The 5-Minute Voice: an online video series

More than four and a half hours of detailed, playful, and entertaining instruction

Your voice is a big part of yourself. Thoughts and emotions, ideas, observations, anecdotes, puns, responses, requests, complaints, declarations of love, and much more find their expression through your voice.

Your voice is like an instrument, which you have played from birth. You don’t have to be a trained singer or professional speaker to enjoy playing the instrument, and to have fun with it.

The 5-Minute Voice is an informal approach to the vocal instrument. I created 52 video clips, each lasting five minutes and introducing concepts and exercises to deepen your vocal pleasures. To practice these exercises you don’t need any previous training; you don’t need to know the anatomy of the voice; and you also don’t need to know how to read musical scores. Some clips incite you to sing a little bit of “Happy Birthday,” or to hold a pitch. But the clips don’t judge you, and you’re welcome to sing out of tune or not to sing at all. You might learn useful things from simply watching the clips, without worrying about the exercises.

Many clips start with an ordinary sound from your daily life—an interjection, a word, a short phrase. We take the sound as a toy and we play with it for a while, telling jokes and making fools of our silly selves. Then we start systematizing the way we practice:  louder, softer, faster, slower; pay attention to your coordination and don’t try too hard; and, above all, have a good time, which is the core principle of the 5-Minute Voice.

The clips are loosely organized around eight interconnected themes. The first eight clips introduce the themes one by one.

  1. Vowels (“Bat Bet Beet”)

  2. Coordination (“How Wonderful”)

  3. Expression (“One Two Three”)

  4. Elasticity (“The Rubber Band”)

  5. Vibration (“Humming”)

  6. Psychology (“Lingering”)

  7. Consonants (“Málaga”)

  8. Breathing (“Silence & Breath”)

Subsequent clips revisit and develop the themes. You don’t need to keep track of the themes, since they’re interconnected anyway; every clip touches upon multiple themes. The numbering is only for the sake of convenience. Go through the clips in any order you wish, as each clip is self-contained. Some exercises will seem easy, others more challenging. But easy and difficult are variable from person to person, and also from day to day. What’s difficult or even impossible today could become child’s play tomorrow.

Study each clip as a vocal workout, stopping the clip multiple times to perform the exercises to your heart’s content. A clip lasts five minutes, but practicing its materials can last ten, 15, or 30 minutes. 52 clips, 52 weeks, one clip per week for a whole year—or any other rhythm that suits your personality and your goals. I suggest you work with the clips at your computer, although a smartphone has its merits, too. The 5-Minute Voice is flexible and allows for many approaches.

The series is offered exclusively through my Patreon page, but you don’t have to become a member of Patreon to purchase the series. You have multiple options: Purchase the complete series (€80), a sampler of 8+ clips (€24), or individual clips (€4). If you buy through the Patreon app in the Apple Store, you'll have to pay a higher price. I suggest you stick with the Patreon site.

Another choice is for you to become a subscriber to my Patreon page, and in addition to the 5-Minute voice series you’ll enjoy my writings, my creative audio and video clips, and my monthly talks and classes.

Please email me with your questions, suggestions, and requests.