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How To Sing For Beginners
Important Note: Before we get into it I want you to know this. The voice you’re born with is not the voice you’re stuck with. We are often told or think that the natural way we sound is all we have to work with. That’s not true. Like any muscle in your body you can train your voice to be stronger and work better. So don’t ever feel like you “can’t sing.” You just need to train. So what’s the best way? First, know what the important areas of your voice are (See the basics below). Then do exercises that train these areas regularly.
- Breathing – there are 7 different ways you can breathe
- Pitch – are you in tune?
- Tone & Resonance – how does the character of your vocal sound?
- Vocal Muscles – vocal chords, diaphragm, larynx – strain vs. tension
- Power & Dynamics – How loud and soft are you able to project?
- Range – Can you hit high notes properly?
- Practice the breathing exercises above for at least 5-15 minutes in total daily
- Practice the vocal exercises above for 15-30 minutes daily for 1 week in your natural tone
- Next, do the vocal exercise in a specific musical scale (ex/ the C Major Scale) for 1 week
- Each week build your pitch by doing the exercises on additional scales – 1 new scale per week
- While you’re doing this, visit our blog to learn a new technique, method or exercise you can add to your repertoire
- Advanced Breath Control
- Harmony
- Pitch
- Tone and Resonance
- Endurance
- Projection
- Vibrato
- Falsetto (High-Notes)
- Specific Genres of Singing
You’ll want to spend at least a week focusing on each of those areas.
- Intuitive – so your sound is natural
- Relaxed – straining yourself never sounds good
- Enough – you don’t want to run out while belting out a longer phrase
Simply put, you should be able to steadily count from 1 to 30 without taking a breath and without straining yourself. If you can’t do that, you’ve got work to do.
How to Improve: Practice these 7 different types of breathing – they will promote control and relaxation in you
- Sleeper Breath – the kind of breathing you do when falling asleep – deep and heavy
- Slow, Silent Breath – how you’d breathe if you were on the phone, secretly listening in to a conversation
- The Yawn – how your breathing works when yawning
- The Sigh – kind of like the yawn, with less exaggeration
- The Gasp – quick, short breath as if you’re startled
- The Pant – like the gasp, but faster and in succession
- The Hiss – controlled breathing through your teeth and lips
You want to practice your breathing regularly – do these different techniques over and over. It will promote relaxation, endurance and control.
- Produce an easy tone
- Not be strained
- Be on key/pitch
To produce an “easy tone” all you have to do is make a natural sound from your mouth. Without any tension or strain make a short and quick “hmm” sound – as if you just learned something interesting. Use your natural pitch – don’t try to hit some specific note/pitch. Just be natural – whatever you’re most comfortable with. How To Improve: Keep making that noise over and over again. This will promote relaxation.
- Gradually, make the “hmm” sounds longer and longer.
- Work that humming into different music scales
- Next, practice humming while imitate how a siren goes up and down.
Doing these things will help you hit different pitches and also connect your different voices (head /middle / chest voice) without any noticeable transition. What Does That Mean? What that means is you will sound MUCH better. Now this is just one type of vocal exercise. There are a lot of different ones out there and they all work to train a different aspect of your singing voice. When learning you want to practice several specific types of vocal exercises daily.
To start things off, here are some tips and pointers to get you started off on the right path to becoming an amazing singer/vocalist:
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