Five ways vocalists can improve their voice

Singers have one of the toughest jobs on a stage. All eyes and ears are on them when a performance begins, and no matter how well the band plays, if the singer doesn’t perform well the audience will be left disappointed.

Improving your vocals and protecting your voice is easy enough to do when you know how, and this will help you to become a better, more consistent, and more powerful singer. Here are some simple steps any singer can take to make their voice sound better when they are practicing or performing.

Warm Up Before Singing

The voice is controlled by muscles in your throat, chest, and mouth. Just like an athlete must warm up their biceps and triceps, a vocalist needs to warm up their muscles before practice or performance.

You can warm up your voice by humming, growing with intensity over time. Lightly singing scales will help you stretch your vocal cords so you can reach the low and high notes with ease. When warming up your voice you should literally feel your throat warming and your vocal cords loosening.

Stand Tall and Drop Your Jaw

Much of the power behind a singing voice comes from the chest and the muscles in the torso. If you stand tall with the correct posture you will be able to add more power and volume to your voice, using all of the muscles in your back and chest.

Dropping your jaw will help too. Keeping the mouth tight or close to closed can only prevent the sound from leaving your mouth clearly.

Work With Technology

Whether practicing, recording, or performing live, singing can be very challenging for the vocal cords. Keeping your voice consistent, especially over a two or three hour long performance or recording session, is almost impossible.

Using software like a vocal enhancer plugin can help keep your voice in the same range as you sing across multiple songs, evening out the sound for listeners.

Control Your Breathing

The energy that powers your voice is the breath you breathe; without it, you have no voice. By controlling your breathing, you control your voice and can push it to greater highs and lows as well as volume.

Look for some breathing exercises that suit your style of singing and your voice. Diaphragm breathing, or belly breathing, is a technique that can support your voice even when singing at the extremes of your range.

Always Start Simple

The first song you sing when performing or practicing should be one you are comfortable with and that sits nicely in your range. Do not stretch your vocal cords or push your limits at the beginning, you need them to last throughout your performance.

When you are constructing set lists, try to steadily increase the complexity of the songs to let your voice build in strength before you push it to any extremes. You need to protect your voice if it is going to last through your gig and your career.

Take just a few of these steps and you will notice the improvement in your voice immediately. Not only will you have a stronger voice, but one that lasts longer too

Buddy Iahn
Buddy Iahn

Buddy Iahn founded The Music Universe when he decided to juxtapose his love of web design and music. As a lifelong drummer, he decided to take a hiatus from playing music to report it. The website began as a fun project in 2013 to one of the top independent news sites. Email: info@themusicuniverse.com