INPUT ARTICLE: Article: Facing the audience directly, versus turning your back towards them, while you sing makes it easier for you to be heard. Stand at an angle to ensure that your voice is heard as loudly and clearly as possible.  Place your focus on the back of the auditorium or the room to help the sound of your voice carry by giving its range a focal point.  Pick a person or an object in the crowd to help center your focus even further. Having someone in the audience to sing to is a helpful tactic in honing your focus. Choosing a tangible object as a focal point while you sing is equally effective. If you don't, you won't physically be able to project. Stand up straight and keep your back and shoulders straight but relaxed.   A great way to perfect your posture is to imagine you’re a marionette puppet on stage and that a string is holding you upright by the top of your head by a puppet master. Your posture will be perfect but in a much more relaxed way. Maintain straight posture, but do it in a way that it doesn’t place too much tension onto your body. You want your focus to be on singing, not on how uncomfortable your body feels in that position. This is where most of your power will come from. You can stand in a relaxed position where your feet are a few inches apart and one foot is slightly in front of the other. Singing from the throat can feel like second nature to an untrained singer, but it is actually the worst thing you can do for your vocal cords and is not the best way to try to project.   Support your voice through breath control. Pull breath from your diaphragm and abdomen muscles by breathing slowly and deeply into your belly. Regulate the amount of breath you use by releasing the breath in a controlled way versus exhaling quickly with force.  While you sing, imagine that your mouth is a resonator guitar. Unlike typical acoustic guitars where the sound comes from the top of the guitar, sound leaves the resonator guitar through the bridge to the resonator, one or more of the spun metal cones. A resonator uses vibrations to project along the guitar’s mouth. Replicate that effect and pull your singing voice to the areas around your mouth where you feel the sound vibrating to project while you sing. Vocal placement is important for vocal projection and is essential to learning how to put your voice in the “forward” position it needs to be in for optimal projection.  Find this by practicing humming exercises. Hum at the end of “mmm” sounds. This will help you feel vibrations and resonance in your face near your mouth and nasal area.  Don’t pay attention to how you hear yourself in your head, instead focus on this area to learn where your voice will come from. This creates less force when you sing.

SUMMARY: Sing towards your audience. Make sure you have good posture. Spread your feet out about shoulder width apart. Sing from the diaphragm. Practice placing your voice.

INPUT ARTICLE: Article: If you have dry hair, you have fragile hair. Handling it roughly will cause your ends to split and could even lead to breakage. When you're washing, drying and otherwise handling your hair, think of it as a delicate fabric that needs to be treated with extra care. That means no scrubbing, pulling or wringing it out.  When you shampoo your hair, use the tips of your fingers to gently pull the shampoo through your hair instead of roughly scrubbing it in. Rinse your shampoo using cool or lukewarm water; hot water is extra damaging to dry hair. Then, seal the cuticle with cold water as you rinse out your conditioner. When you're done, gently squeeze excess water from your hair instead of twisting and wringing it out. Pat it dry with a towel. Hair becomes dry when the natural oils produced by your scalp aren't getting the chance to nourish it. Shampooing dry hair every day will make it even drier and more brittle since you're stripping those oils away on a daily basis. Cut back to shampooing just two to three times a week, to give your hair the chance to receive those nourishing oils.  When you first cut back, you'll notice your scalp producing a lot of oil, since it's used to having to overproduce to make up for how much gets washed out. Give it a week or two and you'll find that things balance out; you'll be able to go several days in between washings without your hair looking dirty. If your roots start looking a little oily,  dry shampoo is a great way to remedy the problem without washing your hair. Are you addicted to your hair dryer? Time to put it down and let your hair dry on its own. Directing hot air toward dry hair won't give it the chance to get healthy. While a blowout might make your hair look shiny, the heat is actually quite damaging, and over time will cause breakage and split ends.  When you first start letting your hair air dry, you might not be thrilled with the results. Give it some time; after a month or so of treating your hair gently, your beautiful natural texture will finally get the chance to shine through. When you just have to style your hair with a dryer (which should be done only on special occasions), use the warm or cool setting on your dryer, and keep it several inches from your head. Be sure to use a heat protectant product, too, to minimize damage to your strands. Hair brushes rip through tangles, leaving a lot of damage in their wake. Since dry hair is very breakable, this can leave your hair looking frizzy and rough. Instead, comb your hair while it's wet using a wide-toothed comb. This is much more forgiving and won't cause you to pull out or break your hair.  If you have tangles, work them out by combing out the tangles near the tips of your hair first, then working your way up gradually to your roots. If you comb straight through from the roots, you'll break your hair. You can also use your fingers to gently work out tangles. Apply some conditioner and massage the tangles until they come out. Straightening, curling, dyeing, or otherwise processing your hair can cause long-term damage, even if you just do it once. If your hair is dry and you're trying to restore its health, you won't see your natural shine and texture return until you give it a break from these damaging treatments. Avoid the following:  Using heat styling tools like curling irons, hot rollers, or straighteners (consider  options that don't require heat). Dyeing, bleaching, or highlighting (try a  natural alternative). Weaves, dreads, and other styles that involve pulling on your hair from the roots are extra damaging for dry hair. Choosing one of these styles could cause breakage or even bald spots to occur. It's best to let your hair be its natural self when you're trying to nurse it back to health.

SUMMARY:
Handle your hair gently when you wash and dry it. Shampoo less often. Let your hair air dry. Comb instead of brushing. Halt damaging hair treatments. Avoid hairstyles that pull on your hair.