How to Sing Adele’s Record-Breaking Song Hello, like a Pro!

While Adele continues to conquer the world with her brand new album 25, something rather interesting happened the other day. A record producer stepped into my studio wanting to learn how to sing Adele’s smash hit song Hello, because he’d been recording himself but felt his voice needed an extra something to nail Adele’s incredibly powerful range. I listened to the track he’d recorded and yes, too right he was. His voice would need some work to get there. If this sounds like you, then this article will talk you through the simple steps you need to take to get your vocals to those dizzy yet powerful heights that have now become synonymous with our darling songstress, Adele.

Now let’s agree on one thing, singing any of Adele’s numbers isn’t child’s play. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Without proper training, chances are you’ll be puffing and panting, and screaming and shouting through her songs… and going nowhere. So how does SHE do it? Do you want to know the truth? Well, talent alone certainly doesn’t cut it. However, training in speech level singing technique does. So now that we know what the solution is, let’s get you started with acquiring the skill to cut the mustard with Adele’s Hello. Let’s begin by analyzing the chord progression of the song and what needs to be done to deliver the song.

Adele’s Hello begins with a warm low note that sticks to the heavier, edgier side of the chord. How to achieve this is to hum your scales with that edge in your sound. But you shouldn’t feel any build up of air pressure. Your tone must remain even or connected all the way up and all the way down. If too much air pressure starts to build, your voice will get stuck and you will start to squeeze your tone. You should feel as if you’re using just a little piece of the chord—just the inside edges. As you learn to do it better, you can involve more and more air and chord, as long as the muscles outside your larynx don’t start to interfere. Try doing intermittent checks under your jaw with your finger, to make sure those muscles aren’t tightening up.

"Hello from the other side, I must have called a thousand times" takes the song to a whole new dimension all of a sudden. Have you ever heard the term ‘sounding chest in your head voice’? To achieve this, you’ll want power that resonates in your upper range inside your head, but with the same strength and tone as you would in your lower range. Vocal training exercises that begin with the lip rolls and tongue trills will prepare the voice to navigate your range with more ease and comfort. When you’re well developed using these, you can step into humming and working with single vowels like AAH, wherein AH becomes UH (UUH/EER) to begin with, to help induce the head voice. Once you’re working comfortably with this, the next step is to work with the straight AAH sounding vowel.

Now let’s take a look at Adele’s impressive high pitches. When her octaves kick in with “To tell you I'm sorry for everything that I've done” and “But when I call you never seem to be home,” you’ll need to pay close attention to the way she delivers her octaves with “Tell, I'm, I and Anymore,”  the latter appearing towards the end of the song. The surest way to achieve this is to do vocal exercises with octaves, to develop that fluid connection from chest to head. It really is that simple. But you have to do these exercises regularly. To give you an idea, if you train every single day for 10 days (well, no harm if you took a break on Sunday), chances are you will be able to nail Adele’s song Hello like a pro.

If you want to improve your singing voice, read my Vocal Training Product Review for Home Learning article in which I recommend vocal training programs that cover the entire spectrum in voice training to include: Pitch, Tone, Vocal Agility, Head Voice, High Notes, the Mix, Vibrato and MORE. Click Here!

You are the instrument, learn to sing like a pro!

JOETT

Vocal Coach & Author "Letters from a Vocal Coach"
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