You Can Sing With Impact was created by professional singer and vocal coach Yvonne DeBondi and consists of 11 vocal exercises. This singing software is point and click and contains both sheet music for the visual aspect and audio files to sing along with.
You Can Sing With Impact consists of 11 lessons plus an introductory lesson on singing with the diaphragm (this is actually a common misunderstanding because you don’t actually sing with the diaphragm; it engages involuntarily in response to the proper positioning of your “carriage”…but that’s another story!) In any case, here’s what the lesson layout looks like once you download it onto your computer:
The lesson format is that you can read the lesson or simply press play to hear it explained to you and then you can play the vocal exercises to here how they sound before attempting to sing them yourself. The singing lessons are as follows:
- Preparing The Body – This lesson helps get you in the right singing posture. Since singing is essentially a full body and soul exercise, it’s important to be in a relaxed, stable bodily position. Making sure that you’re not unnecessarily tensing up any of your muscles, be it your jaw, shoulders, abdomen, etc., is also paramount to good singing.
- Breathing Deeply – Breathing for singing involves learning how much breath to draw (you get an intuition for this over time), how to draw air in a relaxed manner, how not to expel too much air as you sing and how to make the most of the air you take in so that you can sustain notes for long periods or time.
- Awaken The Diaphragm - This is commonly known as “singing with your diaphragm” but it really is about creating what world-renowned singing pedagogue Richard Miller terms “dynamic equilibrium”. What this means is achieving a muscular coordination and tension, both in the fine muscles of the larynx and in the supportive muscles of the body, to eventually sing with ease, dynamism and emotional power.
- Sighs And Sirens – Sighs and sirens are my absolute favorite type of singing warmups. They are easy on the voice, help you extend your vocal range and sound delightfully weird to non-singers. I start all of my private vocal lessons, both as a teacher and student, with sighs and sirens.
- Lip Aerobics – The lips are vital to singing. They are one of the articulators that shape sound quite dramatically. Learning to use them via lip trills and other vocal exercises has fantastic benefits for your singing.
- Humming – Humming is one of my favorite vocal exercises because it creates buzz in the mask, which is the front part of the face. It teaches singers how to utilize their resonators to project their voices, sing in tune and improve tone quality.
- Singing Thirds – Singing thirds will help you improve your intonation and as we all know, learning how to sing in tune is essential to becoming an effective singer.
- The Full Scale – The major scale is the bedrock of music and singing training. Once you become intimately familiar with the major (and later, minor, harmonic minor and melodic minor) scale, you will develop an intuitive feel for the distance between notes. In other words, by mindfully (i.e. listening intently) practicing the major scale, your tuning will improve. But unless you practice the major scale with some regularity, you’ll lose this intuition for singing in tune; not completely, you just won’t be on “fire” like when you practice every day.
- Arpeggios – Singing arpeggios helps dramatically with singing in tune but it also challenges the singer to maintain ease and vocal quality as they make jumps between distant pitches. Practicing arpeggios helps singers to transition from head voice to chest voice (or falsetto if their head voice is underdeveloped). They help your musicianship and make fantastic vocal warm ups.
- Extended Arpeggios - Extended arpeggios continue to train your ear and musicianship and force you to deal with register breaks. If you’re having trouble with your passaggio, extended arpeggios will reveal it!
- Full Song – Eventually, we’d like to actually sing music, not just exercises! This final lesson guides you through a full song to conclude the course.
In addition, this singing course comes with a readable guide and MP3s that you can burn onto a practice CD! The program costs $19.95 and comes both in a physical format and a digital download. Thanks for reading my You Can Sing With Impact review!
