Do Proper Vocal Warmups

The vocal cords are like muscles and can be stretched. If you try to hit high notes without doing proper warm ups, it’s like going for the heavy weights. It is dangerous and you can seriously damage your vocal cords that way. Always do warm ups before doing any singing and also start doing it every day as well. Get your vocal cords used to being used often so you can increase your stamina in singing.

The other benefit of doing warm ups is that it helps you to work on your entire voice range. While your goal might be to sing higher notes, it is a common misunderstanding that you can just work on your high notes while neglecting the notes you can already hit. If you do this, at best you might be able to hit those notes but a more likely scenario is that you will just tire your voice out fast and possibly even lose it.

By working on your low notes as well as high ones, you will bring tonal depth to your high notes and achieve nice harmonic overtones when you sing at your lower register. If you have observed singers wih a wide singing range, you might have noticed that they display similar qualities in their voice when singing. However, a less experienced singer might sound like they were approaching a ceiling as they try to sing higher notes.

Know Your Limits

You won’t be able to stretch your limits without knowing what they were would you? Find out what is your lowest and highest register and start to do vocal exercises that works your entire range daily. Once you are used to that, start pushing the boundary and aim for a gradual increase in the lowest and highest note you can reach.

Another test would be to sing a note and see how long you can hold it for. The note should remain strong and steady when you hold it. It is worthwhile to do exercises that help you hold your notes because while you might be able to reach high notes, you probably won’t be able to sing songs where majority of the notes are high.

Part of knowing your limits is knowing when to rest your voice. Sometimes, people get overzealous in trying to sing higher and overtax the vocal cords. If you feel any pain or unusual strain in your throat you definitely must stop and take time off to rest your vocal cords and just be silent.

Use The Right Muscles for Singing

Many people are unaware that they are using the wrong muscles for singing. In fact, they think it is natural that as you try to reach higher notes, you ‘push’ more. This couldn’t be further from the truth because when you do this, you tense the muscles in your throat that actually make it harder to sing higher.

To illustrate this point, try to gently place your entire hand over your throat as if you are trying to feel the sides of your throat. Now swallow and feel the movement of your throat. Right at the moment you swallowed, what you felt was the movement of more than 3 dozen muscle groups working in tandem to help you swallow! These muscles help make sure the food you eat doesn’t go down your windpipe and return to resting position once their task is done.

Unfortunately, these same muscles that are so useful when eating are practically useless when it comes to helping you to sing. Quite the opposite, if you engage these muscles when singing, they waste energy and work against the muscles that you DO need to sing higher. What’s more, since these muscles are not meant for extended use, they actually wear you out faster.

Hopefully this article has given you a good start in learning how to sing higher. Of course, you won’t be able to do this simply by reading article after article. You will need to practice and learn how to master the coordination of your vocal muscles and breathing techniques. This comes through listening and repeatedly practicing vocal training exercises and plenty of singing. It definitely helps to have a vocal trainer or have the benefit of a good singing course.

In the end, it boils down to technique. To produce high quality, full, rich sounds, you need to learn the correct vocal and physical techniques.

Physical Techniques that Lead to Better Singing

Vocals lessons start not with the voice, but in understanding how your posture effects your ability to produce quality tones. Having a slouched back prevents your abdomen muscles from being able to fully expand and contract. With correct posture, your abdomen muscles can then help with the air flow used for singing.

Singing is strenuous not just on the voice but the body as well. For example, proper control of notes require you to be able to regulate your breathing. There is a breathing technique called appoggiare that involves inhaling deeply and using the abdomen muscles to force the diaphragm up. This will in turn move air up into the lungs towards the vocal cords.

With this technique, you keep the sternum raised while exhaling to maintain control of the air. Once you master appoggiare, you will be able to prevent uncontrolled air pressure on the vocal cords. This is useful for holding notes for long periods of time.

There are many other physical techniques that can benefit all singers, including forming the lips, controlling the palate, and mastering proper tongue placement.

Vocal Techniques

By taking vocal lessons, you will also learn various singing techniques that will help improve your vocals. Along with persistent practice, singing also requires a good understanding of how sound is produced. This in turn helps you achieve the singing results you desire. Once you know how to breathe and posture your body, you can then begin to learn how to:

• Produce a full, solid sound
• Sustain and end a tone
• Recognize and sing in pitch
• Keep the throat open to create resonance
• Pronounce vowels and consonants clearly while singing
• Increase vocal range
• Increase voice amplitude
• Sing with emotion

There are several singing techniques that can be learned and mastered, however there is even more to learn if you aim to be a professional singer. As a professional, you need to master stage presentation elements such as stage entry, microphone technique, and learning to connect with your audience.

One thing that people often don’t realize about singing is that almost everything you do can affect your ability to sing well. Even the way you live has an impact. For example, you can damage your vocal cords by smoking or drinking too much.

The Whole Picture

You need to look at the whole picture when learning how to improve your vocals. There is a lot more involved than merely learning to sing in tune or in time.

To road to becoming a better singer requires both time and effort. You need to “discover” your unique voice and proceed to master the vocal and physical techniques that will enhance its best qualities. It is a life long process that allows you to explore your own individuality so that you can sing your best for yourself and for others.

Many will find the concept of doing warm ups counter intuitive. After all, essentially you are doing more exercises to prevent injury from overuse. However, it is proven that doing light exercises for the tiny muscles that control your vocal folds make them more flexible and easy to use. As a result, your vocal muscles are less prone to injury.

Relaxing Your Whole Body

Before you begin your singing warm up exercises, you will need to stretch your entire body and try as much as possible to relax yourself. Start by doing the “rag doll” exercise. Bend forward at your hips from a standing position and allow your head and arms to dangle freely. Loosen them a bit by giving them a little shake and let them dangle for another minute or so.

After that, continue with a stretching exercise to ensure proper posture alignment. Take a standing position with your feet about a hip-width apart with your arms by your sides. Then as you take a deep breath, raise your arms from the side till they come together at the top of your head. As you do this, rise onto your tiptoes and hold that position for a few seconds.

While you slowly exhale, bring your arms back down to you sides and come back to your original position with your feet flat on the ground. As you do this exercise, try to have your chest up and shoulders back, as you raise your arms up and down. After you have repeated this exercise for a few times, you are then ready for your singing warm up exercises.

Singing Warm Up Exercises

The first warm up exercises is a vocal technique that is known by many names: buzz, lip thrill, bubble lips, or lip roll. The main idea is to exhale through puckered lips and create a vibration that sounds a bit a motorbike or motorboat.

Do this exercise in three different tones: start with the base tone, then go up a fourth and then back to the base tone. So for example, in the key of C it would be the note C, F, C. Repeat this while going up half a tone each time you repeat (C#, F#, C#, then D,G,D, then Eb, Ab, Eb, etc.). You could do this exercise using the syllable “oo” or “ee”, however the buzzing helps to develop better breath support.

Doing this exercise usually result in an itchy nose but most people get used to that after a while. Some find putting a finger at the top of your upper lip helps to reduce the itchiness because it stops the vibration from reaching the nose. However, doing this may also make it harder to perform this exercise. The decision is entirely up to you.

The next exercise is called the fifth slide. Start on the fifth tone with the syllable “wee” and slide down towards the base tone. For example, in the key of C, you would start with G then slide down to C. To add variety, you can repeat the exercise with the syllable “zoo” all the while increasing moving up half a tone till you can’t go any higher.

Next is a five tone descending scale. Again starting on the fifth tone, go down in steps towards the base tone. Alternate between the syllables “na”, “nay”, “noh” and “noo” while moving up half a tone each time you repeat till you can’t go any higher.

The fourth exercise is an extension of the previous exercise whereby you increase the number of tones you descend to eight. You can try other vowels sounds like the previous exercise as you go higher in tone. You can also replace the initial consonant from “n” to “m” or any other consonant for variety.

After that exercise, do a descending arpeggio (do, so, mi, do) on the syllable “nah”. Repeat that with other vowels then move up by half tones and repeat on each syllable once again.

The last vocal warm up exercise is called the octave slide. Using the buzz learned in the first exercise, start on the base note and slide up and octave before sliding back down to the base note. Repeat this with different vowels move up by half a tone as you do so.

There are many other types of warm up exercises you can do. However the five listed here should be more than sufficient to give your vocal muscles a good stretch before any heavy singing and reduce the chances of overuse damage.

For those new to singing, it can be quite challenging to get their voice where they would like it to be. Cost is of course one of the top challenges. Not everyone can afford a private vocal coach or trainer. If you are not meeting your full singing potential, free singing lessons provide here can serve as an effective and economical training tool. Plus, it’s a great way to start!

Other frequent singing challenges include vocal cord strain, struggling with vocal range, or even keeping up with songs because of skips in the voice. Many singers find it difficult to get correct pitch, sing with solid voice or have song timing troubles.

There are also plenty of people that sing for fun and are clueless when it comes to more technical aspects of singing. These include things like resonance, amplitude, key, or pitch. It’s great to sing simply for enjoyment at the start, but somewhere along the line there will probably come a time when learning more about these technical aspects will help you improve greatly in your singing.

A Wide Range of Topics

Vocal training lessons can help you to:

• Learn warm-up exercises for the whole body
• Learn warm-up exercises for the vocal cords
• Develop good posture
• Develop good breathing techniques
• Discover how to produce good sound
• Learn important terms like scales, time, intervals and pitch
• Learn sight singing techniques
• Add expression to your music
• Learn to articulate
• Gain singing confidence
• Learn songwriting skills

This list only is a small portion of what you can learn here at Vocal Training Lessons. The most successful singers regularly employ a broad range of exercises, practices and concepts.

There are many reasons why people decide to take up music lessons. Some might just enjoy singing as a hobby and would like to expand their knowledge of the topic. Others enjoy singing in public places and events and want to perform at their best. If you’re considering singing professionally, vocal lessons are almost definitely a must. This is because talent can only take you so far. If you really want to excel, then you need to train yourself.

Unfortunately, many people put off taking vocal lessons because they think that it is either too expensive or that it is only applicable to those who have full time singing careers. Both assumptions are false. While there may have been a time whereby private vocal coaches were the only choice is getting voice training, but the Internet has made it possible for anyone to take singing lessons from the comfort and privacy of their home.

The voice training lessons offered here is an easy, economical way to benefit from physical and vocal techniques. You can find new ideas, tips, suggestions, and motivation to help you pursue your singing goals. Pick any one of the articles to have a read. You are guarenteed to learn something!

For Those Serious About Becoming a Better Singer

I have put together an ebook titled 90 Days to Becoming A Better Singer. In it, you will learn:

• The critical secret to developing a good voice (it doesn’t just involve your vocal cords!)
• How to identify your personal voice type
• Find out if you’re unknowingly damaging your vocal cords (and how to avoid it)
• How to project confidence when you sing and make a personal connection with your audience
• And more!

To claim this ebook for FREE, all you need to do is sign up for my Vocal Training Lessons newsletter by filling your name and email address below. It’s that simple!

By signing up you will get valuable vocal lessons and tips sent straight to your inbox and you get a free ebook containing some of my best content. With such valuable information offered to you at no cost, there is literally NO excuse for not taking action. So sign up now and kickstart your journey to better singing!

Air is the foundation of the singing process. The quality of what is being sung is largely determined by the rate of air movement through the body. To be a good singer, you will need to learn how to control the rate of air passage out of your body. This will ensure that you can hold notes for long periods of time without getting short of breath.

Building Up Your Breathing Control

When starting vocal training lessons, the first thing to do is learning how to manipulate the amount and rate of air being released from the lungs. The key difference between breathing for singing and talking is that the release of air depends on the words and notes being sung.

You see, normal breathing doesn’t require any specific patterns. You just inhale and exhale any amount of air you want! However, when you sing, the amount of air being released needs to be carefully controlled so you don’t run out of air in the middle of song phrases. The only way you can match the release of air to the singing of the words is to learn proper breathing control.

Here are two simple exercises that targets your abdominal muscles which control the rate of air being exhaled from your body.

Exercise 1

Stand using good posture

Place your feet approximately shoulder width apart

Extend both arms out until they are perpendicular to your body

Turn the palms down

Breathe in for 3 to 4 seconds

Hold your breath for 3 to 4 seconds

Breathe out for 3 to 4 seconds

This exercise is designed to help increase your lung capacity and give you more control over the time it takes to release air from your lungs. Over time, you will notice that the time you spend inhaling and exhaling will have increased due to your larger lung capacity.

Exercise 2

Stand using good posture

Place your feet approximately shoulder width apart

Breathe in deeply

Exhale as long as possible while making a hissing sound

When singing, the last thing you want is for your notes to come out choppy or in gasps. This exercise will help you develop a steady air flow in your singing and achieve the fluid stream of sounds.

These two exercises are great as part of your warm up sequence for whenever you are getting ready to sing. You can also you use them as part of your vocal training.

Breathing Control Training

All vocal training lessons come with breathing lessons. This is because every song has its own characteristic and require different timing and pace of breathing.

Long notes will require steady and smooth exhalation for an extended period of time. Different note pitch will also require good breathing control. The more extreme the note difference, the higher level of mastery that is required.

There are also other breathing training that can further enhance your capacity during vocal training lessons. Another thing you will want to work on is avoiding tension when breathing. In other words, don’t try to force air out that doesn’t exist. All this will do is create tension on your vocal cords and degrade the quality of your singing as well as potentially damage your vocal cords.

I would advise that you continue to practice the exercises in this article regularly till these techniques because almost second nature. They may seem simple, but don’t underestimate the power of what it can do for your singing. Once you have a good breathing foundation, you won’t have to think excessively about breathing pace and holding notes when singing because it will come naturally.