Vocal Training Mini-Course: Correcting the Top 5 Singing Mistakes (Part 1)

If you’ve ever desired tips and tricks to correcting common singing mistakes, then this article will show you how to kit your very own diagnostic toolbox. It’s certainly a good thing to get training by a tutor, but having a couple of ideas on how to correct common mistakes that most singers struggle with would be good for you to know.

The most common mistakes with most students, is too much weight in their voice. There’s always a tendency to push or force notes, particularly in the higher ranges. We’re so used to speaking in our chest voice, so singing in our chest voice is also a lot more comfortable. But when you try to sing in the higher registers with your chest voice it becomes weighty, strained, and it really doesn’t work at all. We tend to want to shout our way up, for lack of a better description. SO, when getting into your higher notes with your chest voice isn’t working, what do you do? Try to get into your head voice through your mix.

Take a deep breath and relax. To test your range from chest voice to head voice, try doing a tongue trill (RRR) for example, and race your way up an imaginary straight line from your chest to your head. Keep it light. The trill will allow your larynx muscles to stay relaxed and not to rise as they would normally do when you’re trying to belt out higher notes. If you’ve managed to do this very simple yet very effective test, and if you’ve done it correctly, you’ll realize how easy it is to hit the high notes.

Another way to get into your head voice is by adding a bit of that pharyngeal resonator “NG” through your mix voice. To get some practice, try to attempt hitting higher notes with the vowel “AA” but starting out with a lighter tone to begin with; and then gradually adding a little weight to it towards the top end of your range. You’ll likely sense that your voice sounds deeper and more chest-register, but devoid of the strain and pain that would’ve otherwise come with it. Nothing conditions the voice better than doing special scales exercises, nonetheless, so make sure you download my free Learn to Sing with Joett exercises on mp3 from my HulkShare page here! 

Thank you for visiting my blog,

JOETT
Vocal Coach
Need Private Singing Lessons? Click Here!

How to Brighten Your Tone for a Consistent Acoustical Shape

In this article I want to talk about having a consistent acoustical shape. I’m sure you’re already wondering… “What on earth is that?” Well, this is mostly about how to brighten up a dull sound. A dull and lifeless sounding voice doesn’t have a lot of crispness to it. It is similar to a gargle pretty much, if I had to describe it literally. If when you sing in your lower register (or chest voice), your voice tends to sound dull, muddy and in desperate need of cranking up a little bit so that it becomes brighter and with more resonance coming through, then this is what you’ll need to do.
 
Try to pay attention to how you’re doing the scales with the vowel and consonant phrase. For example  if you did the Arpeggios scale with BAH you’ll probably notice—if this applies to you—that your vocal is a little muddy on the lower notes, especially. If you want to brighten that up, try adding the NG sound for a few runs to feel the voice resonate crisply, and then go back and apply the same technique on the scale to BAH. Articulating the vowels—which I covered in my last article—also helps to brighten up sound. So without a doubt, opening your mouth is a sure fire way to help brighten up the dull sound.

What you do in the scales you will do when you sing. It tends to follow you everywhere, so the key is to make sure you’re doing your scales correctly. Another sound to watch out for is the squeezed tone. A lot of that sound comes from a raised larynx. It also comes from tension in your neck, throat and jaw. So try to take notice of your sound production, just to make sure that it is neither too dull nor too bright, and then make adjustments accordingly as you’re going through your whole scale; the whole phrase; and the whole song. To help you get started with developing a consistent acoustical shape, you may download my FREE piano Alternative Arpeggios scales MP3 to work with from my HulksShare page here!

Thank you for dropping by,

JOETT
Vocal Coach
Need Private Singing Lessons? Click Here!

A Quick Introduction to the Vocal Tone

Tone is the Timbre of your voice, or the quality of your voice, or something that is uniquely you. Some people would desire to sound like a particular singer, but my advice to you is that ideally you need to sound like you and nobody else. Your timbre is unique and identifies YOU in that when someone here’s your voice often enough, they’ll know it’s unmistakably you. The last thing you want to do is to SOUND like someone else. You’re more marketable when you’re you. Yes, you may take a few things from other artists, I’m all for that, but your timbre or that quality of your voice is what makes you uniquely you. So what can help you get a better tone? Let’s take a close look.

The one thing that can tremendously improve your tone is to open your mouth. I know this may sound a little crazy, but a lot of novices tend to sing with their mouth pretty much opening the same way you do to articulate when you speak… which is hardly enough space for when you want to sing. You can mumble your way through speech, but what sounds like over articulating when you’re talking, when you’re singing it actually sounds normal and clear. You can understand the lyrics. So it is important that you open your mouth so that the sound can come out and resonate. Articulating your lyrics a bit more than you think you should, will allow the characteristic quality of sound that is uniquely you, independent of pitch and loudness, to resonate. It will help you shape your vowels correctly, and that in turn will help you improve your tone.

A couple of really quick ways to train your jaw to drop fluidly is to do the breathing exercise as instructed in my Learn to Sing with Joett vocal training CD (now partly available for free download online). And the second way to get your jaw to loosen up is to do the scales on the vowels AEIOU. However, before you work with the vowels, hum the scales using my Alternative Scales piano tracks until you’re connecting your chest voice to your head voice proficiently. Only then should you attempt to work the same scales on the vowel to help you with your articulation. You may download FREE piano scales MP3 from my HulksShare page here!

Thank you for dropping by,

JOETT
Vocal Coach
Need Private Singing Lessons? Click Here!

A Mini Course on Pitch - Hearing Your Voice Properly

{Published in Business Times Newspaper Friday June 5 - 11, 2015} If you’re having trouble hearing yourself, the likelihood is you could quite easily run into pitching problems. Hearing your voice properly when you sing is critically important to your singing in pitch. If you’re in an empty room, for example, you’ll hear your voice reverberated against the walls, which doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be hearing yourself properly. A padded room, or room filled with furniture and drapes on the other hand will absorb your voice and doesn’t really help you hear yourself properly either; and if you sing in an open space like the beach, even more so. So how then do you get to hear your voice properly when you sense something isn’t right with what you’re hearing? This article will share an age old singers’ tip you’ll want to keep closest to your chest.

A good way to intonate your ear… or to get your ear tuned to what your voice is doing is a very simple trick that is used in opera circles. What you can do when you’re doing your vocal exercises is to cup your ear. Try cupping your palm around one ear and try to sing Nay Nay Nay. And then try doing the same without cupping your ear and you’ll notice you don’t really hear yourself as well. Mind you, this doesn’t have to be done the whole time you’re exercising. You need only do it for a while to help tweak or correct your pitch when hearing yourself properly becomes a problem. It’s a very old singers’ trick that works, and I hope it’ll work for you.

When you’re recording your vocals in a recording studio, it is important that you hear yourself on your headset. If you cannot hear yourself at all (or what you hear isn’t good), then make sure the producer does something about it. Being unable to hear your voice when you’re recording will affect the way you deliver your vocals. It really is as simple as that. You may have noticed how many a time producers resort to auto tune to fix pitching problems, when all they needed to do was to make sure you heard yourself properly. If you’ve had vocal training, you don’t need auto tune. You need to hear yourself. Plain and simple!

Thank you for dropping by,

JOETT
Vocal Coach
Need Private Singing Lessons? Click Here!