The future of music

How to Improve Your Singing Voice

May 4, 2023
how to improve your singing voice

If you are an experienced singer or just a beginner learning how to sing, you can always work on enhancing your singing skills.

Working on your vocal abilities can lead to expanding your vocal range and making your voice more flexible, versatile, and powerful.

You’ll never know what you’re capable of doing with your voice unless you try to bring it to another level.

So what is the best way to improve your vocals?

To improve your singing voice, you need to have regular vocal practice and learn ways to affect the quality of your authentic sound. That is also, probably, the only way.

Breathing exercises should become an essential part of your routine, as they will help you gain control of your voice as well as relax you before approaching more complex vocal training.

Except for proper breathing, there are many other factors to focus on while singing to make your voice sound fuller and stronger. Once you become aware of them, with time, they will simply become a part of your technique.

We have some useful tips and tricks for you on how to improve your singing voice, and they will hopefully inspire you to start doing it today!

Develop Singing Voice

Before jumping into vocal exercises on how to improve your voice, you should think about your current singing skills – what is your voice type and vocal range? Which music genre do you prefer for singing? Do you know what is your vocal apparatus made of?

There are many important steps to take before you start working on your singing voice. You can’t grow without a solid foundation. 

If you don’t think you have developed a good singing voice yet, take your time to master the basics. Getting singing lessons with a vocal coach is never a bad idea, but if you don’t have that opportunity or simply fancy learning by yourself there are many ways to do it.

It’s sometimes easy to get lost while choosing a suitable song to practice, so besides the usual singing scales, this list of easy songs to sing for beginners might be helpful.

Also, don’t let the potential beginner’s struggle discourage you. If you have a natural talent for music, that’s a great advantage, but not a crucial starting point. Either way, with enough time and devotion, your voice will gain more power, flexibility, and strength.

Remember – anyone can learn how to sing with proper and regular practice, so even though the precise outcome will depend on several factors, you can always work harder to improve your singing voice quality.

How To Improve Your Singing Voice

There are many exercises you can take in order to improve your singing, and choosing the right one depends on the level of skill or talent you have, and on the style and music genre you choose to indulge in.

However, there are some basic steps that every singer needs to take, and we will briefly explain them to you.

1) Understand your singing

Firstly, you should educate yourself on how to properly use your body for singing. Do a little research about your vocal apparatus, the ways it produces sound, and the processes that are happening to create a voice.

By focusing on what your body is doing while you sing, you will be able to control your voice better. For example, engaging your diaphragm is one of the most important steps here – feel it and learn how to activate it through adequate breathing exercises.

Engaging your diaphragm to improve your singing.

If you understand your singing on the anatomic level, or at least its basics, you will become aware of how to affect the quality of the sound you’re producing, as well as know why something possibly went wrong.

2) Relax

This might be the most common advice for better singing, but it’s the one worth mentioning again.

Yes, it’s inevitable to start your singing practice with a relaxed body – massage your cheeks to loosen up your face muscles, lean back your shoulders, let your neck rest gently, and keep your back straight.

Don’t forget to maintain that proper posture all the time during singing!

After all, it’s all connected – a tall posture will help you free your diaphragm, breathe more easily and, therefore, sing better.

Good singing posture.

3) Breathe

We mentioned breathing, and yes, it requires a particular focus and practice.

It’s sometimes hard to become fully aware of something that you do all of the time without being conscious of it, but once you learn how to breathe properly you will start improving your singing techniques.

If you are an experienced singer who is enhancing skills, then you already know this, but it’s important to keep practicing it. It might be almost automatic for you now, but going back to the basics to work on your voice can only do you good.

4) Warm-up first, always

Another thing to keep doing no matter how skilled you are is a proper vocal warm-up.

Go easy on your voice, don’t attack it with complex notes and exercises without taking enough time to warm it up first.

You’re usually doing it for your body before a physical workout, and vocal cords are no different.

5) Try the mixed voice

One of the first things that you learn in singing lessons is the difference between the head and chest voice.

The head voice sounds more tender and you use it when you’re reaching higher notes, so it’s a register ideal for R&B or indie rock songs. On the other hand, chest voice is low, thick, and normally used when speaking.

Head voice vs chest voice.

Despite the importance of knowing to sing well in both registers, along with other styles such as falsetto (which is different than head voice), what leads to a full and strong sound is mixing it up.

The mixed voice is created with elements of both voice registers, and you can learn it by practicing smooth transitions from chest to head voice and doing exercises such as octave leaps and lip thrills.

Once you find your mixed voice, you will be able to sing smoothly through your entire vocal range, and the notes you hit will sound richer and more powerful. 

Tips To Improve Singing

Once you’ve learned the ways of how to improve your vocals and found the most suitable exercise for your type of voice, you have to integrate that into your daily routine.

Practice is the key!

Also, you should pay attention to your body connection while practicing. Besides breathing into your diaphragm, you should be aware that your body is a resonance chamber, and that it amplifies the sound you produce.

You can feel these vibrations in your stomach if you’re singing low notes and in your upper body while singing in the head voice. This is especially important to notice if you’re singing opera because that’s the way to increase the volume and intensity of your voice.

Maintaining your vocal health is essential if you want to have a better singing voice. You should always be hydrated during your practice or performance, so drink plenty of water and think about what you consume before (avoid dairy, cold drinks, etc).

Another crucial element of taking care of your vocal cords is to stop practicing at the moment you feel pain or discomfort. If you can avoid damaging your voice and hurting your throat, why not take this simple precaution?

Finally, you need to keep working on your active listening. Your ears can be your biggest allies in the voice improvement process, so listen to your own pitch, sync your volume with the music and adjust your tone accordingly.

By learning how to rely on your ears, you will practice your self-awareness and also contribute to your overall musicality.

What Makes a Good Singing Voice?

You are perhaps sure that you want to improve your singing voice, but what are you aspiring to? What are the characteristics of a good voice?

Vocal control

To be in control of your singing voice means staying in the correct pitch during singing and not wandering off-key. If you don’t have stable vocal control, that will be manifested in your voice quite noticeably.

Timbre

Timbre is the quality that makes your voice unique. Although you are born with a particular color of the voice, once you find your timbre, you should nurture it and develop it. One of the ways to do it is to practice your head and chest voice and learning to recognize when to use each.

While imitating different kinds of voices and tones might be a good vocal exercise, you should stick to your own timbre when performing. If you really want to improve your singing, working with your natural tone is the best way to go.

Moreover, being yourself in singing, by not only finding your timbre but also choosing a music genre you truly enjoy and fit in, is what will make you stand out from other musicians.

Clear enunciation

To be a good singer, you need to have a proper enunciation of the words you’re singing. You should enunciate every word clearly but smoothly, so it doesn’t seem like you’re putting too much effort into it.

Musical phrasing

Expressive musical phrasing is crucial if you want to sound interesting and good, and not simply correct.

How you shape the lines you sing, along with your pitch, adequate volume, and good diction, is what ultimately makes a good voice.

Let the music take over

All tips and exercises on how to improve your singing will not bring you a great voice unless you really feel the music.

After all, music is art, and even though an excellent voice is built on practice and technique, the only thing that truly makes you a distinctive and appreciated singer is the way you make your listeners feel.

Choose or create a song that you can really feel and think about the emotion you wish to express and the message you want to bring across.

Enjoy it, feel it, and have fun!

That way, all the steps for improving your voice that we explained here will come to you more naturally.

Want to learn more tips and tricks and improve your singing voice significantly? Check out our review of the Best Online Singing Lessons.

Further Reading:

Will Fenton

Will, the founder of MIDDER, is a multifaceted individual with a deep passion for music and personal finance. As a self-proclaimed music and personal finance geek, he has a keen eye for futuristic technologies, especially those that empower creators and the public.

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