Value Of the Twelve Tone or Two Octave Exercise

One of the fundamentals of singing involves muscular coordination.

Of course, all exercises have some bearing on different aspects of singing, because all are inter-connected. Yet, exercises also focus. The Twelve Tone or Two Octave Exercise is for stretching and developing coordination between the closer and stretcher muscles – chest and falsetto.

First, this exercise is arpeggiated, meaning it has wider steps, like jumping up and down the staircase, taking two or three steps at a time instead of single step by step. The wider steps tend to release tension and help us let go, like stretching, not lifting weights.

Second, this exercise is over a wide range, which encourages both muscle systems, chest and falsetto, to work together, because we literally move from one extreme to the other, from the pitch range where one muscle has its home to the pitch range where the other muscle has its home. As we move back and forth, the muscles learn how to coexist.

One of the most common ways to structure this exercise would be to begin in our normal lower voice (chest), yodel or flip to falsetto on the way up, then back to normal lower voice on the way down. As the voice develops, there will be the appearance of the “full voice.” This exercise continues to be valuable in its ability to encourage muscular coordination in an ever increasingly complex relationship.