Grammy Winner’s Guide to Perfect Vocal Technique

📍 📍 📍 there’s this common thing that bugs me as a musician where people always say they’re singers and there’s musicians.

No, we are musicians that kind of put singers into this category of we’re not the same. We’re not as intellectual. And I want to encourage singers to know that you are just as valuable as any of the other instrumentalists out there and that you are an instrument as well.

Welcome to the worship ministry training podcast, a monthly podcast for worship leaders who are serious about growing in their craft and calling. My name is Alex, fellow worship leader, super stoked you’re here. And if you’re a new listener, I’m going to encourage you to hit that subscribe button because every single month I’m going to give you helpful, practical guidance that you can immediately implement into your ministry.

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All right, let’s get into today’s episode. Well, how do you sing properly?

How do you sing better? How do you sing with more range, more power, more control, and more stamina? We’re going to be learning all that from a Grammy award winning singer, vocal coach, Anna Crumley today. And so I’m excited to introduce Anna to all of you. Hello, Anna.

Hi, everyone. So good to be here. And Alex, thank you for having me. Awesome. I’m really excited to hear you bust the myth about singing from the diaphragm, but we’ll save that for later. That’s a little teaser. Anna told me, singing from the diaphragm is wrong. It’s a myth.

And I’m going to bust that myth. And I’m like, Ooh, hot take. I’m excited. So, Anna is a, Grammy award winning singer. . Sings with a crew called Tonally, and they won a Grammy this year, which is exciting. And she specializes in all types of singing, jazz, classical, pop and she does a lot of music all around the world and she also teaches at an academy level So university college level she teaches vocal anatomy and vocal technique And so we are going to dig into all of those things today with you She sings on my team when she’s not touring the world, but happy to have her on my team It’s like the biggest blessing ever and i’ll brag on you for a second.

I think the coolest thing i’ve seen You Anna is you went from a singer to more of a shepherd. I see you’re inviting more participation and you’re exhorting and you’re encouraging the people to sing with you. And I think it’s been really cool to see that transformation in such a short amount of time.

So anyway, I’m glad to know you, and I’m glad to have you on the podcast. Oh my gosh. Well, that’s such a kind intro, Alex, and thank you. And I will, a credit, that shepherding aspect, which that’s such a huge compliment. I attribute a lot of that to you and to like looking at , your model your vocal model and your leading model.

So thank you so much. You’re welcome. And it looks like my camera disappeared. So I’m frozen on the screen, but y’all can hear me still. So I will figure that out while we chat.   📍 It doesn’t matter. , who cares. I’ll figure it out while I ask this first question. So you teach at a college level.

And what are the core concepts or large chunk frameworks that you take a student through within that first semester to improve their voice? Like what is kind of an overview of the semester look like to strengthen a brand new college student that comes into your course,

yeah, that’s a great question. And I think the  first thing that I start with is going to be technique. The one thing that I want to say about technique to start off is that technique is technique as technique. If you can really, really hone in those skills and really, really work hard to strengthen your instrument and to understand what is going on internally, it’s going to allow you to sing better.

Any genre of music helpfully so I begin with talking to my students about physical warmups, literally because , your body is your instrument.

There is no separation between person and instrument. If we were playing guitar or playing piano, there is a separation. With our voice, as basic as it sounds, we are instrument. Therefore there’s an aspect of the physical body that we have to take care of, the spiritual body that we have to take care of the mental aspect that we have to take care of.

So through technique, working on, vocal warmups, working on physical warmups, working on mental, like talking through issues that my students have. I, Honestly tend to be, , 30 percent therapist in my lessons with my students because if they have something going on in their lives that is troubling them, it comes out through their voice because our emotions affect us.

Have you ever been a little bit emotional before you had to sing? And that really affects your voice and how you’re able to perform. So , I have a very holistic approach to teaching and knowing that As a singer, especially the whole body is part of the experience. When you are making music another huge component of my teaching is going to be breath management and talking about how to breathe properly.

And yes, I like to call it like a little bit of a myth with breathe from the diaphragm. Yes, your diaphragm is involved in the concept of breathing, but there’s so many other muscles and things that are working.

And so I think teachers kind of use that as a way to get you to breathe lower rather than higher. And maybe we’ll talk about that later and actually what people don’t realize too, is that if you breathe improperly, that also can really, really dry out your instrument and lead to more vocal fatigue later on.

So a third thing that I love to focus on is ear training. If I’ve ever have students that struggle with pitch with their intonation, your training is something that I love to use , for all of them. I also really, really love to encourage students to.

understand theory more and to understand, when they’re singing, where are they fitting in a chord? Like understanding what is my purpose? I’m not just the melody sitting on top of everybody. I have a function. What is our function? Let’s be a part of it. You know, there’s this common thing that bugs me as a musician where people always say they’re singers and there’s musicians.

No, we are musicians that kind of put singers into this category of we’re not the same. We’re not as intellectual. And I want to encourage singers to make the more confident and competent through learning, learning about theory, learning about sight reading, to know that you are just as valuable as any of the other instrumentalists out there and that you are an instrument as well.

I would say there’s two other things I want to kind of touch on really quick. So, Understanding and establishing what a mix is, is something that I love to teach. So really, really basically , you have your head voice and your chest voice. Head voice is controlled by what’s called the CT muscle.

And chest voice is controlled by what’s called the TA muscle. They work together in equilibrium, ideally. And that’s what’s called a mixed register. It helps us get from up, our voice to down our voice in a really, really smooth fashion, rather than having those, you know, have you ever had like a break in your voice where you’re like, Ooh, like what happened then?

That’s because those muscles were fighting and they weren’t working in equilibrium. And so I love teaching my students how to get those muscles to work in equilibrium. So you can have a smooth sound throughout. That sounds like you don’t have. Any kind of break. And then the last thing that I also really work on, because a lot of my kids, are prepping to transfer to four year universities. So we do a lot of audition prep, talking about mindset coaching because once again, your mind, your spirit is connected to you.

You are your instrument. Therefore that has to be in check Getting you confident on stage, especially a lot of people have this incredible gift that they’re trying to hone But then stage fright is keeping them from actually Performing in the way that they want to so I would say that technique, breath management, ear training establishing and understanding a mix, which goes into technique as well.

And then mindset coaching or audition prep is kind of the components that I work on. Wow. I mean, there’s so much there and we’ll touch on a lot of that throughout the episode, but I mean, I think everyone watching can relate to that feeling of like you get on stage, maybe it’s right before Christmas or right before Easter and you’ve got this big crowd , or maybe There’s this high note for this song that you know is hard to hit for you and like you get in your head and then You get nervous and then when you go for the note, you’re tense and you’re tight and it just doesn’t come out right, so I think that mindset piece is something that a lot of us can Completely relate to and it’s something that I feel like with you.

You really do feel so confident in your voice like It doesn’t seem like you ever really have that you just kind of are up there and you’re like Whatever I want my voice to do, it does. And you seem really in control of your voice. And I think that’s probably from the mindset.

Is that right? I would say it’s totally mindset. And it’s also Practice and preparation and preparation is the key thing. And I tell my students this constantly if you just prepare and you just practice enough, that takes an element of nerves out. I think a lot of times when we’re really nervous, That can be sometimes from a lack of preparation rather than truly like I’m insecure. Sometimes it can really just be, Oh, I didn’t put in the work to feel confident.

And there’s also this other myth, you know, people always say, Oh, you’re so talented. Or if this person’s so talented. I think talent is five to 10%, some people are innately, gifted with a nice tone and God bless them for that. Like, you know, you’re really, really lucky, but I would say 90 to 95 percent of that is hard work and people forget about that too, is that singing is really hard work.

So you have to put in that preparation and that effort so that the mindset, then, works in tandem with that to make you feel more confident. That’s so good. I think I said this on Sunday to our crew, but. Like, practice isn’t doing, this is what the pros say, practice isn’t doing something until you get it right, practice is doing something until you can’t get it wrong.

Like, you literally, like, ingrain it into your muscle memory so that you will not ever do it wrong. So, we weren’t planning on talking about this, but I think it’s worth talking about. What does preparation look like for you? So, you’re called to this event to sing at an event

what does preparation look like so that you don’t have that mindset nervousness? I’m going to use an example of where I have to prepare the most, which is, so I’m in a touring group called Lyra currently, and we’re like six women. We’re all classically trained singers, but we do various genres within that group.

And there’s a lot of prep work that goes into it really, really difficult pieces. And so you’ll see me probably two weeks before, even though I am a good site reader, I’m spending two weeks before that. Basically doing small chunks. I look for, where are the tricky spots within the piece. What am I going to work over and over?

And I really, really do things by small chunks. I never just say, Oh, I’m going to run a song ever, even when it comes to doing stuff for, rolling Hills covenant church, or when it comes to St. Simon and Jude, my other church, I’m never going to run a whole song over and over to practice.

That is not effective. That’s really, really tiring. That’s really fatiguing for your voice. Rather, I take a couple measures and I say, I’m going to run this spot because I know it’s the trickiest and I’m going to get , that solid. Then I’ll go to another spot. So I work in small chunks. I think that that’s a really effective way to approach practice also with singing too.

It’s easy with piano, guitar, any other instrument to just keep playing. You could play for hours and you’re not really going to get too fatigued. Like maybe your fingers will get fatigued, maybe with guitar, but with singing, it’s easy to get fatigued, after an hour or two of singing.

And so it’s better to work in like small manageable chunks rather than the large picture. If that makes sense. That’s really helpful. And you’re honing in on specific trouble spots or tricky spots. And a lot of people want more control of their voice. Well, how many times have you done that run like, you know what I mean?

And I there’s this we do thank you Jesus for the blood and you sing it a lot and It’s like heaven’s throne and there’s like four notes in there and you just do it. So perfectly right and That control it’s because you’ve honed in probably on that spot and you’ve done it a few times at least and that control comes from just many, many, many repetitions.

That’s really, really helpful. Yeah. And that’s something too, that I’ll say really, really quickly is with, runs, because I feel like singers always ask, like, how do I do runs, , that’s probably one of the trickiest things within music is figuring out how to do that.

That’s just practice too. Also, another tip is to always go slow. Never go faster than you can successfully. So always start slow. So if I was doing heaven’s throne, I’m going to do that until I can do that 10 times successfully. Then I’ll crank it up, five BPM. So start slow and work yourself up to the only go as fast as you can successfully is my ultimate tip for, getting runs or getting any tricky, spot in the piece.

Wow, that phrase is pure gold. I’m writing it down. That’s gonna become a mantra for me. Yeah, thank you. Okay, so let’s talk about mistakes that singers make. So you get a bunch of kids in your class. And what are the biggest mistakes that you see untrained singers making?

Okay, so this one it’s going to be tension. And I think tension is so visibly noticeable. As a teacher, it’s audibly noticeable. I can hear it right away. How do I know that there’s tension with that singer? Intonation is off. They’re not in the center of the pitch.

It’s kind of an obvious one. Sometimes there’s, shakiness within the tone. Like if we’re trying to go straight tone with something and there’s a little bit of like wobbling and insecurity immediately, I’m thinking tension. Now visibly, what do I see a lot of the times? I see a lot of the times people are reaching their neck up like this, straining to reach a note, which you don’t need your neck to reach a note.

Um, It’s all internal. So I’ve seen people doing this. I see the vein popping out of the neck. I’m sure you’ve all seen that singer who’s like, yeah. And then there’s like this vein popping out. I’m like, Ooh, ow, be careful now. And the thing too is, Tension is the enemy of singing. That is a blanket statement that I will always say that we teach.

Tension is the enemy of singing. Tension in your pinky toe can affect your voice. Honestly, truly like tension anywhere in your body affects the voice. How do we work on that? Physical warmups, doing things to get your blood flowing throughout your whole body. Something that maybe we could talk about later if you have any interest is massaging the face.

Doing a little bit of laryngeal manipulation, we can talk about that too, mm hmm. You can actually shift your larynx back and forth, you can massage the tongue from underneath. All those things help to release tension. Now there is some good tension, there’s something called tonus. Which means that we are using a little bit of tension because in order to sing you can’t be fully fully relaxed There has to be a little bit of engagement or tonus.

There is a little bit of tension in there It’s like your muscles are ready to react and respond, but it can’t be tight like this So oftentimes too I will see singers that have their shoulders raised like this. That is truly just pure stress. And also it’s so close to the larynx and so close to the vocal folds and everything.

So trying to release tension is something that I work on with all of my students all the time. And I see a lot in singers in general so besides the massages and getting your blood flowing and all that stuff Like what can a singer do to relax and to be not in tension? And it’s interesting like you said lifting your voice and vein popping out that seems like very common So what’s happening there in those moments?

So there’s kind of two questions there, but you can attack either one. . Well, i’ll check that last question first. I think a lot of that has to do with lack of understanding of how to approach that note, how to practice for that.

And I don’t think that they understand how to properly approach maybe that high notes. I feel like it’s typically higher notes that they’re reaching. physically reaching for. One thing that we can talk about too is where you want to feel singing because a lot of times, We’ll see singers that are really, really young or inexperienced singing from like here, like they call it singing from their throat.

It’s not healthy versus using their resonator, which our resonator is our face. Think about a guitar for a second. The belly of that guitar, the circle, is the resonating chamber. That’s how you get sound to go out. This is our resonating chamber. Just for a second, take your hands and go over your ears like this and say something.

Hello. Now take your hands away. Hello. It’s very different. Hello. Hello. It’s like, Oh, wait, wait a second. I actually am resonating so much more than I think I am in the room. Another reason I will say, well, we can’t judge our voices so harshly because we don’t fully understand what we sound like until we have a teacher hear us or until we hear a voice memo back of us singing, because what we’re experiencing here is not what everyone’s experiencing externally.

And so, I want to get singers to understand that this is their resonating chamber. This is how we can get volume rather than straining from here. And so we can talk later too, about how do we access the different points in here versus accessing this in straining. That’s a whole bag of worms, but I’m glad to go into that too.

There’s so much to cover. We don’t have enough time. We’re going to have to have you back like 18 times. Are there other questions? Singing mistakes that you see. I know you mentioned tension. Is there another one or two or is that mainly the major one? That’s going to be the biggest one that I noticed and it makes me really nervous for those singers Because over time that’s what’s going to lead to vocal damage I mean tension is the enemy of singing physical tension internal tension all of that Yeah, that’s the biggest mistake that I see.

Yeah, and we’re gonna share proper technique in a bit here, but what is the number one thing, that anyone can do to begin improving their voice. Mmm. Well, you’re going to hate me for saying this, but it’s practice. And what do I mean by practice

I want to encourage people that even singing in your car is practice. I do it. I sing every day, all the time. , we have a really, really cool instrument because we can do it anywhere, anytime when we’re on the road, when we are in our rooms, when we are, out in a park, like we have this flexible instrument that we can practice with anywhere.

So use vocal warm ups from youtube from the internet to help you start to explore your instrument That’s good. Teach us about proper technique or proper mindset or both. I want to talk a little bit about what resonance is, because I think this would help a lot of people. And this kind of ties into that whole, image of the person playing guitar and straining their neck like this and the vein popping out so I just talked about the resonating chamber, which is our face.

And a lot of people don’t realize that we can use this to have So much power. That’s the reason that you’ll hear an opera singer with no microphone, just having the biggest sound in the world is because they know how to access this. So something we can do, and I don’t know how well this is going to sound with my microphone right now, but everyone just say EEEEEE.

E. Now say, Ah. Ah. Good job, Alex. So, E kind of feels buzzy. Everybody at home just kind of just say E and feel that buzziness. E. E. E. E. So, E is a really, really cool vowel to use to start to access this kind of, we call it like a forward placement versus Oh, which is really, really far back. Oh, versus E. E helps us to access this.

Eeeeee. Oh, a very, very different sound. So with a lot of my students, I’ll , really recommend, Hey, let’s try to use an E vowel in our warmups to help us start to access and feel , the buzziness that I like to call kind of here, like around the mustache area. That’s a really, really good way to start to understand how to place your sound more forward.

And through working with a teacher and through doing exercises, you can start to access a fuller, bigger sound without having to strain and tense here because a lot of singers will try to push, you’ll hear that word a lot, you know, singers pushing, tensing, trying to use this to help them instead of using their resonating chamber.

I think you asked about how to approach singing softly and something kind of nerdy that’s really really fun is I would love for everybody who’s interested to go look up a scope of vocal folds if you’ve never seen vocal folds go now especially if you’re a singer you need to know what your instrument looks like so vocal folds do this they’re constantly waving and flapping when they’re happy and when they’re what’s called phonating.

This is phonating. They’re going like this together. They’re tiny. They’re probably the size of your little white part of your fingernail, that small. So they’re really, really dainty. So imagine how careful we have to be because they’re so tiny, but they’re doing this. They’re flapping like this.

And that’s how we’re getting sound to come out. Now, if you want to work on singing softly, correctly, I recommend doing something kind of funny, which is where you’re going to feel your vocal folds come together and phonate at the smallest level. It sounds like this. It’s going to sound crazy.

So I wait, I can kind of hear there’s like a little pause before they come together. when they come together. I know that that’s the smallest sound that my vocal folds can make as they come together. So practice literally going,

making the smallest sound that you can and feeling them come together. It’s a really, really cool exercise too, of mindfulness also, because now you’re being super mindful of what that vocal connection feels like. And not just singing whatever you want all the time and just going for it. It’s like, how about we connect with the instrument and see What is the smallest dynamic range that we have?

It’s easy to find the biggest dynamic range. That’s easy, we’ve all done that before. What about the smallest one? And that’s a really, really cool way to kind of test your instrument also to test your instrument for the day and see how tired am I, how easy is it for my vocal folds to come together? If it’s harder for them to come together, it could be inflamed.

Maybe you’re sick. Maybe you have post nasal drip from allergies, but that’s a really, really cool way to just check in and see, how is my voice feeling today? How am I phonating? That’s interesting. Yeah. And I mean, just to touch on that quickly from a worship leader perspective, like, , everyone watching and listening, like, please, please have a dynamic range.

I think one of the biggest things I see in worship leading that bothers me. And it’s the band. It’s also the vocalist is they’re just like shouting and full volume the whole time. And there’s no beauty and nuance. And one of the things I love about our team at rolling Hills covenant is they really can be quiet and spacious and sing gently.

And I recently in the Academy said something along the lines of like, we’re not making noise, we’re making music. And so , chill out sometimes, like let the dynamics really be large and small so that there’s beauty instead of just like full on out the whole time. So I would like to dig into the tiredness of vocals, the fatigue of vocals,

what can we do to avoid getting tired? And what’s a normal rate of singing? eight hours or three hours or two hours or one hour before people should experience vocal fatigue? , is there a normal cap? And then maybe , you’re tired after an hour, there’s something wrong? .

So I want us to all think of ourselves as vocal athletes. And that might sound kind of silly, but trust me, it’s not because just how we talked about those vocal folds and the muscles that all work in tandem together, we have this really complex muscular system going on. And just like an athlete that has to properly warm up before their football practice or their soccer practice, we have to do the same thing.

Otherwise we will. possibly have injury later on. my biggest advice is going to be properly warm up. And we can totally, once it, that’s another thing we can totally dive into as well as, well, how do I warm up? What do I do? Really quickly? I’ll give you a little couple of pointers of things that you need to do.

One is going to be get your physical body. What we talked about blood flow. Cardio is fantastic. Get the blood flowing doing stretches of the neck making sure that that’s all loose. Getting your shoulders released getting into the masseter and mandible, which is right over here. And releasing this, a lot of us have TMJ or like a clicking jaw, releasing that jaw, releasing the tongue.

You can actually take your thumbs this way and go under this way. You can actually shift your larynx back and forth. Like this. So releasing any tension that way, it’s going to, I would take five to 10, 10 minutes, actually, to do a full physical warmup. And if you are a runner or you love cardio in the morning or yoga, fantastic.

That is the best thing you could do before a gig before you’re going to get on stage. So once that physical aspect is done, once you’ve done a little bit of, facial massaging, a little range of manipulation, then it’s time to actually do like a vocal massage. The coolest vocal massage is going to be slides.

So doing

To your vocal folds these little babies that do this that feels like they’re getting a 60 minute time massage Maybe not time massage. It’s a little intense. Maybe like a nice relaxing massage

. So full on massage, like warm up and body and voice. And I think a lot of worship leaders are waking up, they don’t have time, they’re just drinking, honestly, some of them are drinking coffee. So we’re going and getting a sugary Starbucks drink, which is probably like the worst thing you could drink before service.

Caffeine, even in and of itself is bad. I kind Disregard that I’m just like I’m just gonna drink the caffeine and be fine, but I just drink black coffee So no milk, no sugar. Do you want to speak into that at all? Sure. Yeah, definitely coffee’s a tricky one because I’m a coffee lover myself. I come from a German father and German mother, and coffee is just part of culture in life.

So I’m a total coffee lover myself. However, because coffee is dehydrating, same with tea. They both dehydrate you. So if you’re gonna have coffee before, church in the morning, . Maybe you have a 7am call time. Have your coffee, but then before you sing, have at least two cups of water or have double of whatever amount of coffee or tea that you had to help rehydrate yourself.

I’m never going to say don’t drink coffee. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. But just know that certain foods and beverages do affect your voice. I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about dairy and how that affects you as well. That kind of coats the vocal folds and it can make it harder to sing. One thing that’s really funny is people love kind of oily foods actually, because it feels like a lubricant to the vocal folds.

So a lot of times you’ll see singers during or like in the middle of concerts, eating like potato chips or something kind of greasy that can feel actually really good, like having something like that, but drying agents like coffee, tea, just make sure that you do double the amount of whatever you In intook from those dehydrating beverages but you I think everyone with water Yes, and also notice too like certain foods spicy foods as well can inflame the vocal folds as well So I would never have As much as I love like hot salsa, I would never have salsa before I sing.

Like those kinds of foods that are inflammatory will really, really affect you as well. Have it after you sing. Yeah. Milk, sugar, bread, . It’s going to gunk up like, yeah, so no doughnuts in between services, guys. Sorry about that. One of our students is asking, what about coconut water?

Oh, you know what? If it’s like an unsweetened coconut water, the pure ones, I would say experiment first with that. I would say if I was going to have my ideal day of what was my favorite thing to drink before I sing, it’s going to be a lukewarm water with honey and a little bit of lemon. I’m going to feel perfect. Like soap. So great. There’s nothing dehydrating in there. But it kind of has a little bit of a tea essence to it.

So that’s what I would recommend.

Test it out. Everybody’s different. But it might not be my , first choice. Let’s talk now about proper, breath support and proper breathing technique and you can finally bust the myth about the diaphragm. Yeah. . , so how we talked about tension earlier, tension is caused through also improper breathing.

So when I see singers breathing clavicular Lee, it’s a long word meaning by the clavicles. I see singers going like this. You know, I’m no longer a slave to fear and there’s just so like I am just tension city USA right now I can just feel it and I’m like, oh man so when we breathe clavicularly Which is how we learn to breathe later on in life because when we’re babies if you’ve ever watched a baby Lay on their back and breathe their bellies move up and down like this and just as a baby breathes We want to breathe in the same way.

So when I’m starting with a brand new students who’ve never worked on vocal technique before breathing management, anything like that, sometimes I’m going to have them sit on a chair and lean over. So they feel their belly in their lap. Now I say, all right, We’re going to breathe and feel our bellies kind of go into our lap so that they can feel that sensation of what a low, deep breath feels like, because we don’t want to be breathing from up here as singers.

We want to be breathing nice and low. That helps us to just have A bigger lung capacity also like when you breathe lower you have more air for your phrase When we breathe higher like this And you hear that audible breathing that’s actually drying out our vocal folds Therefore causing us to feel more fatigued later on first is what I like to call a silent inhalation of air It’s not fully silent, but it’s a lot quieter than, than this.

So breathing low and trying to do a silent inhalation is ideal. One to give us more lung capacity and two to help us not dry out our vocal folds as fast. So one way that I like to get us kind of, feeling and engaging what’s called our inner costal muscles. There are low muscles they’re in between our rib cage that help us move is to go.

Alex, could you try it for us actually? Uh Huh. Do you feel like a low engagement going on?

I realized if I’m not on camera, they can’t hear me, but I just did it everybody. And yeah, it’s yeah, it’s kind of engaging down here. Like your ribs. Exactly. It’s engaging the intercostal muscles and the ribs. And so when we do exercises like it’s a really, really important thing to get all those muscles awake and alive.

Otherwise we’ll kind of default to this. And people think that we start to breathe up here because of You know, anxiety as we get older um, you know, when we’re running, you know, when we’re working out, like it’s all breathing up here. It’s, it’s like a stress response because when you are working out, it is kind of a stress response.

So we have to kind of de stress and make sure that we are grounded in that. So I love using shh, shh, shh, or sniffing. To feel expansion. Alex, could you be one of our, examples today? Could you find your lower ribs? So you’re going to kind of dig around in there, find your lower ribs, and you’re going to sniff three times really aggressively like this.

I have a big Armenian nose, so I’m good at sniffing. You’re doing good. What you want to feel, Alex, I’m going to have you do it again in a second, is you want to feel your ribs. It’s going like this. So it kind of feels, oops, where am I, going like this. So it’s like an accordion going in and out.

Have you ever seen an accordion? It goes like this. Instead of sticking your belly out this way, you want to feel the ribs going out this way. So go ahead and sniff three times. Try to feel your ribs going outwards. Okay. So am I sniffing without taking a break in between , it’s all inward, right?

One, two, three, without any exhale. Yep, it’s just release. Yeah, I felt them go out. Huh. See I when I teach people vocal technique and say from the diaphragm again, i’m teaching people wrong But i’m like i’m expecting my belly to go out but you’re saying your ribs should go wide not forward Yes, exactly.

And that’s just how our mechanism works is that we want to feel our ribs expanding to the side because they’re making room for our lungs to have a bigger lung capacity. And why does our lung volume expand? It is because of the diaphragm. It’s the diaphragm and intermuscle intercostal muscles contracting.

They’re working in tandem together which expands our thoracic cavity. So when people say breathe from the diaphragm, I think the point that people try to make with that is just trying to get singers to sing lower. I totally get it. I heard that in children’s chorus all growing up sing from the diaphragm, but really what does that mean?

They’re asking us to sing from a lower place. We want to expand our ribs this way to have a greater lung capacity. So understanding the why I think is really important instead of just saying the same from the diaphragm , but if you can understand that we want to feel our ribs expanding this way, we want to feel a low belly breath.

That’s more than I can ask for singers rather than breathing from up here in our clavicular region. Yeah, maybe also tell us why breath support matters and breathing properly matters. What does it accomplish in the vocal, , experience, expression? Yeah. Well, basic thing, which we just talked about is it increases your lung capacity.

It allows you to make phrases. And when we talk about dynamics too, it gives you more control with your dynamics because you have more breath to do that with. So let’s say that I was doing I’m no longer a slave to fear I am a child of god I’m able to do that all on like two breaths.

I could probably do it on one breath if I did it from up here I’m no longer a slave to fear by the end. I’m already like, oh i’m getting tired I’m, i’m running out. My voice is actually getting drier because i’m using Um More breath this way. I am a child of god. There’s more breath in my sound. As powerful.

It’s not as on the voice. If you’ve ever heard of the phrase singing on the voice before so singing on the voice is the difference between singing with your vocal folds, doing this and being happy and woohoo and having more breath in your sound, which. Is a choice. I want to make it a choice rather than a habit.

You’ll hear a lot of singers

That is just drying you out and going to cause fatigue and strain later on I say use it as a choice, but know how to sing properly on the voice Meaning you are phonating your vocal folds are coming together and there’s not as much air escaping

So having better breath support also aids in being able to not sing as breathy, which sounds counterintuitive. But having better breath management helps you to sing more on the voice instead of releasing all of this air later on. Other benefits of breathing lower and breathing properly are going to be to not have extra tension up here.

One of the classic examples that I use, and sorry I’m singing a lot right now, but it helps to show this example, is with my students. If I was singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow and I kept breathing clavicularly, here’s what’s gonna happen. Somewhere over the rainbow way up high. There’s a land that I’ve heard of once in a lullaby Somewhere and it’s I am just once again tension city USA, you know I’m just getting tenser and tenser My instrument is getting tenser and I’m not releasing old air and that’s something I’ll hit on really really fast Is this concept of when we breathe low and we release you want to feel this actual contraction with your abs?

You want to feel like when you are releasing and contracting That your abs are also doing the work too. When we’re breathing up here It’s much harder to feel that release and we end up singing on top of old air Somewhere over the rainbow way up high. I’m not releasing my air There’s a land that I’ve heard of once in a lullaby And I just keep stacking on top of old air instead of contracting and releasing all that old air and starting fresh with each breath It’s much harder to do that up here than down low.

And then you just pass out on stage right there in front of everyone. You just , hyperventilate, yeah. Probably. , this is a master class and I’m like, wow, this girl can teach. And you, you do private lessons and I’ll tell people how they can get in contact with you if they’re interested in doing some Zoom lessons with you, I’ll tell them in a second.

But Let’s just kind of cover a couple things lastly, which is pitch and ear training. So if a singer is either sharp or flat and not on the note, what kind of advice do you have? To help them get better at that? And then talk about how do you help someone develop their ear to, hear whether they’re on pitch.

We don’t need to talk about harmonies because I have a whole other podcast that we just did about that. But yeah, , ear training. Sure. And pitch. Yeah. When it comes to a singer that is struggling with their intonation, intonation meaning their pitch, probably 95 percent of the time, it’s going to be tension related.

So it’s either that they are physically externally tense in some way. Um, It’s going to be That they are straining that’s typically the main culprit of having weak intonation.

That does tie into ear training though, because the stronger that your ears are and the more that you can work on those skills, the better your intonation will be. So how do I work on that? Well, A little example is I had a younger student who really wanted to sing, had a really hard time pitch matching which is, you know, a really, really kind of basic fundamental thing that you need to be able to do in order to sing.

So we would do things like we started as simple as I would play on the piano. And she’d have to sing back to me. And sometimes she would kind of slide around where the note was. And I’m like, that’s okay. If you need to go

and then find it. Fine with me. Let’s take that time. Now I can say that that student of mine can actually repeat back to me any, like, crazy interval. Like, if I sing her a major 7th, she can repeat that back to me. Or if I just say, can you sing that major 7th, she can do that on her own. All that to say, it’s really, it’s a process , to get your ears stronger, but it’s worth it in the long run.

Talking about intervals, intervallic training, I think that’s a really, really cool way to work on, , your, your training is to start learning what intervals are. So, if this is middle C, learning what, da, da, major second, da, da, major third.

Being able to sing intervals, being able to have that kind of really, really strong, ears that understand what are intervals, how does that work? I do a ton of ear training with my students and that’s like a once again another can of worms. That’s a long discussion. But Basically two if you wanted to work on your own You could sit at a piano or you could have your guitar if it’s really really in tune Play a note and just make sure that you were trying to sing as in tune with that note as possible if that’s kind of a struggling thing for you last thing that I would say is doing things that Have to do with tonal memory.

So playing a sequence of notes if it was Buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, and singing that back. Whatever that sequence is, being able to sing that back and you can work with a teacher on those kind of things too, but being able to have that tonal memory also helps if you have a worship leader that, wants to teach you a song in the moment and is like, all right, repeat back to me.

The more that you can work on your tonal memory and your, your training, the easier that will be to be able to just on the spot be like, Oh, I can sing that harmony, which I know you have a whole thing on, or I can sing that new melody line. Like I got it. I have that memory now. That’s good. So, we’re going to jump into an Academy Q& A actual Zoom session in a second where anyone can ask you questions and you can even give coaching tips on the fly.

But before we do, is there anything that you feel like we didn’t cover that you’d like to cover? And then how can people get in touch with you? Because I know you have a very limited number of slots available for online coaching zoom coaching that you can do so if anyone’s interested in taking advantage of that, how do they get in touch with you?

So last thoughts that we didn’t cover and then how do people contact you and then we’ll jump into our q a zoom call Yeah well, I want to be an encouraging person right now for anybody out there and say Don’t let people pigeonhole you into one genre or another. I think a lot of times People really want to put us into boxes Is And they want to say, Oh, like, Alex sounds really, really good in the worship genre.

Therefore that’s all Alex does. And that’s what Alex is. The reality is that you Alex have a beautiful gift that , can cross over multiple genres. And and many of you haven’t even experimented with all the genres yet. I encourage you and all of the people on this, podcast today to experiment with your voice and to try different things and to not let yourself be confined to just one genre or one thing.

Versatility makes us stronger in general, but versatility makes us stronger as artists as well. And sometimes you’ll discover that you like something that you never knew you liked before and that’s really really special. So try different things. Don’t put yourself in a box and don’t let other people put you in a box either.

That’s good. And where can people get in touch with you if they would like to take advantage of your online One to one coaching just because it’s not part of the Academy. This is something separate that Anna’s offering. So if you want to she can be your coach and you can connect with her. So how would they connect with you?

Definitely. So you are welcome to email me. My email is Anna, A N N A, Crumley, C R U M, like Mary, L E Y. So my name, Anna Crumley, music at gmail. com. And you’re welcome to send me an email and we can get in touch that way. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Anna. We like to call her Granna. She hates it because she’s like, I don’t care about the Grammy.

I’m like, but you won a Grammy and everybody wants a Grammy. So, Granna. But so, Mwah! We are going to jump into our, Academy Q& A. We’re going to do it on Zoom. So I posted a Zoom link in the chat right now and so you guys can hop over there. We’ll run the outro and then we’ll see you guys over there. God bless you guys and I’ll see you on zoom in one second. Thanks for tuning in today. I hope this episode encouraged you helped you and pushed you forward in your ministry If it helped you can you take a second and help us by sending it to just one person that you think needs to hear This and if you’re feeling extra nice Leave us a nice shiny five star review on apple podcasts or like this video if you’re watching it on youtube If you want to discuss this episode questions We do have a free section in our academy where you can post comments You and questions and chat with other worship leaders just like you and also sample some of our courses and you can go to worshipministrytraining.

com slash free to join us inside the free portion of the academy if you’re looking for more check out the full access academy you can get 15 days for just one dollar to start and try things out again you can try all of it for 15 days for just one dollar by going to worshipministrytraining. com hope to see you inside the academy or else i’ll see you next month for another helpful episode.