If you’re dealing with wobbly, slow, or irregular vibrato, don’t despair! In week 1 of our Vibrato series, we’ll do an exercise to boost airflow and energize the tone: The Doobie Doo.
So many singers deal with insecurity about their vibrato – it’s too wide and wobbly, it’s too slow or too fast, or it’s wild and irregular. But saggy, slow vibrato is not an intrinsic characteristic of the voice, regardless of age.
Like every other aspect of singing, vibrato is simply the result of a technical, physical process in the body. So by identifying the causes of undesired vibrato, we can change them, and the resulting sound.
Whether you’re 18 or 81, you can modify the speed, pitch, and regularity of your vibrato by keeping airflow energized and steady, placing the sound high in the face, and firming the palate.
In today’s video, we’ll learn the Doobie Doo exercise to keep air flowing quickly and steadily, the first essential step in modulating vibrato.
How to do the Doobie Doo:
- The pitches in this exercise are very simple. Start on one pitch, go up a whole step, and then back down.
- We’re going to sing “Doobie-doobie” very fast. This is much easier to understand on the video, but essentially you’ll sing, “doobie-doobie-doobie-doobie” on one note, go up a step and sing, “doobie-doobie-doobie-doobie” again, and then back down to the first step and sing, “doobie-doobie-doobie-doobie-Doo.”
- Now, we’ll sing the same pitches, but sustaining a single “Doo” for the time it took you to previously sing, “doobie-doobie-doobie-doobie.” As you sustain, mentally move through all the “doobies” so you keep the air moving.
- Finally, you’ll do the whole thing twice as slow. Keep thinking about all those tiny “doobie”-sized notes INSIDE of the long note you’re sustaining.
Can you tell that when you’re actively singing through each micro-beat inside a longer note, the air and tone are staying more active and energized? This exercise works specifically to counteract the feeling of “holding” a note, which is especially awful when you’re trying to also minimize vibrato.
It’s unlikely you’ll completely eliminate vibrato with this exercise alone, but you may find your vibrato pattern becoming more organized, and you’ll get so many other benefits from it. You can use this doobie doo idea to practice gradual dynamic shifts, or as a substitute for count-singing to really clarify your rhythms.
You’ll also need this steady breath flow as a foundation for the other two videos in this series, so be sure to keep practicing, and I’ll add links for the other two videos as soon as they post.
Thanks for practicing!
