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
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