The #1 Vocal Exercise to Help You Sing Better feat. David Bennett
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The #1 Vocal Exercise to Help You Sing Better feat. David Bennett with tags voice lessons, singing lessons, voice teacher, singing teacher, vocal coach, matt ramsey, david bennett, david bennett piano, octave and a half scale, octave and a half arpeggio, rossini arpeggio, rossini scale, lip trill, gee, bratty nae, seth riggs, speech level singing, ramsey voice studio, singing exercise, vocal warm up, vocal exercise
Master Your Voice Complete Singing Course: ramseyvoice.com/special-offer
The Rossini Arpeggio: 0:00
David Bennett on Theory of the Arpeggio: 1:07
Why It Became Popular: 3:12
How the Arpeggio Works to Sing Better: 3:52
The 1.5 Octave Lip Trill: 7:45
The 1.5 Octave Gee: 9:22
The 1.5 Octave Bratty Nae: 10:40
Nearly every lesson I've given and taken as a voice teacher has started off with one arpeggio: the Rossini arpeggio. But what makes this arpeggio special and why does it help you sing better?
To learn more about the history, I reached out to my good friend David Bennett of David Bennett Piano. He explains that the Rossini scale is not actually a scale, but a set of arpeggios. The Rossini arpeggio ascends with a major chord arpeggio and descends on a dominant V arpeggio ending on the tonic. This sets up a very nice musical phrase.
Why is the Rossini arpeggio so popular? And how does it help you sing better? The Rossini arpeggio was created in the 19th century by the composer Gioachino Rossini who did The Barber of Seville.
However, the arpeggio has had a renaissance of sorts by one of the contemporary masters of voice teaching: Seth Riggs. Master teacher Seth Riggs began using this arpeggio in teaching his students and has made it incredibly popular in his singing technique speech level singing.
The reason that the octave and a half arpeggio, or Rossini arpeggio works so well, is that the voice doesn’t like change. In vocal terms, that means that when singing up from the bottom to the top for instance, many singers will try to pull up their chest voice as they ascend higher. Or, if they start off by singing too lightly, they will get even lighter as they move up towards the top.
The octave and a half arpeggio cuts right through this with its sequence of major and minor thirds, perfect fourth, and major seconds. In other words, since the voice is moving so much, it's difficult for the singer to engage some of their bad habits. If you keep the voice moving, in general it will change and allow the singer to ascend smoothly from the bottom to the top of their voice. This occurs with any vocal exercise using the octave and a half arpeggio. It could be on lip trills, “Gee”s, and bratty “Nae”s.
Now, instead of just talking about it, let's actually do some. In our first exercise, we will do an octave and a half arpeggio on a lip trill, also known as a lip buzz. In our second vocal exercise, we'll use the octave and a half Rossini arpeggio on “Gee”, as in geese. In our third and final exercise, we'll use the Rossini arpeggio with a bratty “Nae” to encourage you to learn to belt with power. No matter where you are on your vocal journey, use this helpful vocal exercise to improve your singing voice.
