How to Improve Vocals?

You practice singing for a really long period, but still the vocals’ improvement happens much slower than you expected, does not it?

You start thinking that it’s better to accustom to it and put up with all this, but do not get disappointed!

Acquiring some useful habits may help you to achieve tremendous results for a rather short term.

We suggest you discovering them with us.

They are sure to teach you how to improve vocals and, consequently, how to go to a new level.

How to improve vocals by using your body?

1. Consume enough water.

   Many people strongly believe that consuming much water is effective solely for those, who go in for sports.

   We think you’ll be greatly surprised to discover how useful it is to your organs of speech.

   Your vocal cords are very much likely to be full of health, richness and always ready to sing, if you drink enough H2O.

   You can get a cup of warm tea or a glass of warm (not hot) water with honey, which will definitely be very helpful eliminating the tickling feeling.

   Though, make sure you avoid milk, because milk products cover your throat with a patch.

   Surely, avoid drinking alcohol.

   It dehydrates the whole organism in general and the vocal organs in particular.

2. Try the technique of deep diaphragm breathing.

   Many people tend to acquire an unhealthy habit to suck in.

   They use only the upper parts of their lungs for breathing.

   You can have strong vocals and healthy speech organs, if your breathing is deep and you use the whole volumes of lungs and diaphragm.

   If you really desire to become a good singer, you must be aware and learn how to stick to the following recommendations:

   • Practice placing your hand on the stomach when you sit or stand, so that your hand moved away from you at the same time you breathe out, and towards you at the same time you breathe in.

     It may seem that you control the hand by your breathing.

   • Put a book on your chest, when you are in prone position, and watch lest it moved while you breathe.

3. Preserve proper back posture.

   • Stand up.

     Tightly and evenly press your feet to the floor.

     Now, imagine a string, which comes right in the middle of your whole body.

     It may help you to maintain the straight posture.

     Besides, you may keep the right posture by easy and full-fledged circulation of the air in your organism.

   • Seated, try not to rest on the back of a chair.

     Moreover, never cross your legs.

     Do not ever forget to work with the full volume of your lungs.

     It’s quite difficult to do it, especially if you are round-shouldered.

How to improve vocals by training?

1. Do regular respiratory exercises.

   You must know how to sustain a note.

   Before you improve your vocals, you should better work with your breathing.

   Sustained breathe out can be developed as well as breath holding.

   • Start from the inhale, which lasts for four seconds and the exhale, which lasts for eight seconds.

     Boost the time of exhales every time on four seconds till you come to twenty-eight seconds.

     Such exercise won’t probably make your lung volume bigger, but you are sure to learn the way how to handle the airflow.

   • Breathe out with your noise.

     This technique will allow your controlling the airflow and give it a tone shade.

2. Warm the vocal cords.

   Devote great attention to your vocal cords and spend enough time to warm them up.

   Start from singing note C and low down on half tone till you get to the lowest pitch of your range, working on the major scale.

   Repeat the same thing reaching the highest pitch of your range.

   To improve the variety and to change the standard solfeggio (C, D, E) you can use the singing warm-ups like “Mommy made me mash my M&Ms”.

   Regular use the labial thrills and sirens.

   Begin from the low notes and go up on the range.

   Such exercise is extremely useful to open the top notes of the range.

   When you perform sirens you should actively use your hands in order to improve the energy of the notes from high pitch.

   It’s often easy to reach a high note, if you visually mark it.

3. You should adapt your vowels in order to improve your vocals.

   Plenty of pop singers became victims of their nasal sounds.

   If you determine how to change the way you sing vowels, you vocals will definitely acquire classic, velar and mature character.

   These are surely bright indicators of how much you train.

   • Exercise with different vowels.

     Begin with ma, me, mi, mo, mu and then come to ta, te, ti, to, tu.

     Later, you may try this very exercise with “z”, “c”, and “sh”.

     After “u” sound you can move half tone lower or higher until you come to the highest pitch.

   • Each voice has its own ways of pronouncing vowels, singing which it’s easy to attain the top notes.

     Try different vowels, so that you could find your own.

4. Sing in your range of voice.

   It happens that our vocals are simply not meant to sing definite notes.

   If you have a too tense feeling, you should either move one octave lower, or select a note, which will harmonize with the one you had to sing.

   • Listen attentively to your vocals.

     You may always dream to be soprano, but you may not be physically able to do it.

   • Mind the most important thing: your range does not define how great your voice is.

     Use those possibilities you have – do not try to be someone you are not.

What vocals’ drawbacks may be there?

In general the following drawbacks are observed in vocals sound:

• shaking and bleating;
• hypernasal vocals;
• false intonation;
• low sound.

Still, there is good news: due to the everyday, planned and systematic training you can either completely remove these drawbacks or improve your vocals a lot.

How to improve vocals removing shaking and bleating?

Such drawback is often observed among mature singers, but children and young singers may also happen to have it.

Voice is not smooth and even, and it seems that it’s trembling, and shifting between the neighboring sounds, and pulsing. Its nature are the vibrations.

The reasons why such drawbacks appear may be extremely various: it may be ill vocal apparatus, organic disadvantages (age-related changes), etc.

However, if everything is fine with your health, the main reasons of shaking and bleating are:

• wrong vocal setting;
• lack of skills in singing breathing;
• constant vocals’ forcing.

Ways to Stop Stuttering

How can you fix it?

1. First of all, you should learn how to breathe correctly during singing.

   Inhale must be active, noiseless and deep, and exhale – even and sustainable.

   In order to train it you may use different respiratory exercises and breathing gymnastics.

2. Sing exercises with the closed mouth with the consonant “m”, train the smooth exhale without pushes.

3. Sing exercises with the open mouth by the well opened vocals.

   The best vowels you can use to get rid of bleating are “u” and “o”.

   Vocals must be not too loud, maximum mf, without forcing, because in case you sing loudly, the vibrations are sure to grow.

   Your tempo must not be quick and it should allow you eliminating the shaking as much as possible.

4. Improve the exercises and add some tempo gradually, progressively as the sound gets even.

How to improve vocals eliminating nasality?

Nasal singing is a very common disadvantage.

The reasons for it are:

• Nasality may appear as a result of illness (cold, stuffiness in nose).

  In this case you should turn to doctor for help and have a proper treatment.

• The second reason is lack of singing skills and faded soft palate.

  Instead of being in a bit higher position, it sags down.

  As a result, the vocals mostly come through the nose and create a nasal sound.

If you want to fix it, you should sing vowels “u” and “o”, because when you sing them the soft palate is significantly reduced.

While you are singing, your lips must be very active, and you must open the mouth wide enough.

Speaking and singing with your nose closed is also very helpful.

How to improve vocals by getting rid of false intonation?

Again the reasons why it appears are extremely various.

At first, let’s try to discover the reason and then how to eliminate it.

Off-pitch singing can be the result of having a cold, ill throat, stuffiness in nose.

Sure thing, you should not sing in such condition, because you must undergo treatment.

Physical weakness, over-strain, mutation may also become the reasons why you have improper tone in singing.

Other reasons, which you may fix during the studies:

• Undeveloped ear for music, lack of coordination between the vocals and the hearing.
• Wrong vocal formation, singing in low position.
• A slipshod performance, when a singer does not try to sing perfectly clear.

You can eliminate this disadvantage and improve your vocals in the following ways:

• Improve general musical sense, musical horizons, listen to more various good music, which is professionally performed.
• Improve the ear for the music: melodic, harmonic, inner.
• Learn how to analyze your singing, control it relying on the inner feelings, which you experience during singing.
• Sing staccato exercises in a slow tempo (it is a very useful method how you can fix the intonation).
• Sing exercises with constant musical accompaniment (it’s also very important that the instrument was properly tuned!), then sing in turns and combine singing with accompaniment and without it, then learn how to sing a cappella, i.e. without musical accompaniment.

Only performing a cappella you can learn how to do it clearly and keep your tonality.

Such technique improves your ear for music and singer’s self-control.

How to improve vocals eliminating low singing?

Low, faded and weak vocals can appear due to the following reasons:

• bad breathing;
• character’s peculiarities – bashfulness, constraint, shyness, lack of self-confidence.

In order to eliminate it you should improve your vocals by:

• using prompt speech;
• singing staccato exercises and then combining staccato with legato;
• singing different exercises and opuses in quick tempo and with sharp rhythm.

We hope that these pieces of advice on how to improve vocals will definitely facilitate maintaining correct singing technique.

However, it’s also important to sing emotionally, feel yourself free and relaxed.

The inner feeling of freedom and self-confidence are the keys to success in any activity.