Would you like to have an amazing voice like Christina Aguilera or Kelly Clarkson from American Idol? To be a great singer, you have to take care of your body both when you sing and when you rest. With practice, hard work and lifestyle changes, you too can have a beautiful singing voice.
Step
Part 1 of 3: Maintaining a Singer's Lifestyle
Step 1. Maintain hydration systematically
Chances are you learned when you were young that your voice comes from your voice box, which is also known as your larynx. The larynx contains muscles called the "vocal cords", which are covered by a mucous membrane. In order for your vocal cords to vibrate properly and produce a clear sound, you must keep the mucous membranes hydrated. Systematic hydration means maintaining healthy levels of hydration in all body tissues.
- Long-term hydration is much more important than short-term hydration, so drinking water the day before a show won't help you.
- Drink, at least 8 glasses of water, not tea, not soft drinks, every day.
- Avoid dehydrating drinks, which contain alcohol and caffeine.
- Drink extra water to compensate for the alcohol or caffeine, if you drink them.
- Avoid all carbonated waters, even those that don't contain caffeine, if they lower the fluid content in the body.
Step 2. Practice actual hydration
Apart from keeping your tissues hydrated internally, you can also keep your vocal cords moisturized and healthy externally.
- Drink your 8 glasses of water throughout the day, rather than drinking large volumes at once. This will ensure consistent external hydration.
- Chew gum and suck on gum to keep our salivary glands working.
- Swallow saliva from time to time to clear your throat without emptying it, which is bad for your vocal chords.
- Maintain a humid environment. If you live in a dry climate, you can purchase a personal steam inhaler at the pharmacy or cover your mouth and nose with a warm, wet towel for a few minutes.
Step 3. Rest your voice consistently
You may love to sing, but if you want to do well, you need to take a break from time to time. Just as athletes rest their muscle groups for a day before retraining them, you need to rest the muscles that produce your voice to avoid injuring them from overuse.
- If you're practicing or performing for three days in a row, take a day off.
- If you're practicing or performing for five days in a row, take a break for two.
- Avoid talking unnecessarily in your daily life if you have a busy singing schedule.
Step 4. Don't smoke
Inhaling any type of smoke, whether active or passive, will dry out the vocal cords. Smoking can also reduce the production of saliva, which is important for actual hydration and increase acid reflux, which can irritate throat tissues. However, the most important effects are decreased lung capacity and function and increased coughing.
Step 5. Maintain a healthy lifestyle
Your instrument is your body, so you must take care of it. Obesity is associated with difficulty controlling your breath, which is one of the most important skills a singer must master, so keep your weight in check with a healthy diet and lifestyle.
- Avoid products made from milk, which produce excess mucus, as it will cause you to want to empty your throat.
- Avoid excessive caffeine or alcohol, both of which will dehydrate the body.
- Eat enough protein to keep up with your workout, which makes your vocal muscles tired from regular use.
- Exercise regularly, both to maintain your weight and to increase your lung capacity and breath control.
Part 2 of 3: Controlling Your Breath
Step 1. Understand how breathing works
The most important muscle to pay attention to is your diaphragm, a dome-shaped muscle that runs along the bottom of your chest cavity. Tensing the diaphragm (inhaling) pushes the stomach and intestines down to make room for air, and lowers the air pressure in the chest, allowing you to take air into your lungs. To exhale, you simply relax your diaphragm, which allows air to leave your chest cavity at a natural rate or you can keep your diaphragm taut against your stomach and intestines, to control the rate of exhalation. The latter is very important for singing.
Step 2. Watch your breathing
To improve breath control, you need to really harmonize the air going in and out of your body. Find a quiet and distraction-free environment, where you can sit for a few minutes each day and just focus on how breathing in and out of air feels inside your body.
Step 3. Practice taking deep breaths into your body
Many people take very short breaths that won't help you breathe, so you need to learn how to breathe to the best of your lungs.
- Inhale slowly and deeply, feeling the air move down through your mouth and throat into your body. Imagine the air is very heavy.
- Visualize you pushing all the way down, below your belly button before allowing yourself to blow it out.
- As you do repetitions, take a quick breath of air. Continue to imagine the air getting heavy and pushing it downwards, into your stomach. Feel how your abdominal area and lower back expand.
- Place one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach. As you inhale, make sure the hands on your stomach move more than the hands on your chest. You should draw the air deep into your body, not shallowly into your chest.
Step 4. Practice holding your breath inside the body
After inhaling deeply and drawing air into your body, try to control how long you can hold the air in your body without feeling uncomfortable. Try to increase the timeframe.
- Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose, making sure to inhale into your stomach area as in the previous exercise. Try to hold it and count to seven, then exhale.
- Repeat several times.
- Over time, try to increase the length of time you hold your breath comfortably.
Step 5. Do the exhalation exercise
Exhaling exercises are important to hold the tone steady. Without it, your voice will likely wavy when singing.
- Breathe in deeply through your mouth, pushing the air deep into your stomach area.
- Instead of letting the air out at a natural rate, keep your diaphragm working, so you can control the rate of exhalation.
- Take eight seconds to get the air out of your chest.
- After you exhale, tighten your abdominal muscles to expel any remaining air from your lungs.
- One of the most important parts of improving breathing, is making sure that we are exhaling properly.
Part 3 of 3: Training Your Voice
Step 1. Warm up your vocals before singing
You won't start running until you stretch, because you can spasm and injure the muscles in your legs. The same principle applies to the muscles associated with singing. Before you strain your vocal cords from serious singing, you want to make sure you warm up your voice so you don't strain it.
- Muttering is a good way to make singing easier by using the whole throat. Before you start singing, practice a few scales by mumbling.
- Vibrating lips heats the muscles associated with exhalation, preparing them for the control of breathing needed when singing. Keeping your lips together, push the air out through them to produce the sound we commonly know as: brrrrrrrrr! Move between scales this way.
Step 2. Practice your scales
While singing a song is the ultimate goal, you should practice a simple scale every day. This will help you to gain control of your voice, stay on the pitch you want and move more easily between adjacent and different notes.
- Listen to YouTube videos to make sure you've matched your pitch exactly to the actual pitch you're supposed to be singing.
- Practice singing scales higher and lower than your most comfortable octave to increase your range.
Step 3. Do tone exercises
Tone exercises such as step intervals will help you move between notes easily without losing your pitch. An interval is the distance between two notes and there are many exercises you can do that will take you through various vocal exercises. The seven basic Major intervals are 2nd Major, 3rd Major, 4th Perfect, 5th Perfect, 6th Major, 7th Major and 8th Perfect, and you can find examples from exercises- this interval training online easily.
Step 4. Record yourself singing
Sometimes, it's hard to know how we actually sound when we sing. Record yourself singing your scales, practice your notes and your favorite songs to find out how you really sound. You can't upgrade if you can't figure out what you did wrong!
Tips
- NEVER drink cold water before you sing. This will shock your vocal cords and make your voice worse. Try room temperature water, but hot tea is best.
- Have fun! If you are auditioning or performing, choose a song that you like and know well.
- Don't be afraid of your own voice. If you think you can't hit a note, keep trying. You will never know!
- When moving on to singing words, pronounce them clearly! The clearer your speech, the better you will be heard.
