The High Performance Singer

Guitarists and bassists talk about the attack of a note - the amount of force and decisiveness with which a note is initiated. Yet again, vocalists can learn lessons from other instruments. Today's tip is a simple one regarding the attack of your words. In general, don't attack your words too hard. What does this mean? And how do you fix it if you are doing it? Easiest for me to give you a audio example where the attacks on the words are too hard. Listen to the first of

Bear with me on this one! It's really simple and helpful, even though it may sound silly. Have you found that you just can't "get" how you're supposed to breathe for singing? You've read about "diaphragm this" and "floating ribs" that, but it just doesn't feel right unless you fill your chest and raise your shoulders? You're used to breathing a certain way - after all, you've been doing it this way for years or decades - and when you try to breathe only into your belly, yo

What are consonants, but a necessary evil between vowels? I mean really, what kind of sounds do you think you should spend most of your time singing? Option 1: fff, sss, ssh, puh, kuh, guh, lll, vvv, zzz, ck, sst.... or Option 2: ah, eh, ee, oh, oo, uh, ih Yeah. You're really singing when you're producing vowels. Vowels are where you can develop resonance, volume, projection, good tone, balanced placement, and all the other great stuff mentioned in other tips. The

You know the feeling of meeting someone new, and feeling almost comfortable with her, but not quite? You can't put your finger on it. She's polite, friendly, even talkative. She tells entertaining stories. She offers you a drink, and makes you laugh. But something isn't quite right. Nothing you can pick out and hold up as egotistical, subversive, manipulative. Nothing rude, obviously false, or annoying. But still, you just can't quite settle in and feel comfortable. Be

Ever listen to ska or reggae? Have you noticed the prominence of the upbeat, usually played by guitar, or keys? (The upbeat is the beat that's normally not prominent - the beat when, if you're tapping your toes, your toes would be up. For example, if you count 1-2-3-4 in a pop or rock song, the 1 and 3 are usually stronger, and the 2 and 4 are less prominent. Divide the time into divisions half as long, and then you have "1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and," where 1-2-3-4 are stronge

I went to a bodybuilding competition a few years ago. One of my husband's friends was competing in the Masters category - that is, the over-50 age group. I don't have to tell you he has one helluva good looking 50-plus-year-old body. I think he won his category. Where was I? Oh yeah... There were some celebrity weightlifters strutting around, too. If you've ever opened a musclemag, you know what these guys look like. The ones who eat a dozen egg whites for the first of s

I've always believed that singing even just a little bit each day is better than singing only a couple times a week for a long time. This certainly felt true when I was learning to play drums and guitar: if I practiced even 15 or 20 minutes in a day, I could feel an improvement the next day. This is because of how the brain turns short-term experiences into long-term memory overnight. Recently, though, I have changed my mind about the benefits of singing for just 15-20 min

Last week I wrote about how to avoid getting caught in your chest voice by learning to identify tension sooner than you used to, using an octave scale down, then up. This week is about keeping a fuller, stronger voice, but without yelling. Yelling is an unpleasant, strained, tense way of making loud noise on a high pitch in your range. Yelling doesn't have very many high frequencies or nasal resonance, so it sounds bottom-heavy even though the pitch is high. In this techniqu

You probably know how it feels - you're singing higher and higher, and your throat is getting tighter and tighter, and you feel like you're going to break unless you push harder and harder to hold it all together. You wish you could figure out how to sing in your chest voice without straining. But you're used to "pulling up" your chest voice. You don't want to sing like this. It simply doesn't sound good. Yes, you CAN bring a full voice up high, but don't do it by yelling

Want to make a leap forward and sing better fast? Sometimes it helps to just go back to basics! I had a fabulous voice lesson last week. I brought my teacher the song "Use Me" by Bill Withers. It has one note that jumps up high - not that high, really, and I can hit it, but sometimes it sounds... well... less good than it could. I had tried a number of different approaches as far as placement, mix, pressure, and volume, but no approach gave me a consistently good result.

You've done the experiments in Part 1, right? Hopefully you found that each day you returned to this exercise, you found a little more clarity (less breathiness) in your voice. Now it's time to make it easier, and better sounding. 1) Say the word "sing" and hold out the "ng" part, so that the back of your tongue touches the roof of your mouth. 2) On "ng", sing an octave scale upwards, starting in the middle of your range and going to a note that's a little bit high for you.

Those of you who know me personally, know how I can get carried away with trying to accomplish too many things at once. And I know that some of you are the same way. We are the kind of people who get so obsessed with making progress, that we don't make enough time for rest. Because of the new year and its attendant resolutions, this seems to be a time of the year for many people when we get too busy trying to get things done... make personal changes... improve ourselves...

Everyone seems to want to sing high notes. You probably have a lot more unused high range than unused low range, but it's a little trickier for some people to access that high range than to access the low range. One reason it is tricky is because there are a lot of different ways to sing in your high range! For example.... Click here to hear a classical head voice (well, as classical as you're going to hear me get, since I'm not an opera singer. Forgive me!) Click here t

For most people, the low end of their vocal range is the range they're most comfortable in. This is mainly because we constantly talk in the low end of our vocal range! But you may be able to access yet a few more notes on the low end of your vocal range than you currently do. Here's how to sing lower notes. 1) Use the Creaky Edge This is also called the "Vocal Fry." Unlike what the name suggests, it's a healthy vocal technique. To do the vocal fry, start by making a c

Wondering how to not to sound nasal when you sing? Well, first, let's understand what's happening when you sound too nasal. A nasal sound happens when too much of your voice exits your head through your nose and not enough exits through your mouth. Now, why would sound exit through your nose rather than your mouth? It happens if you block off the "exit route" of your mouth. Here are some quick and simple ways to reduce nasality in your voice. 1) Open your mouth Yes, this w

Remember the kids that came trick-or-treating to your house a couple months ago? Some of them wore masks, right? Remember how their voices sounded when they said "trick or treat"? Their voices were muffled and quiet, weren't they? You have probably already figured out this week's rocket-science tip: To sing louder, open your mouth. Simple, right? Yes, it is. But most beginning and even intermediate singers don't do it! How far to open? A finger width or two. Try st

Vocal cords: the instrument you can't touch or see. Is it any wonder it's hard to figure out how to do something new? I once went to an ENT who specialized in serving professional vocalists. He temporarily paralyzed my throat with an aerosol spray, threaded a tiny camera through my nose and all the way down my throat, and then asked me to sing the Star Spangled Banner while we watched my cords move on a TV monitor. (Needless to say, it was not my best performance.) It was

One reason untrained singers sound untrained is when vowels go splat. Splatting is when the vowel spreads out and flattens, like a paintball hitting a wall. This is a huge topic, but I'll boil it down into three words: Vertical. Not horizontal. Click here to hear a vertical 'ee', where the lips are stretched into a smile. Click here to hear a horizontal 'ee' where the lips are making a vertical 'oo' shape. Which do you like better? (c) 2009 Adrienne Osborn Adrienne Osborn is

You've heard it milllion times... "Breathe into your diaphragm." "Breathe into your belly." "Your belly should expand first, then your chest." Well, what if you JUST CAN'T GET IT TO WORK THAT WAY? What if, no matter how you try, you can't breathe into your belly first? Here are some more ideas for how to get the feeling of what your voice coach is talking about when they try to teach you to breathe for singing! Kung Fu Panda Breath Thanks to singing teacher Monica August

Does this sound like you?... "I’ve been singingalong with the voice exercises, and I can do them and it’s all good, but I just feel that I don’t GET it. I don’t see how doing these scale-based and word-based exercises (ya, ha, ee, etc) will get me to where I want to be. I feel like I'm waiting for some sort of explanation as to what this is meant to achieve <...> So… why did I do what I just did? And what am I supposed to do now?" Yes, there's a big difference between doing