your tone will match your feelings, which can bring a song to a better perspective.
