Have a Good Singing Voice
Most professional singers take singing lessons, but if you cannot afford them or do not otherwise have access to a professional singing coach, there are a few things you can teach yourself. To have a good singing voice, you'll need to warm up your voice before singing and avoid vocal strain while singing to keep control. Recording yourself, listening for errors, and letting others listen to you sing will also make it easier to improve your singing voice.
Contents
Steps
- Relax your vocal chords before you start singing. Strained vocal chords mean you won't hit high notes well. Try saying "Mum... mum... mum..." in different tones instead of "do re mi". Warm up for at least a few minutes.
- Don't force the high notes. When you need to hit a high note, don't try too hard or tighten up. Relax and let your voice rise smoothly, but still maintain control. If you force your voice, you will end up hitting a bad note.
- Drink plenty cool water (not iced) or have hot/warm tea: This is best for your vocal cords because it simply hydrates them and helps clear away excess mucus. Cold water will shock and tighten your vocal chords. Avoid milk, soft drinks, and other similar drinks because the lactose in milk and the other sugars (and sugar substitutes) in soft drinks can cause phlegm and mucus to build up in your throat.
- Practice breathing deeply. Make a habit of breathing from your diaphragm, by doing it consistently for weeks, instead of gasping and/or heaving with your chest for air. If you are breathing properly, the bottom part of your belly will expand, not your rib cage.
- Practice phrasing. The right time to breathe while singing is between phrases (word groups sung together). In ordinary writing, phrases are often set off by commas or other punctuation, but punctuation may be absent from lyrics. Scan the lyrics before you start singing. Figure out where natural pauses and breaks are. When singing, take breaths at these breaks. You have to practice phrasing/breathing so that you can sing without straining, gasping for breath or running out of air.
- Record yourself. Record yourself while singing to see whether your voice sounds pleasant or irritating. Listen to your voice with an open mind, and don't try to convince yourself that it sounds right, if it really doesn't.
- Improve and experiment. Try to make your timing and phrasing fit the song better. Experiment with varying amounts of nasal and chest tones, timbres, accents and styles to see what suits you. Have a good friend listen who can give you constructive and helpful criticism.
- Practice singing in front of people. Looking at people while singing may feel awkward at first, but with practice you get used to it. If singing for an audience makes you nervous, try looking at their foreheads or over their shoulders. Practice singing in front of a mirror before you perform for an audience.
- Be open to criticism. Try performing before friends or family, whichever you feel more comfortable with. Family members will usually try to sugarcoat reactions and not tell you their true opinions, while good friends may be more open and free with their thoughts. Be ready to laugh at yourself.
- Enjoy yourself, show confidence by smiling a little, have some fun. It might just end up being a massive success for you!
- Be persistent. Talent helps -- but persistence is most important! Continue developing your song list, vocal techniques, voice strength and stage presence. Continue learning to "sell your song" to the audience, using hand motions (a hand on your heart, temple or pointing to the heavens, walking a little, each at the right moment), with sincerity, maybe a slight "tear" of sorrow in your voice -- or humorous timing -- as fits each song. Just don't give up.
Tips
- Don't compare your voice to anyone else's. Adapt their tunes, but don't copy their voices. For example, your favorite pop-star. Most of the time the voice in the videos has been altered, tuned and given depth/presence, and they aren't that good! Listen to them live and you'll see!
- If you're ill/not feeling well don't try to sing because it can damage your singing voice vocals. Same with warm ups. It can still damage your voice.
- If it helps, move your hands and animate your face to help express your musical notes showing feelings, not formal or deadpan.
- If your voice sounds weird to you, it's because we hear ourselves from our heads. Even if you're nervous, don't let on-that will actually strain your voice.
- Try to find an instrumental version of a song that you know really well and sing the words to test your voice.
- Make sure that you are ready to sing; don't let people push you.
- Be confident. Be brave.
- Always keep your back straight so your lungs can inflate and expel air, allowing enough air to get in and out of your lungs to be able to sustain notes -- but not so straight as to be stiff, rigid, or mechanical -- but definitely not continually slumping and stooping. Lie on your back to experience proper straight-back posture.
- Always stay calm when you sing in front of a crowd and sing with passion like sing from your heart.
- Sing from your stomach, not your chest or throat; the chest sounds forward and the throat makes you buzz or clog up while singing.
- Be audible and put excitement to what you are singing.
- Practice singing really high and really low. You don't want your voice to break.
- One good way of developing your ear is by playing notes on a piano and copying it with your voice. If you hit higher notes much better then lower notes, practice putting yourself, gently, into the lower tones, not growling and grinding your voice.
- Make sure your words are formed clearly, and your voice is loud enough. If you mumble or growl your song, people won't know what you're saying, and when you ask them: "What did you think?" They'll say something like: "Umm... I couldn't understand a single word you said!" So, don't be too quiet, but don't yell.
- Use your abdomen to get a good sound in your voice, by deciding when to take breaths, including deep breaths from the belly, for "singing from the diaphragm" -- since you must choose how to control your sound and volume by breath control.
- Try singing while you are swimming or jogging to develop your deep breathing technique.
- Consider taking singing lessons. They are a great way to have guided help and improve your voice
- Don't listen to the people who don't like you. If you do, you will just get worse.
- To learn how to sing longer notes , try taking a big breath in , then slowly let the air out and also don't force breathing for a long time.
- Drop the "soft palette" in the back of your throat (especially when you get to the higher notes) so you can sing fuller and have the ability to reach the higher notes in your range, still including the shaping of your vowels to get a better, richer voice (timbre).
- Practice at least five times a week for thirty minutes, but don't sing too hard or for too long, always drinking a lot of water (not stripping mucus, not sucking lemons or alcohol).
- Try not to add vibrato to your voice.
- Don't compare your voice with others we can sing better than singers and be confident while singing.
- Try to build your confidence.(Be Confident). If you can sing nicely show your talent to others. Don't hide your talent.
- Discover whether you're better at singing using chest voice, or head voice/like [cultured/cultivated] falsetto -- or combinations of the trained chest voice:
- adding in a little head-voice nasality (as singing a somewhat nasal "wah-wah") resonance.
- While your head voice may need a bit of chest -- such as singing a chesty "woo-woo" -- working on your entire voice toward sounding more natural, in either type of voicing.
Warnings
- Don't use a tight throat to control your voice or its air: avoid singing 'from/in your throat' - instead, use the diaphragm to control a consistently available, easy supply of air. If you don't use the diaphragm to breathe deeply, then you'll sound tense, and your throat will hurt from that tension.
- Avoid straining, over-tensing or making harsh, raspy sounds with your voice: so, sing from your diaphragm. Otherwise, you have a high chance of inflammation, a cough, husky-scraping sounds from [perhaps badly] damaged vocal cords, causing permanently stiff, unresponsive, scarred vocal cords (requiring throat surgery ("bye-bye good voice") eventually, if not sooner).
