Listen to Your Voice
Improving your voice is a process so the idea of “instant” is deceptive. You will not get up one morning with an improved voice. You must put conscious effort in order to see change in your voice. Just like anything else, just thinking it won’t make a difference. Doing, not just thinking things, is what makes the difference. A long-distance runner will not “instantly” develop stamina for running by quickly rummaging through a checklist, instead he or she builds up technique on technique by day. Singing is not different.
Set time aside for your singing practice. If you are in the habit of singing all the time, don’t just sing pay attention to how you sing. I will give you an example, if you sing one phrase and it sounds like a violin, the next sounds like a drum, the next like a different instrument and so forth ask yourself a few questions. What style of music is this? Is it intentional to sound like different musical instruments in one piece of music? And so forth.
If you are following the classical style which has a much more formal and strict presentation than most genres, then you are most likely not going to produce different sounds for different phrases in a specific piece of music. Your sound will be more consistent. Imagine an Opera singer switching out of vibrato into a straight violin tone. Whether or not you like Opera( because not liking a music genre tends to bring out more the undesirable elements than the opposite) you understand that the straight tone violin does not belong in this style of singing. So, when you practice, remember your style of music because that will help you design your practice and you will make the best of your time.
They say singing along with a CD helps, but I am sure as with all teaching aids, it won’t help everyone. The problem I have experienced with singing along is to tend to mimic the singer…. I prefer to accompany a male soloist over singing along because I can still sing but retain my voice while I have fun. By the way, you can record yourself while you accompany other singers and then listen to the performance afterwards. Believe me, this works!
Even if you don’t know what is technically wrong in your performance, you will find out what is odd. You will find yourself deconstructing your own presentation to make it better. You know who you listen to a solo or quartet and say, “oh! that was awful!” Now, hold onto that thought. What is it specifically that made it awful? Was one voice screechier
or squickier than others? Was one voice much louder than the other or inaudible? Now it is not enough to say it was awful. Fix it. Play around with your voice and try to do the opposite of what you heard on the recording.
There are different approaches to improving your voice. Here we talk about a situation where you know what music you want to sing, then we go from there. Once you learn the singing technique of your style of music, you must sing as stipulated in the technique. Whatever it says, do it. Even if you think you sound horrible, DO IT. You improve on what you have to the next level. If you don’t start with a horrid sound how can you measure how much you’ve improved?
If you are practicing sacred music, remember the composure that comes with this genre and forget the slides that come with contemporary pop music. When you are practicing pop music remember that a combination of vibrato, staccato, straight tone, etc bring much more color to the voice than the more formal presentations.
The voice has various characteristics and most of them will come with time and practise. With vibrato, you might sound like a chicken laying eggs ( others call it wobble) at the beginning, but this is where you start. Keep doing it. YOU will find for yourself the best way to produce vibrato for YOU. A voice teacher can help you become aware of different ways to improve on a technique. You follow your teacher, but only you will know what makes you produce greatest resonance. Everyone is different.
Listen to yourself when you sing. You produce sound, that is perfect but not sufficient. Listen to the quality of your sound. When you tune in the radio or the old fashioned TV’s you move the knob around until there is better quality sound. You do the same with your voice. This is something your teacher cannot do for you! Try singing a complete song on the vowel you are most comfortable with. I like “i”. Pay attention to the brilliance and placement for this vowel. Now do the same with the rest of the vowels! “A” is the most difficult for me. It may be easier for you.
Make a mental note of the positions that help with these voice attributes. The way to know for yourself if you are doing well on these attributes is to think about your speaking voice. Do you vary pitch abruptly when you talk? If you catch yourself doing so, you almost instinctively come a few notches down to a much lower pitch. It will be the same with developing your singing technique. When you do not sound right, you will know. If you are tone deaf, your music teacher is there to help you!
Know how to recall them under stress. Practice singing in different environments, but be careful they are healthy for your voice! EXPERIMENT with your voice. Just like when you go out to an interview, you try different outfits to see what works best. Do the same with your voice. If you are uncertain, ask your music teacher because you don’t want to strain your voice and ruin your vocal chords.
You will notice that even though your singing style is specific, the brilliance and placement of vowels is vital for most if not all styles. So really, paying attention to practice in your style is perhaps to get you comfortable by improving your singing voice using your preferred style of singing.
Singing is work and requires effort.
