August 8, 2010

How To Sing Great!

Singing is not just opening your mouth and that’s it. Don’t you just open your mouth and do it? Well, sort of. Believe it or not, there is a right way and a wrong way to sing. Or perhaps, we can put it like this, there’s a healthy and sustainable way and there is the opposite – the unhealthy and potentially harmful ways.

Look After Yourself and Your Voice

You must take care of your body in order to take care of your voice, whether you want a glamorous career in music or a recreational singer, you must take care of your voice to sound as good as it can. And like mentioned, the best way to keep your voice sounding great is to keep yourself physically fit and in good overall health. To do this, maintain a healthy diet, adequate sleep, and moderate exercise. Avoid smoking, illegal drugs, and excessive use of alcohol.

In public image, those hard-partying rock star is most often than not, is not real. Most of the recording artists who have had the longest careers have taken good care of themselves and avoided the excesses that prematurely ended the careers of such talents as Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Elvis Presley.

You most certainly need some training on how to sing if you really want to be a serious singer, whether professional or recreational. Aspiring professionals like nurses, engineers and accountants must got to school to pursue their chosen occupation. You can either use an online singing course or find a local teacher and take lessons. Singing is Easy by Yvonne DebBandi or Singorama by Emily Mander are two example of online singing course.

You need to learn how your vocal apparatus works and how to use it, and also avoid or deal any voice problems regardless of which method you choose. Remember that learning how to sing can be fun and exciting with the right teacher or program you got.

The first thing any good teacher or online course should address is your posture and breath support, which allow production of the best vocal tone. The best singing posture is to stand erect but relaxed, with your feet about hip-width apart and one slightly forward. Keep your shoulders back and your chest high, though not as rigidly as a soldier standing at attention.

Here is an easy exercise to help you achieve good singing posture. With you arms at your side, stand with your feet hip-width apart. Bring your arms in a rapid circular motion across your body and over your head, rising onto your tiptoes at the same time while taking in a good, deep breath.

Slowly start to exhale, bringing your arms down to your sides and coming down from your toes. As you exhale and bring your arms down, try to keep your chest and shoulders in the same position they were in at the top of your stretch.

Breath support enables you to produce a pleasant tone without straining your throat. When you inhale to sing, you should feel expansion all around your midsection. Your diaphragm, abdominal, and spinal muscles should all be working together. During this time your abdominal and spinal muscles should all be working together as well as your diaphragm.

Once you have taken in a good breath, breathe out on a hissing sound while trying to maintain the expansion of your midsection. It will take some time and effort to strengthen those muscles, but ultimately you will learn to sing in a healthy manner, with better tone and less vocal fatigue.

The only foundation of how to sing well is the posture and breath support. Tone placement and quality is the next level. There are three primary areas where our vocal tone resonates: the chest, the pharynx (mouth and throat), and the head (sinuses). For lower notes, you use your “Cheast voice” and you use your “head voice” for higher notes.

There are times, that you may want to use the sound coming from both the pharynx and the head. Voice teachers usually call it “mixed tone”. The combination is called mask resonance, because you want to feel the sound vibrations in the area that would be covered by a half-face Halloween mask.

With this simple exercise, you can feel the mask resonance. Take in a good, well-supported breath. Starting on a high note with the syllable “hoo” or “hee”, slide from the top of your range down to the bottom. It should feel a bit like yawning, and you should feel vibration in the soft palate (roof of your mouth) and in the triangle between your eyes and the bridge of your nose.

Mastering these basics is the first step in learning how to sing. It will take time, effort, and practice, but if you work patiently and consistently, you will see results.

Discover the best and fastest way to learn how to sing, or hit those high notes very easily! Check out http://www.singingbasics.com/ now!

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Filed under Music & Music Players by Jacaranda Flagg

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