What Makes a Singer Sound Good

If you have every wondered about what makes a singer sound good then this is the blog post you have been waiting for.

Tuning

Having proper tuning is one of the things that makes a singer sound good. Now if you have never had singing lessons before you may wonder about what is good tuning. You want to think of having good tuning as hitting the bulls eye. If your note is too low you are flat but if the note if too high you are singing sharp. What you want to be aiming for is something that is perfectly in the middle.

So you might ask how can I sing perfectly on pitch. Well if you are singing too high it means that you are pushing too much air throat the vocal cords. Bu if you are singing too low it means that you don’t have enough air. To fix that is you are singing too high you want to balance more of the weight on the heels of your feet. If you are to low focus more of the weight on the balls of your feet. This will help to adjust your posture so you can get the proper breath support.

So what if you can’t tell if you are too high or too low what do you do? Well if you can’t tell you need to work on developing your ear. Try cupping your ear when you sing and that will help you too work on hearing your pitch better. As you get more confident in your hearing you will eventually be able to remove your hand from your ear.

You also may wonder about what do you could do if you running out of breath at the end of your phrases. Well that question would bring us straight to our second point about being a good singer.

A Good Singer Has Breath Support

What creates sound is simply your breath passing through the vocal cords to create sound. If you are finding that you can’t hold onto a sound long enough or if you find you are getting flat at the end of your phrases it means that you don’t have enough breath support.

To have a good breath support your stomach muscles (the diaphragm) should be moving out as you breathe and in as you breathe out. Try practicing breathing by breathing in for four counts and breathing out on a “S” sound. Then see how many seconds you can breathe out for. Increasing the second will develop a stronger breath support.

Vowels and Consonants

If you think about it, the part that rings out when we sing is the vowels on the words. It would song really weird if you tried to sing out on a “R” sound because the consonants just don’t sound quiet as good as the vowel sounds.

So what creates a good vowel sound?

A good vowel has a very pure sound. It is not muddled by consonants so when you sing an “O” sound you don’t want to put the letter “M” in there it is a “O”. The consonants are the percussion of your singing and they should be short and clear. The consonants also are the thing that help to bring the vocal cords together. So you want to make sure that the consonants and vowels don’t get muddled together.

When you create your vowels create space between your jaw bones so the vowel can bounce around in your mouth.

Vocal Tone

Vocal tone comes down to the mix in your voice. So you want to make sure that you have a good balance in your sound. You don’t want anything too nasal or too dull. Vocal tone comes down to how your voice is balanced between vibrating in your nasal, mouth and chest cavity. All sound vibrates and creates sound waves and so you need a balance between the sound cavities.

Vocal Mix

A good singer also has a good vocal mix. So what is vocal mix? A good vocal mix means that you have a strong head, chest, mixed, falsetto, whistle voices. Not only do you have a strong voice in all those categories it also means that you can create whatever sound you want at any time with total control. But let’s talk about what each of those are:

Head Voice – Head voice is a bright and strong sounding voice. Here your voice will vibrate in your nasal passage.
Chest Voice – The chest voice is a dark rich and strong sounding voice where you sound vibrates in your chest.
Mixed Voice – When you have a strong mixed voice it is the mix between your head and chest voice. Also if you have a strong mixed voice it means that you will be able to transition for head to chest voice without having your voice break. You will also be able to avoid it thinning out as you transition higher or lower.
Falsetto Voice – A strong falsetto voice is hard to do. You want to think of a high breathy voice. This is harder to do because the voice is lighter it can make it easier to have it break apart and crack.
Whistle Voice – The whistle register would be those very high notes that you would hear a Mariah Carey or Ariana Grande sing.

Neutral Larynx

You may wonder why in the world the larynx would even matters in making a singer sound good. For men it is easier to feel their larynx because this is where their Adam’s Apple is located. For women you can feel this by placing your hand gentle of you neck and swallowing. The bump that moves and up and down would be where you larynx is located. The larynx will generally go down as you sing notes that are lower and up as you go higher. But you want to generally keep the movement in a more central position on the neck. This will make sure that your low notes don’t sound too deep and your high notes not too bright.

Another thing that you will notice is that the movement of the tongue and the larynx are very connected so if your larynx is going down too low as you sing deep it also means that your tongue will also tend to go deeper into the throat. That is why teachers will tell you to sing with your tongue more to the front of your teeth. Also if your tongue ends up going too far back in your throat you will also have it taking up more space in your mouth. If the tongue is taking up too much space in the mouth at the back of the throat it will block the sound from bouncing around in your mouth creating a more muffled sound.

Compression vs Strain

Another thing that a makes a singer sound good is the balance between compression and strain. If you have enough compression what it will do is help you project your voice better and create a strong voice. However, some people will try to create a stronger voice by pushing really hard. You’ll be able to see this by the way they jut out their jaw and tilt their head upwards and you may even see the blood vessels in their neck and face tense. This is not good for your vocal cords and can begin to create damage.

Instead you should focus on creating a very relaxed sound. Make sure you whole body and face is relaxed as you sing. Then as you are in a relaxed state create compression by focusing on your crisp consonants to project the voice and by having a strong breath support to carry the voice. There is no reason to put pressure on the vocal cords. If you have all the other things in place your voice will naturally project.

Vibrato

Strong vibrato control will help a singer sound good. Vibrato is basically the oscillating between two pitches. A good vibrato isn’t necessarily having a wide vibrato on everything unless you are trying to sing opera. It is really about having control over your vibrato and how fast, high, and wide your vibrato is. Also, it is about being able to choose which notes have vibrato and which notes do not have vibrato.

Now hearing all of things may seem overwhelming because it is a lot to think of. And that is true. But the important thing is that you don’t need to try to master it all at the same time. Simply just try to focus on learning one new thing at a time and mastering it. The exciting thing about music is that you never truly arrive. It is all about a journey where you are becoming better and better every single day.

I hope you loved today’s lesson on “What Makes a Singer Sound Good”. Please check back regularly for more piano and vocal tips for your musical adventure.

Linnea Loves Music