Exercises to Improve Singing

Everyone wants to be a better singer. Whether we’re making fools of ourselves on national television in an American Idol audition or simply singing in the car where no one can hear us, many of us have hidden aspirations of vocal competence.

Of course, our confidence doesn’t always match our competence, which is why it’s important to focus on developing your voice as an instrument just like you would develop your skill in any other instrument: with work, practice, and even vocal lessons.

But improving your singing doesn’t have to be a lifelong endeavor, a pursuit available only to the truly driven. Instead, you can improve your singing right now by following a few basic steps and employing some nice vocal techniques that many professional singers often use.

Let’s take a look at a few of these techniques and see if we can’t improve your singing voice in a short amount of time.

Scales. On a piano, you might practice a scale. When you sing, you also cycle through eight notes. The famous succession of "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do" is actually simply a major scale. Try to go up and down on one of these scales as a way of warming up your pitch and bringing out a stronger, fuller sound that is confident with each change of pitch.

Many times, this is not employed as a vocal exercise but a vocal practice - a way of practicing your pitch when the pressure of the performance is not imminent. Even so, you can hear whether or not you’re singing in tune simply by, well, singing a tune. Using different words on each note is also a way to practice the expression you need to fully sing each word you’ll be enunciating.

Breathing exercises. We forget that our voices are wind instruments - we think about the vibrations in our chests but not necessarily about the wind that our voice is utilizing in order to generate the vibrations in our vocal chords to produce musical notes. That’s why breathing exercises are ideal for singing: you really have to make sure you’re breathing slowly, surely, and properly in order to produce a relaxed, full sound.

If you don’t have your breath about you, you won’t be able to nail that high note.

You can also employ some breathing practice techniques to improve your ability to sing without taking a breath - increasing your lung capacity. The more you take your lungs out for a spin, the more they’ll be able to respond to the demands your singing places on them.

Here’s a nice little breathing exercise: try inhaling and exhaling as you count upwards from one. Notice how your using the air in your lungs - is most of it coming out as air or as sound? Try to make your breathing efficient so that you don’t lose all of your air by the time you get to "four."

Also, take it easy. You don’t want to pop a vein!

Projecting. A great way to warm up for your singing is to make sure that your volume is appropriate. You can do this by consciously projecting a few notes and hearing how they sound. An old theatre trick is to concentrate on projecting your vocals against the back of your front teeth - it helps you to be conscious of the sound you’re producing. You might also want to think about the kind of crowd you’ll be dealing with. How far of a range do you want people to hear you from? Start projecting in that kind of voice, as long as you can do it in a relatively private way!