Perhaps you’ve always dreamed of holding a West End stage rapt like Hannah Waddingham or filling an arena like Adele. Or perhaps you were once told you can’t sing and are determined to prove your critics wrong. Whatever your reasons, everyone can learn to sing better. As the saying goes, “If you can speak, you can sing.” (Unless, of course, you are among the 4% of people who are medically tone deaf.) Even if your career doesn’t quite reach the highs of Waddingham or Adele, there are several steps you can take to improve your voice, starting with these 10.
1. Take lessons
If you’re serious about singing, your best investment will be a vocal coach. A good singing teacher should be able to identify – and correct – where you’re going wrong, whether that’s in technique, confidence, or listening skills. It might be worth trying a few to find the best fit for you. As singing coach Jo Thompson cautions in her book Find Your Voice: “Poor, uninformed coaching ranges from the completely ineffectual to the downright damaging.”
2. Prepare your body
Understanding what’s happening in your body when you sing can help you become better at it. Put simply, sound is created when your breath flows through your larynx, causing the vocal cords to vibrate. That’s why controlling your breath and diaphragm and keeping the muscles of your larynx relaxed are vital to singing well. Even the position of your tongue and teeth can affect vocal quality. Let’s take a closer look at how to achieve this.
- Master your breathing
“To achieve a smooth, flowing sound, you require a smooth, flowing breath,” according to Thompson. “You have to be able to control the outflow of breath as you are singing so you don’t use it all up in one go.” One exercise she suggests for taking control of your breath involves placing your hands on your stomach and breathing out in short bursts, making a vibrating ‘vvv’ sound like “you are softly revving an engine.” To expand the exercise, you can then go up and down in pitch using the same ‘vvv’ sound. - Relax the larynx
Once you’ve mastered your breathing, the next step is to check what your larynx is doing. If you’re a beginner, it helps to place your fingers on your throat to feel exactly where it is and see how it moves as you sing. For example, when you hit high notes, your larynx naturally tilts. As a result of this, some singers develop tension there. To avoid this, work on relaxing your larynx and lowering it. - Stand up straight
Smooth breathing relies on good posture, so arrange yourself in a relaxed, upright position with your core engaged, your knees soft, and your head level. Don’t overdo it; you should avoid tensing any part of your body. Likewise, make sure your mouth and tongue are relaxed.
3. Learn some basic exercises
You can try a whole range of exercises to help develop your technique. One that singing teacher and musical director James Hall starts with is a siren, a warm-up routine that involves saying the word ‘sing’ “like an open hum”, then sliding up and down the musical scale. As Hall puts it, “It allows someone to connect with their voice immediately and figure out where it sits, where it goes, and what the possibilities are.”
4. Train your ears
It’s common for people who have rarely sung or who lack confidence to sing out of tune. While we tend to think that’s an intractable problem, there are ways to improve your sense of pitch. Often, it’s just a case of paying closer attention. As Thompson writes, “Strangely enough, if you give people the instruction to listen, suddenly they can become more accurate.” If one of Hall’s students sings out of tune, he suggests “coming to the piano and hearing the intervals. And really spending the time to slow down and find those notes.”
5. Practise on repeat
Once you’ve learned some technical exercises and mastered the basics, the key thing is to practise – a lot. As Hall puts it, when singers get onto the stage, they want to have all the technical aspects “ingrained into autopilot.” These include accessing the high notes, changing the voice quality, and watching their breath so “they can be in the moment, and they can act and connect with the text live.”
6. Look after your health
Make sure you drink enough water, get enough sleep, and avoid smoking. It’s also a good idea to rest your voice if you’ve overexerted it.
7. Record yourself
Recording yourself and playing back your efforts allows you to spot errors, from missing a note to not enunciating a word properly or sounding strained. You could share the recording with your singing teacher and ask them to identify any issues you may have missed.
8. Pay attention to the lyrics
Singing, particularly in musical theatre, is like acting. The audience has to believe you’re that character and connect emotionally to your performance. Treat a song as you would a script or play: analyse what the lyrics mean and do any preparatory work to get into character.
9. Listen to a variety of music
We all have favourite artists and genres, but it’s a good idea to widen your listening habits while learning to sing. Paying close attention to different artists enables you to work out what techniques they’re using at different points in the song and to see if those are things you can bring to your own performances. For example, country singers tend to use a lot of twang (a particular vocal timbre), whereas classical singers use a lot of vibrato (a slight and rapid variation in pitch that sustains a note).
10. Join a Choir
Whether or not you’re not looking to turn professional, a choir is a great way to improve your singing without forking out for lessons. Though you won’t get the kind of individual attention you would in one-to-one teaching, a good choir leader should point out ways to improve. Plus, belonging to a community choir is fun, sociable, and scientifically proven to lower stress levels.