2. Minor Pentatonic, Sob Quality & Express yourself.

Hi, welcome back, come on in. Today we're going to attack the Minor Pentatonic Scale.

If you're a visual learner, write this down on a big piece of something in front of you: 1; flat 3; 4; 5; flat 7; 8.

Now that's stuck in your brain forever, we're going to manipulate your sound to play with "Sob" Quality. Open your throat, smile, don't worry about anything. It's all going to be ok.

The chords in the song section are A minor and D minor.

Thanks for listening.

Transcript

This is a Twig Bird Productions podcast.

Hi. Welcome back. Come on in. Welcome to Singing Lessons for No One. Awesome. Come on in here. I'll get you a glass of water. Have a seat. Beautiful. Take a breath. Roll your shoulders, breathe into your ribcage. Feel good about yourself. Awesome. Today we're gonna be seeing the minor app Pentatonic Scale, which is a great scale to wrap your chops around and make some weird noises, so get ready for that.

I teach my scales and my singing exercises using numbers. It's the scale degrees of the numbers around the world and back. You will find teachers that teach with the letters of the keyboard or with the sofa system, which is dore me. You'll find all kinds of things, but I found that numbers worked for my brain.

So find out what works for you and use it all the way, and then find something else so you don't have a crutch. So the minor pentatonic scale you will find has a flat three and a flat seven, as opposed to the normal three, the major three and a major seven. So I might have just jumped way too far ahead.

For your theoretical brain right there. But what I just want you to wrap your head and your ears around is the difference between major and minor I like is your major sound and your minor sound. One flat three. It's a beautiful, soft, gentle sound. So I'd like to sing the minor pentatonic scale with you.

So that you can wrap your mouth around the tongue twister that is using flats. So I'm gonna sing it for you. I hesitate to say sing cuz I wanna do it in speech quality. I want you to find a comfortable note. Hello, my name is Shelly. That's about where I talk. I'm playing an A minor. For those people playing at home.

And here's my scale, it goes like this. One flat, 3, 4, 5, flat, seven, eight. I'll do it again. Ascending one flat, 3, 4, 5, 8, coming down eight. Flat. 7, 5, 4, 3. And again, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 4. Flat. 3 1, 1 flat, 3, 4, 5, 8, 8

flat.

Eight,

what's it called? It's the, yeah.

Beautiful. All right, so let's play with some sounds. That's enough of this business. Let's get onto the crazy stuff, right? The first sound that I want you to make for me is so quality. If you mishear me and you think I say sub quality, I'm totally okay with that. Sub quality. Sub quality. It's the big round sound in the back of your throat that will make your voice sound round and deep and rich and open.

It's doing all kinds of things to your vocal chords. Hopefully it's retracting them. It's opening them up. Retracting is the opposite of constriction. Constriction is the sound of your voice fighting against itself to come out. It's the sound of picking up the chair you're sitting on. You can't let your voice out.

It's the sound of nervousness. I'm nervous. I'm freaking out. My voice doesn't wanna come out when I'm nervous. So if I can open my throat and sob, then hopefully that will relax the back of my throat. Relax the back round. Soft palette at the top of your mouth. The back of your tongue. Open up your throat.

I'm gonna give you a few ways to think about sub quality because a description sometimes isn't enough. I want you to play with sounds in your throat. This is where it's gonna get weird cuz I'm just gonna be sitting here doing weird sounds. Imagining that you're sitting there with me doing it. So here we go.

You ready? The first thing I want you to do is yawn and talk to me through a yarn. Which is great. Everybody can yawn. Everybody's tired, nobody gets enough sleep. So I'd like you to yawn and say, hi, Shelly. Oh, I'm so tired, and hopefully it would totally change the sound of your voice. That might not work.

You might think I'm insane. That's all right. Stick with me. The next sound that I want you to do is to cry. Gimme a big, overly dramatic sobbing cry. Overly dramatic. How dramatic can you be? No one's looking at you. It's okay. My neighbors can't hear you. If it's a podcast. Yeah. So sob for me. Cry for me. Oh, Shelly, what am I gonna do?

Everything's terrible. It feels pretty good. Really. Okay, so being in the back of your throat, you're opening up the back of your throat. My first singing teacher told me to imagine there's an orange stuck in the back of your throat, which as a metaphor never really worked for me, but maybe that works for you.

The next weird sound I like you to do is to imagine, I've just said something hilarious, but you're not allowed to laugh. You're in the back of the class and you giggle. And you catch a giggle in the back of your throat and you make that sound, which hopefully will raise up the back of your soft palette and make this kind of weird feeling in the back of your throat.

This is a bit of a funny one to give you because it's also kind of a little bit constricted. It's a bit kind of a bit chokey, but it might help you feel the feeling that I'm asking you to go for with sob. Yeah. The next sound is to pretend you are Count Dracula, which is a big round. Oh, I love to count. I want to suck your blood.

I sincerely hope you're pausing me and trying out these weird sounds for yourself. Oh, beautiful. My next weird sound is to be the mean kid at school. I want you to gimme a big, airy kind of as if you would. And my favorite, your Hmong head. I cannot not say that when I'm teaching sub quality your Hmong head as if you would big round sound in the bottom of your throat.

Yeah. The final one I'll give you will be, uh, possibly politically incorrect, but go with me here. I want you to give me a big darling. I love what you've done with the place. Mm, darling. Yeah. Be grand darling. Feels good, I promise. Okay, so what we're gonna do is apply the effect of sub quality onto the bottom of your minor pentatonic scale.

And hopefully it will alter the sound. Here's my normal speech quality one flat three. That's pretty normal. That sounds like me. And here it is with SOB quality one flat three. Now if you could see me, you could see that my mouth is wide open. My teeth are out. I'm smiling. I don't care what my face looks like.

I'm letting the silliness out. One flat three, because you can hear the sound of air in teeth. You can hear if I'm smiling or not, because it's a beautiful thing to be able to hear. So let yourself smile. Let yourself have fun with it. Okay? And so what I'm going for is applying an effect. And then turning off the effect and being normal by about the middle of the scale.

So, So we are learning to control an effect in our voice, learning to control something, and I'm getting you to practice this all the way silly, 300% silly. And then maybe in a song you will only use it just a sprinkle just a little bit. I promise I won't get you to sing like this on stage or in your family, anything like that.

We're just trying an effect out and seeing how it works for us, seeing what it does. This is one of those things you can try out and disregard. Or try it and go, ah, that's got a name, that's got a thing. I'm allowed to do that. It's, it's a little license for you to do something with your voice. So here it goes.

We're singing with numbers a few more times cuz I'm a, I'm a quizmaster. I like, I like people knowing their numbers of their scales. Here we go. I'm gonna do sub quality at the bottom by about four or five, I'm gonna be normal again. And then on the way back down, I'm gonna turn it back on again. Here we go.

Three. Here we go. 1, 4, 8, 4. 3, 1, 1, 4, 5, 8.

Three, one. Beautiful. How you doing? It's pretty funny, isn't it?

So we'll work on an exercise now that uses your SOB quality and the minor pentatonic scale. I'll teach it to you using the numbers. And we'll get used to the numbers and then we'll move along. We'll progress along and I'll add the things that I want you to think about. This is an exercise that uses a minor and D minor.

It's a little Kiara to Fat Freddy's drop. It's a little section of a song. If I taught scales every day for all of my life, I think I'd go crazy. So I like to find little sections of songs and figure out the theory behind them, and then make little exercises out of them that as far down the line as you can go, will turn into an improvisation game, A place where you can relax and.

Know what's happening in the music underneath you and trust your voice and make things up from your own heart. That's the game we're playing here. That's where we're heading. So this exercise sings one flat 3, 1 4, 1 5. And I'm smiling cuz I've taught this for about a decade or two. It's a little hug to anyone that's ever come for seeing lessons with me.

I think this is a walk down memory lane for you. So it goes like this. So you're ready. Oh, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1 flat three. 1, 4, 1 5.

One flat three. 1, 4, 1 5. Back down to one. Let's do it in speech. Cody. Get day. How's it going? One flat three. 1 4, 1 5, 1 big open mouth. Drop your jaw down. One flat three.

Beautiful. I wanna sing. I, I too. Here we go. I,

I.

And again, I, I.

All right, gimme So Cordy on the low note. I

did. You do it and again.

Beautiful. All right. I want lots of air. Gimme lots of air, so you're swooshing it all out. Ready? Two, three, I

this summer. I want you to try and not let any air out. Try and hold all your air in your chest, not give any out. Ready? 1, 2, 3. I I.

Oh, yeah. Beautiful. All right. Here's the next bit of the exercise. It sings. I would step out of the rush for you. We seeing it three times and the first one and the third one, I get a land on the two. I haven't talked about the two. It's the two or the nine of the cord. So it goes like this. 1, 2, 3. I would step out of the rush for you would step outta the, for you.

Would step outta the for you. You. So the first and the third land on the nine you. The nine of the two. One two and the second one lands on the one. Mm. Goes back home, it resolves. I sing it for you again. I would step outta the rush for you. There's the two would step outta the rush for you. There's the one would step outta the rush for you.

It doesn't land, it stays up in the air. I would step outta the, for you would step outta the rush for you would step outta for. You, I, I, I gimme some, so,

The rush. 2, 3, 4. I would step outta the rush for you. Would step outta the rush for you. Would step outta the rush for you. Your turn. I outta.

Your turn.

Your turn. I.

The rush, gimme some so outta.

Okay. Now what I really want, what I really, really want, is for you to make up your own words. The simpler, the better. The simpler, the more poetic it is to look around your room, look around your car, wherever the heck you are, look down at your hands and sing about your hands, and I want you to make up a line or three lines.

There's not many rules. I'll go first. I would like.

Your turn.

My turn.

I'm going for, I'm gonna.

Going some things for you. Your turn.

Let's finish it with an I I.

Thank you so much. Beautiful. Remember, every cd, every music piece you own is a band just sitting there waiting to jam with you. Thanks so much. I'll see you next time. Have a good one.

This has been a Twig Bird Productions podcast.