Getting Started With Singing Technique

By Author: Maxwell David
Total Articles: 26
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Whether you want to train to sing in a stage show to hundreds of people a night or whether you strive to be a vocalist in a band, developing and maintaining strong and secure singing technique is crucial.

First, in the process of working on your technique you must ensure you do not push your voice - straining your voice can cause long term damage and should be avoided at all costs.

To develop good singing technique, you must begin to think about singing from a different part of your body. Instead of thinking about breathing from the chest and singing from the voice box in the neck, we must develop the concepts of:
1. Using the diaphragm (which is just below the lungs) for effective breathing and
2. Supporting the voice with the contraction of the ‘core muscles' located in the lower abdomen (the muscles just below the tummy button)

The following exercises will help you to apply these fundamental singing techniques:
#1: Breathing:
Put your hands around your waist with your thumbs at the back and fingers at the front - this will help you to become aware of the exact movements ...
... of the diaphragm.
- In front of a mirror, breathe in for 8 counts, hold your breath for 8 counts and hiss the air out slowly and consistently.
- Watch yourself carefully to make sure your shoulders stay still. You should feel your tummy go out as you breathe in and go in as you breathe out. You should also feel a similar movement around your side and back.
- You may want to imagine having a rubber ring fitted tightly around your waist and as you breathe in you push out onto the ring.
- As you repeat this breathing exercise, you should remember three things:
1. You should try to take as much air into the lungs as your breath in - using more of your total lung capacity
2. As you hiss out, you should try to maintain as much control of the air flow as possible - keep a consistent flow to the hiss
3. You should try to encourage as much air out of the body - towards the end of the breath use the tummy muscles to direct the remaining air out of the lungs

- Once you have completed this slow breathing exercise, you need to try speeding up the breathing process.
- Breathing like a steam train, produce short, sharp bursts of air. Remember to ensure you are breathing ‘diaphragmatically' - tummy going out when you breath in and in when you breath out.
- Gradually speed the breaths up - stop if you feel dizzy at any stage.
- Use the contraction of the ‘core muscles' (the band of muscles below the tummy button) to pressurise the air and maintain as much control of your breathing as possible.

#2: Support
- Progressing from the breathing exercises, instead of producing short sharp breaths, produce three short sharp bursts of sounds on a note which is easy for you to sing (try singing to ‘HA')
- Gradually increase the number of sounds you are producing on each note until you are singing scales to ‘ha'
- With each note, you should feel the diaphragm flatten and the tummy expand as you breath in and the core muscles contract to support the voice as you sing the sound
- Repetition of this simple exercise will establish an initial awareness of what ‘support' is and how the contraction of the core muscles can be used to help create security, stability, power and projection to your singing.
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