Singing for people with Big Goals
Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 6:23 pm
This is mostly copied from another thread, because people there said it might be useful on its own. I added a bunch of clarifications and explanations.
Best method: find a great teacher and get singing lessons.
Barring that, get hyper-critical of your vocals. If something doesn't sound ultra-clear (with ridiculously full sound, compared to most stuff here on SF, including mine), pitch-accurate etc. etc., you're not doing it right. It's easy to get too critical, though. A teacher will know what's right and wrong where you don't, that's why I recommend finding one.
1. Breathing
Step one. Breathe out as freely as possible... there should be absolutely no feeling similar to holding your breath. Compare this feeling against the feeling you normally have when you sing and your notes sound strained. While you're at it, compare it against the feeling you normally have when singing and it doesn't sound strained.
Step two. Tense your stomach muscles (not too much), lightly (!) pulling your belly in. This is all about breath support and "breating from the diaphragm" as you've all heard countless times before on the web.
The muscles below the ribcage (in that "reverse V" kind of spot) should feel tense from the outside. This is where the action is: the diaphragm is directly below the lungs, so it's right about there. Breathe in (without lifting your shoulders), then breathe out as slowly as possible. Keep that throat relaxed! Make sure breath expels at a steady rate throughout. Experiment a bit. The better your breath control without doing anything weird in the throat area, the better.
This stuff was explained to me recently in a way that really made sense: for singing, breath control is vital. Without it, you can't have stable pitch. Remember how the human voice works: air hits the vocal folds and makes them vibrate. This only works well for certain quantities of air flow, so your body has to make sure the right amount of air gets pumped through them at all times. The lungs themselves don't have any muscles, so breath can only be controlled in two places: the diaphragm below the lungs (which isn't a muscle, either, but there are muscles below it) or the throat area above the lungs. If the diaphragm doesn't do the job, the throat does, by tensing up. That's bad. Your job here is: a) learn to have the diaphragm do the breath control; b) get the throat used to getting a break.
2. Simple notes
Start from your most comfortable pitches (mid range of chest voice). Remember breathing stuff from previous paragraph. Sit straight but don't overdo it. Become very aware of tension in your throat. Keeping your throat relaxed and "open", sing a note that feels comfortable. Loudly (i.e. the volume obnoxiously loud people use when talking). If you're not mangling it in your throat, it should sound pretty cool and be very, very effortless (except for the tension stuff from last paragraph, which you will get used to in time). Perhaps it helps to imagine singing through your stomach.
The trick here is that when you sing loudly and it feels effortless anyway, that pretty much means you're doing it correctly. The only pitfall is that you might not even recognize the effort because you've always sung the way you do. That's why I recommend becoming very aware of the sensations in your throat. Loud and tense = bad. Loud and relaxed = good.
Going from that, experiment with higher and lower pitches. Go for about the same quality of sound and the same level of effortlessness. As you move further away from your comfortable range, old habits of "reaching" for notes will start interfering more and more. Be patient, they'll start unravelling after a few days of practice (particularly if you don't keep on singing the wrong way all the time). If something doesn't sound right, do it again a couple of times, perhaps experimenting a bit... don't keep hammering on notes that don't seem to work well. Instead, perhaps just move back to something slightly easier, and let your muscle memory get more practice with using the right kind of coordination. More often than not, you'll find that a couple of practice sessions later the difficult note suddenly works better.
If something does sound right, do it again a couple of times. If you can space out the repetitions a bit, wonderful... helps the remembering part. Either way, keep practicing, and keep practicing things that already work decently. That way you'll not only get even better but it'll also pave the way for further improvement in the more difficult things.
Don't worry about consonants for a while. When you start introducing them, ignore any advice you've ever heard about overdoing the pronounciation. Same for different vowels, really. You'll find that most of the clarity will magically appear when you sing the right way.
Listening to what you're doing is critical. The best solution is to get someone else to listen to you and offer feedback (the more detailed, the better). The second-rate alternative is to use a (good!) microphone and immediately listen to each passage after you sing it. Once you know what to listen for, you can do a lot of the "live evaluation" without external feedback, though, because you'll remember what it sounds and feels like inside your body.
The throat stuff might not be as easy as I pretend it is. Don't worry about it too much, but do keep it in mind. Prefer limiting your range for now over straining too much. Once you've experimented and practiced for a couple of weeks, go grab a second lesson from me. By then I'll have learned more about it myself.
Feedback is appreciated.
Best method: find a great teacher and get singing lessons.
Barring that, get hyper-critical of your vocals. If something doesn't sound ultra-clear (with ridiculously full sound, compared to most stuff here on SF, including mine), pitch-accurate etc. etc., you're not doing it right. It's easy to get too critical, though. A teacher will know what's right and wrong where you don't, that's why I recommend finding one.
1. Breathing
Step one. Breathe out as freely as possible... there should be absolutely no feeling similar to holding your breath. Compare this feeling against the feeling you normally have when you sing and your notes sound strained. While you're at it, compare it against the feeling you normally have when singing and it doesn't sound strained.
Step two. Tense your stomach muscles (not too much), lightly (!) pulling your belly in. This is all about breath support and "breating from the diaphragm" as you've all heard countless times before on the web.
The muscles below the ribcage (in that "reverse V" kind of spot) should feel tense from the outside. This is where the action is: the diaphragm is directly below the lungs, so it's right about there. Breathe in (without lifting your shoulders), then breathe out as slowly as possible. Keep that throat relaxed! Make sure breath expels at a steady rate throughout. Experiment a bit. The better your breath control without doing anything weird in the throat area, the better.
This stuff was explained to me recently in a way that really made sense: for singing, breath control is vital. Without it, you can't have stable pitch. Remember how the human voice works: air hits the vocal folds and makes them vibrate. This only works well for certain quantities of air flow, so your body has to make sure the right amount of air gets pumped through them at all times. The lungs themselves don't have any muscles, so breath can only be controlled in two places: the diaphragm below the lungs (which isn't a muscle, either, but there are muscles below it) or the throat area above the lungs. If the diaphragm doesn't do the job, the throat does, by tensing up. That's bad. Your job here is: a) learn to have the diaphragm do the breath control; b) get the throat used to getting a break.
2. Simple notes
Start from your most comfortable pitches (mid range of chest voice). Remember breathing stuff from previous paragraph. Sit straight but don't overdo it. Become very aware of tension in your throat. Keeping your throat relaxed and "open", sing a note that feels comfortable. Loudly (i.e. the volume obnoxiously loud people use when talking). If you're not mangling it in your throat, it should sound pretty cool and be very, very effortless (except for the tension stuff from last paragraph, which you will get used to in time). Perhaps it helps to imagine singing through your stomach.
The trick here is that when you sing loudly and it feels effortless anyway, that pretty much means you're doing it correctly. The only pitfall is that you might not even recognize the effort because you've always sung the way you do. That's why I recommend becoming very aware of the sensations in your throat. Loud and tense = bad. Loud and relaxed = good.
Going from that, experiment with higher and lower pitches. Go for about the same quality of sound and the same level of effortlessness. As you move further away from your comfortable range, old habits of "reaching" for notes will start interfering more and more. Be patient, they'll start unravelling after a few days of practice (particularly if you don't keep on singing the wrong way all the time). If something doesn't sound right, do it again a couple of times, perhaps experimenting a bit... don't keep hammering on notes that don't seem to work well. Instead, perhaps just move back to something slightly easier, and let your muscle memory get more practice with using the right kind of coordination. More often than not, you'll find that a couple of practice sessions later the difficult note suddenly works better.
If something does sound right, do it again a couple of times. If you can space out the repetitions a bit, wonderful... helps the remembering part. Either way, keep practicing, and keep practicing things that already work decently. That way you'll not only get even better but it'll also pave the way for further improvement in the more difficult things.
Don't worry about consonants for a while. When you start introducing them, ignore any advice you've ever heard about overdoing the pronounciation. Same for different vowels, really. You'll find that most of the clarity will magically appear when you sing the right way.
Listening to what you're doing is critical. The best solution is to get someone else to listen to you and offer feedback (the more detailed, the better). The second-rate alternative is to use a (good!) microphone and immediately listen to each passage after you sing it. Once you know what to listen for, you can do a lot of the "live evaluation" without external feedback, though, because you'll remember what it sounds and feels like inside your body.
The throat stuff might not be as easy as I pretend it is. Don't worry about it too much, but do keep it in mind. Prefer limiting your range for now over straining too much. Once you've experimented and practiced for a couple of weeks, go grab a second lesson from me. By then I'll have learned more about it myself.
Feedback is appreciated.