LA Music Review | Art, stories and advice
by Carley Varley
- Always warm up your voice
Warming up your voice is crucial when you are singing, whether it’s for a few hours or twenty minutes, warm up your voice. Start with humming exercises and work through your vocal range slowly, building up to the higher and more powerful notes after about thirty minutes. I always start with humming, then I move onto scales, give your voice a proper warm up by warming up for at least twenty minutes.
You can go on YouTube and type in vocal warm up and you will find thousands of examples. If you don’t warm up your voice it can lead to your performance being not as good as your voice won’t be warmed up and even vocal damage as you can strain your voice. Always warm up your voice, learning a short routine will ensure that you always do it, even in the car on the way to a gig, or in the bathroom beforehand, make sure you warm up your voice properly.
- Learn about your head voice and your chest voice
I remember when I started singing I just did it for fun, I didn’t know any of the terminology and I certainly didn’t understand what people were talking about when they said head voice and chest voice. As a full-time musician, I had to learn this quickly as it was important not only to ensure I performed well but also to protect my voice. Your head voice is light and airy, it is almost like it’s in your head, its weaker than your chest voice, Billie Eilish is well known for her haunting head voice, she has a very delicate voice and this is the range she usually uses.
Chest voice you can feel in your chest, it is powerful and an artist who uses her chest voice a lot is Pink, she belts her notes beautifully. Knowing the difference between your chest and head voice will help you sing songs, for example Taylor Swift has a song called Cruel Summer, a lot of her range in that song is head voice in the higher notes but also chest voice for the belts in the bridge.
Learning this can help you sing songs effectively and very well! There is also another voice called your MIX, this is in between both chest and head voice, Kelly Clarkson is very gifted in this field, her voice is mixed often when she sings and she sounds beautiful. This can be difficult to train and discover but once you do higher notes will be easier.
- Control your breathing
An important part of singing is breath control, it allows you to add more power to notes, hit lower or higher notes and hold a note for a longer duration of time. Your throat should be relaxed when you sing and learning to control your breathing is a key part to singing well and effectively. If you are a very breathy singer, you will find it harder to sing verses with not much time in between notes, you will also find your notes to be weaker or that you are unable to hold the notes for as long.
There are many videos on YouTube that teach you how to correct your breathing, often speaking the notes and using less air can help, this is something my singer teacher taught me last year. I was using to much air at the end of notes, leaking air mostly and so I didn’t have enough breath for the next section of the song. After a few tips and this being pointed out to me, I was able to be more effective with where I took breathes in songs and it meant I could sing a lot better.
I hope these tips help you today with your singing, being a vocalist is so much fun but it does require so much training and looking after your voice! Remember these tips for the next time you sing.
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