How to Sing Better

If you’re not a naturally good singer, you might find yourself despairing over your situation and giving up on singing altogether. However, there’s NOTHING that can’t be improved with practice, and the same goes for singing. You’re not stuck with a bad voice – you just need to train it up until it becomes good.

Of course, this will take a lot of effort, but if you know what to do and work hard, you’ll make it there eventually. In this article you’ll learn ALL the methods you need to employ to practice the right way and improve your singing voice.

Even those of you that know how to sing will benefit here since these techniques will help you learn how to sing better. So, let’s get started and learn how to sing!

The Benefits of Learning How to Sing Online

The first step where most people go wrong when thinking about learning how to sing is that the FIRST thing they reach out for is a voice coach. These teachers can be incredibly expensive, and that’s a thing that puts a lot of people off even trying to get singing lessons.

However, while getting a vocal coach can be an effective way to improve your singing, it has some major flaws. It is expensive, as mentioned, but it’s also slow. The coach will be available to teach you only on certain days and for an hour or two at most. If you want to improve quickly, this is NOT the way to do it.

Luckily, online singing lessons have become more and more popular in recent years. With some of these programs, you can find great pre-recorded lessons as well as tips that will help you learn much faster. You will be able to practice as much as you can, and you’ll see tangible results in a matter of weeks.

The best part is that some of these online lessons cost next to nothing, or absolutely nothing – you can find a lot of free online singing lessons as well.

So, to sum up, online singing lessons are:

  • Better-structured
  • More affordable
  • Allow you to learn quicker
  • Let you learn whenever you want
  • With that in mind, here’s some advice that will help you get better at singing.

How to Sing Better

In this part of the article you’ll learn how to sing better and improve your singing voice, no matter how good or bad you are. There’s nothing that can’t be achieved with enough hard work, as you’ll see

Working on the Basics

Working on the Basics

To start training properly, you need to have a good base to start from. You can’t start singing opera pieces straight away. Lots of people start trying to master singing without paying attention to the basics, and then they wonder why nothing is working – you shouldn’t be one of those people.

Here’s some advice on how to properly start training your vocal chords.

First, you need to start by working on your posture. Most voice coaches might just tell you to “stand up straight” or “sit up straight,” but they will rarely explain what that entails.

Well, here’s how to maintain correct standing posture with a few easy instructions:

  • Stand with one foot a bit in front of the other
  • Keep your feet as wide apart as your shoulders
  • Keep your back straight – stand against a wall at first if you have to
  • Don’t tilt your body to the left or right
  • Make sure your chin is parallel to the ground
  • Puff up your chest high, so the lungs can take in enough air
  • Keep your shoulders down
  • Leave your abdomen flat and firm
  • Keep your knees loose and don’t lock them together

The correct sitting posture is not much different:

  • Move to the front part of the seat
  • Keep your back straight and avoid touching the back of the seat
  • Keep your feet flat on the floor with your knees bent at a 90-degree angle
  • Make sure your legs are apart and avoid crossing them
  • Place your hands on your lap and avoid crossing them on your chest
  • Keep your shoulders low and relaxed and puff up your chest
  • Your chin should remain parallel with the floor

Once you’ve got a handle on that, you’re almost ready to start singing. Still, there’s one more crucial thing you need to watch out for – your breathing. The one CONSTANT with bad singers is that they constantly run out of breath, but if you know the proper breathing techniques for singing, that won’t happen to you.

Here are a few quick tips on how to breathe properly when singing:

  • Try not to move your shoulders while singing
  • When inhaling, find your diaphragm and try to inhale into it
  • Relax before trying to sing or doing breathing exercises
  • Breathe in through the nose and breathe out through both the nose and mouth

However, there’s more to it than just that. You need to practice your breathing thoroughly until you’re sure you can properly inhale and exhale. Over time you will get better at this and your lung capacity MIGHT even increase through the exercises you’ll see described below.

By the way, if you’re wondering how to find your diaphragm and breathe into it, here’s how:

  • Place a hand on your stomach and another one on your chest
  • Inhale deeply through your nose
  • Try to make your stomach expand and poke out when you breathe in
  • At the same time, try to make your chest stay in place
  • While exhaling, push down, contracting your abdominal muscles
  • You should repeat this exercise until you can do it without even thinking about it

Another way to do this is something called “the book method,” which you can do by lying on the ground with a book placed on your stomach. Try to make the book rise when you inhale. Sing a note while you exhale and try to make the book lower.

Of course, you should train until you’re able to do this quickly since your backing music won’t wait for you to catch your breath.

If you want to learn how to breathe in effectively and quickly, you’ll get some tips on that as well:

  • Try to breathe in through both your nose and mouth while imagining that the air is heavy and that you’re letting it fall down into your stomach
  • When you’re done, exhale quickly and repeat the same thing, but imagine the air falling down faster
  • Continue doing this while making the air fall down faster and faster – you should also feel your lower back and abdomen expanding

Just with this simple exercise, you should be able to learn how to quickly fill your lungs with air and, over time, it will start increasing your lung capacity. Regular cardio exercise like running should also help with this.

You should also practice inhaling through your nose and mouth at the same time to keep your vocal chords healthy. If you inhale only through your mouth, you’ll quickly end up with a sore throat.

Of course, inhaling is not the only important thing – properly exhaling is just as important. This will allow you to avoid breaks and keep your voice nice and smooth while singing.

One method for practicing your exhaling is known as the ‘feather method’ and here’s how to do it:

  • Take a single feather and place it on your open palm
  • Try to keep it in the air with just one, long breath
  • Your abdomen should be steadily returning to its normal size without your chest collapsing
  • Exhale until you feel that all the air has left your chest, then inhale and repeat

Of course, that’s not the only method you can try. Another effective exercise is this one:

  • Inhale slowly and deeply then don’t breathe for a few seconds
  • Let the air out of your lungs with a steady hissing sound
  • Try to keep the hissing steady with no breaks or changes in loudness
  • Once all the air has left your lungs, inhale and repeat
  • You can also do this by singing a single tone instead of simply hissing

And there you have it! If you work on your posture and breathing using these tips and exercises, you should start improving in no time. Even if you’re already singing regularly, this might be helpful since many self-taught singers are hindered by poor basics and are straining too much when they don’t have to.

Once you’ve got that down, it’s time to move further.

Moving on to Singing Better

Now that you’ve got your basics right, you can start training to sing. Of course, you’re not ready to start belting out full songs yet. Again, you need to start with some basic stuff and move up from that.

Before you do any singing though, even the most basic, you SHOULD warm up to protect your vocal chords from getting damaged.

Here are some of the most basic vocal warm-ups:

  • Motorboat Sweeps

    Press your lips together and exhale, letting air escape through them, making a sound similar to a motorboat. Repeat it three times, starting at a certain pitch and then increasing or decreasing in pitch.

  • Sirens

    Start at a low note and make a siren sound, slowly moving up in pitch until reaching the end of your range, then moving down. Do this in one continuous sound, without breaks. Repeat it a few times while also stretching out your face.

  • Tongue Twisters

    This warm-up exercise helps you avoid stumbling over words when singing. Just do some regular tongue twisters that you can remember easily and repeat them a few times.

  • Tongue Trills

    The tip of your tongue should be placed behind your top teeth and vibrate while you exhale. Start at a certain range then go up or down for the repeats.

  • Humming

    This can be done for cooling down as well. Make sure your jaw and shoulders are relaxed and inhale normally. Then, hum the ‘m’ sound while exhaling slowly; you should feel a tickling sensation in your lips and nose.

With this, you should be sufficiently warmed up and ready to start working on some of your vocal basics.

One of the first things you could try is opening your vowels, also called the ‘open throat technique.’ With this, you’ll learn how to sing vowels more clearly without letting consonants get in the way, thus projecting more power and resonating better.

These are the five basic vowels:

  • Ah – like in father
  • Eh – like in bet
  • Ee – like in sleep
  • Oh – like in good
  • Oo – like in true

Learning how to identify them and properly sing them will help you massively improve the way you’re singing. If you’ve ever heard anyone sing unclearly and like they’re straining it’s probably because they’re not opening their vowels properly. If you’ve ever heard a local rock garage band, you’ve heard it.

However, you’ll avoid that by following just a few simple guidelines. Here’s how to open your vowels, one by one.

How to Sing the Ah Vowel Better

If you have any questions or would like to share your reviews on how to sing better, then comment down below. I would love to hear what you have to think.

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