Where to Start: The Onset

I think there's a lot of confusion about where to start with singing, or how to begin really working on the voice as an instrument. We can start by thinking about breath support, or by trying to access higher range, or by chasing a good quality of tone, and all of those are worth working on eventually. But I want to offer some direction here that the singing masters of the past recommended for centuries as a fundamental, something to base the rest of your training off of.

Before we dive in: my name is Nathaniel Stern. I'm a classically trained baritone, and I teach voice lessons to students working in a range of styles, from classical to pop.

The attack

The most fundamental and basic coordination a singer can learn is the idea of the onset, or the attack. It has also been called the coup de glotte, French for "stroke of the glottis." Pedagogy texts from Garcia to Lilli Lehmann to Lamperti all mention this idea of attack in some way, and while I'm not going to go too far into the specifics of those texts here, they are worth knowing about. If a closer look at the historical sources would interest you, that's a video I'd be glad to make.

Simply put, the attack is the most basic form of coordination between the vocal mechanism and the breath moving through it, which is how sound is being made in the first place.

You might be asking yourself what's so important about practicing just the beginning of a note. Well, to sing really means to lengthen this idea of attack, this contraction of the vocal mechanism. The sustained tone is really just the onset, extended. And at the beginning, students usually have a lack of coordination in this process, coming from a certain direction.

So what do I mean by coordination here? It's the ability to balance the flow of breath from beneath with the action of the closing of the vocal cords. Usually, beginner students tend to push too much breath from beneath, which makes this coordination quite challenging. It either necessitates the closure of the cords being too tight and squeezed in order to block all of that air from beneath, or else it stays too loose, and the tone comes out breathy without the strength of the contraction of the vocal mechanism.

Keep in mind that in these early stages, the goal isn't immediately a "good" tone, though that's obviously what we're all after ultimately. This is about working on a fundamental coordination that will pay off across many different kinds of exercises as you move forward in your training. Search more for balance and freedom in the sensation than being self-critical of your sound. The good sounds will follow the good feelings.

Finding the sensation

One of the earliest sensations to learn is how to close the vocal cords around the airflow. In the video I demonstrate this with a grunt, essentially the valsalva maneuver you'd use to brace yourself under a heavy lift in the gym. What that mechanism teaches us is that the vocal cords are themselves partially responsible for controlling the flow of breath, and for acting upon it.

Try making that sound, and then calling out immediately after it, a short "eh." The sound comes out tight and squeezed, but it also comes out controlled. Feel the action of the vocal mechanism on the airflow beneath it.

Now try it again, but lighten the mechanism underneath into a lighter and lighter closure, and call out into that. Much lighter, but still controlled, right? This sense of the lean of the vocal mechanism on the breath is the coordination that has to be learned at the beginning. Try just sustaining that calling-out mechanism from this feeling, without worrying about specific pitches at all yet, and simply work on holding the sensation longer.

Bringing it toward singing

Now to bring this closer to "singing," if we can really call it that yet. Try onsetting this closed but light sensation into a short attack on a specific note.

For most singers who are English speakers, I find the [i] vowel quite useful for finding narrowness in the vocal tract in this part of the voice, but feel free to play around with [e] and [a] as well. Try repeating this on two notes: four short onsets on the first degree, then four on the second, coming back to the first, so 1-2-1, with a sustain at the end of each group. The thing to focus on is the light reclosing of the vocal cords each time, just to build the feeling. When you go to sustain, focus on sustaining the sensation of the onset rather than pushing forward with more breath.

I'd keep this exercise fairly low and comfortable in the range to start, around A2 for low-voiced men, B2 for higher-voiced men, A3 for lower female voices, or B3 for higher female voices. I wouldn't take it too high into the middle voice at this stage, since the point here is the coordination of things.

An additional thought, though this will likely feel quite challenging at the beginning, is to use the vocal cord mechanism itself as the only thing that opens with the sound. You maintain the feeling of the hold of the breath against the cords and the hollowness of the chest, and open only the vocal mechanism to feel the tone start. Then you sustain that beginning, and that is the sustained singing tone.

Carrying it between notes

As you build up this sensation, try sustaining the feeling of lean, of closure, between the notes, really on a sliding sensation, and again without worrying much about producing a good "singing sound." Just work on building up the coordination between those two pitches. A useful version of this is four onsets on the first degree, four on the second, then a slow 1-2-1 on [e] or [a].

It can be helpful here to think about the sound coming back at you rather than being pushed out. And if it feels too tight, experiment with pushing less air as you go to sustain.

Give it a couple of weeks

Try this out for a week or two and see how it helps. The main thing to play around with is the sensation of where the onset is taking place from, seeing if you can isolate it as coming from beneath the throat, in the chest, rather than above the cords in the mouth. Play with the breath as well, and notice how changing it changes your whole relationship to the sound.

There aren't really mistakes to be made here. Treat it as an exploration, and don't be afraid to just make sounds.

This coordination can be applied to any singing, honestly. It will be much less rigid in more contemporary styles than in a classical setting, but the mechanism really is useful in a contemporary pop setting as well.

If you found this interesting, useful, or even just challenging, I'd be glad to hear about it. Leave a comment on the video and I'll happily give you some thoughts. My background is in classical voice and I teach voice lessons online, so feel free to reach out for a trial lesson.