by Versilaryan » 12 Nov 2011 13:02
I’ve noticed an increase in “Help me with my singing!” threads lately, so cue another tl;dr from yours truly!
So, singing is a natural part of who we are. It’s the musical instrument built into our bodies, so it’s natural that we are born with the knowledge of how to sing, right?
Not really. Just like with any instrument, you can go a long way without learning the basics, but eventually, people that worked on a solid foundation will overtake you and you’ll have to spend long months unlearning and relearning something you’ve lived with for a while.
So that’s what this guide is for. Hopefully you can learn something to get yourself started on the right track should you require your own vocals for a piece!
Super special thanks to Overkillius for helping me with this guide! A lot of the stuff I never formally learned wouldn’t be on this guide without him! ^.^
Breathing and Breath Support
This is probably the most important section of the guide, especially for new singers! Before you start working on any other aspect of singing (of anything, really), you need to get down to the basics. And you can’t get much more basic than breathing, right?
Breath support is a two-part problem. First part is, you’re probably not breathing correctly. Secondly, your diaphragm is a really weak muscle.
So first things first: you need to breathe using your lower lungs. When you breathe, your shoulders should not rise and your stomach should inflate. Try this exercise. First, make sure you’re standing or sitting up straight (which is what you should be doing when singing anyways). Take a HUGE breath (it doesn’t matter how). Then, force that air down as far as you can make it go without it hurting too much. Your stomach should visibly expand, and your shoulders should be relaxed. Even your chest shouldn’t be too much bigger. Congratulations, you’ve discovered your lower lungs!
Most people live their lives without ever really using that part of their lungs, which is why the first few times you do this, it will hurt a little. But this is where you should be breathing all the time when singing. Eventually, as you use more of your lungs more often, it should stop hurting. (If it doesn't, then you're really not doing something right!)
Secondly, you need to use your abs when singing. This is what people mean by "using your diaphragm". The misleading thing about using your diaphragm is that you're not really using it to support your air. All it knows how to do is contract, pulling more air into your lungs, and relax, letting your lungs return to their natural state. Relaxing doesn't sound very supportive at all, so try this out.
Put your hand on your stomach, take a large breath (breathing like I just told you!), open your mouth wide, and breathe out as much as you can as fast as you can. Find someplace isolated (if you're self-conscious) and give a shout, again with your hand on your stomach. Notice how the muscles in your gut tighten when you force air out of your lungs like that. To a lesser degree, that's what you should be doing whenever you're singing, no matter how loud or soft, how high or low you go. It will stabilize your airflow, helping remove shakiness from your voice as well as fixing a whole host of other problems.
Now, be careful not to tense up when you're singing. Think about it like your lower abs are holding up your lungs. You aren't trying to do sit-ups, or show off that manly six-pack. Nor should you be using the muscles in your ribcage, your pecs, or anything else. Use your gut to hold up and maintain airflow. Imagine that you're carrying a large box. You need to support it enough to keep it in the air, but no more than that. Tensing muscles in your chest or midsection is akin to having more people pushing that box down while you're trying to carry it. It just doesn't work out.
So now that you know this, let’s dispel a myth. Breath support does not mean to use more air! There is a difference. Sometimes, especially if you want to sing really softly, you don’t want to completely tank up, ‘cause that makes it harder for yourself. But if you don’t sing that without supporting your air, you sound wimpy or tense. And you don’t want to sound like that, do you?
(And while I'm at it, singing louder doesn't necessarily mean to use more air -- and likewise, singing softer doesn't meant to use less air. Singing louder means you have to use faster air. And granted, that means that you'll run out of air faster, so you need to use more air. But you should never get into the habit of tanking up for loud notes and then singing soft notes wimpy. Soft notes need air, too!)
So if you’re doing this right, you should feel a little tense in your gut, ‘cause obviously, you’re using your abs. But now, your shoulders shouldn’t feel tense, your chest shouldn't feel tense, and by extension, your neck shouldn’t feel as tense as it was, either. That’s good. ‘Cause that lead right into the next big point!
Stay relaxed while singing.
I don’t think I can stress that point enough, so I’ll stress it again. Stay relaxed.
This has two major effects on the body. One, if you’re performing, you’re probably going to be nervous. A nervous performance is a poor performance, so loosen up and don’t be nervous!
The second, and more important one is that tension in your body equates to tension in your singing, which causes a whole host of problems from shakiness to straining. And if you have too much tension, you can ruin your voice! One of the big points of using your abs and breathing using your lower lungs is that it frees the upper half of your body to stay relaxed while still supplying breath support. If you tense up somewhere else, then what’s the point?
One of the biggest culprits for tensing up your voice is your jaw. When singing, your jaw should be a little loose and should not be tense at all. Not only does that help eliminate tension in the neck, it means your jaw hangs lower, resulting in more open, resonant vowels. These benefits keep compounding!
So before you go and sing something, move your jaw around, wiggle it, make lots of silly faces. Loosen it up, and then make sure it stays loose when singing. Just like proper breath support, it will take time and practice to do it without thinking about staying relaxed all the time. But eventually, you should be able to do it automatically, and then you’re set!
Speak properly while singing!
When singing, there are a lot of little problems with word pronunciation that aren’t immediately apparent in normal speaking. Additionally, there are probably a lot of other things going on musically that your listener has to pay attention to, so words can easily get lost in the mix. So, the first rule of proper pronunciation is to overenunciate everything.
Go in front of a mirror and say something. A short line. Then, say it while exaggerating every single movement your mouth makes. Chances are, you probably spoke it much more clearly than you normally speak. Good. Now, you don’t have to exaggerate nearly that much to be understood, but you get the idea.
If you’re performing onstage, then your audience can identify the words more simply by watching your mouth, too. Extra bonuses everywhere!
Okay, now that you’re enunciating your consonants, how about vowels? First thing to keep in mind is to keep your vowels open. Keeping your jaw loose will help with that, but you have to go the extra mile and open your mouth wide for those “aahs”.
Secondly, learn to sing dipthongs correctly. A dipthong (yeah, I know, funny word) is a vowel that’s actually made up for multiple vowel sounds. Take for example, “play”. When you say it, it sounds like “pleh-ee”. There are actually two distinct vowel sounds in that “ay”, so you need to take that into account. And “pony”. That “oh” sound is actually an “uh - oo” in quick succession. If you say it really slowly, you’ll hear it.
This goes hand in hand with speaking clearly. You almost always want to stress and hold out the first vowel so that you don’t have these vowel changes muddying up your words. For example, if you were to sing the word “play”, you’d sing it “plaaaaaaay”, with that last “ee” sound really short at the end of the note, as if it were a consonant. Bearing this in mind, go ahead and listen to your favorite singer and pay attention to how they hold out vowels. Chances are, they’ll do this, so get cracking on it!
This applies to a few consonants, too, especially r’s. Unless you really want to emphasize that r, you want to apply this same treatment to them, even more so than if it were a vowel. In fact, it’s often fine to just completely omit the r at the end of a word. People will still understand what you’re saying.
And now you know how to speak while singing. Now, take in mind the style of music that you’re singing. Country actually tends to do the opposite with dipthongs, where they’ll sing the first vowel sound quickly and sustain the second one. And especially with things like rock, R&B, or anything that’s supposed to sound more rough and down-to-earth, you’re not going to want to pronounce everything properly. But however you say the words, make sure you say them clearly.
If there’s enough of a demand, I’ll do an audio/visual thing and upload it to Youtube to help demonstrate these points
Okay, then, what about the actual ‘hitting notes’ part?
There isn’t much to say here, except practice.
One thing that can help a lot is to sit down with a piano, guitar, or some other instrument you can play while singing, and just play and sing every single note one at a time, not caring about tempo. Focus on hitting every note spot on without scooping up into it. You can add all the scooping and fun stuff later. The important thing is to hit the pitches.
Then, eliminate the piano. If you know you’ve had problems singing certain pitches, use it as a reference, but only after you’ve sung the note in question. The idea is to get those pitches ingrained in your head, not learn to copy off a piano.
Once you’ve got the notes down, sing it with rhythm, but at a much slower tempo. Again, keep focusing on hitting all the notes as perfectly as you can. And once can do that, speed it up. And then speed it up some more, until you can sing it well at the correct tempo.
One last, important thing to know about pitch is to approach the pitch from the top. Do not scoop up from below. Especially with high notes, this will help immensely with hitting pitches accurately. It’s really tempting to search for notes as you’re singing and our natural tendency is to start flat and then move upwards. If you can eliminate that, you can hit pitches more accurately.
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So I hope this helped you somewhat -- if you have any questions, post or PM me and I’ll do my best to answer! (That goes with changes you’d like to see to the guide, too! I’m always open to suggestions.)
Last edited by
Versilaryan on 06 Apr 2012 00:46, edited 3 times in total.