1) MESSAGE from Your Personal Singing Coach

2) FACEBOOK GROUP for all supporters and fans of Your Personal Singing Guide

Join our facebook group now and keep in touch with the latest news from Your Personal Singing Guide.com!

3) NEW Website Section: Testimonials

Read some of the singing testimonials sent in by our readers all around the world!

4) RESOURCE Website Section: Ear Training

Ear Training Exercises to help us listen to ourselves better and know what to correct!

5) COMMUNICATE with Your Personal Singing Coach

Send in your questions about singing, and also compliments or feedback about this website!

1) Vocal Tip #19 – Breath and Voice. A Delicate Balance.

2) Pitching Tip #17 – Tones and Semitones. Back to the Basics.

3) Harmony Tip #02 – Chord Notes for Good Harmony.

Homepage URL:
http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com

Message from Your Personal Singing Coach:

“Welcome all fellow singers, vocal coaches and singing students!

This 17th issue of Your Personal Singing Ezine happens to coincide with April Fool’s Day, a day for jokes and fun amongst friends and family!

Of course, sometimes jokes can be carried too far, but as long as it’s all in good and healthy fun, April Fool’s Day really is all about making people happy and having a sense of humor in life.

On this April Fool’s Day, I am preparing to travel overseas to France for the next 2 weeks for a holiday! Really looking forward to this trip as it will be a welcome break from my work. ;-p

I certainly hope that everyone will have lots of fun on April Fool’s Day, and just let loose and appreciate the pranks that people play on each other!

The website also has a new section that I would like everyone to check out, and that is the ‘Testimonials’ section. This is where I showcase some of the lovely testimonials that all my readers have been sending in since I started the website. Hopefully it will help to inspire some of you to keep learning singing, and to never give up even in the face of challenges along the way!

I would also like to once again invite everyone to join Your Personal Singing Guide’s Facebook Group
(http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=161546608524&ref=ts

and be a member of our group, so that I can more effectively update everyone about the latest happenings at our website, and also engage everyone in discussions about singing and music.

Do enjoy the tips that I am providing for you in this 17th issue of this Ezine, and feel free to share Your Personal Singing Ezine with your friends and loved ones, or better still, get them to come and subscribe to their very own Personal Singing Ezine! I will be glad to share my singing tips and pointers with them too!

If you wish to share with your friends the back-issues of our Ezine, feel free to do so too:

http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com/Your_Personal_Singing_EZine-backissues.html

Also, if you feel that our website is really beneficial to you, please do let us know by dropping us an email through our Contact Us section on the website! Your comments will be greatly appreciated!”

Yours Sincerely,

Aaron Matthew Lim

Your Personal Singing Coach

FACEBOOK GROUP for all supporters and fans of Your Personal Singing Guide

For those of you who subscribe to our Personal Singing Ezine, do make it a point to join our Facebook Group for readers of Your Personal Singing Guide.

This facebook group allows us to keep in contact with each other online, and also to discuss various topics about singing and music.

Basically, we can build an online music community, but I do need your help for this. Hopefully you can join this facebook group, and also get your friends and family to join too!

I am sure it will be fun to interact with people from all around the world, and exchange pointers and contacts with musicians and singers from every part of the globe!

So, do check out the URL below and join our facebook group now!

Your Personal Singing Guide Facebook Group URL:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=161546608524&ref=ts

Thank you for your help, and I hope that our music community keeps growing by the minute!

NEW Website Section: Testimonials

Since I started this website more than 2 years ago, many of you have sent in wonderful words of encouragement that have inspired me along the way and allowed me to continue taking this journey in singing.

I would like to show my appreciation by publishing your kind comments on my website, in the hope that these words will in turn inspire others to pursue their singing education and never give up in the face of adversity!

Singing is certainly a skill that we can learn for the duration of our lives, and it is a lifelong journey that we undertake. Along the way we touch many lives and we inspire many people to also seek what they love and enjoy.

So, do read the lovely encouraging words that people all around the world have written to me, and if you feel inspired, do send in your own kind words too and I will be more encouraged to provide more content and services to everyone!

To read up on the singing testimonials, click on the link below:

Singing Testimonials URL:

http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com/testimonial.html

RESOURCE Website Section: Ear Training Exercises

Ear Training Exercises are one of the most important exercises that we can do to keep ourselves in tune.

A lot of singers train their voices everyday, doing vocal drills and technique training, but neglect to also train their aural awareness and listening ability.

Being able to hear ourselves when we sing will certainly help us to know when we are singing off-key, and to allow us to correct our pitch before our audience notices anything amiss.

So, the next time you sing, do remember to listen too!!

Check out the section on Ear Training Exercises now:

Ear Training Exercises URL:

http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com/ear-training.html

COMMUNICATE with Your Personal Singing Coach!

Do make use of the Contact Us page on our website, for those of you who wish to ask me questions about singing, or would wish to let us know how great a job we are doing with our website.

We welcome all your comments, and hope to hear from you regularly regarding our website and how we can improve!

I would also like to invite those of you who would wish for me to answer any burning questions about singing, to write in using the online form here and let me know what your questions are.

I will certainly do my very best to answer them, and maybe some of your queries will find their way onto our
website section for Singing FAQ!

Do also let us know what you wish to see on our website, and we will try our best to make the improvements as quickly as we can!

In fact, many of you have already sent in your positive feedback, and I certainly look forward to receiving more from all you readers out there!

Do take note that for the security word challenge, you will need to type the word in CAPITAL LETTERS exactly as it appears, or you will not be able to send us your comments and we would have missed out on valuable feedback from you!

Click on the link below to send us your comments and feedback!

Contact Us URL:

http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com/contact-us.html

Vocal Tip #19 – Breath and Voice. A Delicate Balance!

I just finished a lesson with some youngsters, and had a Eureka moment during the lesson.

Actually, my realization wasn’t really about something I did not know, and in fact I do know it well, but it never really hit me and I never really fully realized how important it was.

And this is it. Your breath and your singing voice are actually in a very delicate balance all the time. In fact, they can’t live without each other.

If you notice, when you sing a very solid note, or even when you strain and try to sing a very ‘tight’ sounding note, you find that you use so much more force with your diaphragm.

In fact, the more solid a note you sing, the more pressure is created in your body and the more work your diaphragm has to do.

On the contrary, when you sing a very airy note, you will find that you do not really need to use a lot of force with your diaphragm.

You may however need to use more air to sing that airy note, but you certainly will not feel as much pressure in your body as you would when you are singing a solid note.

This actually is an important point for all singers to understand and digest, and it may really take you a few years to fully master this simple but important point.

Just be sure to keep experimenting with different sounds, and varying between solid and airy sounds to really understand how your diaphragm reacts to the changes in your voice.

If you are unsure about how your breath supports your voice when you sing, visit the URL below:

Breath Support URL:

http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com/breath-support.html

If however you wish to revisit the topic of breathing when singing, in order to fully understand my vocal tip for the day, do check out the URL below:

Breathing for Singing URL:

http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com/breathing-for-singing.html

Pitching Tip #17 – Tones and Semitones. Back to the Basics.

I find that this issue of Your Personal Singing Ezine is very much inspired by my interactions with people during vocal lessons, and also my observations of lessons by other instructors.

The pitching tip for the day is all about Tones and Semitones, and how we can understand them better and apply them in our singing.

I got inspired to write about this after observing one of my school’s guitar instructors conduct his lessons in the morning, and seeing how he explained this topic to his students.

For those who feel that they need a revision of basic musical theory before proceeding with this pitching tip, do check out the URL below:

Pitching Exercises URL:

http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com/pitching-exercises.html

As most of you would know, a semitone is a half step, and it means that we move from one note to its direct neighbor, without any notes in between.

For example, if we were to move from a B note to a C note, it would be a semitone up, because on the piano, the B and the C note are direct neighbors with no notes in between.

However, if we were to move from a C to a D note, you would be moving a tone up, because there is a black key in between the C and the D note on the piano. Moving a tone up also means that we move a full step up in pitch.

In solfege terms, here is the breakdown and the movement from note to note:

Doh – Re (Tone), Re – Mi (Tone), Mi – Fa (Semitone), Fa – Sol (Tone), Sol – La (Tone), La – Ti (Tone), Ti – Doh (Semitone)

Knowing about our tones and semitones certainly makes it easier for us to pitch the notes that we want.

For example, if we are singing from a Mi to Fa note, we would know that we are singing a semitone up, and would not pitch the Fa too far away.

But, if we were singing from Sol to La, we would pitch slightly further because we know that they are a tone apart.

There are so many other applications of this basic theory, but this certainly is one of the most basic and yet important theories that we need to use in our everyday singing and pitching training.

For those of you who wish to read about how tones and semitones create basic musical scales, you are free to check out my webpage on it:

Major Scale URL:

http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com/major-scales.html

You can also check out more pitching and ear training books at my webpage on Singing Books:

Singing Books URL:

http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com/singing-books.html

Harmony Tip #02 – Chord Notes for Good Harmony

This last tip for this issue of Your Personal Singing Ezine is also inspired by a lesson that I just conducted a few hours ago with a bunch of rowdy and energetic youngsters.

While I was giving them some listening exercises and interval singing training, it certainly dawned on me that the exercises I was giving them could also be applied to harmony singing.

For those who want to know about some basic interval training exercises, do check out the URL below:

Interval Training URL:

http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com/pitching-exercises-1.html

In order for us to harmonise well, we certainly need to know what makes good harmony. And certainly, the most basic and strongest of harmonies would of course be the Chord Notes themselves.

By chord notes, we usually mean a group of 3 notes that form a chord, either Major or Minor. For a Major Chord, the chord notes would be Doh (1), Mi (3) and Sol(5).

However, for a Minor Chord, the chord notes would be Doh (1), Mi Flat (3b), Sol (5). This creates a very different sound from the major chord, but yet the notes are not all that different!

In fact, if you are observant enough, you would notice that the only difference between a major and a minor chord would be the centre note. ;-p

The main point here would be that if your melody note were a Doh (1), you could either harmonise with a Mi (3) note or a Sol (5) note. This harmony arises because of their chord note relationship.

So the next time you wish to harmonise something, try using Chord Notes to fit in with the melody and see if it works better for you!

For those who genuinely need help with your harmony sense, there are good books that you can consult at this URL:

Harmony Books URL:

http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com/singing-harmony.html

Also, check out the following URL for some pointers on listening to relative pitch, which is an extremely important skill when it comes to harmonising:

Relative Pitch URL:

http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com/relative-pitch.html

Should you have any questions, feel free to email me at enquiry@your-personal-singing-guide.com or use the feedback form available on our Contact Us page.

Those of you who wish to check out the previous issues of our Ezine for other tips on singing can also go to the following URL:

Your Personal Singing Ezine Back-Issues URL:

http://www.your-personal-singing-guide.com/Your_Personal_Singing_EZine-backissues.html

Keep up your training as a singer, and do also keep me updated about your progress!

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Here ends Issue #17 of Your Personal Singing Ezine!

I hope that this issue is useful to you, and that you are able to gain some knowledge from what I have written in this Ezine. I always try to provide tips that you can use, in a manner that is easy to understand and apply in daily life.

Do remember to join our facebook group so that we can finally meet each other, and share our interests and ideas online!

Feel free to email me at
Your_Personal_Singing_EZine@your-personal-singing-guide.com
or use the Contact Us page provided on our website if you have any feedback, requests or any questions about singing! I will be glad to reply and also to discuss singing tips with you!

Do also subscribe to the RSS feed provided on my website so as to be constantly updated about the new and exciting content that will appear on Your Personal Singing Guide website!

Also, remember to forward this issue of Your Personal Singing Ezine to your friends and loved ones, and encourage them to come visit our website and join you in your singing practices too!

Singing is always more fun in a community with more people!

Your Personal Singing Ezine will be back in another 6 weeks’ time, but be sure to check back at our website frequently and keep practising your singing!

Aaron Matthew Lim
Your Personal Singing Coach
Your Personal Singing Guide

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