Ready for mix voice exercises that actually work?
In this episode, we build on last week’s foundation with practical drills to help you connect your voice, smooth your break, and develop a strong, flexible mix.
Learn how to coordinate your registers, use resonance effectively, and access both power and ease—without forcing.
0000:00 Introduction to Vocal Development
04:50 Exploring Mixed Voice Exercises
09:14 Advanced Techniques for Vocal Mastery
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Hello friends, I'm Amber, your host here at Vocal Tips in 10. Thank you for being here. Last week's episode was all about the foundational tools that we all need to develop and focus on to create our best mix voice sound, our most consistent, connected, confident, professional voice. So I'm gonna link that down in the show notes.
This week, I wanna give you exercises, the fun part.
I think all of it's fun, but the part that everybody wants to jump right into that really help you focus on your best mix voice. And if you listened to last week's episode, first and foremost for me, mix voice means one connected voice. You are able to go from the bottom of your range to the top of your range, everywhere in between and sound like you want. You sound like the same singer, you have tonal options.
It feels good, it sounds good. I know I say that all the time. So for me, before I go into any of those mix voice specific sounds, right? Like the more nay, nay, nay, or any of those things that you might see a lot online. And by the way, I love those. They're just not the only thing that you wanna focus on. I love to do what I just call register connect exercises. So that's where I'm focused on my voice functioning, sounding and feeling.
like one connected instrument, one connected voice. That's what it is. Where we have those hiccups, those breaks, those tricky spots is where we are in our own way, either from lack of development of the voice, of the musculature, from tension in the mind, the body, the voice itself.
So I'm a sucker for consonant vowel combinations. I love to play with consonant vowel combos. So think my, my, my, my, my is what we're going to do here. M is a buzzy nasal forward consonant. I is a diphthong between ah and e. I, right? You can lean into either one of those vowels that feels better for you, but they get us resonating forward so that we are off of our vocal folds. And ideally we can get this nice connected voice.
sound and feel. So spread it out over an octave. I love this pattern too. Man, I repeat it all the time. So arpeggiating an octave, repeating it four times on the top and coming back down. So let me not talk over that.
Let me do it slowly for you guys.
If you happen to be watching this on YouTube, you will see that I have a finger up right in front of my mouth. And I talked about this resonance strategy in an episode just a couple of weeks ago where I shared some of my favorite resonance tools. So I will tag that in the show notes too. I will do my best to remember. I'll do it. So what I like about that finger in front of the mouth,
is that it's letting me remember, making me aware of the fact that even though I'm spreading out over this octave, my vocal folds do not move up and down. Always, even though I can feel resonance potentially move up my face, I might, as I go higher, feel more and more kind of in the nose and cheeks, Then it starts to feel like it kind of moves away from the body. That's more of that head voice sound and feel, but it's always coming out of my mouth.
So what I'm focusing on in this exercise is letting that my, my, my, that same shape all the way across. That's my focus. I'm not worrying about the vocal folds If I'm out of their way and I've done my low end,
my upper end development that we talked about in last week's episode, it's going to feel good. Where I've got those little hiccups, that's okay. Then I go back to where am I getting in my own way? Do I have tension in my tongue? Do I have tension in my jaw? Am I fueling with my breath all the way through? But I love an exercise like that where you take a consonant vowel combo that feels good, gets you resonating and sounding how you want to sound.
to help you connect all the way through your range.
Another resonant sound I love that is so great for Register Connect is an NG. So two consonants like the word sing, but you're going to hold that NG. Sing. Sing.
you will notice you get this great buzz in your nasal cavity. It's because the sound is only coming out of your nose. If you pinch your nose, when you're at that top NG, it will cut the sound completely off.
NG is also another SOVT, Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract Exercise. So I love it because it helps set up the vocal folds ideally, gets us in that nice, buzzy, resonant spot, gets us off of our vocal folds, resonating more forward so those vocal folds can stretch and thicken up and thin out how they need. We're getting out of their way so that we can have this nice, connected voice bottom to top. So that's just a couple examples of Register Connect exercises.
After Register Connect feels good and you can go from bottom to top of your range and everywhere in between, then I like to lock into my mix voice exercises. I'm gonna give you a few different options that will help you get a mix voice sound.
I'm gonna give you one first for what I feel like gives you a really good, balanced, kind of 50-50 nice equal mix voice. The singer that I think of when I think of really balanced mix is Sara Bareilles.
And I love her. when you listen to her sing, so many times, if you say to somebody, what do you think that is? Is that more chest voice? Is that more head voice? Is that they're like, yes, all, none. It just sounds so,
lovely, it's like the best of all worlds. It's so balanced to me. And then she can lean really strongly one direction or another anytime she wants to. So I'm going to give you an exercise for that. then I'm going to give you an exercise for a more chest dominant or belting mix voice that many singers are looking for. I think of like Jennifer Hudson.
Demi Lovato, singers that no matter where they are, there is this powerhouse, chesty aspect to their voice, And then I think of singers that no matter where they are and no matter how powerful and gorgeous it sounds, you can tell there's some upper end dominance throughout it. So I think of singers like Sam Smith.
I think of singers like Ariana Grande, no matter where they are in their ranges, you can still hear some head voice mixed in and fairly dominant throughout. So those are just examples, I think of off the top of my head. And always when I'm working with singers, whether it is in the Vocal Pro Collective, whether it is in my Erase Your Break course, whether it is one-on-one coaching, I want every singer I work with to have as many
options as possible and have them all sound good and feel good. And by sound good, mean sound how they want them to sound. so actually as I think about it, an exercise that I like that can either be really balanced or can be more upper end head voice dominant. I'm going to give you guys one that can do both of those. And it's on me.
Ya. M-E-Y-A. The reality is, once you get going, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, you could be meowing like a cat. So, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, that works perfectly too. Some singers are totally down to get their meow on. Other singers feel super goofy. I understand both, so do what feels better for you. Either me, ya,
or mi-yao, and it's five notes descending. and what I want you to think about when you're singing this is if we're thinking about where we might be focusing our resonance, trying to feel it We don't all feel resonance by the way, that's okay. But I want you to take your hands and make a triangle around your nose, cheeks, and mouth.
And actually we're gonna use this triangle shape for all of these exercises. And what I want you to think about is focus your vocal energy in that triangle. If it goes below the triangle, then I'm feeling pushing and squeezing on my vocal folds. That means we're overworking, we're getting in our own way. I want you to think about everything happening, the mouth up. If we start to have focus above our nose, then we're getting heady and we're losing that mix voice quality that we're going for. So we're try and keep the sound focused.
in the triangle. Mia, mia, mia, mia, mia. So I love that one. I would call that one more balanced. Mia, mia, mia, mia, mia. Hopefully you guys can hear I let a little more head voice be dominant there. And then I just looked at the time and realized Amber, you're going over again. Like I said, mix voice is just such a monster of a topic. So if I'm going through things too quickly here and you're like Amber, I want a whole episode on.
Whatever it is, comment, DM me, let me know. So let me give you one more before we finish up. I love this one for more chest dominant belty mix sounds. We're gonna do buh buh buh like the word bug and we're gonna add some vocal cry.
It's a sad bug and let's take this over an octave.
Hopefully you guys can hear how that's mix voice. I'm not using just my low end, just my upper end. The tonal qualities are a mix of those, right? The function is a mix of those in order to get that tonal qualities well. And that sounds very different than the other options I just gave you before. So those are some quick mix voice exercises to work with.
a couple of register connect exercises to work with. Like I said, this is a monster of a topic. But if you find yourself struggling with mix voice or maybe getting the tonal qualities you want, know that that is normal. This is lifelong work. My Erase Your Break course, if you work your way through it like it's a weekly hour lesson, it will take you two and a half months. But you get lifelong access because it is life long work.
And even if you've gotten to the point where you're able to do these more advanced sounds, you might go through periods where you're like, huh, I'm not loving the sound as much, or I wanna add in a new layer, a new tonal quality to my voice. We kind of have to go back through all these other pieces that we talked about these last couple of weeks of episodes and figure out where do we need to fine tune? This is work we're always doing, no matter your level of singer, the more access you have and the more options you have,
the more professional of a singer that you sound like, you have to have a developed mix voice, to really sing contemporary music styles,
I hope you all found this helpful. I'm gonna put the Erase Your Break course link down below, the Vocal Pro Collective link down below because you get access automatically if you join to the Erase Your Break course, along with a free warmup and a sing-along mix voice belt exercise. Like I said, let me know what you wanna hear more about. Thank you all for being here and see you in the next episode. Bye.
