The One Magic Singing Exercise To Strengthen Mixed Voice – It’s a Myth

Are you looking for the one magic singing exercise to strengthen mixed voice? It’s a myth.

The same goes for the magic bullet exercise to learn vibrato, sing high notes, get a stronger head voice, stop the straining, stop the cracking. All a myth.

Why? Here’s the answer.

Hi I’m Chuck Gilmore, Founder of Power To Sing, and the Second Nature Singing System. If you are looking for the one magic bullet singing exercise to strengthen mixed voice, learn vibrato, sing high notes, get a stronger head voice, or anything else, THERE IS NO MAGIC BULLET EXERCISE for anything.

Here’s why the magic bullet exercise for any purpose, is a myth.
Simply put…it doesn’t exist. As a teacher, I’ve wished there was such a thing for my students.

Here’s a real life example. I once used a great exercise that strengthened the mix for my student I’ll call, Guy Student A. It worked amazingly.

The next week Guy Student A needed help getting ready for a high school band competition and we spent all our time working on the set list. The following week he missed his lesson. Three weeks later, he did the same magic bullet exercise and it was as if he had never done it before. In fact, he really struggled with it and so we tried some other exercises to find one that helped this particular day. This kind of experience happens all the time.

Life gets busy and fills up our time and attention with many things that are not related to singing. He didn’t practice. There was no muscle memory to help him do it again. He had a different mental attitude the next time we did the exercise. So, not only did he have to relearn the exercise, this time, for whatever reason, he didn’t believe he could successfully do it, even though he did it before.
Same exercise, same student, and it didn’t work when we used it a second time.

The same thing is true when I’ve tried to use the very same exercise with other students. They don’t work consistently with different students. In other words, a vocal exercise that works brilliantly with one student, doesn’t the next time with the same student and fails to help different students.

This is one reason why I say there is no one magic bullet vocal exercise. Also, human beings change everyday.

1. Our psychology is different everyday.

2. Awareness of what we see, hear and feel from inside and outside our body varies moment by moment.

3. Concentration always ebbs and flows depending on emotions, goals, events, and life pressures.

4. Changes in physical health.

5. Our relationship with ourselves and others affects our singing.

6. Everyday all of the above fluctuates…sometimes moment by moment.

7. We are all different. Our talent, gifts and work ethic varies.

8. Humans vary…probably infinitely. No two people are the same, not even twins.

The hoped for magic bullet did work to strengthen the mixed singing voice with Guy Student A. It worked spectacularly well in his voice the first time. But as soon as he tried to sing mix in a song, it was as elusive and unsteady as it was before.

So the magic bullet was a beginning, it was helpful, he started to feel something new and improved, but he couldn’t use it in a song…nor with all the different vowels, scales and keys.

Can you see that learning to sing is not a one time event? Rather it is a process. A complex process that requires you add learning upon learning. Here a little and there a little. It is repetition upon repetition and experience upon experience. Day upon day, week on week, and year upon year.

Eventually all these separate vocal experiences, like thousands of individual coloured pieces of glass, begin to form a beautiful vocal mosaic of a wonderful singing voice. Every “glass” of deliberate practice, hours of work, effortless tone, sustained notes, consistent vibrato, understandable words, growing confidence, successful performances,
contribute to the creation of a unique vocal mosaic that is your singing voice. You emerge a confident singer and performer. And then you continue to maintain and improve your vocal mosaic.

Pavarotti, one of the greatest tenors of all time, said it took him “maybe ten years” to sing the F4, one note, the way a true tenor should sing it. Ten years to get one piece of glass for his mosaic. There was no magic bullet.
So do vocal exercises work? I answer that question in this video. Watch it for vital information about vocal exercises.

Exercises designed for your unique vocal needs will give you fast and consistent results.

I recommend two steps

1. First, discover your vocal type, that is, understand what your voice does as you sing from low to high through the first bridge of your voice.

2. Do vocal exercises for your vocal type. In other words, do vocal exercises designed specifically for YOUR vocal type.

Those exercises eliminate problems that are making singing difficult for you and simultaneously start making singing easier for you.

Knowing your vocal type and doing exercises for your vocal type will save you from doing the wrong exercises that reinforce the same problems that have been holding you back. Those of you familiar with The Second Nature Singing System will recognize this as the Designer Exercises inside Pillar One in Second Nature Singing.
You can take a simple vocal test to get your vocal type by clicking the link here.

As a friend and mentor said to me:

The “Magic Bullet” may be the number one belief pervasive with singers and teachers. This may be the biggest misconception singers have. That there is a single, magic bullet kind of exercise that is going to make everything right about your voice.

Learning to sing is a process. It’s developmental. It’s the repetition that will cause you to get it. How long it takes is up to you, the individual. There are as many different voices and vocal mosaics as there are singers. Yours will be unique to you…and that’s what you want. That’s what the world wants. You don’t have to be a Pavarotti or a Lady Ga Ga. Be you and others will love your voice and your message.

If this video was helpful, please tell me why in the comments below. Be sure to hit the like button, subscribe and share it with a fellow singer.

You can also join me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @Power To Sing.
I’m Chuck Gilmore with Power To Sing. For you, singing can be second nature.