Morning Voice

To make your day go better, do this simple activity before getting out of bed.

• Lie flat on your back with your legs uncrossed and hands at your sides
• Focus on a point out in front of you, on the ceiling if possible
• Take a deep breath, fully expanding your belly and keeping your shoulders from tensing upwards
• Purse your lips like a fish and let out your breath with an "sss" sound directed towards the point in front of you, like it's coming from a slow leaky tire. Repeat 3-5 times
• Take a deep breath and as you let it out, make a VERY GENTLE "mmm" sound as though you're tasting something delicious, then spin the sound up and down as long as your breath lasts
• Do this 3-5 times (or more) before you get up and enjoy your day!

Britain's Got Talent and Babies

"Britain's Got Talent" 2007 winner, Paul Potts, restored my faith in mankind!

Why?

This mobile phone salesman, whom Simon Cowell called "the underdog" of the competition, sang "Nessun Dorma" and won.

What's "Nessun Dorma?"

Opera, plain, simple and powerful! It's one of the Puccini arias that Pavarotti made famous during his celebrated career. (read about the Puccini Effect)

Even though the competition took place in June, I didn't hear about it until today when I watched a brief Oprah YouTube promotional video on which he briefly appeared. On YouTube alone, the videos of his audition and final competition triumphs have been seen well over 20,000,000 (yes, that's 20 million) times! More than Pavarotti's YouTube of the same aria, I might add.

Potts sang opera and Britain's pop music fans went wild!

But what does this have to do with babies?

As you already know from my previous post, Song in Your Womb, and according to research from academic circles, voice (singing and speech) training starts in the womb and continues throughout life.

The trouble is that most of the academic research never makes it to the general public, which is where it will do the most good.

One of my jobs with SingBabySing™ is to point out the research that can inspire and motivate parents (especially moms), childcare educators and providers to enhance the work they do in raising the babies of the world.

For example, on Friday I had lunch with Dr. Sheila Woodward, a wonderful researcher. You'll remember her from Song in Your Womb. She's the Interim Chair for the Early Childhood Music Education Department at the University of Southern California and sits on the board of the International Society of Music Education, amongst the many other things she does.

She's also the person who recorded sounds that babies hear inside their mothers' wombs and from those recordings discovered important information about language acquisition before birth. With her permission, I would like to quote from her article, "Musical Origins:"

"The acquisition of music and language skills requires the same cognitive auditory processes essential for speech development...the evidence of auditory discrimination, memory and learning which occurs from the fetal stage indicates the vital role which parents, caregivers and society should play in the provision of optimal sound environments from before birth."

Allow me to translate the academic-ese:

"What a baby hears inside the womb will directly affect the way it speaks or sings later in life, so parents, educators and others should expose babies to the best possible sounds before birth."

Other research backs up what SingBabySing™ does, so I'll have more to write on this subject in the future.

Meanwhile, sing to your baby today, whether inside your womb or out!

You are the most important talent he/she will ever hear so...
let us help you give your baby your best!

Song in Your Womb

I listened to a music education presentation at the Disney Hall in Los Angeles on Monday, October 29th and was totally blown away when Soili Perkiö, the Head of the Music Education Department at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, played a recording called "Womb Sounds" by Dr. Sheila Woodward from South Africa, who now teaches at the USC's Thornton School of Music.

In 1992, as part of her doctoral thesis, Dr. Woodward placed hydrophones (miniature microphones that work in liquids) inside the wombs of several pregnant women (with their permission, naturally) and recorded the sounds that babies hear inside that watery world.

Guess what those sounds are?

• Mom's heartbeat
  
• Mom's voice
  
• Music that Mom plays

I nearly came out of my seat! It was evident that I hadn't been thinking big enough yet. That recording reinforced EVERYTHING I've been doing with SingBabySing™ plus took my ideas to the prenatal level!

If a baby hears her mom's voice around 4-5 months during development inside the womb, and other research shows that this mommy voice highly impacts the baby's later language development (it does), then how much more important is it that moms everywhere be given the opportunity to learn how to use their voices to their fullest beauty and power so that their babies will get the best possible leg up in life!

Another amazing story that came from that conference was the story of El Sistema, the phenomenal music education program in Venezuela!

But more on that another time.

For now, I simply finish by saying that music and language education start in the womb, not (WOW!) after birth (WOW again!)

It Starts at Home

Your child will sound like you sound to her as she grows up.

If you get tense emotionally (don't blame PMS, your husband or your child) your voice will tighten up and probably get strident, which usually means UGLY!

She's watching you and listening to you to see how you react to life.

She'll do pretty much the same things you do so...

Do her a favor (not to mention yourself) and learn simple techniques to control how you sound to her:

• Tune out what's causing you to get upset


• Focus on a point on the wall in front of you


• Take a deep breath


• Let it out slowly, like a slow leaky tire whose air is directed at the point on the wall


• Do it again but smile this time


• Do it until she smiles


• Twirl around 3 times and laugh at yourself!

Go back to what you were doing and remember this blog!

Morning Sounds

Adding beauty to the morning sunrise that still managed to show up today in spite of Southern California's current inferno, I spoke softly and gently to Michael about the importance of how we use our voices when we communicate with one another.

As a large coal-colored crow and squirrel vied for dominance over the branched territory of trees that have been smacking the windows because of the Santa Ana winds that emblazoned and emboldened the fires, I realized something crucial about the significance of SingBabySing^TM.

A curious goose-bumpy feeling burned this truth into me:

We must set an example of vocal excellence in our day-to-day communications or we won't help anyone else. And if we succeed, we'll have the opportunity to lead the way to a better world, a world that has learned to control the fire of its negative passions so that the power of its positive ones can prevail.

If not us, who?

And if not you, who?

Control Your Voice

Yesterday I wrote about how to control your voice when someone provokes you without cause. Today I'm telling you why it's important to control your voice:

• It's like putting water on a fire that's raging out of control instead of giving the fire more fuel, which means less people get burned
  
• It keeps the noise levels down so that you can be heard, which means you don't have to shout and hurt your vocal cords
  
• It keeps the door of communication open for a future time when the person might (maybe they will, maybe they won't) become more rational, which means the possibility of letting in more light

Besides all that, you get healthy sleep at night because your conscience is clear, which means you won't be adding negative energy to the mess in the world.

Sleep well!

Ugly Voice

This week a close family member really challenged my ability to use my voice in a healthy manner.

I managed to succeed without getting ugly even though he, without any provocation, behaved in an unbelievably ugly way towards me.

So try these voice tips when you're tempted to fight back with your voice:

• When someone shouts at you don't shout back
  
• Instead, take a deep breath and release it slowly without letting them hearing you
  
• Focus into the "tunnel" of your voice that's out in front of you and keep breathing deeply and slowly
  
• Find something about them that you appreciate and express it to them in a soothing way
  
• That'll throw them off long enough for you to take another deep breath while they continue to rant at you
  
• Do it again
  
• Take another deep breath and don't let their ugly words reach your soul
  
• Speak without stressing out your vocal cords by slowing your words way down
  and speaking more softly than usual
  
• If they won't back down, politely excuse yourself, get off the phone, leave the scene or whatever allows you to "disconnect" from them
  
• Go and do the "Silly Spinning Siren" somewhere out of their earshot
  
• Of course you could always do the "Silly Spinning Siren" within their earshot, although I don't often use this tip myself!

Voice Bursts

I just returned from teaching 5 workshops at the HSC '07 Conference in Sacramento. I covered a number of topics, including how to strengthen your diaphragm muscles in order to support the tone.

One mom who attended my parent workshop told my group about her 17 year old son who is taking military training but is having difficulty communicating orally even though his written work is superior. He doesn't yet know how to use his voice to gain command of a situation so his superior officers want to fail him.

If only I could have had 2 hours with the young man, away from everyone else. I'm confident I could have helped him with these few simple vocal concepts and the example of my own voice used with authority and power that has come from years of practice:

• Stand taller but don't suck in your gut when you breath in because it goes against nature. Instead, use the dog pant to strengthen your diaphragm, the main muscle that controls how you use the air that makes sound waves.
  
  
• Exaggerate your vowels and consonants, making strong use of your lip and cheek muscles
  
  
• Send your voice towards the skull area between your eyes. It will make it boom and resonate, carrying it further with more power
  
  
• Never feel intimidated or embarrassed when you use your voice
  
  
• Get focused on a point in front of you and think of it as a megaphone as you send your voice through it via the bony structure between your eyes
  
  
• Loosen your jaw and tongue and let out your air slowly as you feel the sound 'riding' on it

Hopefully, I'll be able to help more people in the future.

Joy

Baby Voice

I'm so passionate about training for moms and childcare providers that I'm in the process of producing my training video to accompany the beginning level CD for babies. There are so many simple things that parents and childcare providers can do to develop a baby's inner musical ears for excellent language development that I just can't hold back that knowledge.

Today, I posted the training demo video on YouTube. Here it is:


Joybug out

Tehnorati Link

I'm trying a Technorati link for SingBabySing^TM so that people around the world can continue to get singing lessons from me on YouTube and elsewhere.

Joybug

Never Figure It

January 6, 2007

Did I study to become a web designer?

Of course not! I studied music.

Did I study computer science, recording engineering, electronics?

Nope. Creating songs out of the atmosphere and reaching into the hearts of people with them is my science.

What of business, marketing, accounting?

You MUST be kidding!

So how did I end up in the business of providing information and resources with SingBabySing for teaching the world to sing?

I WILL NEVER FIGURE IT OUT, but against all odds, I'm doing it.

Joybug
Staying the course

New Year - New Site Design

January 5, 2007



New Site Progress:
I hope to have my newly designed website operational by the end of Jan. ’07. Until it’s up, you can check my new site progress.

Other news:
As of today, I’ve had over 15,000 views of my voice lesson videos on YouTube and Video Google.

A few comments from subscribers all over the world:

• “thanx! Ur class! WE WANT MORE!!!” – Ireland


• “thank you so much for this! it means so much to me! – U.S.


• “kool thanx 4 vid ! your gr8!im beggining 2 understand singing better . – United Kingdom


• “You are so cool ,I teach Ennnnggglish in Japan to children and they love to sing ,which I find is the best way to teach them good pronounciation of sounds that are not found in Japanese…after watching you ,I realize i don't even need to be singing songs yet just creating the sounds…Thanks for posting all your silliness ,women are great teachers ,so are men but balance is so important as well.” - Japan

Back to the web design drawing table for now.
Joybug