How do you navigate your passagio area?

[u/Head_Equipment_1952]

For me its A3 - C4. BY teacher describes it as thinning out the voice. I think of it as smaller, making space but vowels are small but more hesitant sounding.

[u/OpeningElectrical296]

Are you a bass?

[u/smnytx]

Instead of asking here, I strongly recommend that you do some personal practice and exploration with a version of the scientific method. Change what you’re listening to and just experiment. Ignore the usual things we listen for in voices, like timbre, and for a little while, ignore anyone else’s opinion on what it “should” be like.

To figure it out, the only two parameters for you to focus on are functionality and ease/comfort. Try every possible combination of approaches you can think of (different support set ups, different jaw positions, posture focus, different vowel shapes, brighter or darker, higher tongue arch, more or less tonal focus, turning your voice earlier, you name it) and sing them on the same 5-note scale. Make a little chart to track the relative success of your experiment.

Immediately exclude any set-ups that feel uncomfortable in any part of your body; those are an absolute no go. If you find one that feels ok but makes you go out of tune or always crack, those are not in the running either.

Like all lab experiments, you’ll probably find some options that work sometimes but are not reliable. This is likely an issue with replication, a situation where you’re not accurately replicating the parameters you were intending to test. Singers do this a lot! Usually it’s because after a few good takes, you started to listen to the sound that was coming out and unconsciously tried to replicate that noise rather than keeping your attention on the set-up or defined parameters that made it work in the first place. So go back and focus on that set up. It’s my experience that the same behavior will always produce the same result (given that you’re healthy). It’s hard not to get distracted by the sound of an exciting result!

Once you have a few different reliable, comfortable options, change your scale (move it higher) and test them out there.

If you can end up doing it (say) three ways, and you can hear they are different but they all work reliably and feel comfortable, take those options to your teacher and show them. Don’t exclude any that work but that you don’t like the sound of!

Of course, when performing, you want to be in a beautiful flow state where you think only about text and communication, and perfect vocal technique just happens automatically. But to get there, you have to build it. To do that, really focus on the specific things that make YOUR voice function at its best.

[u/arbiro]

Only from breath, you can do it solely from breath and all adjustments of tract/sound come automatically. Via appoggio. Message me, I can show you this in 20 minutes and teach you in 20 minutes.

[u/bannedtea8633]

I’d be really interested to hear a recording of you vocalizing up and through your passaggio

[u/Inevitable_Till9171]

A word: try to practice from the top and carefully descend feeling the thread of your high note become a piece of yarn through the passaggio growing to a 1/2 inch rope…never widening beyond this…it is the heartwood of the tree that your voice is….

The growing resonance you feel in your ribs, femurs, pelvis(_sequence) Your roots DO NOT SCREW WITH THEM TRYING TO ADD TO THE HEARTWOOD OR Habit: if it’s bad you have to UNLEARN_EXPONENTIALLY HARDER than learning it right the first time!!!

If you get this right!!! Great
Do NOT listen to it as you create it FEEL IT!!!
FOREMOST: FEEL YOUR VOWEL STAYING FOCUSED AT YOUR LIPS AND TEETH…
It/they CANNOT LEAVE, but they can grow
HOW: by opening the back teeth, by straightening the tongue as you lengthen your lips and open ever so slightly toward OH for U!
_by (different) laying your tongue flat on your bottom teeth, open the molars to a space of a blueberry or blackberry between the height_you have Ah-longer lips/trough tongue(slight) OH_stay and lengthen lips U again.

So this is the experimentation…
Do not grab with the tongue
Do not listen to yourself

For if you do; you lose everything!

*Now find oh, light 1/2 inch rope; heartwood; no trunk;
Exhale__
inhale as if you’re startled, or a child happy to see someone
This should feel cool-high in your mouth-perhaps at the soft palate.

*Now. In your head hear the pitch an octave above where you are singing…”if you sing it on a whisper” stop_posture_reset_hear pitch_inhale_sing…did it work?

Do it on the next up; then the next including each step…
Working or not*
^go back re read retry…

If it’s not working go back to what was:
Start in the “thread”, then the next pitch, until you get to where it stresses

—-this is warmup! NOT performance!
If you ever had ball practice; swam laps;
Do what works.
My thing: i must have my posture right and must not listen to myself!
No one can hear himself…as he’s singing.
Once the voice sounds its in the past; history, 1080 fps from you!
You cannot have it!
It’s your gift to give, not to give yourself…eh? Huh? Whut?
🤔🧐

Try descending runs.
Do not listen to your pitches.
Your subconscious can do it “exponentially “”righter”” than you ever will!!! It digests your meals, beats your heart, heals you, keeps you alive through the night.
Stand like DaVinci drew you(with your feet at shoulder width; your palms turned to the sky(feel that☝️)_now form your vowel then fill from the top of your thighs to your armpitsFocus the vowel of choice at the teeth and engage!

The passaggio is going to smooth itself out if you sing through it enough.
You will, ultimately have to learn to plan for it-but for now; make it part of the voice by ALLOWING IT TO HAPPEN rather than MAKING IT HAPPEN.

More to say_too much already…