The problem with this approach is that if you don’t have a solid foundation for singing, you will be hurting your voice instead of helping it.

Enter the concept of “sing light and right instead of strong and wrong”. The basic idea behind this principle is that if you can sing the notes correctly with a very light sound, you can sing them louder and still maintain that correct and proper foundation.

I will admit that this is tough at first, especially when you are first starting out singing. There are a few exercises, though, that can help you sing light with more ease.

Lip rolls are one of the best ways to build strength in your voice. Building strength with lip rolls will make singing light much easier.

You can also do mums which help keep your larynx low and build quiet power in your voice. You can also check out these vocal exercises to build your voice as well.

As you build strength in your voice, singing light will come easier and easier. It just takes practice!

Related posts:

1. Developing Your Head Voice
2. When I Can’t…I Sing!
3. How To Sing High Notes

In the meantime, I wanted to write a post and let everyone know that Singing Success is having a 20% off sale on their flagship singing product, Brett Manning’s Singing Success. You’d better hurry, though, because the sale ends on Thursday, August 19th at midnight. That means that you save $40 on the program! The discount is available for the downloaded program only (which is even better because you get it right away!!).

So hurry up and purchase your Singing Success product today! Click here to purchase Singing Success for yourself!

Best of luck to your own Singing Success,
Thomas

No related posts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3zd8wHZsXY

What do you think about vocal cord closure? How does it impact you as a singer? Do you struggle with this technique? I’d love to hear your comments!

As always, sing on my friends!

Related posts:

1. Vocal Exercises For Singers
2. Vocal Compression

Breath control is a pretty self explanatory term. When we talk about breath control, we are talking about the ability to manipulate your breath in order to have greater control over your voice. In order to properly control our breath, we need to learn how to breathe from our diaphragm. So let’s get started on discussing how to do just that.

In general, most people breathe incorrectly without even knowing it. As we grow up, we move from breathing from our diaphragm to breathing with the top part of our lungs. While this method of breathing works, it is very inefficient because it does not utilize the full capacity of the lungs. What we want to do as singers is utilize all of our lung capacity in order to get the most out of each breath we take in.

Start by examining how you breathe. Stand up straight against a wall and take a breath. If your chest bumps out and your shoulders rise, you are breathing inefficiently. Now I want you to place your hands on your stomach and take another breath. This time I want you to breathe in and push out your stomach. Be sure that your chest stays still and your shoulders don’t move. Now hold that breath in and feel all the muscles that you are engaging: your abdominals, your obliques, and your lower back muscles. Those muscles are there to help you! Now release this breath slowly by making a “tssssssssss” sound (almost like the hiss of a snake except with a “t” on the front end). Feel your muscles help your regulate your breath as you slowly breathe out.

This is what people talk about when they ask you to sing from your diaphragm. You can work on exercising your diaphragmatic breathing by standing up against a wall (or lying down flat on your back), taking in solid breaths, and slowly exhaling with the “tsssssssss” sound. Make sure your shoulders don’t rise and your chest doesn’t bump out!

Practicing this exercise often will give you greater control over your breath and, consequently, greater control over your voice. Will this help your tone sound prettier? Most likely not, but it will give you extra power and control over your voice. You need to learn proper vocal cord closure and other singing techniques in order to build a solid tone quality. BUT…breathing properly will help you control your notes when you are singing, which will distinguish you from other singers!

Just think of David Phelps when you think of breath control. While he has an incredible voice with a beautifully sweet tone, it is the control over his voice that is so impressive. Where does he get all that control? – from breathing properly!

I hope this post is helpful! As always, sing on my friends!

Photo Credits: informatique (flickr)

Related posts:

1. How To Breathe Properly

Learning how to breathe properly is a very important factor in learning how to sing better.

Some people put great emphasis on breath support. Other people put little emphasis on breath support. I just want to put breath support in its proper place.

If learning how to breathe properly was all we needed in order to learn how to sing better, singing would be so much easier. But oh, things aren’t always that simple..and such is the case with singing.

For starters, I want to assert that you need to learn breath support. Period. There is no way of getting around this. You need air to create sound (phonate). Therefore, it would seem logical that you would need to learn how to regulate your air support when creating your sound, right? Right!

I want to go ahead and assert that I am coming at the subject of how to breathe properly from the stance of vocal cord closure. Without proper vocal cord closure, breath support will not help you one bit….ok, well maybe it will help you burst and shout through your high notes, but your vocal cords will not last very long and your tone won’t be clear. Breath support is most appropriately exercised when coming from a position of vocal cord closure.

Let’s further unpack this idea of learning how to breathe properly by examining what is actually going on regarding vocal cord closure and breath support. The vocal cords are positioned horizontally across your larynx. To get this image in your head, hold your hand out and make the peace sign. Now I want you to open and close the peace sign. This is a representation of how your vocal cords function. When the peace sign is open, that is like the resting state of the vocal cords (vocal abduction). When the peace sign is closed, that is like the singing state of the vocal cords (vocal adduction). Now, here is where we get into the healthy tension between vocal cord closure and breath support. You see, if you have proper vocal cord closure but lack breath support, your singing voice will find itself getting stuck in the back of your throat, giving you a kind of Kermit the Frog type of sound. On the flip side, if you have proper breath support but lack vocal cord closure, your singing voice will find itself sounding, well, breathy while being pushed and devoid of tone, causing excess strain on your vocal cords (and your audience’s ears).

Here’s the important factor in all of this: breath support adds that needed pressure to vocal cord closure in order to create a healthy tension within your voice.

Now that you have this, I want to give you some advice regarding breath support.

How To Breathe Properly Tip #1: Practice your breathing exercises regularly!
Your lungs need to be worked out just as much as your vocal cords do. Practice breathing from your diaphragm in order to augment the amount of breath you can take in with a single breath. Breathing from your diaphragm requires your stomach to poke out, not your chest! Take time to practice holding out your breath and work on increasing the length on time you can sing on a single breath.

How To Breathe Properly Tip #2: Practice breathing through your high notes!
As singers, we have a tendency to forget that we still need to breathe properly through our high notes. While we do not need as much breath on our high notes as we do for our lower notes, we still need to breathe through the high notes. If we forget to breathe through the high notes, our tone ends up sounding strained (this sound is different from the sound tension produces) and gets stuck in the back of our mouth. In this sense, we want to bring our sound forward (hey, doesn’t this sound familiar to classical teaching styles? – now you know what they mean!) by remembering to breathe properly through our high notes.

Obviously this list is not an exhaustive list, but it does highlight some of the main struggles that singers have regarding breath support. In my own personal experience and study, I find that most beginner singers struggle with this because they don’t know how to breathe properly and more advanced singers struggle with this because they forget that they still need to breathe properly.

Enacting proper breath support along with vocal cord closure will give you exceptional control over your voice. I think you will find the results pretty amazing when you get the two to flow hand in hand!

What are your own experiences with breath support? I’d love to hear from you!

As always, sing on my friends!

Photo Credits: 1

Related posts:

1. Breath Control
2. Chest Voice
3. Don’t Push Your Voice!

I wrote an article about vocal weight a while back, but I wanted to come back to this subject again because it has such a dramatic effect on the voice.

The vocal weight factor can radically alter your voice if you are not carefully monitoring your voice – this is where taking voice lessons can really come in handy. Unfortunately for me, I had to learn (and am still having to learn) the hard way about the negative effects of excess vocal weight in the voice. Unless you are a light tenor who has never had issues with excess vocal weight before (lucky dog), you probably struggle in some measure with excess vocal weight.

But why do we struggle so much with bringing up too much vocal weight? I think it may be because we have a fundamental misconception about how we look at singing. For most us (myself included), we tend to think of singing from the bottom up. That is, we tend to mentally approach hitting notes from the perspective of looking up at them. Therefore, we think that we must necessarily “climb” so that we can reach these notes. In essence, we do climb to reach notes – but we do not have to view it this way.

A very freeing concept in singing is to imagine approaching the note from the top down. To illustrate, take your arm and hold it out straight. Now bend your arm at your elbow into a 45 degree angle. Now imagine that the note you have to hit is at your hand and you are standing on top of your elbow – the top down approach. Silly illustration I know, but it gets the point across. If you attack the note from this approach, it is much easier to sing without the negative effects of excess vocal weight.

Sometimes we progress in singing and never really learn to keep our larynx neutral. We practice the dopey lip rolls and mums and buhs, but we never move on to the state of keeping our larynx neutral. This can be very damaging because singing with a constant low larynx will bring up way too much vocal weight when you are singing in your mix. I’m not saying that practicing with a low larynx is bad – it is very beneficial in the beginning stages of learning how to sing better. However, I am saying that we must always be moving towards neutralizing our larynx in order to completely free up the voice.

If you struggle with excess vocal weight, you are not alone. Many singers struggle with excess vocal weight and have no clue how to get rid of it. In my own personal experience, the mindset of “light and right” has helped tremendously with lifting vocal weight. Also, literally practicing exercises at speech level and not trying to do anything extra has been extremely helpful.

Fortunately for those of us who struggle with vocal weight, the guys at Singing Success have just posted an incredible lesson dealing with the issue vocal weight. Check out this video clip below to glean some valuable vocal knowledge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OuYBPHGQg4

This lesson is wonderful and insightful. If you find this video helpful, you may want to look into getting a subscription to Singing Success Online. They have an extensive library of online vocal lessons that work mainly on vocal diagnostics (like removing excess vocal weight). It is definitely worth every penny. I attest to its power and worth!

Hope you enjoyed the post! Sing on my friends!

Photo Credits: 1

I would also like to take this opportunity to mention that I do use affiliate links on this site. I only promote what I personally have used and what I personally believe is beneficial. If you would like to know more, please view the disclosure policy. Thanks!

Related posts:

1. The Vocal Warm Up Is Absolutely Necessary
2. Vocal Compression
3. Finding Your Head Voice

Although there are many technical definitions of what chest voice actually is, it is most widely known and understood as our normal speaking and/or singing voice. For our purposes, chest voice is the range in which we feel completely comfortable singing and speaking. It is marked by the majority of the resonance being located in the chest. There are more specific definitions than these, but the general outcomes are still the same.

I find that chest voice receives much less attention than it actually deserves. In fact, chest voice should deserves just as much attention as any other area of our voice. Why? Simply because we most often sing in our chest voice. Therefore I find it quite necessary that we engage and train our chest voice just as much as (if not more than) our head voice and mixed voice.

Somehow we get this faulty idea that since we speak and sing in our chest voice all the time, we are in no need of training it. Wrong! Your chest voice may be stronger than your head voice or mixed voice, but that does not necessarily mean it has been properly trained. And here’s why.

Even though we speak and sing in chest voice often, we never truly train our vocal cords to function in the proper manner. Since our vocal cords are not trained in the proper manner, they do not give the proper control over chest voice. It now makes sense why people could sing in chest voice for years and still be incredibly pitchy and inconsistent. They are relying on everything except proper vocal cord function. Even though their chest is strong, it still remains untrained.

So how do we train our chest voice?

1) We must first get to the root of the issue. An inconsistent chest voice is only a symptom of the real problem: improper function of the vocal cords. Vocal cord closure is an absolute necessity for properly functioning vocal cords. Getting the vocal cords to come together correctly is the first step in creating a smooth, rich and controlled chest voice. The proper amount of vocal cord closure implies proper breath support as well. Breath support is also key for developing your chest voice. Breath support is not the focus but rather a supplementary element of vocal cord closure. When you fill your diaphragm with the proper amount of air and control it correctly with cord closure, you have the ability to produce that rich and controlled sound.

Here is what I would do in order to start training your chest voice.

I would practice the exercises “mum” and “buh” on octave scales, repeating the “mum” or “buh” 4 times at the top and holding out that note. If I were to write it out, it be like this:

mum-mum-mum-mum mum mum muuuuuuuuuuuuum-mum-mum-mum

or

buh-buh-buh-buh buh buh buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh-buh-buh-buh

As you ascend up the scale, focus on controlling the notes as you sing them.

You can also work on developing your chest voice by humming a particular note in your chest voice and holding it out for 10 seconds. Go to the next note higher, hum it and hold it out for 10 seconds. Focus on controlling the sound you are making. As you begin to gain control, increase the amount of time you spend holding out the note. This will help regulate your breath and develop your chest voice.

So what are the benefits of having a solid chest voice? Here are 2 tangible benefits:

1) excellent control over your vocals
2) a launching pad for adding energy into your mix

Like I said earlier, vocal cord closure is quite important to developing that rich sound in your chest voice. Grasping that concept and implementing it into your singing will do wonders for your voice!

As always, sing on my friends!

Related posts:

1. Developing Your Head Voice
2. Finding Your Head Voice
3. Keeping The Voice Connected

When seeking to find your head voice, you need to approach it in this manner:

1) Understand that you already have a head voice – you just haven’t found the correct way to access it. Too many singers believe that they just don’t have a head voice at all. That is completely untrue! You have a head voice, you just have to “find” it!

2) Understand that it can take some time before you find your head voice. I was lucky and discovered mine in a few days. For some people, it can take weeks to months.

Now that you have a proper understanding, let’s start unpacking how to find your head voice.

I think the easiest way to find your head voice is by doing lip rolls. Lip rolls automatically aid you in getting the correct amount of vocal cord closure, allowing you to access your head voice in a relatively easy manner. I have placed a video of the lip roll exercise in an article about vocal weight – check it out to see the example.

Now many people go on to say the sound they make with lip rolls is too light to be head voice. However, the people that say this either have only: 1) just discovered their head voice, or 2) discovered their head voice and have not trained it. Keep in mind that your head voice will be weak when you first discover it because you have never trained it before! It will sound similar to falsetto at first, but trust me – with a few weeks practice you will begin to tell the difference between the two.

Another way to access your head voice with more vocal weight is to practice exercises using vocal compression. Vocal compression will bring up more energy into your head voice so that you can feel how it differs from falsetto.

Finding your head voice is relatively simple once you get down the proper techniques. Start with lip rolls and practice them – and seek to master them. They are a critical step in helping you find your head voice. They can also help you develop your head voice.

What are your experiences with finding your own head voice (or not finding it)? I would love to hear from you!

Related posts:

1. Developing Your Head Voice
2. Voice Lessons
3. Relaxing The Voice

1) Take your finger, press the flat side under your chin and run it down your neck.

2) When the feel the bump in your neck (for guys it is easy (Adam’s apple), girls a little tougher), congratulations! You have found your larynx!

Now I just want you to imagine your larynx rising in your throat. Swallow for a moment and feel it rise. See how far up in your throat it is? When your larynx rises, it constricts the vocal cords and cuts off a lot of resonance space for your sound. What you end up with: tension, and a lot of it.

In fact, I would muse to say that this is the most common cause of tension when people try to sing high notes. Their larynx rises high because it falsely gives the “feeling” that it will make the high notes easier. You then discover that it just plain hurts to sing the notes. You also begin to wonder why you feel like there is a lump in your throat. Guess what? There is a lump in your throat – your larynx!

In order to neutralize your larynx, you must train your larynx. What I personally have to do is place my finger on top of my Adam’s apple when it is in the resting position. Then, when I go to sing, I make sure that my larynx does not rise above my finger. Warning: it sounds much easier than it actually is. If you have never worked on neutralizing your larynx before, this little trick may be difficult at first. But no worries, with time and training, you will have your larynx in a neutral state in no time!

Exercises that help keep your larynx neutral are “mum”, “buh”, and “guh”. Be sure to keep a dopey sound underneath your tone as you practice them on scales. Singing these phrases automatically lowers your larynx. Be sure to place your finger on top of your Adam’s apple when doing these exercises as well.

It will take time to train your larynx to stay neutral when singing. However, if you really focus and take the time to intentionally train, you can speed up the process dramatically.

When you have successfully trained your larynx to stay neutral, you will notice a freedom in the voice that you had not felt before. Less tension. More power. Isn’t this what every singer desires?

As always, sing on my friends!

Related posts:

1. Keeping The Voice Connected
2. The Vocal Weight Factor
3. Vocal Exercises For Singers

Solutions to singing with confidence are not particularly easy and vary from individual to individual. However, there is one overriding factor that I find to be present in most people who sing with confidence: they practice – a ton.

Being adequately prepared to sing is one of the best ways to boost confidence while singing. And the best part is, even if we don’t sing that well, the confident air we give off can speak louder than our vocal woes.

In short, what am I saying? I am saying you need to practice, and practice often. When you have had sufficient practice for the song you are going to sing, you don’t have to worry about the words in the next line or if you can hit that certain note. You have already worked out those issues beforehand. Rigorous practice schedules may be tough at first, but they are incredibly beneficial in the long run. Always be sure to make ample preparations before you sing, and if you have prepared rightly, you will not be disappointed.

As always my friends, sing on!

Photo Credits: 1

Related posts:

1. How To Prepare Your Voice For Singing
2. When I Can’t…I Sing!