Vocal Tips

Introduction

I am, by no means, a professional singer, nor a professional voice coach, but I do have a certain kind of OCD affinity for singing, and I have studied with opera, jazz and regular (for lack of a better word) voice coaches, so I figured I would share a brief synopsis of what I know so far. 

Philosophy:

No one can teach you how to sing. You can only teach yourself, with a few hints from others. If you can effectively and comfortably sing a song without any ill effects, carry on. 

By that same token, no one can teach you how to breathe either ;-) You already instinctively know how to breathe, or else you would not be reading this right now (wink).

This natural, instinctive ability to breathe and sing is evidenced by the fact that a small baby can cry all day (some of us know this all too well) without losing their voice, and each and every one of us, no matter what age, would surely and naturally hit an incredible high note if were were to fall off a cliff! 

That being said, there are some nice to know nuances that can help you steer clear of the typical under-breath that comes from a lack of confidence, or over-breath that comes from nerves.

As for vocal position, i.e. to go through the range from chest to mixed to head voice, that is a bit more complicated, but, for the most part, one learns this by trying to follow along with scales in a safe place ('safe' meaning, away from prying ears, so that you can experiment without constraints), and continually building an internal compass for how to navigate through notes, and, ultimately songs. 

Much like scales, each song is, indeed, a journey that one has to navigate through. 

As you continue to grow, maintain a personal, unified theory of singing, in terms of the fundamentals to be mindful of. As you add more songs requiring different skills to perform, you should never have to ditch everything you know, but you should never beat your head against the wall based on what you think you know either. Even the great Beniamino Gigli, when asked when he finally mastered the voice responded: "I have not" (in Italian, of course). Your task as a singer is to keep developing an understanding and a mental model that works across every song, without being unrealistic or disappointed in *your voice*.  

Fundamentals:

Smile, as the single most important thing you can do to make sure that you are in the right physiological position to sing. A harder note should prompt a stronger smile. Really good singers are able to create the interior effects of a pronounced smile without having to actually smile on the exterior, so I would not necessarily look for evidence of this advice on the faces of your favorite singers, but, rather, would invite you to try it and see if the difference in head space becomes evident, after which time you might be able to make the association of a smile and its effects, and then figure out the effects without the smile.

In operatic singing, this 'smile effect' is called 'covering the song'.

Always sing in mixed mode, meaning: Direct your voice towards your palate from the back of your throat.  Avoid trying to force resonance out of just the head or chest. If a key is too high or too low, then modify the song, because you cannot modify your voice into an unnatural key. This technique is transparent in a trained singer, but you will clearly hear this kind of ill-advised forcing of head or chest space from your local karaoke scene or cover bands, or from singers that should have retired long ago. 

Understand proper breath control. More appropriately, understand that the breath powers the voice. In some ways, our 'voice' (i.e. vocal cords) are doing little more than flapping in the wind ;-) You need to take in enough breath, and you need to let it out with enough consistency to allow the vibrations to do their thing. There is no additional engineering required, and any technique that attempts to over-engineer this phenomenon (e.g. sing from your heels, sing through the top of your head) is more likely to lead to misguided dynamics than the simple zen of 'doing without doing' by letting your body work as designed. 

You already know how to handle your breath when you are talking, because our brains have an incredible ability to maintain the right level of air support for conversation, but as soon as you attempt a song that requires a bit of unnatural planning (e.g. Across the Universe from the Beatles) you will go beyond this natural ability, and if you don't have a few rules of thumb to follow, you may not fare too well. 

For operatic singing, constrained full breaths are the norm, but there are certain high notes that call for singing on a near-empty lung, as you want to have a small thread of air at a very high velocity to hit notes in the high (tenor) A, B, C region. This is where I think trained opera singers defy imagination, because they are doing something that is completely counter-intuitive and unnatural to produce incredible notes. 

If you go home and try to approximate this without understanding the physicality of what they are doing, you will hurt yourself, and, perhaps, prompt your neighbors to call the police. But if you were to try and swell into an approximation (i.e. from quite to loud), you might start to develop an understanding, but your neighbors might still call the police. A rule of thumb here is: never try to shout your way into a note.  


Strengthening the voice is a separate concern from singing. It is like training in the gym vs playing a sport. A football player does not endeavor to do squats while he is playing the game, but he benefits from them nonetheless. In terms of strengthening the voice, outside of actually singing, I’ve come to rely on these four: (1) Core exercises through the empty lung, which is different than core in the gym. You can do all the sit ups you want, but this will never increase your ability to squeeze. Try this: breath out until you cannot breath out any further, and then breath out as if you were trying to blow out a candle. You will feel a potentially unfamiliar squeeze. It is the same squeeze that your body does naturally when you sneeze, but because you take in a full breath just prior to sneezing, you never feel the kind of maximum, interior squeeze that this kind of empty lung exercise invokes. You should still do core in the gym, for overall support, but it is ***ONLY*** this squeeze that is going to effect your singing. (2) 1/4 second and 1/2 second exercises. This is a hard one to describe in writing, but here goes. If you breath out until you are just about of air, which will naturally drop your voice box a bit, then let your vocal cords get into the same position they would be in if you were holding your breath and then try to squeak, for lack of a better word, in that exact position, then you will have achieved a 1/4 second. The 'squeak' is not meant to be high pitch, but, rather, is meant to be whatever comes out in the position described. Changing pitch comes later, but is not the essential point of this exercise. If you master this, and then move on to more than just a pulse, i.e. a longer note, then you will have achieved a 1/2 second, where 1/2 second could be more like a full second, but you don't want to go much longer than that, so as not to damage your vocal cords. To that end, remember that this is an exercise, not a position to learn for singing, as surely as doing squats on the football field would be ill-advised. (3) Power Scales. You can look this up on the internet, and I am sure that you will find videos and scales for your voice type. (4) Power Falsetto Notes. This is ***NOT*** scales, but, more like hitting an progressively higher sequence of very high notes (i.e. that require one to sing in falsetto) for as long as you can hold the note (say, 5 to 20 seconds). Again, this would necessarily be for singing, unless you want to cover the Bee Gees, but is more about building strength and flexibility to help with mixed mode singing, as well as give you the foundation to hit and hold high notes if/when you need them. 

There are a whole bunch of other fundamentals pertaining to vibrato, etc, but there are plenty of great videos and books out there, and my intention is not to write a book here ;-) Just be weary of the books that spend the first 5 out of 15 chapters extolling the virtues of proper hydration, nutrition and sleep. I view authors of such books to be charlatans of sorts, trying to achieve a certain page count to convey a sense of comprehensiveness and authority that, in reality, probably amounts to no more than this blog.

Tactical Stuff:

Learn the difference between beneficial vs detrimental vocal thrashing, and try to limit thrashing to the evening hours, so you can rest thereafter and let your mind work it out. Thrashing is when you are trying to figure out how to sing a song that should be achievable, but has been problematic. Sometimes you just have to keep trying a song or a section of a song over and over again to figure it out, and this can lead to a certain kind of abuse of your voice, which you can embrace, so long as you learn to differentiate the good kind vs the bad kind of abuse. With that in mind, you should always try to sing songs that are out of reach, not necessarily so you can eventually perform them, but more so to develop new skills while trying to cope with them, which can then be applied to the songs that are attainable. 

Develop your own internal monitor for singing, so that you just do your thing, no matter what. In other words, whether you find yourself with a crappy quiet or crappy loud sound system, you use the same vocal position and support vs trying to modulate on the fly. For this reason, avoid singing in the shower or the car, because either one will impair this internal monitor and lead to bad habits - you might find yourself modifying your style based on the over-feedback of the shower or under-feedback of the car. Best to practice in a room with moderate acoustic feedback and master this in that kind of environment. 

Do not try to match the timbre of another singer’s voice. Go for the note, not the tone. If you can cover Chris Cornell in his key, great, just beware of covering his growl, because that stems from a combination of his vocal qualities and bad choices - he had nodules several times, and, in my opinion, could barely sing before he committed suicide.

Every song has a vocal path, and, outside of memorizing the lyrics, you have to memorize your vocal through a song, so that you have the right amount of breath support, tension, position as you go. It is not as complicated as it sounds. 

Cheers!