Are you looking to improve your singing? Take your singing to the next level by learning and practicing different vocal techniques. From warm-ups to vibrato, these vocal techniques can help you improve your tone, pitch, and overall performance.
In this article, we’ll go over 9 must-know vocal techniques that every beginning singer should know.
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1. Control your breathing
Breath control is about learning how to manage your breath while singing. Good breath control helps you to sing clearly with strong sounds. Breathing for singing should be conscious, which means you need to think about and remind yourself often of how you breath while singing. Here are some great tips to help you improve your breath control:
- Stand or sit up straight, with your chest lifted and shoulders relaxed
- Position your tongue, mouth, and jaw for the next vowel you’re going to sing.
- Relax your throat and open your vocal folds.
- Breathe in silently and smoothly, without moving too much.
- Expand your rib cage and abdomen as you inhale.
- Use abdominal and intercostal muscles to exhale. Try to keep your abdomen and ribs engaged.
2. Reduce tension and relax
Tips for reducing tension
Many singers open their mouths and jaws too much to create resonance, which can lead to jaw tension. To avoid this, try sustaining the “ah” sound while gently massaging your jaw joints with your finger.
You can also watch yourself in a mirror and move your jaw slowly up and down within a limited range. Remember to release the tension in the back of your jaw when opening it, to get a sense of how it feels to move your jaw without tension.
3. Make a good singing posture
4. Always warm up before you sing
Vocal warm-ups are a set of exercises that prepare your body and voice for singing. Warming up can improve your singing posture and make your body feel more comfortable, which also leads to preventing injuries and improving your tone quality.
There are many different warm-up exercises you can do, such as humming, using the yawn-sigh technique, lip trills, scales, and arpeggios. You can find these exercises online or ask your singing teacher to guide you through them and give tips on how to warm up effectively.
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5. Understand the resonance
When we sing, our voice bounces and gets amplified by different parts of our throat, mouth, and nose. By using these different areas, we can create a clear and consistent sound with better pitch and more range.
For example, if you raise or lower the “soft palate” at the back of your mouth, you can create nasal resonance. You can try breathing out through your nose to feel the soft palate lowering, and then imagine you’re surprised and take a sudden breath through your mouth to feel it being raised.
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6. The Vibrato technique
Vibrato is a singing technique where a singer changes the pitch of their voice slightly to create a vibration. It adds expressiveness and improves the quality of the performance. Most singing styles use vibrato to some degree, but the amount and duration of vibrato can vary. Classical singers typically use a moderate vibrato throughout a phrase, while modern pop artists tend to use vibrato on the final note or at the end of a phrase.
If you’re a beginner, try to avoid making an artificial vibrato. The most effective way to master the correct vibrato technique is by working with a professional voice teacher.
7. Keep your vocal cords healthy
Stay hydrated
Avoid smoking and excessive alcohol consumption
Rest and avoid overusing the voice
8. Learn how to dictate words in singing
When it comes to singing, it’s important to be able to clearly communicate the lyrics to your audience. Good diction involves pronouncing both consonants and vowels properly. You can improve your diction by focusing on the shape of your mouth and recording yourself singing to listen to it later for feedback from your instructor.
9. Practice intonation
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Rose Park
Rose Park is a graduate of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University where she studied Piano Performance and Arts Administration, receiving both Bachelor's and Master's degrees before co-founding Lesson With You. As a pianist, Rose was a prizewinner in many international piano competitions and performed at various summer programs and festivals across the United States, Italy, and Japan.