Want to sing runs and riffs that actually land? 🎯 Whether you're reaching for Beyoncé-level agility, soulful R&B phrasing, or intricate musical theatre licks, vocal agility is the skill that brings it all together—and this episode breaks down exactly how to build it.
In this episode of Vocal Tips in 10 with Amber Mogg Cathey, we’re diving into what vocal agility really is, why it’s a must for contemporary singers, and the 4 vocal exercises every singer should have in their toolkit to gain flexibility, control, and precision.
Inside this episode, you’ll learn:
⏱️ Episode Breakdown:
0:00 – Why agility work matters for singers
3:38 – Major scale agility exercise
6:02 – Minor scale agility exercise
6:50 – Pentatonic scale agility exercise
7:40 – Chromatic scale agility exercise
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🎤 Explore more agility training inside Vocal Pro Membership
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Episode Transcript
Hello singers, welcome to vocal tips in 10. Today I want to talk about one of my favorite things to work on, vocal agility.
I love vocal agility because I feel like it's such an athletic aspect of singing and it's such a combination and culmination of the core things that we need for good singing. Flexibility and control. flexibility is freedom. Flexibility is access to our entire range and have it feel good and easy and sound good. It's the ability to move fluidly through a melodic line or to just
easily connect a vocal run. Control is pitch accuracy. To be able to hit those notes in that run, even though it sounds totally effortless, that's the flexibility bit, we are in full control of what's happening. Control is to be able to hit pitches throughout a song. We want both of those things. And vocal agility and vocal agility exercises are such a great way to work on all of those. And I think when we think agility, we immediately go to like Tori Kelly crazy runs.
And I love those so much. But agility is also being able to work through your song and have fluidity and freedom and ease, but have everything dead on. Be in control of what is coming out of your mouth while it sounds and feels pretty darn effortless. Those are the things that we want.
So I feel like vocal agility is a really important thing for singers to be working on, especially as you get to higher and higher levels in your singing for sure. If you're looking to do this in any kind of a regular, and especially any kind of a professional way, you need to be working on vocal agility on the regular. And what I like to do is kind of think about building my vocal tool belt. So I am building more and more agility patterns that I work on regularly.
in my voice, working on all different kinds of scales and patterns and riffs and runs.
so that when they come up in a song, I don't feel like I'm coming upon something new. I always think of a riff or a run you're not expecting is like a runner who is, you know, a great runner, knows what to do, runs kind of the same route all the time. They've got their little three mile loop and all of a sudden one day they turn the corner and there are cones that they have to weave around. There are tires they have to go through. And then they've got to like scale a little wall and shimmy through a tunnel. I don't care how athletic you are, you better stop.
Assess everything, take it step by step, or you're going to very likely hurt yourself, or it's going to be a big old hot mess, right? So the runner really has to slow down, assess everything. It's the same thing we have to do with singers if we have a pattern come up in a song that we have not regularly worked. The great news is if the runner does that obstacle course over and over again, their body barely even needs to slow down eventually. It's the same thing with singing. So that's why I love and I highly recommend for singers
to work on melodic patterns, scales, agility exercises that are going to come up in songs so that when they come up, you're gonna have to stop and break down, what exactly are the notes here? But if you know your pentatonic scale, if you work with major and minor and chromatic and all of those different things that are gonna come up in contemporary styles of music and all kinds of styles of music, you're gonna be able to jump into it way more quickly.
So
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, Ascending and descending. Whenever you're first working with agility and you're learning a new pattern, notice how I give every note its own consonant and vowel combo. I like my, my. You can really use whatever feels good for you. I like my, my, my because it's that M nasal forward consonant.
So I don't have articulation mucking up my flexibility. Those articulators aren't getting in the way. And then I sound is that nice combo of and e, so I'm relaxed, but I've still got some brightness. So some hopefully more forward resonance in my sound, which is what we're utilizing Almost all of the time in our contemporary singing styles. When the individual my, my, my feels good and easy,
I want you to take out the individual consonant-vowel combo and make it one connected line. So, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my becomes my. You will start to hear already like, gosh, like that's just like the t tiniest bit pitchy. And we want to work until it is dead on. The other thing to keep in mind with all of this agility work is start as slow as you need. That's probably.
The biggest struggle I see with singers and agility or breaking down a run in a song, we don't want to slow down. We're like, I hear them go fast. I want to go fast. And again, think about that runner who's an amazing runner. But if it's a new obstacle course, you have to slow down. There is no shame in slowing down. It's the intelligent and professional thing to do. Take it as slow as you need. Giving each note its own little individual sound. I like a consonant vowel combo.
Then as it feels good, take that out, make it one connected run. As that feels good, speed it up, speed it up, speed it up, speed it up. And all of these, I recommend doing ascending, lower pitch, moving up and descending, higher pitch, moving down.
It might seem simple, but once you speed it up, you repeat it, you are likely gonna see some pitch inconsistencies. So that's our major. And let's just work with a five note scale. Then you wanna have the minor as well. I feel like so many times singers work a lot of major or coaches will give you singers like a lot of major exercises. Amazing. I start with major exercises too. You need minor in your tool belt too. Same thing.
except we're gonna take the third note and flat it, which just means drop it by one key to the left. So this is major, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my. I'm gonna take the third note and flat it. Here's my minor. My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my. So I've got my five note minor scale. I'm gonna do it ascending and descending. So we've got major five note scale. We've got minor five note scale.
You need a pentatonic, friends. If you are doing any kind of contemporary music styles, commercial music styles, that just means non-classical, you want a pentatonic scale under your belt. A pentatonic scale is five notes, but it's a little different than our five note pattern we just did. You are taking out the fourth and the seventh. So it sounds like this. If you're a solfege person,
Do, Mi, Sol, La, Sol, Mi, Re, Do. If you're a numbers person, one, two, three, five, six, five, three, two, one. If you're neither of those, forget that ever happened and just listen to the pattern. My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my. Individual consonant vowel for every note, slow, speed it up. My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my. When that feels good, make it one connected run.
My, there's minor pentatonic too, but time is of the essence y'all. So we're moving to the fourth scale I'm gonna give you today. Work on these four and you will be feeling good, chromatic. So it's five notes, but we're only going to the third. Chromatic is every note. White, black, white, black, white, black, white, black, white, white keys and black keys on the piano. My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my,
For me, having a basic knowledge of the piano can really help people with chromatic. I feel like, cause you can kind of see the keys. Otherwise just practice that pattern again, slow. My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, Speed it up. My, my, my, my, my. Make it one connected run.
My. The more you work these agility patterns, these vocal agility exercises, the better you're gonna feel. In singing songs, right? That's all melodies are. They're vocal patterns, they're a pattern of notes, probably based, very likely, in a major scale, a minor scale, a chromatic scale, or a pentatonic scale. The more you work these, you'll notice that your are pitch matching, the flexibility and the control.
gets better in everything you do when you're singing and vocal runs and riffs and all of those things come easier and easier to you. We're always gonna have to slow it down and kind of plunk it out, figure out what's happening, but that process gets quicker and quicker and quicker.
Thank you guys for being here. I hope this was helpful. If you want more training and vocal support, I've got a completely free vocal movement training right now. It's one of the best things we can do as singers. I break down 25 different movements for everything from your warm up,
to your exercising, to performances, to cool down. You can get it for absolutely free. Check it out in the show notes below. You can also try two weeks of my Vocal Pro membership. It is awesome for absolutely free. And if you really feel like you want more one-on-one help, you can book a free 15 minute Zoom consultation with me or my fab coach, Eva Cassell. I'll put that in the notes below too. Until next time guys, happy singing.
