Singing tips?

I can't say I'm a good singer but my ex did opera and I've had vocal training.

The basics

- Breathing is key. Breathe from the stomach, not with shoulders. Make sure you've got air before you sing.

- Sing from your chest/diaphram, not your throat

- Warm up. This is paramount. Do scales, vocal exercises to prepare.
Your voice will thank you.

- Practice. Practice, practice, and fucking practice some more.

 

I had a great vocal teacher so I can try to help you.

- Stand up straight (If sitting sit up straight)
- Feet shoulder width apart
- Knees slightly bent. DO NOT LOCK YOUR KNEES.
- Breathe until you can feel it fill up your stomach

**This is going to seem strange, but is very essential to singing properly:
- You need to use your lower body muscles and push down like you would if you were taking a poop. Keep those muscles pushed down while you're singing and it'll help tons.
- You also need to sing from your diaphragm which is in basically the same place as your stomach so you need to fill it up with air and then sing from there.
- You need to control your breathing. If it sounds breathy when you sing you're doing it wrong. You need to have a full tone.
- Another major thing to do is placement of your tone. You need to place your tone in between the back of your throat and your nose. You need to feel the resonance in the front of your head. People usually feel resonance in one of two places, either in your forehead or your cheek bones. When you feel it there you've got it.

Tips to remember:
- When singing always think more of musicality than just hitting the pitches. (However, make sure you hit them too) What I mean by that is know when to crescendo and decrescendo, based on the context of the piece and what it's about know which words should have emphasis and which ones souldn't. Musicality is just as important as pitch.
- Remember to keep your vowels tall and round and your consonants hard. Make sure you can hear all the consonants clearly, don't slur them in with your vowels. Everything needs to clear.
- PRACTICE EVERY DAY. That is vital to learning to sing you should practice for at least an hour every day.
- Make sure that you always warm up with vocal exercises before singing. It makes a major difference.

Hope this helps. If you need any more singing help I can try to give you a more in depth analysis for what you need to practice specifically if you want to give me more details on what you're having trouble with.

 

I have some vocal training, though I am admittedly still learning a lot myself I can definitely give my 2 cents.

littlememphis did a solid job of covering basics.
Is there anything in particular you are looking to improve or just you want to be a better singer in general...?
And just purely out of curiosity, do you know your voice range? Different voice ranges can sometimes have different issues (though it's rare). I myself am a baritone, which is fairly common among males. It's possible you are a tenor too.
Basically, are you hitting the lower notes, the higher notes, or both (you lucky son of a gun if that's you)?

Breathing is definitely, as littlememphis said, the key to building vocal technique. A good way to tell if you are breathing correctly is to put your hands around the bottom of your ribcage and trying to make it expand. Once you start really breathing as deep as possible you can put your palms on your back ( as if you are supporting your back like an old person complaining...if that makes sense ) to feel expansion.

-Singers vocalize from the chest, the mask, and the head. The mask is basically just section of your cheek bones and nose. Singing from your throat will guarantee a sore throat and possibly damaged vocal chords. You should be able to feel when your in chest voice, mask voice, and head voice by vibrations you feel. It's more or less a resonance.

-ALWAYS warm up. It is extremely helpful for preparing.

- Relax your jaw. Tense jaw or tensed face is the enemy of anyone who wants to sing. Anyone who is singing a long note and has their jaw moving up and down during vibrato (the slight vibration in a voice that really makes notes beautiful) is doing it wrong.

- To make sure you get out the best quality sound possible, make sure you are giving the sound room to fully resonate. Here's a cool trick, but it's a little unsanitary so wash your hands. Take your thumbs and put them in your mouth so they're behind your molars. It will feel weird, but the space created will give your voice a little bit more freedom.

-Finally, a-nun-ci-ate. No one will enjoy your singing if they can't understand what you're saying (excepting songs not in English of course). When practicing songs accentuate the syllables, and by the time you perform it, it will be natural and crisp.

 

That's exactly right. Never work from your throat because you could permanently damage your vocal chords if you put too much strain on them.

 

Do what you can. No one can hold a long note for a super long time without significant practice. If your throat hurts after a while, STOP.

It's more effective to practice 15 minutes each day and spacing them out so you don't tire your voice out. Your diaphragm is used to make sure you get your money's worth of air. Air flow has a lot more to do with the placement of your voice then anything else.

 

I'm going to guess that by "preparing for singing" you mean preparing a song for a performance?

Weird trick: Sing while laying down. It helps you place your voice without straining it. This helps me if the song has a particularly difficult note.

Also, when your singing, know the difference between a closed vowel and an open vowel.
For example: an "AHHHHHHH" is more open then an "EEEEEEEEEEEEEE". (not an eehhh, but an eeeeee)
if you're doing an AH vowel sound you can take advantage while singing to show off your voice.

 

There are several you can use. One would be to work the scale using solfege (do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do) Work your way up one at a time and then back down. Then work one at a time like this (do, do-re-do, do-re-mi-re-do, see the pattern?) You can also work with the bumble bee exercise (just search it and you'll find something) and the red leather, yellow leather exercise for enunciation (you can look it up too). Basically just look up vocal warm-ups and you'll find plenty of useful exercises.

 

Bless, you have vibrato! Not to sound shallow but some people honestly don't have vibrato or fake it and it doesn't sound good.
Resonance is basically when you feel a soft vibration in your chest or cheekbones while singing. It's somewhat internal. IDK what "resonators" are though. You don't 'use' resonance, it's just an indication your vocalizing with the correct technique.
I totally understand how you feel, that's basically what is motivating my current training in voice .

So now that you brought it up, I will talk about vibrato
Vibrato is the slight wavering you hear in a voice often when holding a note. Look up any opera performance (literally...any) and you will see that when they sing it's like "AH-ah-AH-ah-AH" except a lot faster and in one note. :lol:

The key to using your vibrato is to NOT 'use' the vibrato. People try to apply vibrato to a note when in reality it comes when your vocalizing is relaxed, and your jaw is relaxed.

 

Jealousy! You have vibrato and I've been trying for ages to find mine. That's a good tell for someone with natural vocal ability, honestly. If you work at it you could be a great vocalist especially in classical music where vibrato is so highly sought after.

 

Ok then I know EXACTLY what your talking about . It's almost like a no man's land.
The key thing is just practicing singing in that area, and getting comfortable with hitting the notes there if it's not comfortable. Vibrato comes with time, especially since you appear to be just starting to explore your voice.

Out of curiosity, what is your range? Are you a tenor, boy alto, or baritone? Goodness if you're a bass. If you're confused you can google it .

 

I'm no singer, but I am a horn player and I can tell you first hand that learning an instrument will help your air control infinitely. If you have the time, dedication and money, of course.

---------- Post added 27th Jul 2013 at 10:00 PM ----------

As for this, in instruments (sorry for this viewpoint again), that's known as the break. Not sure if it's the same in singing, though.