Rezzimax techniques to improve singing performance with Broadway singing coach Andrew Byrne

We'd like to introduce you to Andrew Byrne, (Instagram, website, IMDB) a New York City-based singing teacher whose studio serves professional musical theatre performers, with his students appearing in over 75 Broadway shows. He has Broadway experience, including playing in the pit orchestra for Les Misérables, and has worked with creative teams at The Sundance Theatre Lab, Yale Repertory Theatre, and North Shore Musical Theatre, among others. On television, he has been a vocal coach for America’s Got Talent and Penny Dreadful: City of Angels.

Twice voted NYC’s favorite vocal coach in the Backstage Readers’ Choice Awards, Andrew offers brain-focused vocal training globally. In 2016, he was appointed by the U.S. State Department as the first Arts Envoy to Belarus, where he directed a Russian-language production of Next to Normal. His international teaching has also included work in Singapore, Switzerland, Denmark, France, China, and Australia. In North America, he has taught in Canada, including at The Banff Centre, and has been a guest faculty member at the University of Michigan.

Andrew is also a songwriter, with his work featured in films and online series like Seth Rudetsky’s “Obsessed.” His YouTube channel has over 1.2 million views, with his parody of “Taylor the Latte Boy” being his most popular video.

He holds a Master of Music degree in vocal pedagogy from Arizona State University and a Bachelor of Music in voice from Western Michigan University. Additionally, he is a master practitioner of Z-Health, a functional applied neuroscience program for athletic trainers.

Andrew put together some great advice on how he uses the Rezzimax Tuner to enhance the performance of his students. Check it out!

"Hi, my name is Andrew Byrne. I run a singing studio for Broadway performers in New York City. I'm here today to talk to you about one of my very favorite tools that I use in my studio, and that is the Rezzimax.

Singing is a vibration in the body. Using external vibration sources like the Rezzimax to help singers feel their voices better, is one of the highest pay off things that you can do.

There are some things that the Rezzimax does that no other kind of vibration source that I've seen can do. I have two favorite design elements and the way the Rezzimax is constructed, and one of them is the way this attachment works here. It is very easy to open or close this, and that allows you to get into some places where other kinds of vibrators can't go. Specifically, we're going to think about the ethmoid sinus."

"That's a pocket of space in your head. And when that is clogged, then you're going to have trouble with speaking voice, singing voice and general projection of sound.

With most vibrators you can't get up under here, but the way the Rezzimax is designed, I can turn it on. I can go right in here and I can feel vibration in my ethmoid sinus.

So for anybody who is suffering from sinus trouble, stuff with your ears or anything like that, this ability to get up under there can provide some pretty instant relief.

And for singers, what happens is that if you can't feel where the sound is going, you're going to strain your voice. So being able to feel the sensation of that pocket of space in the head often unlocks something for a singer that they haven't been able to get any other way."

"And the other thing I love are these wings that you see on the side there. So what you can do is you can turn it on, and then you can go over the skull like this on both sides. And what is so great about that is that there are two nerves that go into our skull.

The front part here is called the trigeminal nerve, and the back part is called the vagus nerve. Those are called cranial nerves.

The trigeminal and the vagus are two of the very most important of those cranial nerves. You can vibrate the front and the back of your skull, you wake those nerves up,which can change a lot of things in your body. It can change stress level. It can change your heart rate, your breathing patterns, tons of things that might seem like they're unrelated to, that can be adjusted just by having the sense of vibration. And the way this is designed allows you to get over a much greater surface with a lot shorter time, so it makes it more efficient and more effective to get those nerves to wake up a little bit."

"The last element I want to highlight is that the Rezzimax can also go in your mouth, which makes it a very powerful tool to rehab stuff, like I had braces, had a palate expander, I had a wisdom tooth surgery or something like a root canal that may not have been really rehabbed properly and I might not be aware of it, but sensation in my mouth can affect stuff like my neck posture. So if you've seen yourself and you're like that."

"What's crazy is that that might be related to what's happening inside here. So how you can do it is like this. And you go in your mouth. And that's me on my jaw muscles. I also can take it and I can make it a little smaller and put it around my tongue. And for me personally, that vibration trapping my tongue does a lot for my singing.

So I will do that while I practice my voice and you can also bite it between your teeth. Tooth vibration has been shown to help stuff like pelvic floor dysfunction. If you're trying to find a new way to get at some hard to reach areas of your body, just biting like that might do a lot for you.

Thanks for watching! I hope you'll think about getting a Rezzimax, because you will not be sorry!"