How can you tell if you are singing from your diaphragm?

I need to get my singing/speaking voice back. What are the best possible ways?

• Im a cheerleader, and in chamber choir at my school. Those are two things that are hard to juggle. I do yell from my diaphragm, though my voice has been damaged ever since cheer camp about a month ago. I cannot sing many notes. Im usually a Soprano but now anything i say makes me sound like a man. The last couple days its turned out to looking like a cold, what are some tips to getting my singing/speaking voice back. ASAP. Please help, singing is my biggest talent and i cant stand to lose that range. Is there a chance my upper range could be gone foreevr? How can i tell. if os how do i get those notes back once y voice is healed. Help :(

• Answer:

  Voice is a life long project, not a thing ASAP. Voice is good health. You have to take your decision. How much effort are you going to put into your voice? I’m myself a soprano and cannot sing during f.eks. a cold. When the cold is over it should not be hard hot juggle the use of the voice, even if it changes from cheer leading to chamber choir. But different aims put on high demands about training. Your cheer camp must have been dangerous. Voice is not only a focus at the diaphragm. If the diaphragm had anything to do with the actual voice, how come our athletes, boxers and runners don’t all sing particularly well? They also breathe very well. How about trumpet players? Never forget this all-important truth: The diaphragm can and will only develop equal to the resistance met at the vocal cords. Trumpet players have very strong diaphragms because their breath meets considerable resistance, yet this does nothing for their singing. Training builds and controll small muscles It has to be a balance between all muscles used in the sound production. The key lies in the vocal organ and they need clever training. You take the rest of your body to the gym to get fit but at the moment perhaps your voice need an expert to get fit and getting instructions about how to exercise it. Ask your choir leader about suggestions; ask other choir leaders, ask in the neighborhoods, in your hometown and neighbor towns. Ask for a grant for voice training. Check Internet. You have to develop your training program depending on the specific demands of your use of your voice. Perhaps your goal gives that you end up with voice speaking training and singing exercise five days a week. Don’t focus in high range notes. If you really are interested to sing a lot during your life high notes is not the most useful thing to sing. If your natural talking and singing voice is dark or very dark you will have the opportunity by training and exercise to develop a “falsetto” – a high voice – that can be remarkable. But these high notes have to have all the dark voice qualities to exist! During periods I have specialized in different voice produced sounds. Once I focused on extremely high pitch, another time at very high volume. And during the last years just to sing renaissance and baroque style very well. Sunday 19 Sept. I sing in a chamber choir performing “Messa a quattro voci da capella” 1651 composed by Claudio Monteverdi. All voices are extremely exposed in a piece like that and every note has to be carefully elaborated so the voices have to be enough trained for the task. Voice is a life long task, at least if you want to use it for singing.