Teach Yourself To Sing

Some people think that singing is talent that you are born with or you will never have but like most skills in life it is something that can be learned and mastered by anyone willing to put the time and effort into achieving a goal. Talent does play a part in how quickly one learns and what they can do with that voice but no matter what your natural talent for singing and musicality you can teach yourself to sing well enough to be a social singer or even as a career option because more than talent and a sweet voice is your drive to make something of it that really gets results!

So what do you need to know to teach yourself to sing?

There is an enormous amount of information out there on what to do to be a great singer and the more skilled a singer the more small nuances you can uncover to help you different parts of your skill set. This however is all useless unless you know the basic foundations of good singing which will help you establish good habits that will aid you in all the rest of your efforts to teach yourself to sing.

Here are a few basics you should get right to begin with:

With your very breath being the instrument you need to refine to learn to sing better your breathing needs to be geared for good singing. If you can breath correctly when you sing and know how to use that breath then your voice will be stronger, firmer, and more accurate on the pitch and tone.

To get this right we must go right back to the basics of something we do all the time every day for our entire lives: Inhaling and Exhaling.

To inhale Correctly

1. As you breath in imagine that the air is very heavy and will sink down into your body with the weight.
2. Let the air fall down to your stomach, as low as it can go.
3. Exhale and inhale again a few times and continue to imagine it is heavy but make it fall to your stomach faster each time to get the right feeling.
4. You can also fill your lungs as if you were going to blow up a balloon. You will feel your lower back and abdomen expand.

This quick inhalation of air to the lower torso not the chest area is what you need to sing well.

To Exhale Correctly

1. Imagine you have a feather (or use one if you have one) and practice breathing using this tool
2. Blow the feather high into the air by using a long steady stream of breath.
3. Do not let your chest collapse from lack of breath or poor posture during this exercise.
4. As you blow this feather around the room you should feel the air exhale from your stomach as you use your diaphragm to press the air out of your lungs leaving your chest in the same position
5. If you do this right you should feel the need to immediately inhale again and quickly as you squeeze out all the air in your lungs in a steady stream.

Good exhalation technique will allow you to control your singing like an expert.

Posture itself is not the base reason to sing well but relates to being able to breathe well by putting your body in the correct position to take advantage of every muscle in the human body that is used to inhale, exhale and use that breath to sing without cramping your body or overextending it.

Some simple tips for good posture while singing are as follows:

• Stand up straight without slumping forward at all. Try bringing your shoulders back more and raising your chin as you stand for best effect.
• While doing this do not be too rigid and unmoving. Stand in a relaxed pose but without being sloppy. Do not tense any muscles.
• Try placing a hand on your chest and the other on your stomach as you sing and breathe. This is to check you are breathing from the diaphragm not the chest as mentioned in the previous section.
• Try singing in front of a mirror for posture clues, you can use this to check your posture or even to play around with your posture a little bit and see how it effects your voice.

There is a natural sort of posture and way of moving as you sing and breathe if you practice this that has a flowing quality that becomes instinctual as you teach yourself to sing.

Your ability to hit the right pitch is paramount as you teach yourself to sing and can be quite challenging for many people. Otherwise known as singing in key hitting the right pitch can be achieved by control of your vocal chords which produce the right pitch by vibrating at the right frequency as you breath through them. Some common reasons why people struggle with this however are as follows:

• Lack of breath support
• Lazy ears, lack of good listening for pitch
• Vocal cord tension

All of these issues can be overcome however. If you practice good breathing technique for instance you will be able to get the breath support for singing in key and if you do not try to sing out of your range you will not strain your vocal chords and place tension on them. Lazy ears for lack of a better term is simply something that comes with practice but taking time to listen to pitch and tone changes in music and singing will help.

It is suggested that singing scales is an excellent way to practice pitch and also expand your range gradually. Having a keyboard or even online keyboard will help you a great deal here.

Another problem you may run into when trying to teach yourself to sing is how to get more volume and power or projection of your voice which many people esspically those of a smaller frame seem to struggle with. There is one very important thing you must NOT do here

Do not YELL!

Some vocal coaches may try to get you to yell to practice louder volumes but this can seriously damage your throat and is not good form to begin with. You hardly need to know what loud IS just how to achieve it.

The thing you must know about achieving a greater volume when singing is that you do not need more air as is the case with yelling but you do need a higher air pressure passing through your vocal chords.You see when you sing a note of average volume, the vocal chords will hold back the air in your lungs for a very short moment, and then will open. The air is then 'allowed through' the vocal chords at a particular air pressure.

For a louder note however, the vocal chords keep back the air for a longer period of time They open quickly then ... quicker than they would open for a note of a lower volume. This means that the air pressure is higher than for a lower volume note.

These four main components of singing are very important to master before moving on to more complicated and specialized skills but there are a few general tips you may need to know to teach yourself to sing.

• Accept criticism - Do not get discouraged by negative feedback because everyone starts somewhere and even if the criticism is not constructive you can make it constructive. Artists must live with people critiquing them all the time.
• Talk to other singers - If you do not know any, go find some! Not only will it enhance your knowledge it is a great way to build a network.
• Look after your health - Quit smoking, do not ruin your throat! Eat and drink well, your body is an instrument and needs to be cared for like any other.
• Stay positive! Sometimes it can be depressing and hard work to teach yourself to sing but if you work at it you can achieve it and the main factor that stops a lot of people is it becomes too hard and they give up not that they could not do it.

While these tips and tricks may help you set a good foundation to singing you may be looking for more resources to help you become a better singer. While you can find more information on a variety of sites there is a lot of repetitive information which takes a long time to trawl through and does not take you to a more advanced phase.

Some other resources that are very helpful:

Singorama is defiantly one of the most professional peices of software you can download to teach yourself to sing. This package comes with 28 audio lessons and includes a heap of other software features like a computer piano, recording software, pitch training software and more.

If you are serious about improving your singing voice and want to sounds truly professional the singorama is probably the best software program if you are looking for more help to learn to sing.

Click Here to view SingoRama

This is a cheap and cheerful product you can download to help you learn better singing. This software is interactive with diagrams, quizzes, audio and visual elements. Coving all the fundamentals of singing this package is a great choice for absolute beginners, children or those who wish to sing socially more than professionally.

While this course will help you improve your voice is not as comprehensive as singorama but for a much reduced price it delivers a lot of content that might be half the cost of a singing instructor's lesson givign you flexible, afforable self learning.

Click here to view Singing Is Easy