The High Performance Singer

Here are six ways to greatly speed up your progress toward becoming a great singer. I'll get the obvious one out of the way first: Practice almost every day. At least a few minutes. (Your brain will chew on it overnight.) A day or two off per week. 'Nuff said. Slow down and focus on one thing at a time. Did you come away from your last voice lesson with 3, 4, 5 different things to work on? Great! But when you practice, focus on only one of them at a time. You can't r

Sometimes I've been asked which key I prefer to sing in - not just for one song, but in general. That's an absurd question and tells me that the person asking doesn't understand much about voice or music. You don't have one key you sing in. What really matters is where the melody lies in the song, the pitches of the most dramatic notes, and which pitches are most commonly used in a song. Just because a song is in the key of G, for example, doesn't mean that the melody run

Do you sing cover songs or jazz standards? Do you find yourself singing just like the artist on the recording? Would you like to sound more like yourself when you sing, and less like an imitation of another singer? Here are a bunch of ways to help you break out of the box of what you hear and find your own voice. Play with dynamics (getting louder and softer at different times). Intentionally try using different dynamics than the dynamics the original artist used. Play wi

Here are some quick, down-to-earth, immediately applicable set of singing tips today: Five vocal technique checks you can do to make sure you're singing with good technique, and not making some of the most common mistakes that beginning singers make. 1 - Is your larynx moving up and down? Check that your larynx is not moving up and down a lot as you sing higher and lower. It should stay more or less in the same place for the main comfortable part of your range. (When men

Vocalists, like cellists and trombone players, have instruments that can produce infinite gradations of pitch – unlike pianos and guitars, which produce exact pitches according to their tuning. In order to sing in tune, singers must rely on muscle memory, “in-the-zone” hearing, and an accurate mental concept of where pitches live. Sometimes a flat or sharp note can be used for emotional or artistic effect, but you want any notes you sing out of tune to be intentional choices

I’ve received a couple of requests for tips on how to warm up voice for singing, so this week we’re just going to get down to basics on a couple of the best vocal warmups to start with before you move into further exercises and warmups. Bubbling (Lip Trills) I'll be honest, there was a period of time when I thought lip trills were not very useful. But as I have learned more about the voice, I've realized their application to even hard rock singing. The most important piec