One of the difficulties a singer will encounter is how to train your voice properly. There is an endless amount of information out there that can be very contradictory and confusing. Often times you’ll hear some of the same things repeated over and over that aren’t really effective in helping you learn how to sing properly. In all honesty most of the time they’ll just confuse you even more because they’re unclear. Common maxims like “Put it in your mask!” or “Support more!” are really not very helpful and frankly don’t explain what you actually need to do to create the sound you want.
Here we’ll explore some of the basic ways to make sure that your practice sessions aren’t going to waste. Here we’ll only be able to give a cursory examination of good practicing habits. There is a lot more to truly learning how to sing correctly and like a professional. See this site for more.
We’ve written other articles about this first tip before but it’s worth reiterating: Sing how you speak. This is a simple yet very powerful concept when considering how to train your voice. You don’t think about “putting it in your mask” when you speak, so why would you do that when you’re singing? When you speak you just naturally let the sound flow and it comes out correctly. A few exercises to focus on this include:
1. Singing a five-tone scale ascending and descending while doing lip rolls. Think singing “Brrr” while placing two fingers from each hand on both cheeks and applying gentle pressure. Remember to remain relaxed and focus on transitioning smoothly from chest to mix to head voice as your scales ascend and then the opposite as they descend.
2. Do the same except use a tongue roll instead (think the Spanish “R”).
3. Finally move to an “Ah” sound while still maintaining the relaxed smoothness that you used in the first exercise with the lip rolls. It is imperative to continue to focus on not forcing and transitioning as smoothly as possible between the chest, mix, and head voice as you ascend and descend. If you find that you’re pushing too much then go back to the lip or tongue rolls and fell the relaxed, non-pushing sound that you’re able to produce with those and then take that feeling back into the “Ahs”.
Practice these 3-5 times a week. You may not notice a difference on the first day, but with consistent proper technique you’ll start to notice the breaks in your voice transitioning from chest to mix to head becoming less noticeable and eventually being eliminated. These exercises are a great first step to learning how to train your voice.
It’s important that you make sure that you’re practicing properly. This article is meant to provide you basic instruction but these exercises alone won’t train your voice to the level of a serious singer. For more on how to train at the same level as professional singers do, see the Singing Success program.
Thanks to Blmurch for the photo.
