By: Gavin Swift
Greetings LECTURE OWLS! And welcome to another thrilling instalment of ‘Articles to Improve Your Musical Life’! I’m your host, Jiminy-Bow Christmas, and by golly have we got something special in the tank today!
Picture this scene:
You’re at your local karaoke bar. Your pals are all up on the chairs; positively howling the lyrics to Someone Like You & Wonder Wall. They sound bad. I mean my god they sound absolutely abysmal. Flat. Croaky. Like a drunk police siren.
Your turn.
Your friends spur you on [“come on Jiminy!”]. You step up to the mic, whack on Don’t Stop Believing by cult rock band Journey, and even though that song has been so incredibly overdone since the 2009 series Glee, you absolutely SMASH IT OUT OF THE PARK. You sound incredible! Like if Adele and Ariana Grande had a baby! And then that baby had a baby with Stevie Wonder !
“How on earth did you get so good?!” your friends think!
And of course, the answer is that you read this article and got some serious big daddy tips on HOW TO GET BETTER AT SINGING.
So sit up, be alert, and get ready to take notes – we’re about to take your singing game to a whole new level. Get ready to enter the karaoke hall of fame.
In this article we’re going to:
Learn how to improve our singing!
Want to learn way faster and avoid any pitfalls? Try a free in-person online lesson from one of our world class instructors today.
WHAT IS SINGING ANYWAY?
I’m sure we all know this, but I think it’s great to go back to first principles and really define what it actually is that we’re aiming to improve at before we start chucking in techniques and exercises willy-nilly. So what is singing?
Well, the Oxford English Dictionary defines it thus:
“The activity of making musical sounds with the voice, usually a tune with words”
Pretty well sums it up right? But I’m angling for something a bit deeper, so lets go ahead and define that word ‘voice’:
“The sounds that are made when people speak or sing”
Lol. Cheers for that illumination Oxford. Should’ve gone to Hull.
So let’s get the first entry for the Hull English Dictionary written:
The voice: sound created through the mobilisation of breath in the body combined with manipulation of the vocal organs, namely the vocal folds, resonant cavities, and lips to create words, sounds, or song.
Alright alright alright.
We inhale; fill our lungs, then on the breath’s way out, we consciously control the air and our vocal folds (cords) or other resonating passages. From this we create sound either for speaking or singing.
When we want to improve our singing then, this is the place that we start. I promise you this, tweaking your breath alone can make SUCH a huge difference.
So, to maximise the breath, let’s learn how to breathe!
BREATHING POSTURE
“I mean surely this is self-explanatory?”
Well you’d think so wouldn’t you? But alas mon amie, modern life has conspired against us. You see, good breathing begins with good posture. That means get your shoulders back & your spine straight (ish). But here’s the thing! 95% of children, teenagers, & adults spend a massive amount of their time sat at desks hunched over their computers! To make matters even worse, when they are standing, they’re often hunched down over their smart phone texting! So their spines curve & they’re shoulders hunch.
“Big deal!” I hear you say – well it is I’m afraid!
Let’s try something right now. Wherever you are, sat down or standing, I want you to hunch right over. And I mean reeeaaally hunch. Let your shoulders collapse. Let your chin touch your breastbone. Let everything feel really heavy and really forward.
And now take a deep breath. As deep as you can.
How does that feel?
Constricted? Uncomfortable? Incredibly inefficient? I’ve just tried this exercise myself and my dog literally came to check if I was ok because of the wheezing that I was doing.
Now let’s try this something else.
Stand up. Place your feet about shoulder width apart. Let the tips of your shoulder blades reach to the corners of the room behind you. Raise the back of your head so that you’re standing as tall as you can. And now breathe.
How does that feel?
Powerful right? Strong?
And that’s the first step to being a better singer: better posture, followed by better breath.
For a slightly tangential but really fascinating further look on the benefits of good posture, check out this Ted Talk:
Which are you??
BREATHING
So now we know how to stand & sit, let’s look at how to breathe!
Be honest. When someone tells you to ‘take a deep breath’, what do you do?
If you’re anything like most of the world, I bet you inhale and let your chest puff out like a rooster? Right?
Well that's wrong!
When we breathe, we want to inhale as low into our bodies as possible. That means rather than breathing into the chest, we breathe down to our belly buttons.
You see when we breathe into our chests (otherwise known as ‘vertical breathing’) we limit the amount of breath that we can inhale, because the size of the chest cavity is simply not big enough for our needs– it’s not fit for purpose!
Now compare this to breathing deep down into your belly… Unlike the chest, the belly expands much further outward with the inhalation, as well as to the sides and rear – and of course it’s travelled downwards through the body to arrive there! So much more power!
We call this type of breathing diaphragmatic breathing, for the simple reason that to breath this low, we have to recruit a handy sheet of muscle that the majority of us know little to nothing about….
THE DIAPHRAGM
Below is a representation of the diaphragm in the body:
I know! Weird right?! Why are we getting so hopped up about this odd jellyfish thing? Well it’s because it is absolutely vital for proper breathing.
That pink jellyfish is actually a sheet of muscle that works like a bellows in the body to suck air in, and it does that by contracting downwards – as shown in the diaphragm sorry diagram below:
This is the optimum way for our body to breathe and if it’s the optimum way for our body to breathe, then it’s the optimum way for our bodies to SING!
How can we tap into this powerful and correct way of breathing? Especially if we’ve conditioned ourselves into ineffective, unhealthy breathing for a rather long time? Have no fear my friend – I’ve got just the exercise for you…
DIAPHRAGMATIC BREATHING EXERCISE
Lie down on the floor with legs hip width apart, feet semi-supine.
Place a heavy-ish object [such as mobile phone or hard back book] on your belly button
Breath low, into the object and aim to move it up as high as you can with the inhalation, and down as low as possible with the exhalation.
That power that you feel in your tummy is you diaphragm – you’re now breathing properly! Let’s progress a smidge further…
After a couple of minutes solely focussed on moving your object of choice up & down using your diaphragm, then add a count on to the breath of: in for 4, hold for 4, out for 8, hold for 8 [aaaand repeat].
When comfortable, move the counts up by one, e.g.: in for 5, hold for 5, out for 9, hold for 5.
Length of the count is good, but more important is the integrity of the exercise. We’re looking for a full volume of air in, and then every single drop of breath out. All being powered by the diaphragm and lower stomach muscles.
Once you’ve got this exercise down, it’s time to try it standing! Simply perform the above exercise standing in the proper posture that we discussed earlier in the article! Instead of a heavy object, simply press your hand against your tummy and breath there. How does it feel? Strong?! Great! In which case…
…Let’s take a look at the next fundamental to take your singing up a notch!
RESONANCE
So you know how to stand.
You know how to breathe.
But do you know how to…
…hum?
Well compadre, that is the next step or this journey, so let’s get ready to vibrate. Remember our definition of singing that we wrote for the Hull English Dictionary:
“…the mobilisation of breath in the body combined with manipulation of the vocal organs, namely the vocal folds, resonant cavities, and lips to create words, sounds, or song…”
Oh baby, feel the friction in the airwaves. Let’s take a moment to think about what a sound is.
When we play the violin, we have 4 strings. To make sound using those strings, we can either pluck them using our fingers to make a short sound, or we can draw a bow along the string to make a longer, sustained sound. It is the friction created between the bow and the string that makes the sometimes pleasing sound of the violin. If the pressure from the bow is strong we get a louder sound, and if the pressure from the bow is soft we get a quieter sound.
Now that concept is the essence of how we produce sound in our bodies (or our instrument) too – except our bow is the breath, and our strings are our vocal folds.
THE VOCAL FOLDS
Check out the diagram below – you can see the vocal folds highlighted in green, located in the larynx.
And below you can see a laryngoscopic view on the right:
When our breath moves through these folds - depending on how we manipulate them – they create vibrations, which in turn become sound, which in turn we convert into a karaoke smash hit!
For an in depth (and I mean reeeeaaallly in depth) look at the vocal folds, check out this video:
RESONANCE EXERCISE
So. Our foundation in terms of resonance depends on how we can manipulate our vocal folds in combination with the breath. And therefore to be the best singers we can be, we need to become intimately acquainted with our resonance. Lucky for you, we’ve got just the exercise to send you on your way.
Lie down on the floor, assuming the ‘semi-supine’ position.
Take a moment to breathe deeply to your diaphragm, remembering to let the belly expand as high as possible with the inhalation; and to drop as much as possible with the exhalation.
Now with the next breath, make the sound ‘Mmm’. Keep your mouth shut, but your jaw relaxed. Repeat, and keep making the sound on the outbreath.
Carry on with this, and now begin to mindfully examine where that resonance feels like it’s occurring. Is it in the mouth? The nose? The forehead? The chest? Wherever it is is totally fine, for the moment just notice it.
Now, continuing to hum on ‘Mmm’, I’d like you to take that sound and make it as low as possible, both tonally and physically. To help with this you can place your hand on your chest. Breathe here a few times.
Next, I’d like you to try and place the hum in your throat! Again, if it feels useful, try placing your hand/s over the larynx and send the hum here for a few breaths.
Now try sending the hum to the lips. 3 breaths here.
Now try sending the hum to the nose. 3 breaths here.
Now try sending the hum directly between the eyes. 3 breaths here.
And finally try sending the hum to the very, very top of the head! Why not do three breaths!
How did that feel? I personally find this an AMAZING exercise to use as a warm up before I sing, but also with my students to increase vocal range in a really gentle way! I promise you if you do this exercise every day for a week you’ll be blown away with the difference in you singing ability!
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
And that’s all for today folks! Three very workable fundamentals that are guaranteed to take your singing to the next level.
Try implementing these exercises & techniques into a daily practice, and see how you progress over a couple of weeks!
Until next time!
Gavin Swift is a film and media composer based in London, England