Dear brothers and sisters,

I have been a church choir member for years now, but I have never had any vocal technique training. Lessons in my area cost $65.00 per lesson and up, and the teachers want to teach every week.

My voice range is soprano/alto - I alternate depending on who the choir director needs more that day. I read music, English and Cyrillic, but not the Greek Byzantine notation.

Can anyone recommend a vocal technique/breathing technique CD or website that could help specifically a church chanter get better at singing?

Dear Mariya,

I don't know of anything specifically for church singing, but I know of a few things for classical technique.

the best exercise by far is the siren or flex, which will help improve the area where you "break" between the soprano and alto part of your voice (you're probably actually a mezzo); there's a demo here for countertenor, but you probably want to start on a different pitch (say just around middle c).

If I'm correct from your description and you are a mezzo soprano, a good article about that voice type (and the site has similar articles on all voice types) is:

http://www.voiceteacher.com/female_passaggio.html

If you want to improve your classical solo voice, doing quite traditional vocalises and arias is good; some books come with CD, such as:

http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Method-Italian-Singing-Baritone/dp/079355120X

http://www.amazon.com/24-Italian-Songs-Arias-Collection/dp/0793515130/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_c

On the whole though, nothing is better than not resting on your laurels. Nobody in my choir has any vocal training, but in the two years I have had them they have progressed amazingly just by me forcing them to learn one new piece a month, to the point that I can put something brand new out and most can sightread it well enough to sing in Church straight off.

Do as many new pieces as you can in as many styles as possible, and try and pick pieces to learn that target the weakest part of your range; if you consistently work in that area it will improve.

Also, I don't want to overstep your choir director, but I think that switching voice types to fill gaps can be counterproductive to trying to improve vocal technique. It can be really damaging to sing outside your natural range (I'm guilty of it myself, but conducting it is unavoidable to be across many parts). If your choir director is amenable, and you really seriously want to work on technique, I would suggest picking one type (probably mezzo- soprano) and sticking with it at least 90% of the time. Ironically, if you strengthen one type, it will carry over better if you have to occasionally double.

My choir is chronically short of altos, but I never force sopranos to sing alto for the reasons mentioned above. A sop singing sop always sounds better than a sop singing alto, and secondly, in a lot of our church music (obixod tones etc) the bass usually carries the same note as the altos, so the altos can drop out without too much lacking.

Thank you so much for the information, Otsheylnik. I appreciate it. :-)

By the way, I'm not good with articles and books when it comes to voice, I learn better by listening to and doing exercises on CD or Youtube.

Glory to Jesus Christ!
Mariya,
I would suggest what was suggested to me by our matriarch from the choir-if you can, enroll in a local community college music course. I'm only 3 weeks into it but I think it has helped thus far.
Just a thought in terms of finding a regular way to be involved with developing better breathing/pitch technique.

In XC,
J. Andrew

I realised I left out the link to the flex exercise in the above post..sorry. It's here, As I said start around middle c, maybe go up by semitones till around A above middle C.

http://blog.counterpointspublishing.com/2011/07/vocal-technique-the-flex/