The Top 5 Tips Every Singer Must Know - Kirbanu

Embrace & Empower Your Unique Voice

The Top 5 Tips Every Singer Must Know How to Improve Your Voice in Under 5 Minutes The following vocal manual contains a few simple tips and tricks that can be done easily and in most places. Most of the exercises involve nothing more than your own awareness. If you do these 5 things, however, they will improve the quality of your voice. Also, they will make you more aware of your body as your instrument.

As with anything, change comes with practice and persistence. So take time and have patience. Give yourself this time to get to know your voice better by getting to know your body better.

You can decide to tackle these 5 things together, or one at a time. If you have any questions about these techniques, please don’t be shy, contact me, and I’ll be happy to help you out.

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1. Fix Your Posture The voice, unlike any other instrument, is located within your body. So slumping, slouching, and other poor alignment habits not only make you feel bad, but they really get in the way of your voice. Just try it and see for yourself. Take a moment. Slouch. Drop your shoulders forward and let your chin fall in towards your chest. Now try and sing. Doesn’t feel very good, does it?

Ok, sure, that was a little extreme, but can you honestly say that you do none of these things in a day? If yes, congratulations, you are the master of your own posture! Please teach your good habits to others! If no, then here is a great alignment exercise to help you out:

1. Stand with your legs slightly apart, and your weight balanced evenly on both feet. Your knees should be slightly bent. 2. Become aware of the your bottom (your sacrum) and tilt it under slightly, so that your anus is pointing south. 3. Align your jaw with your butt. Yes, your jaw should sit in a direct vertical alignment, directly over your butt hole. 4. Roll the shoulders gently up and back. Let your chest rise up. 5. Finally, feel as though your whole body is being gently and comfortably pulled up on a string. As though a string is attached to the very top of

your head, pulling you up towards the ceiling.

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Now try singing a tune. I hope that you can hear and, more importantly, feel, the difference!

2. Breathe Deeper Too many of us have developed a habit of breathing in a rushed, shallow manner. Although this breathing type clearly keeps us alive and functioning, it unfortunately really limits us when singing.

When we breathe in a shallow way whilst singing two things happen simultaneously: 1. Our shoulders rise. This leads to tension and cramping in the neck muscles, which places pressure on the jaw, tongue and eventually on the vocal chords. This may cause you to feel a burning or scratching feeling in your throat whilst singing. 2. Our lungs take in a lesser amount of air than what is actually possible. This leads to many problems including: a. A need to inhale more often than there is space for within a song b. Inhalations that sound violent, rushed, trapped and forced c. Reduced air pressure bellow the vocal chords causing straining directly on the chords as they have to work harder to meet together during singing

d. Inability to hold a tone for the needed length

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e. Shaking and cracking of the voice f. Inability to pitch correctly g. Breathy or an unclear sound h. Vocal fatigue

What is the solution? Learn to breathe deeper. My blog posts on Active Breathing and the Pee-Pee Point go into a lot more detail on this topic. I recommend that you read them and do the exercises given there.

In the end singing is about the body. It is about working with, and developing, our bodily awareness. Your sound is a result of the work you do within yourself. And you should begin with your breath!

3. Stand Your Voice Forward Tired of feeling like your voice is trapped in your throat? Then get it out of there!

Working with a voice that is stuck in your throat is a recipe for disaster. Many of the problems that you may experience are: -

burning and/or scratching in the throat

-

lack of power

-

lack of projection

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vocal fatigue

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-

vocal loss

-

overall frustration as you are unable to find your vocal power

Your voice feels like it is trapped in your throat because it is.

What you may or may not realize is that you have a choice regarding where to position your voice. What do I mean by this? Let’s take a step back and look at the sound making process.

You breathe in and your lungs fill with air. You decide with your brain to make a tone using your voice. On your exhalation air is breathed between your vibrating vocal chords, located in your larynx.

But the journey doesn’t stop there. This vibrating, sound filled air travels further. It goes up into your throat and is converted into audible words through your tongue, jaw and lips in your mouth.

What you can decide at this point, is where to project that sound. You can drop it back into your throat, leave it in your mouth, or aim it forward. This choice determines how the sound vibrating within you is heard by the world outside of you.

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What we are talking about here is the technical term resonance. To project that sound out of your body into the world, you need to decide upon how to use it.

If you choose to project your sound into your throat or leave it in your mouth, the effect is the same as speaking into a wet towel. The muscles and flesh in these areas effectively absorb your sound. The result is that you can’t hear your voice projecting. When this happens to us, we often become frustrated and try to force our voice out by using more power. Sadly this does not help our voice to come out. Instead this force causes damage to our vocal chords to the point that we may lose our voice.

The solution is to take option 3: Aim your voice forward.

In fact this should become your new mantra. Why? Because the forward part of your face is made of bone. When you aim your sound against these bone, it is the same as speaking into an empty room with wooden floorboards. Your sound is amplified. It requires no force from you, just the mindfulness to put your voice there.

And, you can develop this mindfulness through practice. A good, simple exercise that you can do anywhere is to hum. The trick with this is that you

need to hum whilst aiming your voice forward. Use your fingers to help you.

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Hum a mid-range tone, holding it for as long as you can. Now ever so lightly, touch the sides of your nose, your cheek-bones and your top lip with your index finger. You should be able to feel these parts gently vibrating.

If you can, super! If not, try to aim your voice further forward. Keep practicing and have patience. Change doesn’t normally happen in a moment, but if you persist, it will.

4. Warm Up Would you go to the gym and do heavy squats without warming up beforehand? I hope not!

In the same way, we need to warm up the vocal mechanism before using it for speaking and singing. A simple trick that you can do anywhere is called a vocal trill. My favorites are using “n” and “m”.

Let’s start with “n”. Make a “n” sound, in the same way that you would speak the word “nut.” Now keep just the “n” part. Choose a mid-range tone and sing “n” for your entire exhalation.

Next do the same but choose a tone that is a bit higher. Repeat this again, but on a tone that is lower than your first one.

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Now, starting at your lowest possible tone, slide all the way up to your highest possible tone, using this “n” sound.

Next, do the opposite, from your highest to your lowest.

Take time with both of these and really feel that you are sliding all of the way up and down your range. This does not need to be a very loud tone. Choose a volume that is comfortable for you and go with that.

For the finale you can begin at your lowest tone, slide up to your highest, flip over and slide all of the way back down to your lowest tone again. This should be done using one breath.

Once you are comfortable doing this trill on the “n” sound, you can repeat the whole exercise using “m”. This is the “m” sound that you would use to say “mother.”

The point of both trills is to slide through your range and to take time. These should be done as a warm up, so allow them to be gentle and “stretching” for your voice.

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5. Drink lots of water You voice is unlike any other instrument. It is inside of you. It is not outside of you. How you treat yourself has a direct impact on how you treat your voice, and how it will function.

We all know that we need to drink enough water per day to stay healthy and hydrated. This is very important for proper bodily functioning as well as for long-term health. However, what you may not know is why your vocal chords need to stay hydrated.

The vocal chords move in a wave like manner when they vibrate. In order to do this they need to be flexible and supple. They are suppler when they are wet, and become tougher when they are dry. As we want to aid in their ability to move freely, it is really important that we keep our vocal chords hydrated.

Hydrated vocal chords also produce less friction when they vibrate together. This friction causes heat that can lead to discomfort, like throat burning sensations, whilst singing. Which is a discomfort that we can easily avoid.

The quickest and simplest way that we can keep our vocal chords hydrated is to keep our body hydrated by drinking enough water. I recommend 1 liter of water per 20 kg of bodyweight as the absolute minimum. So find a bottle that

you like and get drinking!

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I hope that you find the short little tips I have given you in this manual helpful!

If you want to find out more about how your voice works and how you can become a more empowered singer, then remember to take a look at my blog. There I explain many topics in more detail and give you free tutorials and tips on a regular basis.

You can also attend to one of my workshops or contact me directly for private online lessons. In the end, it is about you becoming the best version of you, and I’d like to help you with that!

Embrace and empower your unique voice, and let the world hear you!

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