Learn How You Can Sing Like a PROFESSIONAL with Legendary Opera Singer Lilli Lehmann. In this audio book she will cover ALL the basics of a good singing technique, to help you make the MOST OF YOUR GOD GIVEN VOICE! Here are a few basics: Step 1: Posture When you sing, your body is your instrument, so your posture can make a difference to the sound you produce. Stand feet shoulder-width apart, slightly turned out, with your weight more on the balls of your feet. Your legs should be very slightly bent - don't lock your knees. Your shoulders should rest back and down. Keep your chin down with the back of the neck long, making sure the front of your neck and your throat is relaxed. Step 2: Breathing When singing, sound is made by pushing air through your vocal chords which makes them vibrate. Increase the capacity of your lungs by expanding your ribs using the intercostal muscles (between the ribs). Don't think about taking in air, rather focus on expanding your ribs and you will take in air automatically. When you start to sing, support your ribs by holding in your abdominal muscles. Step 3: Warm up Before you start singing, you need to warm up your voice like an athlete warms up before a competition. Here are three exercises to do this: Step 4: Lip rolls You're going to make a "brrr" sound by relaxing your lips and singing through them. Starting at a comfortable pitch, using a small range and expanding your ribs between each repetition, ascend semitone by semitone and go as high as you can. Step 5: Vowel Sounds Making the phonetic sounds A, E, I, O, U, sing a slightly more complex scale. Again repeat up the octave. Keep your jaw relaxed and your mouth open. Step 6: "Mi" sounds This time use a full scale, using the sound "mi". This will help you get into your higher register. Take quick breaths between each exercise. This will help to strengthen your intercostal muscles. Step 7: Performance Having a nice voice is one thing, communicating the meaning of a song is quite another. Make sure you annunciate your words appropriately, pronouncing consonants clearly and energetically. Also use your face to communicate the meaning of the words. Think about what the song means and allow those feelings to show in your facial expressions. Lilli Lehmann's Vocal Technique: Lehmann objected seriously to the use of the term 'method.' But her teaching was just that. She built upon fundamental ideas of pedagogy: she examined her students individually, schooled the voice for tone in respect to throat, head, and chest formation, and was proficient musically, so that when it came time to advise regarding a career, she knew well enough in what direction to lead the student for public work. Her schooling for tone production and control demands tremendous concentration, a perfect coördination of all faculties for rapid adjustment and change, and an eventual chart of habits which are reliable as a good heart beat. Lilli believed that the muscles of the face, neck and head - what she called the 'mask form'- needed to be disciplined every day. Towards this end, she taught her students to vocalize on an [i] vowel from the very first lesson, for which she was "laughed to scorn" by other teachers - the [a] vowel being the vowel of first choice. Lehmann insisted on this vocal placement, deeming it essential for all that followed. She also insisted that American students needed to mix [a] with [o]. However, [a] was only attempted after the student had obtained [i], [e], [o] and [u]. Each vowel was exercised in a specific manner which Lissfelt includes in the text. Lehmann's exercises range from the chromatic (for tuning) to the Great Scale, which Lilli practiced for an hour and a half a day. Each half note is sung on all 5 vowels in succession, the goal being the attainment of absolute control over a two octave range- if not more. Lissfelt includes the preparatory exercises which are graduated and carefully explained. Perhaps this is what enabled Lehmann to sing like this, with brilliant execution and trill. Lissfelt also credited the Lehmann exercises for strengthening and improving his speaking voice. More About Lilli Lehmann: Lilli Lehmann, born Elisabeth Maria Lehmann, later Elisabeth Maria Lehmann-Kalisch (November 24, 1848 Würzburg – May 17, 1929 Berlin) was a German operatic soprano of phenomenal versatility. She was also a voice teacher. The future opera star's father, Karl-August Lehmann, was a singer (Heldentenor) while her mother, Maria Theresia Löw (1809–1885), was a soprano of Jewish origin. Her first lessons were from her mother, who had been a prima donna under Spohr at the Cassel opera. After singing small parts on the stage, for example in Mozart's Magic Flute at Prague in 1866, and studies under Heinrich Laube in Leipzig,[1] Lehmann made her proper debut in 1870 in Berlin as a light soprano in Meyerbeer's Das Feldlager in Schlesien. She subsesequently became so successful that she was appointed an Imperial Chamber Singer for life in 1876. Lehmann sang in the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, singing in the first complete performances of The Ring Cycle as Woglinde and Helmwige. She performed in London in 1884, and appeared at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1885–1890. Together with her Met colleagues Fischer, Alvary, Brandt, and Seidl, she helped to popularise Wagner's music in America. By remaining in America beyond the leave granted her by the Berlin Opera, she faced a ban following her return to Germany. After the personal intervention of the Emperor, the ban was lifted. She appeared at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1899 and sang in Paris and Vienna in 1903 and 1909 respectively. In 1905, she sang at the Salzburg Festival, later becoming the festival's artistic director. Lehmann was also renowned as a Lieder singer. She continued to give recitals until her retirement from the concert stage in the 1920s. Her mature voice, of splendid quality and large volume, gained for her the reputation of being not only one of the greatest Wagnerian singers of her day but also an ideal interpreter of Bellini's Norma and the operatic music of Mozart. She was considered unsurpassed in the rôles of Brünnhilde and Isolde but sang an astonishingly wide array of other parts. Indeed, across the span of her career, she performed 170 different parts in a total of 119 German, Italian and French operas. She was noted not only for her rendering of the musical score, but also as a tragic actress. She was also a noted voice teacher. Among her pupils were the famous sopranos Geraldine Farrar and Olive Fremstad. In 1888, she married the tenor Paul Kalisch. Lehmann founded the International Summer Academy at the Mozarteum in Salzburg in 1916. The academy's curriculum concentrated on voice lessons at first but it was extended later to include a wide variety of musical instruction. The Lilli Lehmann Medal is awarded by the Mozarteum in her honour. Her voice can be heard on CD reissues of the recordings which she made prior to World War I. Although past her peak as an operatic singer when she made these records, they still impress. Singing Lessons With Lilli Lehmann - How to Sing - Vocal Techniques from the Legendary Opera Singer Lilli Lehmann ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!