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

1. Hum like crazy! Hum up and down scales to gently loosen up your vocal cords. Humming is one of the easiest ways to clear any excess mucus from the throat and prepare your voice to sing fully.
2. Do lip rolls. Lip rolls are easy exercises that gently massage your vocal cords.
3. Do “mums”. “Mums” lower your larynx and helps your voice resist strain when warming up.

These quick little tips can be done anywhere at any time. While I would certainly recommend you having a fuller warm up, better some type of warm up than none at all!

What kind of warm ups do you do when you are rushed or in a hurry?

Related posts:

1. The Vocal Warm Up Is Absolutely Necessary
2. How To Prepare Your Voice For Singing
3. Guest Post at Quick Online Tips

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.

Here are some things that go along with the title of this post:

When I practice singing too much, I…

• get physically worn out and frustrated
• notice that my vocal tone goes dead
• have trouble getting the proper vocal cord closure needed to connect into my mix voice
• rush my warm ups and practice
• forget that my voice needs a break every once in a while

Does this sound like you sometimes? I have to consciously remind myself that I must take breaks from singing in order to let my voice rest. I notice that many of my vocal woes simply come from a lack of rest. It always seems like there is so much to be done, yet so little time to do it. And when you try to jam singing into the mix, sometimes it can be overwhelming on your voice.

So the take home point of it all: rest your voice!

What happens to you when practice singing too much?

Related posts:

1. How To Prepare Your Voice For Singing

How To Sing Vibrato

1. One of the best ways to learn how to sing vibrato is to use the art of imitation. I cannot stress to you enough how important it is for you to imitate other singers in order to grow your abilities. Your own style will come from a variation of other styles that you pick up on and implement into your singing habits. This is why it is important that you find good singers with good technique to imitate. Vibrato can be learned, but you have to work at it. The easiest way (in my own opinion) is to go about imitating people and not really thinking much about vibrato. You will have one of those ‘ah ha’ moments with your vibrato and wonder when you practiced it at all. Oh the joys of imitation! If you wanted someone to imitate, try Chris Daughtry. His vibrato is very fast but it is extremely easy to notice. Listen to some of his songs and try to imitate the vibrato that he is making. You will obviously be a lot slower than him when you start, but practice and endurance will pay off.

2. Remember that vibrato is simply an oscillation between pitches. You could just say “ah” and then say it in a little bit higher of a pitch and it could technically be called vibrato. Just shift back and forth between pitches as quickly as possible without slurring your speech. Start out slow and quicken it as you go. If you have a piano, take 2 keys beside each other and alternate playing them. Match your pitch to the pitch of the keys and continue that pattern as quickly as you can.

Honestly there is not much to it when it comes to learning how to sing vibrato. In my own personal journey of learning how to sing vibrato, I just had to be intentional about it every time I went to sing. It took a good while for it to fully develop, but now my vibrato comes out as naturally as my singing voice. It just takes time, patience and training.

If you are interested in finding a program that will help you learn how to sing vibrato, you should try out Brett Manning’s Mastering Vibrato program. At only $49.95 and a 6 month back money guarantee, it is hard to go wrong with purchasing this product. Let me go ahead and tell you – it just plain works! You WILL develop a good vibrato if you use this program as it is intended.

I hope some of these tips are helpful to you! How have you gone about learning how to sing vibrato?

Photo Credits: flickr4jazz (flickr)

Related posts:

1. What Is The Function Of Your Vibrato?

Because thinning out your voice is such a vital component in developing your mix voice, it is crucial that you learn how to thin out your voice as soon as possible. Shelby Rollins, a new Brett Manning Associate at Singing Success, has made an excellent video that describes one way to thin out your voice. However, this is not the only way to thin our your voice. There are other ways to thin out the voice (which we will discuss below the video).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6C4_Z1VBt8

As the video pointed out, vocal fry is an excellent first step towards thinning out your voice, but it could use some help along the way too.

I have found that another way to thin out your voice is to simply practice scales in a lighter sound volume. This is much tougher than it actually sounds. The reason why practicing at a lighter sound volume helps your voice thin out is because it forces you to learn how to bring your vocal cords together in the lightest manner possible in order to produce that light sound. Try this out by using the “mum” exercise. Start out at your normal volume and gradually get lighter and lighter as your practice through your scales. Once you find a volume that proves to be somewhat difficult to connect, stay on that volume until you have taught your vocal cords how to connect at that soft volume. You will notice that as you learn how to connect at lower volumes, your voice will thin out better at a normal volume. It has worked wonders for me – surely it will work for you too.

Another way to thin out your voice is to intentionally practice your exercises with your sound resonating more in your head. For example, let’s take the lip roll. The lip roll can take on many different weights. If you intentionally shift your resonance towards your head when doing lip rolls, your vocal cords will automatically thin out more than if you were to practice lip rolls normally. You can practice lip rolls in this manner in order to develop the sense of how thinning out feels in your own voice.

Learning how to thin out your voice can be tough, but it is well worth the effort and time. What steps have you taken in order to learn how to thin out your own voice?

Photo Credits: garryknight (flickr)

Related posts:

1. Developing Your Head Voice
2. Finding Your Head Voice
3. Don’t Push Your Voice!

I was singing along with a song on the radio yesterday, and for the first time my girlfriend genuinely stated, “Wow, you sounded really good singing that song.” Did I mention that I have been working at this singing thing for quite some time? Once you have developed a strong foundation for singing, it just takes time and practice the build that good sounding voice.

So my encouragement for you today is to not give up. Stick to the course of learning how to sing better. If you are feeling down or discouraged, remember that the way you sound this week is better than the way you sounded 6 weeks ago.

If you don’t have that solid vocal foundation, I would encourage you to look at Brett Manning’s Singing Success. This singing program gives you a solid vocal foundation that you can build upon for years to come.

Don’t quit! Keep the course, and you will see results!

As always, sing on my friends!

Photo Credits: Robbert van der Steeg (flickr)

Related posts:

1. Voice Lessons
2. How To Sing High Notes

The mix voice is essentially a blend between chest voice and head voice. The mix voice has the energy of chest voice while maintaining the light weight of head voice. It is developed at the point where the singer crosses his first bridge (or passaggio).  The larynx begins to shift towards more of a C shape when you begin to sing in the mix, incorporating the pharyngeal sound as well (the pharyngeal sound is “nnggg”…or you can just think of the Bee Gee’s). The pharyngeal resonator acts as a connector between chest voice and head voice and holds the mix together to some extent. It is very important that all three resonators (chest, pharyngeal and head) are well developed when singing in the mix voice. If one of the resonators lacks training and/or precision, the mix voice falters.

Sounds like the mix voice is complicated, doesn’t it? Technically, yes – it is quite unique. But mechanically, it is no worse than learning how to play guitar for the first time. (Ok, I realize for some that may have been a nightmare..for others a breeze…but just stick with me for now.) I chose the analogy of playing the guitar for the first time because it is quite relevant for learning how to sing in the mix voice. At first, it is quite tough and can be very frustrating, but the more you practice playing it, the better you get at it. The sames goes for the mix voice.

Speaking in general terms (each person is different), the area when the mix begins to form (or should begin to form) are as follows:

male: Eflat4 to F#4
female: F#4 to A4

Like I said, these are general specifications. Some people begin to mix before the specified notes, others afterward. In general, my mix voice starts around E4 (first bridge) with my next bridge coming right around G4/Aflat4. I have a friend, though, who doesn’t starting mixing until G4 (it must be nice to not have any vocal weight all!). In some instances, I may start mixing as early as middle C depending on the nature of the song. Like I said before, it varies from singer to singer.

The mix voice takes time to develop. I would be telling you a lie if I said I had it nailed down. In reality, I am still working through my own issues with the mix voice. However, I know that it is getting stronger and clearer with every day that I practice in it.

Do you have have any more questions about the mix voice that you would like answered? Ask them here – I’d love to help!

Photo Credits: flo and me (flickr)

Related posts:

1. Developing Your Head Voice
2. Chest Voice

Which leads me to my post today. When I talk about improving your singing voice, I’m talking about steps you can take in order for you to gradually improve the quality of your voice. I’m not talking about an instant fix that will magically make you an incredible singer – such a remedy just does not exist. However, there are some ways for you to improve your singing…it just takes time, practice and patience. You will here me say this over and over and over again. Time, practice and patience are all your friends on your journey to learning how to improve your voice. You just have to constantly make yourself aware of it. Here are some things you can do to improve your singing voice over the next couple of weeks:

1) Sit down and assess where you are at now on your vocal journey. Record yourself singing a song or two. Sit back and critically listen to your voice. Do you find yourself running out of breath? How does your tone sound? Is your inflection good? Do you have any emotion in your sound? Is your vibrato wobbly, fast, or non-existent? Does your voice break on the high notes? All of these questions are good reality checks for you. Diagnose issues that you think you may have and write them down. It’s hard to know what to practice if you don’t know what needs improvement.

2) Once you have assessed your situation, take action. With the questions I listed above, I will provide answers and exercises to help you get on the right track towards improving your singing voice.

Do you find yourself running out of breath? If this is you, you most likely need to learn about breath support and breath control. Check out the posts to learn exercises that can help you improve your breathing.

How does your tone sound? If you tone is not sounding so good, you most likely need to work on vocal cord closure and vocal compression. Both of these techniques tied together give you a firm foundation for quality vocal tone. Vocal cord closure is the most important technique followed by vocal compression. Lip rolls work wonders at building solid vocal tone.

Is your inflection good? Basically, can you control the volume of your notes as you sing? If you struggle with this, you need to work on a combination of breath control and vocal compression. Finding a balance between these two techniques gives you the ability to sing at whatever volume you desire whenever you desire.

Do you have any emotion in your sound? If you lack emotion, I wrote a post a while back entitled “How To Sing With Emotion” that deals exactly with that topic. It will guide you into improving your singing via passion and feelings. Having that sense of urgency and emotion in your voice involves a combination of vocal compression and intentional experimentation with your voice.

Is your vibrato wobbly, fast, or non-existent? I’ve written a post entitled “What Is The Function Of Your Vibrato?” that deals with this subject. It would be a good read for you. I also an article about vibrato itself that you may find beneficial. There is no secret and magic way to developing and maintaining your vibrato. It just takes a lot of intentional practice and some “Viola!” moments.

Does your voice break on the high notes? If you find your voice breaking on the higher notes, you need to teach your vocal cords how to connect and shift correctly in order to sing those high notes with power and ease. Once again, vocal cord closure is probably the most important element of singing that you will need to learn in order to master the high notes, along with keeping your larynx neutral.

Following this course of assessment and practice will definitely improve your singing. Seriously, take two weeks to assess and really practice some of these techniques. You will get better – trust me.

Many of these techniques are found in the singing program Brett Manning’s Singing Success. If you take two weeks and start to see improvements, you may want to check out the Singing Success program for yourself. It offers a comprehensive and systematic approach to improving your voice that is second to none. If you want to read my own Singing Success review, feel free to click on the link.

Have you found these tips to be helpful? What are some of the ways you have gone about improving your singing voice? I’d love to know!

Until next time, sing on my friends!

Photo Credits: Marco Raaphorst (flickr)

Related posts:

1. How To Prepare Your Voice For Singing
2. When I Practice Singing Too Much, I…
3. Finding Your Head Voice

1) I always, always, always start with a vocal warm up routine. In my mind, this is a non-negotiable step that must be taken by anyone before they sing. Take the time to gently warm up your voice through your normal warm up routine. If you do not already have a vocal warm up routine, view the post I made about vocal warm ups (link is above).

2) Start hydrating yourself a few days before you have to sing. This is especially relevant to me and many other singers now that allergy season is in full bloom. It is very important that you drink plenty of water before, during and after you sing in order to keep enough moisture in your vocal cords. Moisture is the lifeblood of your vocal cords, so make sure that you are always hydrating them with good ole’ H2O.

3) Depending on the situation, I sometimes do some light physical exercises before I sing. If my body is stiff, sore or still tired from the previous day, I will do some dynamic stretches, push ups, sit ups and pull ups. Take notice that I don’t do an entire hardcore workout – I just workout enough to get blood flowing throughout my body (which includes my vocal cords). I’ve also found that working out also relieves me of some of my nerves and tension, so I am incorporating that into my routine more on a regular basis.

4) Finally, I think this is the most important thing you can do in the quest to learn how to prepare your voice for singing: practice. Practice what you are going to sing over and over again. Nail down the tough parts. Be confident in what you will be singing. This goes the longest way in prepping your voice for singing. When you have confidence to sing, the first three things are easy to do and will only bolster your confidence. So practice, practice, practice!

I hope these tips are beneficial to you in some way. What about you? How do you prepare your voice for singing?

Photo Credits: Rodrigo Moraes (flickr)

Related posts:

1. When I Practice Singing Too Much, I…
2. Singing With Stress
3. Improve Your Singing Voice