1. Hi! Warm up, Major Scale & Milk.

Hi How are you, come on in! Welcome. This episode will have you warming up and singing some basic Major scale exercises. 

You can listen to these episodes as a whole, or, every two episodes will have a version with all the chit chat cut out, so you can just use the exercises. 

Please feel welcome to send through requests, questions and feedback. 

Thanks for listening.

www.shelly.com.au

Transcript

 This is a Twig Bird Production podcast.

Hi. Welcome to Singing Lesson for no one. Come in. Come on in. Would you like some water? Are you well? I'm Shelly Brown, and in through here is our little music den. It's my little world where I teach singing and we laugh and we cry, and we work through our stuff to let our singing voices out. I always say three things at the start of voice lessons.

The first thing is take care of yourself. If you need a drink or to stop and breathe, a moment to stretch or focus on your body or your mind for a tick, then be sure to stop me and check in with what you need. You are your own doctor. Secondly, if I ever don't make sense or I give you an exercise and you don't get what the benefit of it is, please ask me to explain it in another way.

So via a podcast, this is a whole other thing, but it's important to get to the point of what it is though, right? If I haven't explained it in a way that works for your brain, then I'm not really helping. I feel like I'm asking for sight to traffic, but being a good teacher is a two-way street, so if you have questions, stick 'em on a pigeon, get 'em into me.

And thirdly, we're going to make some really weird noises. I need you to be playful with me. If anything is too weird, you can tap out, say no, stick it on the bookshelf and come back to it or disregard it completely. It's okay. I'm getting you to take all the sounds you can make out of your head and use all the colors of your rainbow cuz it's your rainbow.

And my rainbow is my rainbow, and that's the unique beauty in it. All right. One more thing. Nothing should ever hurt vocally, mentally, spiritually. If you're pushing or pulling something too hard, stop and reassess that. If your teacher, me or otherwise is pulling your strings, stop and reassess that. A lot of my job sometimes is undoing scars left by childhood musical disasters.

It's such a cliche because it's a thing the teacher that told you just to mouth the words and to not sing or whatever, it was just for today, let's drop that right here on the floor and leave it behind. And if anything I say twangs at you, you drop me like I'm hot. It's never my intention to do that.

Okay, enough chitchat. I don't want too much talking on this thing. I want singing.

I think students get used to my vibe, which is to say you'll get used to my timing, how I count in, or you might hear me breathe in a way that I hope reminds you to breathe, or you might hear me laugh in a way that I hope reminds you to laugh. It opens your throat, it relaxes you. It reminds you this isn't brain surgery.

It's just opening up your heart and letting all your feelings come out. You get used to how I sing as an example, and then I'll physically turn myself down, so I'm still a guide. I'm still journeying with you, and then I'll drop out so you can bust out of your shell. Okay, that's my intro. Let's do this.

Okay. The first thing that I'd like you to do is to find your rib cage with your hands, to place your hands on your ribcage, and then to breathe in through your nose so that your hands and your ribcage expands. This isn't that weirder thing to do. This is pretty normal, right? Your body likes breathing.

Your body likes to be alive. I don't want you to overthink breathing, but I do want you to take a second just to take a few breaths in to roll your shoulders, maybe hold your tummy in a little bit so that your rib cage and your breathing feels supported by this stomach frame. Underneath it, you kind of feel ready for something.

And then I'd like to do a lip flutter where you control how much air is coming out of your fluttering lips. You might feel your stomach and your rib cage squishing as you control how much air is coming out at the end. Boom.

This is a good warmup for your lips, for your cheeks, for your breathing, for your diaphragm, for all your bits. It's good for all of you.

You can hold your lips and cheeks if you want to with your hands, if that helps support the sound. You're not stuck with your hands on your ribcage. You're not a statue. If you're driving. Keep one hand on the wheel. The next sound that I want you to make is a siren. I want you to say the word un, like u n g, like sung, and I want you to extend the note nice and high and nice and low, and this is where you kind of listening to your vocal health.

You're listening, if there's any cracks and creaks, you're listening how your voice sits between its vocal breaks. We'll talk about that in a little bit. And you can hear what's going on with your voice. So we'll go. Um,

Yeah, so I do these at the start of every single lesson, but I'm not gonna do them at the start of every single podcast. I want you to just see if you can stick in your head to remember to do that as you walk over to press play to the next episode. Yeah. Okay. The next thing that I'd like you to do is to say, Hello everybody.

My name is, and then say your name. I want you to imagine there's about five people in the room and you're just gonna get their attention. We're both gonna do it together. So you say your name and I'll say my name. It'll be fine. Ready? Here we go. Hi everybody. My name is Shelly. Beautiful. How'd you go? Yeah, let's do it again.

Ready? Hi everybody. My name is Shelly. Awesome. And then we're gonna say the number one after your name. So it's gonna go like this. Hi everybody, my name is Shelly One. Awesome. And then we're gonna count to three slowly rising in pitch just a little bit, so it's gonna sound like this. Hi everybody. My name is Shelly.

1, 2, 3. Can we all do that? Ready? Here we go. Hi everybody, my name is Shelly. 1, 2, 3. Awesome. I'm gonna stop saying hi everybody. And now I just wanna do the 1, 2, 3. Ready? Here we go. 1, 2, 3. Awesome. And then we're gonna come down saying three blind mice. We're gonna say three blind mice. So I'm gonna do this. 1, 2, 3, 3 blind mice.

Ready? 1, 2, 3. Three blind mice. How you doing? You doing well? I can imagine you're there, you're doing it. I can see you, you're doing it. Now, if you're a dude, you might be doing this in quite a lower register to me, and if maybe you have a slightly higher voice than me, you'll do it in a slightly higher register to me.

So press stop on me and go and find out where you talk and where you make sounds and where you're talking voice is. So you down here however go everybody. My name is 1, 2, 3. Hi everybody, my name is one. You sit where you need to sit cuz you are your rainbow or that metaphor is gonna come back to get me.

Okay? And then we're gonna go up to five and I want you to imagine you are hammering a nail and you get to five and you miss the nail and you smack your thumb. So it's gonna exp splitt a little bit. It's gonna go like this. I'm gonna sit back. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I could have done it a bit more than that. I was being careful of the microphone.

It's a thing. Okay, I'll do it again. Ready? Here we go. Join me 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then we're gonna come down. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. So let's go up to five and back down again. Ready and two. Ready go. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and five. 4, 3, 2, 1. And again. And 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Beautiful. So we're kind of singing, speaking, speaking, singing.

We're not quite singing to the stars yet. We're just getting our voice out in a way that we speak all the time. I find that we talk all the time, but we might not sing all the time, so let's just make singing a little bit more in normal. Terms, and then we'll start adding some weird stuff later and we'll get all fun and crazy in a minute.

Hang on. Work up to it with me. Okay? Now I wanna go up to eight, and I want you to imagine you're stopping someone running on the road at eight. I don't want you to scream and yell. I don't want you to blow me off my seat. I don't ever need you to belt 10 outta 10 volume, but I just want you to give a little bit of oomph, a bit of.

Extra support. Yeah. So here we go. We're gonna go explain at five and then call out at eight. Big open mouth like you're biting into an apple. Here we go. Ready? Go. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8. Coming down, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Ready go. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Coming down. 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I wanna go nice and quiet. You go loud. Ready? 1, 2, 3.

Here we go. 1, 2, 3.

8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. One more time. Ready, go. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Ready, go. 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Beautiful. You're seeing me a major scale. How Very delightful. All right. Let me give you another one. Can I have this, can I have 1, 3, 5, 3, 1. Ready? Here we go. 1, 3, 5, 3, 1. And again, One. 3, 5, 3, 1. All right, let's add it. Eight. We're gonna go like this.

1, 3, 5, 8, 8, 5, 3, 1. Here we go. 1, 3, 5, 8, 8, 5, 3, 1. Beautiful. One more time. Here we go. 1, 3, 5, 8, 8, 5, 3, 1. Alright, let's ing a major scale. And then the major chord. That is a major chord. It's a triad. 1 35 is a triad, and I'm chucking eight in there. Cause it's fun to get your voice out. All right, so we're gonna go like this.

One, two. Ready go. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. One. 1, 3, 5, 8, 8, 5, 3, 1. Can we do it again? Ready? Go. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 1, 3, 5, 8. 8, 5, 3, 1. Beautiful.

Hey, you're doing a really good job. I'm really proud of you. I like how you think. Okay, so we've been speech singing this major scale in F Sharp or G flat, which is great. You're doing a really good job. I'm really proud of you. You're a good person and that's great. But now I wanna jam with you. I wanna take the major scale and I wanna jam with you so that we use something that you've learnt in music theory.

We apply it to something musically and you have fun with it and you stick something, you know, theoretically into something that you can do as a skill. Cuz that's what I wanna do with my voice. I wanna be able to use my voice and know what's coming outta my head and not be surprised. I wanna go, yeah, I know how to do this.

This is a skill I possess. I don't think that that's egotistical. I don't think it's arrogant. I think being able to do something as a skill and owning that is a powerful, wonderful thing. So join me with that. So we are gonna sing, I've, I've made up all of these exercises because, That's, that's what I do.

This is what I do here and uh, and cuz there's probably copyright issues if I use anyone else's. So this one's the major scale and it's about going to the shop to get some milk ready. Okay? It goes like this. I like going to the shop to.

To buy milk. And again, I like shop to

the shop to milk. Yeah. It's pretty awesome, isn't it? I know, that's what I was thinking. Okay, so for this exercise, what I'd like to do is sing it twice in each key. I'm gonna sing it here twice, second time's more about your time though. Yeah. And then we'll go up a semitone, sing it twice again, and off we go.

Are you ready? Okay. Sing it like you made it. Ready? Here we go. I want two. Ready Go. I like

buy milk. And again, it's your turn. Ready? Here we go. I.

Okay, we're gonna go up.

Gonna go up again. Ready? I like.

All right. Big finish. Last 1, 2, 3, 4.

Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me In your ears. Thanks for letting your voice come out of your head. This is the end of episode one, less than one. I hope I see you next time.

This has been a Twig Bird Productions podcast.