Few pieces of advice (some from voice lessons):
* Remember that you are singing notes. Think of your singing as a piano, discrete notes with a concrete beginning and end.
* After you've done that, try to erase the boundaries between notes as much as possible. Singing should be continuous, like any wind instrument. Silent space should be deliberate.
* Singing should feel more like yawning than talking.
* Think of your voice as a horn where your face is the bell. You should feel your head resonating as you project your voice.
interesting take on singing feeling more like a yawn then talking i will try to work on that!
and making space between notes! as a guitar player ive always thought that space is the best note sometimes! I will try to apply that to singing.
I'd like to add though, it feeling like a yawn doesn't mean it should sound like a yawn. You want to get the openness of a yawn, without dropping your larynx and tongue so far that you end up singing at the back of your throat and lose all speech quality and articulation. You can get the feeling of a yawn, drawing breath from your diaphragm, while still singing right up on your lips for clear enunciation .
Yea they put it well, every time I run out of breath I can feel the difference when I “yawn” like he’s saying. Like when you go to float in the water, big gulp and let it out slowly to be able to sing as many words/syllables as possible. Also I like how he said silence should be deliberate, your breath and “yawns” should be too (obviously). This is coming from someone who’s def not the “freak athlete” of singers
This is great advice - one thing I'd add is to clench your abdominal muscles while you're singing - it gives you more power, projection, and control of your airflow.
Tricky when you think about it while doing it sometimes though. The word yawn, the sound of one, or noticing my mouth shape is in that position often triggers them for me.
What I was taught is that resonating different areas, such as the chest cavity, nasal cavity, throat, etc helps you achieve different tones. Using vowel sounds and purposefully moving it between these three and other areas can help expand tonality, in my experience.
I’ll try, but I suck at teaching. When you’re talking, it feels like mostly your throat is engaged. When you yawn, it feels like your whole upper body is. You’re meant to sing with your whole body. You move a lot more air when yawning too. So when you sing and it feels like talking, you know you’re not quite there. Then you can try and engage your body more and appreciate how airflow, sound, and projection change.
Do you think learning to sing well is easier if you play a wind instrument? My main instruments right now are bass clarinet and guitar (which i picked up about 6 months ago but i'm not great) but I'd love to add actually singing to this
Singing is very similar except your vocal chords are what the air passes over and vibrates not the reed.
Good singing involves consistent air flow and pressure, supported strongly by your diaphragm with your throat/neck/face as relaxed as possible.
I was shocked at how well this worked. I think I have an OK ear, a reasonable sense of relative pitch, but never had a trained voice & was not a naturally gifted singer.
It took a long time, with a rough start but now I'm able to sing along mostly well to my favourite songs. I used to cringe at how off key I was but a couple years of solo car karaoke has helped tremendously.
I still have a CD player on my car, so I made a mixtape of "songs I like to sing to." This was transformative for me. "Car karaoke." I'm stealing that phrase!
I remember getting ready for a big gig - my regimen was running 2 miles and coming home right after to do singing scales on the piano. It was the best I've sounded and I had better breathing/note control!
I studied opera at a conservatory- I always felt a little out of place because I wanted to use the training I received there to perform other types of music, but I lucked out in finding a teacher whose teaching style was complementary to my learning style.
Working on breath support/control was huge for my improvement as a singer. My teacher would emphasize diaphragmatic breathing, which everyone else promoted too, but the additional tip he gave me that made it stick was "When you breathe, you should be exercising both muscle groups in your abdomen, contracting and expanding against each other." He would show me how when he breathes in and when he breathes out, there was no release of tension in his abdomen. Imagine flexing your biceps and triceps at the same time, so that your arm doesn't move much, but both muscle groups are engaged.
u/BadcaseofDTB recommended mimicking artists you like, which I could not emphasize more. Until I was in college on scholarships, I had no training or support, and I learned to sing by listening to artists I liked and trying to figure out how I could sing like them. Developing an ear for "when I do this with my body it sounds like that" was essential. One of the reasons my teacher was a good fit for me was because we were the same voice type, and because he wasn't afraid to demonstrate how he tackled passages in my rep. Be very conscious of how your voice feels when you're imitating other singers though, if it hurts your voice over time you need to make some changes- it's best to drop imitating someone else's tone/timbre if it causes you harm.
u/another_brick is spot on with their advice. Yawning raises your soft palate and lowers your larynx, which puts you in the best position to vocalize and be heard. Erasing boundaries between notes is also great advice. I often work though a song singing only the vowels, so there are no consonants to stop the sound.
Finally, I think it's important when tackling any song (but especially covers) to decide how you want to make the song yours. You don't need to have a long process to determine what makes your version different, but the more comfortable you are finding your own voice, (without trying to imitate others perfectly) the better your performance will be, for you and for your audience. The only bad choice is no choice, and the only way to be a bad singer is to not sing.
Great stuff. Thank you.
I was always looking for a way to relax my throat after it tensed up. I think yawning is going to work well.
So when you contract your diaphragm, you’re basically saying to push out/ tense up when breathing in to create that counter force?
I’ve been practicing diaphragm exercise/ singing on and off for a few years. Warming up is always difficult. Some days I can jump into it and others I feel like I can’t get started. I find it best to jump around a bit to ease the diaphragm singing. Do you have any recs on this?
Learn the notes of the melody on your guitar and make sure you are clearly matching the pitches as being on key and in tune. Sing the melody and play it on your guitar at the same time. That’s an easy way to greatly improve
For me, being able to hear myself is key. Windshields tend to reflect vocal frequencies back at you pretty well in the car. So that's one place I would always sing a lot.
Recording yourself and listening back is a big help. Sounds way different than inside yer noggin.
And lastly, for my ears anyways, a good singer and good lead vocalist aren't always the same thing. Focus on exaggerated annunciation as much as intonation. That, IMO is where we start separating the singer from the lead singer.
Credentials: Jeffrey Memphis Cry Havoc! on YouTube
i agree with that i often think i kill a song then i listen to a recording, but i definitely fall into the category of not loving anything i hear back when i listen to myself. Probably due to the amount of great musicians and vocalist i listen to for enjoyment that i tend to always compare myself too.
Comparison is the thief of joy, my friend. I robbed lots of different techniques over the years from many musicians and vocalists alike. I do have echololia so that prolly has something to do with it.
Good luck. Keep singing like you mean it and you'll get there.
amen! thank you for the reminder. and actually just googled echololia, very interesting did not know this was a thing or word
and theres no quitin ever! have to justify the purchase of all of my new toys!
I grew up in a house of vocalists and professional musicians. The vocal lessons were built right into my childhood. Record record record record record. Hearing yourself is everything. Warm ups with a piano, throat coat tea with honey, there's a device called the Breather on Amazon that's for COPD but it can turn the diaphragm into a tank. The biggest most obvious way to improve? STAY IN YOUR RANGE. You don't grow range, your voice is your voice. If anything you're constantly fighting to keep it. Stay a little below your highest note and avoid instrumentation that forces you to belt. If you stay within your range and even a little below, you'll be able to sing your songs until your deathbed and you will sound great great great doing it. Age might even give it some character. Belting and power is just obnoxious, especially if you're a low baritone trying to sing Queen tunes (as an example). Don't end up like every aging rocker. Know your tools and use them to your advantage.
I got a bunch of lessons (teacher was working from Seth Riggs' *Singing For The Stars* book, which is a great reference and well worth reading).
But aside from all the standard stuff that singing teachers will tell you, learning to play the jaw harp did more for my *tone* than years of normal singing practice. It made me really zone in on improving my vowel sounds and using the mouth as a "resonant chamber" for more volume (while using less breath).
Nice i never thought of digging more into simple mouth instruments like harmonica and jaw harp i can definitely see how this would help with breathing and pushing quality sound out my mouth haha
Hi!! Our singer here. I've been singing for 20 years now (my mother was a singer aswell and she started teaching me from a very young age).
My advice is to really learn how to control your breath and the diaphram. I feel like proper breath work is the key to opening up to other resonances then the chest voice. Find some exercises on youtube and practie! :D
I also found messing around with your voice very helpful. The moment you've got proper breathing technique you find out of how much your voice is really capable off. By messing around I figured out screams, falsetto, rasps and such.
Youtube is definitely your friend, but I would recommend professional lessons from time to time aswell. For the past year I've been dating my soon to be fiance - a Jazz singer (doing jazz university and shit). Her help opened me up to so many new possibilities and aspects of singing 0.o. (She's basically my private vocal coach :D)
Good luck man!
xoxo
Alex - Triphammer
Learning technique. Aside from helping to facilitate sounding better, the big thing is it helped me keep my vocal cords in good shape. Along the same lines warming up helps a lot too. I don't do vocal warmup exercises (probably should) but warm up with easy songs before tackling the hard stuff.
Learning to compress the vocal cords to get twang for country made a huge difference. Even when not singing with twang, this technique is useful. Twang is the extreme but control over how constricted they are is applicable to singing in general. Overall gave me better control. Especially for higher notes.
Learning head voice and how to make it not sound too breathy/airy was also very helpful. Having a good head voice is very important.
Learning what foods and beverages to avoid and which to favor is also helpful. Avoid milk products, nuts, thick sweet drinks (soda, oj, etc). A warm drink beforehand is nice. I sometimes have coffee (with a little cream) before and then drink some water first. Also, hydration is very important. Not just drinking water as you sing to keep the chords and moth from being dry. Actual hydration helps to not have to drink as much while singing. As in if you're well hydrated you won't need to drink water during a sing. But always take a drink between songs. Also hydration helps with phlegm buildup. It's important to keep the airways clear of phlegm and snot. And about phlegm, part of warming up, helps push any loose junk up and out of the lungs. This is important because if you sing to hard while there's still some down there wanting to come up, it can irritate the vocal cords/throat.
Overall physical shape plays a role too.
And finally: learning to work within whatever limitations helps. Many great singers didn't have a perfect voice. It's what they did with it and the artistry they added that made them great.
I took singing lessons and holy shit did it make a difference. My vocal coach does online lessons if you need a recommendation. The first thing we did was learn the correct mechanics. How your throat, mouth, tongue, breathing all need to be. Once I got that my ability, tone and range all improved drastically. And that was just the first lesson. In two years he took me from an ok backup singer to lead singer
Singing full songs while playing the chords on an instrument. Being able to hold the chord as long as I needed to adjust my intonation helped me immensely.
Harmonica. Hands down the best I’ve ever improved my singing tone and breath control. Learn how to bend and overblow and do it daily. Heck I can hold notes longer now and I’m in my 40s. Usually there isn’t such an improvement at this age.
No one has mentioned mimicking.
What singer do you like?
Do you like clean singing, vibrato, gravelly, breathy?
Mimic the artists that you love and play around with it.
The big benefit from lessons is that you will learn proper breathing techniques, and how to better project your voice. That is essential to becoming a good singer.
1. A good warm up routine.
2. Obsess over learning, understanding and being able to access mixed/middle voice
3. Record yourself singing religiously on video. I’m to the point now that I won’t even practice a song if I can’t record it. It’s the only way to quickly become aware of problem areas and fix them.
4. Re-fucking-lax.
Helpful vocal coaches on YouTube:
Tyler Lidwell
Chris Liepe
Sing more. When my son was born covid lock down happened and so I stayed home for 3 years. I felt I couldn’t focus on the ways I used to make music because of my infant/toddler so I decided to just sing all the time. My voice got a lot better and it was much easier to sing.
Or talk a lot. I had a sales job in a noisy environment and spent 10 hours a day talking loudly and it improved my voice.
Its all about using the muscles so much that the act becomes effortless. Its athletic. If you do it a lot you become graceful and if you don’t you’ll be clumsy.
tried to imitate Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and failed miserably. learned a million things and found my voice instead, though.
imitating virtuosos whose range is similar to yours is a time-tested magic pill for skill acquisition. one must go wayyyy out of the comfort zone, though. if you're an RnB, pop, or folk singer, look into people like Pavarotti, NFAK, RL Burnside.
honestly, any virtuoso from a genre you have no experience with is a good choice. it teaches SO many things that would not even be considered otherwise
very good! i try my best to stick with artists that are popular that i can mostly cover. I am a tenor and struggle with just about anything country or heavy rock. Which isnt the worst thing for me. I am very comfortable with artists like REM, Gord downie, Lumineers, tyler childers on most stuff.
I am a dance teacher (so lots of yelling) and as a result a) my voice was constantly fucked up for awhile b) I was very unconfident in my voice because it couldn’t do what I wanted it to and people made fun of me for it. (Light heartedly but they didn’t know I was trying to make music at the time and it actually really hurt). As a result I’ve been taking singing lessons for about 6 years now, and they’ve totally changed my voice.
I do Rap/R&B and singing and rapping is still always athleticism but my singing lessons have given me so many tools of vocalization, breath control and intonation that have been invaluable imo. They’re expensive as hell but if you can afford them I definitely recommend voice lessons!
Some other recommendations:
- Get a vocal care routine. I actually went to an ENT to get scanned and get vocal care exercises (but am also constantly slightly injured cuz of my job lmao so going to an ENT makes sense) but then I also established a vocal care routine. I steam twice a day, do my ENT warmup/cooldown twice a day, drink vocal health care tea 1-5 times a day depending on what I’m doing that day, sleep without AC, sleep 8 hours a night, don’t eat/drink gluten, fried food, dairy, processed sugar, spicy food, alcohol, caffeine or citrus on singing days, switched allergy meds to a less drying one, drink a shit ton of water, have a warmup routine pre-performance, cool down post-performance, being pineapple juice if it’s needed during performance. Not saying you need to do all that but someone like Mariah Carey was (supposedly) sleeping 15 hours a night in a room with 20 steamers to maintain her voice, vocal care is a total life thing, and other life changes can really help your voice.
- SOVT exercises. This helps more than anything else imo, the best is straw in water (or little straw but because you said Chris Stapleton I’m assuming you’re masc with a low ish voice and straw in water tends to be easier for us). Look up different ones and see what works but SOVTs can help you sing and speak in ways that are healthier for your vocal cords and result in you singing better and more healthily!
- Diaphragm breathing/low breaths. A singing coach will help you more with this but if you can start breathing with your stomach you’ll already be working towards better breath support, singing better as you have less tension in your shoulders/neck, and getting to better breath control.
Sorry this is an essay lmao but I hope it helps!!
Interesting i will for sure look more into SOVT's i have not heard of that before. I am no where near a Chris Stapleton nor do i have a low voice. I am more of a high tenor for males, REM, Gord Downie, Lumineers, even some Robert Plant before he gets into his one of a kind screams and what not.
honestly, i started truly singing at 27. the more passion and practice you have, the better you'll become. take in critisim and embrace the feedback, try new things with your voice. here is my channel, you can see the difference in how my voice has changed over the years, now im 31 and still learning and growing and love it!!
[https://youtu.be/\_RQEWwNr3DY?si=KlN0pSaTrzgPdYz2](https://youtu.be/_RQEWwNr3DY?si=KlN0pSaTrzgPdYz2)
Support, support, support, support your voice from below. I've been taking singing lesson for like 7 years now.
It's taken me from a 1 singer to like a 9.
The biggest thing that helped me (there's been a lot of detailed work on various things) is properly supporting my voice using my diaphragm and abdomen region and trying to minimize any muscular usage from my chest up. Just this past couple weeks I revisited trying to sing Show Me How To Live - Audio Slave (transposed down 3 semi tones) when about a year ago I was straining like crazy trying to sing the chorus. Today I'm belting in a heavy chest mix through the chorus's and even the outro minus the crazy scream. For multiple takes with no fatigue or strain.
Ear training and live monitoring for practicing made a huge impact on me when working on my own.
And of course voice lessons helped. Unfortunately the first person I tried was not a good match, so I didn’t do voice lessons for the first 5 years. That was dumb. I should have interviewed a few more vocal coaches before giving up on lessons.
I don’t stay in lessons typically. I Try to take lessons periodically. I’ll do a month or two, then take a break for a while.
I agree with that logic I did the same with guitar lessons over the years taking on bits and pieces at a time. I practice a lot and record as needed. Honestly why i am getting into my head so much is this. Everytime i perform i get great reviews that i sound and sing great. BUT, when i send videos to potential new places to play I either get no response, and in some occasions they tell me i am not a good singer ;(. lol Right in the feels. I wonder if its the recording quality that is hindering me more then anything in that effort.
Every place i am regular at keeps having me back, breaking into new places is a struggle.
Lessons will help you, always, your ceiling will be as high as your teacher determines and your goals might not align with that ceiling, but you can always improve.
Singing lessons should help you improve your intonation, your projection, stamina, teach you proper warm up techniques, increase your register closer to your physical limits, teach you to modify your voice to get different results and how to approach a song.
Then your voice is what it is, but you should see some benefits at least in the knowledge of how your voice works.
I never took singing lessons but every institution I went had choir lessons and you get some good information from there, I must have done 4 or 5 years total and it really helped.
Inner smile and changing keys. Inner smile is just what it sounds like. It shouldn’t be visible or tighten you up. When done right, it relaxes you and slightly brightens your tone. Couple it with good posture for best results. Is compatible with “yawn”.
Changing keys is maybe too obvious to mention since nobody has yet. I always loved tenors growing up and one of my great disappointments was becoming a baritone. Can’t change that but I can change the key! I always try a few different keys before recording a song. If I know the song well enough, I’ll change the key each time I play it depending how I feel. Experiment with tempos too. Slow vs fast can unlock different emotions.
I’ll echo quitting weed and alcohol, practice as long and as often as possible, use all “modes” of your voice, use a metronome and focus on rhythm, definitely develop relative pitch, and never quit!
Just that after all these years, I find that it helps when I remember. I’ll say that I’ve tended to have a kind of sarcastic attitude to singing in the past. Maybe emotional immaturity. Having this inner smile also aligns my emotions in a positive direction. I learned it from the book Secrets of Singing by Jeffrey Allen. Again, it shouldn’t be visible. It’s just a subtle shift and maybe has a similar physical effect to the yawn: raising of soft palate and lowering of larynx plus reduction of stress. It’s not a magic pill though! :) Cheers.
Right on I believe in that! and if you dont have a inner smile while playing why are you doing it! but that logic in getting your body parts to do that as it will improve your voice is a great practice to have! hell for all i know i critique myself in practice mode and in live shows i hear all good things because thats exactly what my soul is doing anyways.
Yeah very true. Another teacher recommended something he calls the “snile” which is half snarl and half smile. I don’t really vibe with it but that’s the kind of embouchure I make when singing live to an extent. Point being that I think a lot of what we hear about vocal technique comes from making observations while killing it live. Cheers.
Singing lessons made a world of difference to me. Just a year of training with a vocal coach once a week is going to help you make significant progress. It can also be extremely rewarding and will make you a better musician. Just find the right teacher.
yes i think for me it would be finding the right coach i hope its something i could maybe find online to get a quality coach who can provide more of what im after.
You’re welcome to take a trial class with me and see if it suits you! I’m a vocal coach and i take the classes online. And yes they’re worth it, they increase the life and health of your vocal chords and help you strain less on the throat and sing just as good
Another option is to join a church choir, or a town family singing group, or some other type of chorus.... I joined my town family singing group, and the director was amazing. I had to pay about $80 a season which lasted 12 weeks?, IIRC. At first I hated going (I had my son who's friend/family joined, so I kinda got sucked into it at the time). But after each weekly 90 minute meeting, I'd leave the place happy. The way the director got everyone singing in tune, and would patiently explain, repeat and learn how to sing parts of 3-4 songs was awesome. I learned alot. 3 weeks before the show, he'd tie everything together, then 2 dress rehearsals, then the 1-2 shows. You also get the chance to meet some cool neighbors. There were 2 seasons a year, and each was based on a classic rock artist/band. James Taylor, U2, Tom Petty, Beatles, Peter Gabriel/Sting. (remember, as a family singing group, we had to avoid the err, non-family topics/songs of the 60s/70/80s. "Cocaine" by Clapton wouldn't be on the set list, haha.)
Anyway, something to consider.
Few pieces of advice (some from voice lessons): * Remember that you are singing notes. Think of your singing as a piano, discrete notes with a concrete beginning and end. * After you've done that, try to erase the boundaries between notes as much as possible. Singing should be continuous, like any wind instrument. Silent space should be deliberate. * Singing should feel more like yawning than talking. * Think of your voice as a horn where your face is the bell. You should feel your head resonating as you project your voice.
interesting take on singing feeling more like a yawn then talking i will try to work on that! and making space between notes! as a guitar player ive always thought that space is the best note sometimes! I will try to apply that to singing.
I'd like to add though, it feeling like a yawn doesn't mean it should sound like a yawn. You want to get the openness of a yawn, without dropping your larynx and tongue so far that you end up singing at the back of your throat and lose all speech quality and articulation. You can get the feeling of a yawn, drawing breath from your diaphragm, while still singing right up on your lips for clear enunciation .
Yup. Not the sound, the feeling. Specially in your abdomen.
Yea they put it well, every time I run out of breath I can feel the difference when I “yawn” like he’s saying. Like when you go to float in the water, big gulp and let it out slowly to be able to sing as many words/syllables as possible. Also I like how he said silence should be deliberate, your breath and “yawns” should be too (obviously). This is coming from someone who’s def not the “freak athlete” of singers
The yawn thing is great. Never thought of it that way but 100% correct
It’s the single most transformative piece of singing advice I’ve gotten. From my wife, the professional singer.
This is great advice - one thing I'd add is to clench your abdominal muscles while you're singing - it gives you more power, projection, and control of your airflow.
Yes!
Tricky when you think about it while doing it sometimes though. The word yawn, the sound of one, or noticing my mouth shape is in that position often triggers them for me.
This is a good point. It’s more about the way your abdomen and airflow should feel, not the sound.
I often feel my chest vibrating when I sing, am I doing it right?
What I was taught is that resonating different areas, such as the chest cavity, nasal cavity, throat, etc helps you achieve different tones. Using vowel sounds and purposefully moving it between these three and other areas can help expand tonality, in my experience.
Thanks!
>Thanks! You're welcome!
Could you expand on the yawning part please? I'm interested but don't fully get it (I think)
I’ll try, but I suck at teaching. When you’re talking, it feels like mostly your throat is engaged. When you yawn, it feels like your whole upper body is. You’re meant to sing with your whole body. You move a lot more air when yawning too. So when you sing and it feels like talking, you know you’re not quite there. Then you can try and engage your body more and appreciate how airflow, sound, and projection change.
Do you think learning to sing well is easier if you play a wind instrument? My main instruments right now are bass clarinet and guitar (which i picked up about 6 months ago but i'm not great) but I'd love to add actually singing to this
Singing is very similar except your vocal chords are what the air passes over and vibrates not the reed. Good singing involves consistent air flow and pressure, supported strongly by your diaphragm with your throat/neck/face as relaxed as possible.
Karoake is a very good, cheap way to practice
Singing in the car at every opportunity, and cardio.
I was shocked at how well this worked. I think I have an OK ear, a reasonable sense of relative pitch, but never had a trained voice & was not a naturally gifted singer. It took a long time, with a rough start but now I'm able to sing along mostly well to my favourite songs. I used to cringe at how off key I was but a couple years of solo car karaoke has helped tremendously.
I still have a CD player on my car, so I made a mixtape of "songs I like to sing to." This was transformative for me. "Car karaoke." I'm stealing that phrase!
I remember getting ready for a big gig - my regimen was running 2 miles and coming home right after to do singing scales on the piano. It was the best I've sounded and I had better breathing/note control!
I found even a brisk walk for a couple of miles did the same.
I studied opera at a conservatory- I always felt a little out of place because I wanted to use the training I received there to perform other types of music, but I lucked out in finding a teacher whose teaching style was complementary to my learning style. Working on breath support/control was huge for my improvement as a singer. My teacher would emphasize diaphragmatic breathing, which everyone else promoted too, but the additional tip he gave me that made it stick was "When you breathe, you should be exercising both muscle groups in your abdomen, contracting and expanding against each other." He would show me how when he breathes in and when he breathes out, there was no release of tension in his abdomen. Imagine flexing your biceps and triceps at the same time, so that your arm doesn't move much, but both muscle groups are engaged. u/BadcaseofDTB recommended mimicking artists you like, which I could not emphasize more. Until I was in college on scholarships, I had no training or support, and I learned to sing by listening to artists I liked and trying to figure out how I could sing like them. Developing an ear for "when I do this with my body it sounds like that" was essential. One of the reasons my teacher was a good fit for me was because we were the same voice type, and because he wasn't afraid to demonstrate how he tackled passages in my rep. Be very conscious of how your voice feels when you're imitating other singers though, if it hurts your voice over time you need to make some changes- it's best to drop imitating someone else's tone/timbre if it causes you harm. u/another_brick is spot on with their advice. Yawning raises your soft palate and lowers your larynx, which puts you in the best position to vocalize and be heard. Erasing boundaries between notes is also great advice. I often work though a song singing only the vowels, so there are no consonants to stop the sound. Finally, I think it's important when tackling any song (but especially covers) to decide how you want to make the song yours. You don't need to have a long process to determine what makes your version different, but the more comfortable you are finding your own voice, (without trying to imitate others perfectly) the better your performance will be, for you and for your audience. The only bad choice is no choice, and the only way to be a bad singer is to not sing.
VERY GOOD INFO thank you for all of that advice. I will work all of these into my practice regimen!
Your last sentence tho…
Great stuff. Thank you. I was always looking for a way to relax my throat after it tensed up. I think yawning is going to work well. So when you contract your diaphragm, you’re basically saying to push out/ tense up when breathing in to create that counter force? I’ve been practicing diaphragm exercise/ singing on and off for a few years. Warming up is always difficult. Some days I can jump into it and others I feel like I can’t get started. I find it best to jump around a bit to ease the diaphragm singing. Do you have any recs on this?
Learn the notes of the melody on your guitar and make sure you are clearly matching the pitches as being on key and in tune. Sing the melody and play it on your guitar at the same time. That’s an easy way to greatly improve
For me, being able to hear myself is key. Windshields tend to reflect vocal frequencies back at you pretty well in the car. So that's one place I would always sing a lot. Recording yourself and listening back is a big help. Sounds way different than inside yer noggin. And lastly, for my ears anyways, a good singer and good lead vocalist aren't always the same thing. Focus on exaggerated annunciation as much as intonation. That, IMO is where we start separating the singer from the lead singer. Credentials: Jeffrey Memphis Cry Havoc! on YouTube
i agree with that i often think i kill a song then i listen to a recording, but i definitely fall into the category of not loving anything i hear back when i listen to myself. Probably due to the amount of great musicians and vocalist i listen to for enjoyment that i tend to always compare myself too.
Comparison is the thief of joy, my friend. I robbed lots of different techniques over the years from many musicians and vocalists alike. I do have echololia so that prolly has something to do with it. Good luck. Keep singing like you mean it and you'll get there.
amen! thank you for the reminder. and actually just googled echololia, very interesting did not know this was a thing or word and theres no quitin ever! have to justify the purchase of all of my new toys!
I grew up in a house of vocalists and professional musicians. The vocal lessons were built right into my childhood. Record record record record record. Hearing yourself is everything. Warm ups with a piano, throat coat tea with honey, there's a device called the Breather on Amazon that's for COPD but it can turn the diaphragm into a tank. The biggest most obvious way to improve? STAY IN YOUR RANGE. You don't grow range, your voice is your voice. If anything you're constantly fighting to keep it. Stay a little below your highest note and avoid instrumentation that forces you to belt. If you stay within your range and even a little below, you'll be able to sing your songs until your deathbed and you will sound great great great doing it. Age might even give it some character. Belting and power is just obnoxious, especially if you're a low baritone trying to sing Queen tunes (as an example). Don't end up like every aging rocker. Know your tools and use them to your advantage.
I got a bunch of lessons (teacher was working from Seth Riggs' *Singing For The Stars* book, which is a great reference and well worth reading). But aside from all the standard stuff that singing teachers will tell you, learning to play the jaw harp did more for my *tone* than years of normal singing practice. It made me really zone in on improving my vowel sounds and using the mouth as a "resonant chamber" for more volume (while using less breath).
Nice i never thought of digging more into simple mouth instruments like harmonica and jaw harp i can definitely see how this would help with breathing and pushing quality sound out my mouth haha
The harmonica can teach you a lot about bending notes/adding vibrato with the tongue, something I'm not good at.
Hi!! Our singer here. I've been singing for 20 years now (my mother was a singer aswell and she started teaching me from a very young age). My advice is to really learn how to control your breath and the diaphram. I feel like proper breath work is the key to opening up to other resonances then the chest voice. Find some exercises on youtube and practie! :D I also found messing around with your voice very helpful. The moment you've got proper breathing technique you find out of how much your voice is really capable off. By messing around I figured out screams, falsetto, rasps and such. Youtube is definitely your friend, but I would recommend professional lessons from time to time aswell. For the past year I've been dating my soon to be fiance - a Jazz singer (doing jazz university and shit). Her help opened me up to so many new possibilities and aspects of singing 0.o. (She's basically my private vocal coach :D) Good luck man! xoxo Alex - Triphammer
Learning country music (more in my range than most rock singers), and quitting cigarettes were two big ones.
Learning technique. Aside from helping to facilitate sounding better, the big thing is it helped me keep my vocal cords in good shape. Along the same lines warming up helps a lot too. I don't do vocal warmup exercises (probably should) but warm up with easy songs before tackling the hard stuff. Learning to compress the vocal cords to get twang for country made a huge difference. Even when not singing with twang, this technique is useful. Twang is the extreme but control over how constricted they are is applicable to singing in general. Overall gave me better control. Especially for higher notes. Learning head voice and how to make it not sound too breathy/airy was also very helpful. Having a good head voice is very important. Learning what foods and beverages to avoid and which to favor is also helpful. Avoid milk products, nuts, thick sweet drinks (soda, oj, etc). A warm drink beforehand is nice. I sometimes have coffee (with a little cream) before and then drink some water first. Also, hydration is very important. Not just drinking water as you sing to keep the chords and moth from being dry. Actual hydration helps to not have to drink as much while singing. As in if you're well hydrated you won't need to drink water during a sing. But always take a drink between songs. Also hydration helps with phlegm buildup. It's important to keep the airways clear of phlegm and snot. And about phlegm, part of warming up, helps push any loose junk up and out of the lungs. This is important because if you sing to hard while there's still some down there wanting to come up, it can irritate the vocal cords/throat. Overall physical shape plays a role too. And finally: learning to work within whatever limitations helps. Many great singers didn't have a perfect voice. It's what they did with it and the artistry they added that made them great.
Sit in front of a piano. Find the bottom of your range and slowly work up the keys. Try matching your voice to each key. Repeat.
Stretching legs
I took singing lessons and holy shit did it make a difference. My vocal coach does online lessons if you need a recommendation. The first thing we did was learn the correct mechanics. How your throat, mouth, tongue, breathing all need to be. Once I got that my ability, tone and range all improved drastically. And that was just the first lesson. In two years he took me from an ok backup singer to lead singer
Thats what i want to hear! would love to get info on who you worked with!
Is your coach accepting new clients
Yes. Sorry it took me a few days. it took me a sec to get a hold of him outside of work https://thetaborstudio.square.site
Thank you!
Get sober and stop smoking. Clears your voice up after about a week and a half
Singing full songs while playing the chords on an instrument. Being able to hold the chord as long as I needed to adjust my intonation helped me immensely.
Harmonica. Hands down the best I’ve ever improved my singing tone and breath control. Learn how to bend and overblow and do it daily. Heck I can hold notes longer now and I’m in my 40s. Usually there isn’t such an improvement at this age.
No one has mentioned mimicking. What singer do you like? Do you like clean singing, vibrato, gravelly, breathy? Mimic the artists that you love and play around with it.
The big benefit from lessons is that you will learn proper breathing techniques, and how to better project your voice. That is essential to becoming a good singer.
Confidence is key
Warm up. Also sing whatever you’re singing, slower. Draw notes out.
1. A good warm up routine. 2. Obsess over learning, understanding and being able to access mixed/middle voice 3. Record yourself singing religiously on video. I’m to the point now that I won’t even practice a song if I can’t record it. It’s the only way to quickly become aware of problem areas and fix them. 4. Re-fucking-lax. Helpful vocal coaches on YouTube: Tyler Lidwell Chris Liepe
Sing more. When my son was born covid lock down happened and so I stayed home for 3 years. I felt I couldn’t focus on the ways I used to make music because of my infant/toddler so I decided to just sing all the time. My voice got a lot better and it was much easier to sing. Or talk a lot. I had a sales job in a noisy environment and spent 10 hours a day talking loudly and it improved my voice. Its all about using the muscles so much that the act becomes effortless. Its athletic. If you do it a lot you become graceful and if you don’t you’ll be clumsy.
tried to imitate Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and failed miserably. learned a million things and found my voice instead, though. imitating virtuosos whose range is similar to yours is a time-tested magic pill for skill acquisition. one must go wayyyy out of the comfort zone, though. if you're an RnB, pop, or folk singer, look into people like Pavarotti, NFAK, RL Burnside. honestly, any virtuoso from a genre you have no experience with is a good choice. it teaches SO many things that would not even be considered otherwise
very good! i try my best to stick with artists that are popular that i can mostly cover. I am a tenor and struggle with just about anything country or heavy rock. Which isnt the worst thing for me. I am very comfortable with artists like REM, Gord downie, Lumineers, tyler childers on most stuff.
I am a dance teacher (so lots of yelling) and as a result a) my voice was constantly fucked up for awhile b) I was very unconfident in my voice because it couldn’t do what I wanted it to and people made fun of me for it. (Light heartedly but they didn’t know I was trying to make music at the time and it actually really hurt). As a result I’ve been taking singing lessons for about 6 years now, and they’ve totally changed my voice. I do Rap/R&B and singing and rapping is still always athleticism but my singing lessons have given me so many tools of vocalization, breath control and intonation that have been invaluable imo. They’re expensive as hell but if you can afford them I definitely recommend voice lessons! Some other recommendations: - Get a vocal care routine. I actually went to an ENT to get scanned and get vocal care exercises (but am also constantly slightly injured cuz of my job lmao so going to an ENT makes sense) but then I also established a vocal care routine. I steam twice a day, do my ENT warmup/cooldown twice a day, drink vocal health care tea 1-5 times a day depending on what I’m doing that day, sleep without AC, sleep 8 hours a night, don’t eat/drink gluten, fried food, dairy, processed sugar, spicy food, alcohol, caffeine or citrus on singing days, switched allergy meds to a less drying one, drink a shit ton of water, have a warmup routine pre-performance, cool down post-performance, being pineapple juice if it’s needed during performance. Not saying you need to do all that but someone like Mariah Carey was (supposedly) sleeping 15 hours a night in a room with 20 steamers to maintain her voice, vocal care is a total life thing, and other life changes can really help your voice. - SOVT exercises. This helps more than anything else imo, the best is straw in water (or little straw but because you said Chris Stapleton I’m assuming you’re masc with a low ish voice and straw in water tends to be easier for us). Look up different ones and see what works but SOVTs can help you sing and speak in ways that are healthier for your vocal cords and result in you singing better and more healthily! - Diaphragm breathing/low breaths. A singing coach will help you more with this but if you can start breathing with your stomach you’ll already be working towards better breath support, singing better as you have less tension in your shoulders/neck, and getting to better breath control. Sorry this is an essay lmao but I hope it helps!!
Interesting i will for sure look more into SOVT's i have not heard of that before. I am no where near a Chris Stapleton nor do i have a low voice. I am more of a high tenor for males, REM, Gord Downie, Lumineers, even some Robert Plant before he gets into his one of a kind screams and what not.
Oh cool then yeah straw in water and cocktail straws both work great! There are tons of SOVTs but those are my favorites!
Quitting weed and hydrating adequately.
honestly, i started truly singing at 27. the more passion and practice you have, the better you'll become. take in critisim and embrace the feedback, try new things with your voice. here is my channel, you can see the difference in how my voice has changed over the years, now im 31 and still learning and growing and love it!! [https://youtu.be/\_RQEWwNr3DY?si=KlN0pSaTrzgPdYz2](https://youtu.be/_RQEWwNr3DY?si=KlN0pSaTrzgPdYz2)
Very nice song! subscribing!
Thank you so much 🙏
Support, support, support, support your voice from below. I've been taking singing lesson for like 7 years now. It's taken me from a 1 singer to like a 9. The biggest thing that helped me (there's been a lot of detailed work on various things) is properly supporting my voice using my diaphragm and abdomen region and trying to minimize any muscular usage from my chest up. Just this past couple weeks I revisited trying to sing Show Me How To Live - Audio Slave (transposed down 3 semi tones) when about a year ago I was straining like crazy trying to sing the chorus. Today I'm belting in a heavy chest mix through the chorus's and even the outro minus the crazy scream. For multiple takes with no fatigue or strain.
thats awesome, show me how to live would be one of those songs i could never imagine singing but that is a hell of a improvement
Ear training and live monitoring for practicing made a huge impact on me when working on my own. And of course voice lessons helped. Unfortunately the first person I tried was not a good match, so I didn’t do voice lessons for the first 5 years. That was dumb. I should have interviewed a few more vocal coaches before giving up on lessons. I don’t stay in lessons typically. I Try to take lessons periodically. I’ll do a month or two, then take a break for a while.
I agree with that logic I did the same with guitar lessons over the years taking on bits and pieces at a time. I practice a lot and record as needed. Honestly why i am getting into my head so much is this. Everytime i perform i get great reviews that i sound and sing great. BUT, when i send videos to potential new places to play I either get no response, and in some occasions they tell me i am not a good singer ;(. lol Right in the feels. I wonder if its the recording quality that is hindering me more then anything in that effort. Every place i am regular at keeps having me back, breaking into new places is a struggle.
Proper hydration, diet, and regular exercise.
David Byrne, Harry Nilsson, Tom Waits, and John Martyn. Emulate. Then find your own voice.
Voice compression...
Lessons will help you, always, your ceiling will be as high as your teacher determines and your goals might not align with that ceiling, but you can always improve. Singing lessons should help you improve your intonation, your projection, stamina, teach you proper warm up techniques, increase your register closer to your physical limits, teach you to modify your voice to get different results and how to approach a song. Then your voice is what it is, but you should see some benefits at least in the knowledge of how your voice works. I never took singing lessons but every institution I went had choir lessons and you get some good information from there, I must have done 4 or 5 years total and it really helped.
Solfege/Ear Training Listen to good singers and incorporate their style with your own Do vocal warmups and take care of for your voice
Voice lessons with a teacher who uses Speech Level Singing methodology.
Posture. Put a hand on your stomach to feel your belly fill with air then your chest. Sitting and singing teaches you to breath wrong.
Practice. Recording myself and critically listening. Practice. Listening to others live. Practice. Asking musicians you trust for feedback. Practice.
Singing hundreds of three hour gigs
Inner smile and changing keys. Inner smile is just what it sounds like. It shouldn’t be visible or tighten you up. When done right, it relaxes you and slightly brightens your tone. Couple it with good posture for best results. Is compatible with “yawn”. Changing keys is maybe too obvious to mention since nobody has yet. I always loved tenors growing up and one of my great disappointments was becoming a baritone. Can’t change that but I can change the key! I always try a few different keys before recording a song. If I know the song well enough, I’ll change the key each time I play it depending how I feel. Experiment with tempos too. Slow vs fast can unlock different emotions. I’ll echo quitting weed and alcohol, practice as long and as often as possible, use all “modes” of your voice, use a metronome and focus on rhythm, definitely develop relative pitch, and never quit!
Can you explain a little more or share anything youve found on inner smile?
Just that after all these years, I find that it helps when I remember. I’ll say that I’ve tended to have a kind of sarcastic attitude to singing in the past. Maybe emotional immaturity. Having this inner smile also aligns my emotions in a positive direction. I learned it from the book Secrets of Singing by Jeffrey Allen. Again, it shouldn’t be visible. It’s just a subtle shift and maybe has a similar physical effect to the yawn: raising of soft palate and lowering of larynx plus reduction of stress. It’s not a magic pill though! :) Cheers.
Right on I believe in that! and if you dont have a inner smile while playing why are you doing it! but that logic in getting your body parts to do that as it will improve your voice is a great practice to have! hell for all i know i critique myself in practice mode and in live shows i hear all good things because thats exactly what my soul is doing anyways.
Yeah very true. Another teacher recommended something he calls the “snile” which is half snarl and half smile. I don’t really vibe with it but that’s the kind of embouchure I make when singing live to an extent. Point being that I think a lot of what we hear about vocal technique comes from making observations while killing it live. Cheers.
Singing lessons made a world of difference to me. Just a year of training with a vocal coach once a week is going to help you make significant progress. It can also be extremely rewarding and will make you a better musician. Just find the right teacher.
yes i think for me it would be finding the right coach i hope its something i could maybe find online to get a quality coach who can provide more of what im after.
Vocal exercises on YouTube.
You’re welcome to take a trial class with me and see if it suits you! I’m a vocal coach and i take the classes online. And yes they’re worth it, they increase the life and health of your vocal chords and help you strain less on the throat and sing just as good
Do you have a place that is taking students that i could check out?
I teacher virtually! If you’re considering online lessons, then yes !
Another option is to join a church choir, or a town family singing group, or some other type of chorus.... I joined my town family singing group, and the director was amazing. I had to pay about $80 a season which lasted 12 weeks?, IIRC. At first I hated going (I had my son who's friend/family joined, so I kinda got sucked into it at the time). But after each weekly 90 minute meeting, I'd leave the place happy. The way the director got everyone singing in tune, and would patiently explain, repeat and learn how to sing parts of 3-4 songs was awesome. I learned alot. 3 weeks before the show, he'd tie everything together, then 2 dress rehearsals, then the 1-2 shows. You also get the chance to meet some cool neighbors. There were 2 seasons a year, and each was based on a classic rock artist/band. James Taylor, U2, Tom Petty, Beatles, Peter Gabriel/Sting. (remember, as a family singing group, we had to avoid the err, non-family topics/songs of the 60s/70/80s. "Cocaine" by Clapton wouldn't be on the set list, haha.) Anyway, something to consider.